Queer Representation in Kollywood: From Harmful to a Hopeful

Intersectional Wave in Tamil Cinema

Subashree J.
Research Scholar
Government Arts College
Tiruchirappalli – 62002.
Mobile: +91 80566 72384
E-mail: subashreeeq@gmail.com
Co-author:
Dr. P. David Livingstone
Associate Professor & Research Advisor
Government Arts College
Tiruchirappalli – 22.
Abstract

It is a well-known fact that people who come under the umbrella term ‘queer’ have

never been treated with respect and is still being considered as inhuman, a disease and a

mistake that should not exist by sadly a large demographic of the world despite several pro-

LGBT organizations and advocates came into emergence. This heteronormative perspective

and the sheer ignorance of the queer for ages in literature, arts, and politics has been harming

the people of the queer community to the extent where they have to hide their identity to be

accepted in society as a person. Cinema, being one of a popular culture, is a direct portal to

understand a particular society – what it accepts, and what it abhors; cinema of a particular

region represents their culture, values, and ideals. As much as cinema represents the already

existing majority, it also influences the society, a lot more than literature as it reaches rustic

and the illiterate demographic. The main paper intents to trace the representation of the

Queer people from the early Tamil cinema to the contemporary – it’s hostility towards the
queer and the stereotypes put forth by movies, antagonization of the queer, the back lash, and

the shift in portraying the queer community in contemporary cinema.

Keywords: Film Studies, Queer Studies, Popular Culture, Tamil Cinema, Kollywood

Introduction:

The history of Indian Cinema started when the ruling British bought theatres into the

country. The British have brought their silent movies in India mainly for their own people

and not for the Indian natives. “The history of Tamil films began in 1897 when M. Edwards

screened the first-ever movie show of South India at the Victoria Memorial Hall in Madras. “

(Culturopedia).Throughout history, cinema has been catering to the popular interests of the

viewer demographic. For instance, in the pre-independence era, majority of the South Indian

movies were an adaptation of Hindu mythologies, epics or biopics of saints whereas there

were a notable few social movies like, ‘Desa Munnetram’ (trans.: Development of Nation)

(1938) which highlighted the social issue of untouchability in India. The movie, along with

several early Indian movies, were unfortunately lost.

Though producing spiritual/historical movies was a safe-play while securing box

office during the British rule, some directors took the risk of documenting the freedom

struggle of Indians and made movies against the British as a form of protest. The British

banned such movies, one such banned Tamil movie was Thyagabhoomi which was released

in 1939. After India gained its rightful freedom from the British colonial rule, Indian film

makers also started to own their creative freedom and produced many patriotic movies that

showcased the struggles of freedom fighters such as Bharathi, Kappalotiya Thamilzhan,

Mahatma Gandhi, Kattabomman, etc.., which they couldn’t do during the colonial rule.
 As post-colonial India started to grow as a separate nation with its own identity, the

cinema of each state started to grow separately. Multi-lingual movies and dubbed movies

from the Northern part of India has been always famous in South India. Directors started to

shift from the stories of gods and kings to creative contemporary stories that caters the

majority of viewers’ i.e., Indian men.

Sexism was much normalized since early productions of cinema, although there were

also a number of women-centric movies produced, and directed by women. But the

idealization of a ‘passive, chaste and ever patient’ wife has been always popular as the early

movies used to romanticise such women who tolerates the abuse of their husbands and their

illegal affairs, only for the husbands to undergo catharsis in some way and then return to their

ever faithful wives. This portrayal of an ‘ideal women’ can be traced back into the

mythologies and epics where the women written in epics are elevated to the status of a deity

due to their sacrificing nature and their story would be preached to young women to follow

their steps.

The role of male and female characters in South Indian cinema represents the role of

men and women in the society, or better yet, how the men view the women and how the men

want the women to behave as the film industry was largely dominated by upper-class men

and are also made for men since women rarely watch movies in theatres as a flock.

This explains the glamorous, eye-candy roles South Indian actresses were largely, and

are still being given - to entertain the male audience who is the majority demographic. But

what about the demonization of the Trans community? How and where did that emerged as a

stereotype?

Unlike women who are needed by the patriarchal society to do household work, beget

and rear children and, entertain the oppressing gender, the Trans people are not included
within the society and were banished from the society to live on the outskirts or in dangerous

places with no support. Like underprivileged and marginalized women, transwomen were

pushed into sex work either as a resort to stay alive or forced by local powers who would run

the brothel. While Hinduism confirms the trans-identity through the legend of

Arthanatheswar (a form of Sivan and Parvathy fused as one body), and early epics like

Ramayana acknowledges the existence of the trans community, and there is exclusively a

deity for transwomen in Kuvam, Tamil Nadu where they would organize a grand festival.

“The story behind the festival is often heard in modern times through the Hindu epic

Mahabharata, but more commonly as a separate folklore in Tamil culture” (Wikipedia).Still,

they are not a desirable topic due to the lack of proper representation in popular literature and

culture. This lack of knowledge about the transgender population and instead of educating the

people about through mass media, the negative projection of them have only brought more

hatred and prejudice to the already oppressed community. At this point, there is no

acknowledgement of the existence of other Queer community in any South Indian popular

media.

Problematic Portrayals in Early Tamil Cinema:

Tracing back Tamil cinema, the earliest movie with a prominent queer character is

found to be the action- drama Appu. Released in 2000, the movie stares actor Prakash Raj as

a transwoman named Maharani who runs a brothel. The reason why Maharani cannot be seen

as just a villain who happens to be transgender is because of the way the dialogues are written

for and around her.

When the female lead Seetha was brought to the brothel run by Maharani, she would

get scared of Maharani’s semi-sexual innuendo to which Maharani says, "Why are you
getting scared? I cannot do anything (to you) because I am half man and half woman."

(Appu). Maharani further goes on and says,

"I don't get upset about the fact that I am neither a man nor a woman, because my

desire is to be the best of men, and the best of a women. I don't have the (fair) skin

tone or beauty, but I have one thing: brain. That's why I'm running a brothel with

women." (Appu)

Maharani would describe her hardships when she was young which made her run

away from her home in Tamil Nadu to Bombay, since her father, as implied by her, an

immoral person has turned abusive person after her mother dies. So, she had to run. This is a

common situation faced by the trans community in India; majority of the transgender would

be abandoned by their family, ending up in streets and would either be forcefully trafficked or

left no choice but to beg on the streets since no one would hire transwomen for work.

The movie took the real account of how transwomen would fall into the black hole of

sex work but then it was used as a villain arc for Maharani, who has never been a sex worker

herself, but a pimp, and then a brothel head with several political influence.

The reason Maharani's portrayal is harmful to the trans community is not because a

transwoman was portrayed in a negative light, but a transwoman was portrayed in a negative

light in a commercial movie in an industry which never tried to cast the trans community ever

in a neutral let alone in a positive light. Audience who rarely saw trans representation in early

cinemas is exposed to this vile transwoman who justifies selling women due since the society

refused to accept her and instead mock her. The movie also uses transphobic slur through

Maharani herself, as the usage of slurs were so common during that time period.
 The film did not focus on portraying trans sex workers who would be largely either

forced into it, or walked into it without other choice, as it focused on portraying a transgender

villain. It is said that Prakash Raj later regretted doing this role.

Before this movie, there have been usage of transgender characters for laughs;

many comedy scenes irrelevant to the actual plot of the movie have used transgender

characters as a mockery. Those minor characters would always be designed as someone who

is hypersexual, talks in a seductive tone, and would try to seduce the straight men around

them, who in turn would get disgusted and mock the trans character for being attracted to

them, thus creating a transphobic comedy for the laughs of ignorant cis-gendered men and

women. A clear examples for such archetype is portrayed

in the movie Thulladha Manamum Thullum (1999) where actor Vaiyapuri would

start to transition from a man to a woman, wearing bindhi and clothing traditionally worn by

women, and the bizarre reactions given by his other cis-gendered male friends are portrayed

as comic-relief scenes.

The erratic portrayal of transgender in movies itself shows the heteronormative

structure of our society; lack of knowledge of the autonomy, sexuality, or the transitioning of

the transgenders are prevalent through their ambiguous portrayal in the movies discussed

above. In Appu, Maharani is shown to be flirting with the female lead Seetha through her

sensual poetic dialogues, and later expresses in vain that she cannot do anything with Seetha

even if she wanted to, creating sexual ambiguity in her character. Maharani is neither

portrayed as a lesbian nor as a eunuch, thus this dialogue is entirely confusing of her identity

and it has been included for the sake of shock-value for Seetha as well as for the audience.

The Portrayal of Homosexuality in Tamil Cinema:

 Even the recognized Third gender of India’s representation in pop-culture is

extremely disappointing, so one can only imagine how harmful the portrayal of homosexual

characters can be in movies. Homosexuality was illegal in India until September 6, 2018

when the Supreme Court of India decriminalized it. Still, same-sex marriage laws are yet to

be written to protect the marriage union of same sex couples. Also, despite the updated law,

the stigma is awake and active throughout the country. Not every Queer has the privilege to

come out without it affecting their personal and professional life.

The concept of homosexuality, to Indians, felt like a dangerous western culture

followed by brainwashed young generation or, even worse, as a mental illness as many

doctors followed the pseudoscientific ‘conversion therapy’ that involves invasive and forceful

methods in order to ‘correct’ their sexual orientation.

“In ancient India, there are some sculptures on temples and many stories which

indicates that homosexuality is been part of India since a very long time. The birth

story of Bhagirath (who brought Ganga river from heaven to earth) in Hindu

mythology suggested that homosexuality was a thing in that time and wasn't really

criticised like today, but any kind of propagation or support has not been shown

anywhere.” (Criminalisation of Conversion Therapy in India)

In 2004 movie called Gambeeram starring Sarath Kumar and Laila in lead roles, and

with popular comedian Vadivelu casted for comedy tracks, there exists a scene where

Vadivelu along with his team and media surrounds the house of a drug dealer woman to

arrest her. To challenge the male officers, the lady removes her clothes and throws it outside,

making the officers clueless on how to arrest her now. Vadivelu goes in nevertheless and

after some minutes, the screen shows unclad Vadivelu pleading to provide him some clothes

as the lady took his police uniform forcefully and escaped. One of the cameraman would be
shown ogling unclad Vadivelu who then asks “Are you one among them?” to which the man

seductively nods but then was kicked out by Vadivelu. This dialogue has since been famous

among the Tamils who use the rhetorical question to shame boys who supposedly shows any

feminine traits. Tamil cinema has thus added this phrase along with many other slurs to bully

boys and men with non-masculine traits.

At that time, there were no prominent Queer critics nor have the existed critics

acknowledged the disgusting comedy track as harmful to some population. Instead the movie

received applaud for its comedy tracks. Malathi Rangarajan of The Hindu magazine wrote

about the film’s comedy track as “another comedy track in which Vadivelu evokes some

healthy laughter.” (Source: Wikipedia). This is apparent of our male dominated

heteronormative society, which has normalized laughing about homosexuals, transgenders

and women by stereotyping them.

The trope of portraying homosexual men as hyper-sexual, and potential sex offenders

can be traced back to the 2005 Tamil movie Adhu Oru Kanaa Kalam starrinng Dhanush and

Priyamani in lead roles. In the movie, the male lead Srinivasan played by Dhanush, along

with his friends were took by the police to police station to discipline them for a petty matter.

Instead of coming to retrieve his son like other fathers did for his friends, Srinivasan’s father

asked the police officer to jail him for a night to teach him a lesson despite the officer’s

advice to just come and take Srinivasan home. This decision by Srinivasan’s father changes

the course of Srinivasan’s life as he took the life of the man who attempted to sexually harass

him inside their shared jail. When the man tries to grope Srinivasan, he woke up and in utter

shock of what happened, he started to strangle and punch the man in anger and disgust

instead of alerting the sleeping authorities. When they wake up, it’s too late as Srinivasan, in

an attempt to free himself by pushing the offender who then smashed his head against the

wall, losing his life. Sexual assault is by no means unserious, and it happens to young men
and teenage boys a lot more, but it is neither discussed nor the boys were taught to identify

‘good touch, bad touch’ as girls are been taught and disciplined.

But this portrayal seems to miscarry that sexual assault of men are due to

homosexuality and this leads to a subsequent misconception that all homosexuals are

immoral and are sexual abusers who target men.

What did most damage to the LGBTQ community is the open portrayal of

homosexual villains in the 2006 thriller Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyadu staring Kamal Hassan and

Jyothika in lead roles. Hassan plays the role of a intelligent cop Raghavan who is on his

mission to hunt down the serial rapist and killer duo. Upon realizing they have tattoos on

their body denoting each other, Raghavan spits in disgust and calls them out for being gay,

this has the erupted the same response as the rest of the movie: laughter. Throughout the

movie, Raghavan disses the relationship between them, calling Ilamaran as Amudhan’s

female lover. It is also shown in the flash back of the villains, they their killing instinct have

been fuelled by Rani, a girl they have harassed who then complained to her father a senior

police officer who then orders to torture them inside prison, with other policemen arranging

an eunuch to sexually assault the duo. This has deeply affected them and they have started

killing anyone who looks down on them, or mock them. This continuous portrayal of the

queer in a negative light when neither Tamil cinema nor the people have a constructive

understanding of Queerness has caused enough fear, disgust, and a general disrespect on the

community. While mainstream reviews stuck to reviewing the ideal cinematography,

screenplay, and marvellous acting of Kamal Hassan, Chennai-based human rights activist

Aniruddhan Vasudhevan, who has been long vocal about the Queer issues in India, has

released a critical review in his website Orinam based on the portrayal of queerness in the

movie.
 “I am not saying that a gay man can never be a psychopath or vice versa. I am not

saying there might be no sex-worker Aravani who ends up having to please policemen

or other powerful clients of hers. My objection and protest can be put this way: If

there already were enough or adequate affirmative portrayals of queer people in Tamil

movies, I might choose to ignore this. In the absence of any representation at all, such

abominably negative representation is not welcome. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT

ANY REPRESENTATION IS BETTER THAN NO REPRESENTATION. There is a

clear danger of uninformed people beginning to see the representation of these two

characters as types – as homosexuality and psychological disorder as being

inextricably linked” (Vasudevan).

In 2010 movie Goa, the portrayal of queerness is somewhat ambiguous. The plot

revolves around three young men who run away from their conservative village to Goa, with

an ambition to marry a White woman and settle there. One among them is Samikannu, played

by Premgi Amaran whose innocence attracts the attention of Daniel, boyfriend of Jack, the

man who has been helping them with accommodation. Samikannu, who is presumably

straight is oblivious of the affection Daniel shows, and this in turn makes Jack jealous leading

for him to hire ninjas to beat up Samikannu, who shows his brave side and defeats everyone.

The fight is comical as the entire premise of the movie is to be taken in a light-hearted

manner.

There is no negative implication on homosexuality such as showing disgust on Jack

and Daniel, and the other characters treat them relatively the same as other. But the sexuality

of these characters are casted purely to invoke laughter passively, as the six-packed

masculine man whom the main characters idolized is actually gay, and for the double-

meaning jokes during the conversation between Daniel and Samikannu is written purely to
evoke laughter on the situation. While this is not homophobic necessarily, this sadly adds to

the trope of homosexual characters added in plot for laughs as in the time when the film was

released, the audience were used to the portrayal of homosexual characters as a laughing

stock and not as a human with comedic traits, or with a distinct personality.

The Intersectional Wave in Tamil Cinema:

After 2010, a new hope has hit the queer critiques and queer people in general, as the

resurgence of representation has emerged in Tamil cinema, this time in a positive or in a

neutral way, thus normalizing their existence.

While the horror comedy Kanchana (2015) has sensitively covered the struggles of

transgendered kids abandoned by their parents, the movie extensively relies on sympathy in

order for the hetero audience to accept their tragedies. Nevertheless, it is one of the film

which soundly documented the issues trans community face while being homeless, public

harassment, and also talked a previously untouched topic of transgender education.

Tamil cinema started to produce movies that interact with the Queer characters

normally without degrading their identity, some examples are 2014 comedy Un Samayal

Arayil where the cross-dressing character is not treated any different to other characters, 2017

drama Tharamani where the female lead Althea played by Andrea finds her husband is

homosexual and splits, understanding he cannot provide the love and care for her without any

homophobic mentality and the 2018 action drama Thimiru Pudichavan which has casted a

real transwoman Sindhuja to play the role of a constable, the movie further goes on to

humanize sex workers whom are treated as social outcastes.

One of the critically acclaimed movies of 2017, Aruvi has a trans character splayed by

an actual transwoman Anjali, and portrayed the character of Emily in a sensitive manner. But

there were allegations on not including Anjali in any of the success meet or celebrated her
winning the title of Best Supporting Actress in Norway Tamil Film Festival. While this has

been a series of coincidence and nobody was in the wrong, Anjali has told the media that it

would have been nice it she was recognized as it would have provided a great boost to her

community.

The 2017 En Magan Magilvan is the first Indian feature film on the topic of

homosexuality and it won the best feature film award the Indian World Film Festival in 2018.

But such non-commercial award winners does not reach the eyes and hearts of commoners as

commercial films with their favourite characters do.

One of the popular actors in contemporary South Cinema, Vijay Sethupathi acted as a

transgender names Shilpa in the 2019 critically acclaimed officially hit movie Super Deluxe

which contains most of the stigmatized themes as the plot of its multi-layered story. One such

story is the story of Shilpa, a transwoman who ran away from his marriage once she found

out she is a woman and come back years later as fully transitioned. Her orthodox family and

her lawfully wedded wife was understandably shocked but her son was happier than before as

he now has two parents like everyone else, and the gender of his other parent didn’t matter to

him.

The movie showed the rights and wrongs of Shilpa, treated her as a separate trans

individual; the movie neither pitied her nor mocked her, it justly showed how grim situation

in a different light. Apart from this, the rise of OTT also paved way to proper representation

of trans, gay characters through the thriller series of Suzhal: the Vortex (2022), which

questioned the stigma associated with transwomen and questioned the perception of an

average cis-het man who looks at the characters as how the society has passively taught him

to do so.
 The most recent Tamil OTT series that touches the topic of same sex female

relationships is the 2023 Sweet Kaaram Coffee. It reveals the friendship of two elderly

woman and their shared past as the final twist as series finale, but the dialogues, and the

visual portrayal of those women’s relationship makes it more confusing, and raises the

question of why the writers need to beat around the bush instead of revealing they were

lesbian lovers in an era where Tamil cinema is receiving appreciation for coming out with

good representations of non cis-het demographic.

But the 2022 film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu was unapologetic while showing same-

sex love, and portrayed a happily married transwoman thus breaking the stereotypes cinema

has put forth before. The movie is also sensitive enough to creatively censored the derogatory

transphobic words through its screenplay while simultaneously teaching the viewers on how

to address and look at the queer characters.

The reason behind this sudden surge in politically correct and inclusive films maybe

the entry of new-age directors and writers, who aspire to take Tamil cinema to a next plane,

away from the misogynistic, casteist, transphobic, homophobic and glorification of male

dominance it endorsed for decades into movies that can be enjoyed by everyone.

Directors like Thiagarajan Kumara raja, Pa. Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj, Ram,

Vetrimaaran, has bravely showed in their movies what the masala films has been avoiding, or

using as a side tropes as, and with a healthy audience growing to constructively critique the

cinema politically as well as aesthetically. This is prevalent in the both the reviewers and the

audience’s critique in Siva Karthikeyan starrer Mr. Local (2019) used transgender character

as a laughing stock. The film received poor response and was a flop. The Huffpost releases a
review stating “The film hates women’s guts, even if they don’t identify as women. A trans

man — played by a man — is insulted and misrepresented for cheap jokes. (Krishnakumar)

Conclusion:

As theatres are no longer hoarded by just men, as films are no longer just by and for

men, as the critiques started to not ignore the insulting trope that affects the minorities, one

can see the cinema of Tamil Nadu, and all of South, changing for the better. With Malayalam

films being one step above in portraying centralized queer characters along with top actors

playing a prominent role in such movies to bring attention and to break the silence, one can

hope the neighbour land would catch up soon in its unique way.
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