What Central Board of Film Certification can learn from gay sex in films
The Central Board of Film Certification has cracked down on two lesbian-themed films, Margarita with a Straw and Unfreedom, because of that familiar bogey of "cultural values". This from a body whose chairman directed a song that referred freely to an erect penis ("Dar pe tere aashiq khada hai," from Andaz). Shonali Bose, the director of Margarita, has been asked to cut short a kiss between two women in her film since the Central Board of Film Certification, she was told, "has moral guidelines to follow". The kiss is all of 12 seconds, too long for the Censor's comfort.
The obvious condemnation of the Central Board of Film Certificationd springs from its closed definition of cultural values, one that allows scenes of rape and straight sex to regularly pass muster but would not permit a tender kiss between two women. But the greater foolishness is that the Board thinks it can control people's choice to see whatever they wish by exercising its power arbitrarily on Indian content.
This when viewers can freely download content from other countries. In Looking, a gay show based in San Francisco, sex scenes appear as part of the natural storytelling arc, and involve a fair bit of pushing and shoving, not just kissing. 2013's Blue is the Warmest Colour had some rather graphic sex between its female protagonists, and it was the electric attraction between them that gave the story its raw emotional heft.
Which is why the Censor's move in the case of Margarita is so doltish. About a woman with cerebral palsy, the movie has been making waves at international film festivals for its stark but sensitive portrayal of disability. Kalki Koechlin is said to have put in a bravura performance as Laila, who refuses to let her condition limit her chances. She travels to New York from India and finds love. One can already imagine what a wonderfully halting scene that kiss would be. But the Central Board of Film Certification in its wisdom thinks we Indians are not good enough to handle what the whole world has already praised to high heaven.
Also, there was a not exactly peaches-and-roses gay kiss in the Karan Johar short in Bombay Talkies. Which, as far as I remember, the Central Board of Film Certification had no issue with. Of course, it was a man-on-man lip lock so one wonders if the Board has a problem with lesbianism. The membership of the Central Board of Film Certification was different at the time, so that may have played a role too. Instructively, this Board is manned by the same kind of people who had protested against Deepa Mehta's Fire, so maybe there is some truth to the assumption that while the Hindutvawadis hate us all, they hate the women among us more than the men.
Besides these arguments, there is another line of reasoning that makes it incumbent upon gay and lesbian films to address sex readily. Since there is such little public information, such a lack of natural socialisation around being gay (one must search for a gay space when one realises one is gay) gay visual content plays an essential role in thrashing out issues of sexuality, including sex.
Let me explain. Looking wrapped up its season 2 last week, and the final episode brought several undercurrents to the surface. While the show improved several notches in the second season, it had tiptoed around the very real problems with Kevin and Patrick's relationship and one of those issues came to a head in the last episode.
On the day Patrick moves in with Kevin, another gay couple in the same block invites them over for a party. Patrick has to be with his friend Agustin for the fundraiser that the latter is organising at the trans shelter he works at. However, Patrick and Kevin decide to sneak in at the party for a quick half hour before heading to the fundraiser.
Up until now, all is well. The party is fun, even if "all white", as Patrick complains. But in a brilliant gay-specific twist, the hosts begin playing a parlour game involving Grindr, the gay meetup app, which involves guessing who is which profile on the app. Inevitably, Kevin is found out.
The episode progresses to a verbal duel between Kevin and Patrick in which the central question of their relationship - can it be open? - is brought into the open. Kevin thinks nothing of sleeping around as long as he returns to Patrick while Patrick cannot believe that Kevin even has a Grindr profile now they are together.
The episode got me thinking about a particular strand raised by the conflict between Kevin and Patrick. We know that Patrick and Kevin's sexual relationship is, primarily, one of bottom and top respectively. (The one scene where Patrick fu*ks Kevin in this season stressed that fact in no uncertain terms, so that it had to be the outlier.) Even as they may occasionally be versatile, the show broadly gives us little indication that topping and bottoming are not the primary sexual positions of Kevin and Patrick, respectively, so let's just play with that.
What if, however, both Kevin and Patrick were bottoms? Should they be together? Absolutely. They might have things in common; they might be great with one another; they might get, really get one another. Should they perhaps also occasionally look out to be fu*ked, since that's the way they turn? Maybe. It is possible that the love they come to share eliminates any such need. But it is also possible that either of them would want to be boned from time to time. And if the latter case, should they be judged for that choice?
Of course, on this particular debate between Patrick and Kevin, I was with Patrick. Given that they generally replicate traditional gender roles in bed, I would consider it a betrayal of sorts for Kevin to look out from time to time. But would it still be betrayal if the two of them were similarly placed in terms of their sexual needs? I am not so sure. I was willing to discuss more.
And I was glad that Looking had brought this question to the fore. These are questions that gay men cannot find the answers to in an encyclopedia or their immediate environment. These are questions that they have to answer as they go along, hoping to strike a balance between their desires and their hopes for stability.
So, the next time the Central Board of Film Certification raises the issue of morality, someone had better tell them that unlike a lot of straight films with gratuitous sex, gay sex in films might actually help some uncertain, shy kid somewhere find answers to his doubts, as also assist more seasoned players in handling the various possibilities their different status throws up.