Ayushmann Khurrana says he is a big supporter of the female gaze, a flag-bearer for progressive films, and he is against toxic masculinity. However, the actor, whose fame rests on the shoulders of woke movies such as Vicky Donor, Dum Laga Ke Haisha, and Bala, lost the plot in his latest release, Dream Girl 2, touted as the spiritual sequel to the 2019 drag comedy hit Dream Girl. His alter ego, Pooja, could have been the perfect vehicle to explore the nuances of the male-female world that crossdressers straddle, but is instead reduced to a comic crutch for an over-the-top plot.
This seems to be a perennial problem with Indian cinema, including the South Indian film industry. And while some of India’s top actors — Kamal Hassan in Chachi 420, Amitabh Bachchan in Laawaris, Aamir Khan in Baazi — have crossed to the other side, more often than not, the hero plays a heterosexual male who cross-dresses to achieve an end. In Dream Girl 2, Khurrana’s character Karam, a jagrata performer, becomes Pooja and dances at bars to dig himself and his father out of financial doldrums.
Still a laughing matter
Drag and cross dressing are Bollywood staples. From Half Ticket (1962) to Kismat (1968), cross dressing and drag have been used as key plot-advancing tools in many Bollywood films. In most instances, though, these tools have been deployed to evoke laughter.
In performances like Bhaona in Assam, where men dress up to play female characters, this practice continues to be the norm. However, in the 1990s, with Govinda becoming an icon of both comedy and dance, drag became almost entirely a source of slapstick comedy. From Raja Babu (1994) to Aunty No 1 (1998), Govinda effortlessly dressed up as a woman to make audiences laugh.
But by and large, all such depictions didn’t subvert the prevalent notions; drag or cross-dressing simply remained a comedic tool that promoted sexism or homophobia. Actors such as Salman Khan in Jaan-E-Maan (2006), Ritesh Deshmukh in Apna Sapna Money Money (2006) and Saif Ali Khan in Humshakals (2014) have dressed up as women to salvage thin plots.
Almost a decade later, in 2023, it serves absolutely no purpose to use drag for the same treatment or to target popular reactions from the audience. This looks especially tone-deaf in the light of how even commercial movies like Badhai Do (2022) and Ayushmann’s own Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhaan (2020) have tried to take bold steps to talk about homophobia, sexuality, identity, and choices.
The repeated portrayal of drag in comic situations stigmatises gender non-conforming dressing. It also aggravates and deepens existing prejudice against people who identify as trans. It’s as if writers are stuck in a time loop and cannot make cross-dressing or drag anything other than the butt of crass humour. To the extent that even Bollywood’s leading actor, Ranveer Singh’s unconventional dressing sense, can’t escape the trolling.
Also read: Mahabharat’s Arjun dressed as mistress of dance, eunuch in King Matsya’s court during exile
Beyond Bollywood
While Hindi film industry refuses to move beyond its comfort zone, occasionally writing genuine trans characters like Munnibai Mukhanni (played by Ravi Jhankal) in Shyam Benegal’s Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008), films in other Indian languages have tried to push the envelope. In Super Deluxe (2019), Vijay Sethupathi dons a saree to play a multi-layered trans character. The movie uses the space to move beyond humour for the sake of it, depicting sexual desires and how trans people are vulnerable without laws in place, as well as how poverty drives them to earn money by any means possible.
Beyond transgender characters, Tamil cinema has also depicted cross-dressing with sensitivity. In Mari Selvaraj’s Pariyerum Perumal, the namesake protagonist’s father is a cross-dressing folk dancer. The ridicule he faces is depicted without exploiting it for laughs.
Based on a 1978 Marathi novel by Anand Yadav, Natarang (2010) is set in the 1970s against the backdrop of a village in Maharashtra. Natarang highlights the emotions related to gender bias and the sacrifices of an artist for the love of his art. A poor labourer named ‘Guna’ (Atul Kulkarni) nurtures an obsession for the popular theatrical folk art form of Maharashtra, Tamasha. After setbacks in life, Guna sets up a theatre company along with his friend and mentor Pandoba (Kishor Kadam). As no one is willing to take up the role of an effeminate character, Guna plays it in a riveting performance of a man who will do anything for his love of art, including pushing against existing stereotypes and taboos surrounding gender and sexuality.
Arekti Premer Golpo, the Bengali film starring Rituparno Ghosh and Indraneil Sengupta, is based on the famous drag personality of theatre, Chapal Bahaduri, and how the protagonist associates themselves with the character of Chapal Rani. Bhaduri used to be the last of the female impersonators of Bengal jatra and occupies a prominent place in Bengali art and culture.
Even in Hollywood, whether it’s the teen coming-of-age film Perks of Being A Wallflower (2012), where Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller take part in a drag show, or in Sex Education (2022) where Ncuti Gattwa as Eric decides to own his identity through drag, strong political statements about the subversive power of drag are evident.
Disney+ Hotstar’s Pose is a depiction of the drag ball culture in New York in the 1980s, a joyous yet vulnerable celebration of queerness and representation. In her review of the iconic show, movie critic Chitra Ramaswamy writes in The Guardian, “Pose treats with respect, pathos and love both the glamour of the ballroom and the guts of the Aids crisis, transphobia, sexism and racism.”
The world has clearly moved ahead, but Bollywood still continues to rely on drag as a device to poke fun at people who do not conform to gender roles. Full of cringeworthy dialogues like “What if he wants to also bang me?” referring to gay sex, and jibes like, “ Have you ever seen poor people get depression?” Dream Girl 2 is an exercise in what Bollywood should stop doing with drag and cross-dressing in the years to come.
(Edited by Prashant)