Seriously Kissed Sexual Freedom and Its Normative Structures in Raja
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Seriously kissed Sexual freedom and its normative structures in Raja Natwarlal Willem Lenders, 6032257 Master Thesis rMA Cultural Analysis Graduate school of the Humanities University of Amsterdam Date: 10-06-2015 First reader: dhr. dr. M. (Murat) Aydemir Second reader: mw. dr. H.H. (Hanneke) Stuit Willem Lenders, 6032257 University of Amsterdam Table of contents 1. A boy in Bollywood 3 1.1 Visualizing sex and sexual freedom 3 1.2 Approaching Raja Natwarlal 5 2. Playing with patriarchy 9 2.1 Conflating the national with the Hindu female ideal 10 2.2 Visualizing sex in the genre 12 2.3 Queer sexuality through homosociality 17 2.4 Queering gender 20 2.5 Problematizing explicit and implicit visualizations 23 3. Sex and erotics in Raja Natwarlal 25 3.1 Raja and Ziya 26 3.2 The men of Raja 30 3.3 The feminine and the masculine 33 4. Breaking down sexual freedom 37 4.1 Sexual freedom and the repressive hypothesis 38 4.2 Homosexual panic and the regulation of the male body 41 4.3. Raja vs. Bollywood: intersections of sex, gender and the nation 44 Bibliography 49 Attachment 51 2 Willem Lenders, 6032257 University of Amsterdam 1. A boy in Bollywood While travelling through India in the summer of 2014, I was able to experience what it was like to be part of the largest movie industry in the world, Bollywood. For one day my travel buddy and I were asked to be extras in the new and upcoming movie Raja Natwarlal. As the Lonely Planet described to us: “Studios sometimes want Westerners as extras to add a whiff of international flair (or provocative dress, which locals often won’t wear) to a film.” (Lonely Planet, 734). Listening to experiences from other tourists, we soon found out that it often meant that the women were dressed in skimpy clothes and used in dancing scenes. As we were expecting an extravagant dancing scene and some cliché Bollywood outfits, we were surprised to find out we were going to be part of an auction scene, dressed in suit and tie. Months later, I was luckily able to see the movie in the cinema right before I had to catch my flight back to Amsterdam. The movie revolves around a scam artist called Raja Natwarlal, played by Emraan Hashmi, who falls in love with a nightclub dancer. After scamming a large mobster for a large amount of money to woe the girl he is in love with, he sees his friend get killed as a result. He then decides to try to pull an even larger scam on the mobster at a cricket memorabilia auction in South Africa, all the while becoming more and more involved with the nightclub dancer. While the movie adheres largely to the generic structure of Bollywood as a genre, including the ever popular love storyline and multiple large dancing and singing scenes, the use of actual kissing scenes, Indian (and not Western) actresses in revealing outfits, and the portrayal of an unwed couple sharing a bed, surprised me to say the least. It raised several questions for me about the current development in Bollywood cinema regarding the visualization of sex. With the introduction of more explicit portrayals of sex and sexual tension and possibly the redefinition of the conventional characters, Raja Natwarlal seems to (at least partially) step away from the standard image of Bollywood as a genre. 1.1 Visualizing sex and sexual freedom An emerging debate in India regarding its cultural (and often religious) norms is the debate about sexual freedom. While the Western perception of sex and sexuality are largely considered to be immoral in India, a view that has become key to the Bollywood genre to underline the moral supremacy of India (Kaur, 2005: 143-161), questions about sexual and gender normativity and sexual freedom are being raised in the public domain by various activists and public figures, as well as international organizations like Amnesty International that consider sexual freedom as a human right. As Raja Natwarlal departs from subtle 3 Willem Lenders, 6032257 University of Amsterdam representations of sexual tension, the movie subverts traditional Indian (and often Hindu) family values, and seems to fall in step with this debate. At first glance this subversion seems liberating as it contests Indian discourse of gender and sexuality by visualizing sexual freedom through pre-marital sex and partial female nudity (as partial male nudity has already become common in Bollywood). Through the rhetoric of sexual freedom and in light of ongoing debate in India, this would be considered as progress. However, even though the movie breaks with conventional Bollywood and its tendency towards sexism and patriarchy, I believe this move towards “sexual freedom” has not been without costs. For my thesis I would like to demonstrate that the inclusion of more explicit visualizations of heterosexual sex and sexual tension has demanded multiple changes regarding the performances of gender and sexuality, leading to the exclusion of queer readings. Gayatri Gopinath (2000) argues that many of the traditional films in Bollywood, despite their sexist and homophobic storylines, leave space for a queer reading, especially in the diaspora, as they watch “through the differently subjective lens of transnational spectatorship” (Gopinath 2000, 283). It offers an audience that seems to be excluded at first glance, to identify with their queer identity without losing pride for their culture. Furthermore, the move towards explicit heterosexual erotics has resulted in a redefinition of femininity and a delineation of masculinity, from which the diminished intensity of homosocial behavior is a result. I will relate this diminishment with Eve Sedgwick’s (1985) concept of homosexual panic, which she describes to be a result from heterosexual males having to navigate the continuum between homosociality and homosexuality after sexuality has become an aspect of identity and as an identity is conflated with behavior. The diminished intensity of homosocial behavior and other aspects of the film in which gender and sexuality are redefined, are precisely what limit the possibility of a queer reading of Raja Natwarlal as the movie visualizes a limited mobility for the male body. Furthermore, I will introduce Michel Foucault’s (1998) concept of the repressive hypothesis. As Western sexual discourse assumes that the West was sexually repressed in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century and that we have been liberated during the 20th century by the public discussion of sex and sexuality, he argues that this repressive hypothesis is a construct that ignores the power relations and regulation of bodies that come with this public discussion. I will use this theory, to argue that sexual freedom as a liberating and progressive goal actually should be considered as repressive, if not more repressive than preexisting constructs and relate this to how Raja Natwarlal brings heterosexual sex and sexuality to the foreground. The term sexual freedom implies that breaking with sexual normativity has a liberating 4 Willem Lenders, 6032257 University of Amsterdam effect and should be considered in terms of a linear structure of progression, as opposed to the incarcerating effects of an ‘outdated’ or ‘backward’ tradition. It is framed as something society should strive for. It implies that to achieve it, a breaking away (from normativity) is required. Raja Natwarlal shows that this discourse of sexual freedom can have consequences that are left unaccounted for: sexual freedom itself can be seen as reiterating the normative structures of sexual identity politics. It might well open up the discussion about acceptable heterosexual sexual activity outside of marriage for the female body, it simultaneously tightens the (possibly Western) identities of sexuality and gender. As a result it excludes, intensified homosocial relationships and non-normative gender or sexual identities. I will aim to answer the question how the movie Raja Natwarlal debunks the concept of sexual freedom as progressive through its explicit representations of sex, especially in comparison to conventional Bollywood as a genre. 1.2 Approaching Raja Natwarlal I will dedicate the first chapter to conventional Bollywood and discuss how the genre has traditionally visualized sex in its movies. A few iconic strategies applied are the ‘wet sari’ scene, in which the sari of the female love interest becomes wet and shows off the body (Dwyer 2000), and the fade away right before a couple kisses. Both strategies offer the viewer a glimpse of sex or sexual tension, while simultaneously avoiding compromising the characters’ (as well as the actors’) reputation and reiterating the (Hindu) family values of patriarchal India. Furthermore, the genre has usually positioned the West as the morally inferior by using Western(ized) women and portraying them as sexually available in contrast to the Hindu female who takes the position of the pious (soon to be) wife and mother. Looked at through the post-colonial lens of Indian national identity, they confirm the existing structures of the ideal and normative Hindu family, reiterating sexist, homophobic, and patriarchal views on sex (Roy 2012, Kaur 2005, Gopinath 2000). As a contrast to this view on Bollywood, I subsequently view the genre as possibly transgressing patriarchal India’s gender and sexual norms from a queer audience’s perspective, as emphasized by Gopinath (2000). The Bollywood film, despite its normative portrayal of sexuality and gender, offers the possibility to be reclaimed as queer due to its visualization of female, but primarily male homosocial relationships, and allowing for cross- gender identifications. Waugh (2001), Rao (2000), and Dasgupta (2012) are a few of the theorists that address this, by looking at the buddy storyline, the concept of yaar, the homosocial triangle, and cases of mistaken identity in Bollywood cinema that open up a queer 5 Willem Lenders, 6032257 University of Amsterdam space outside of the sexual and gender identity categories.