Posted on 06/18/2004 8:52:52 AM PDT by NYer
A hundred Hindu fundamentalists have attacked and vandalized cinemas in several Indian towns, tearing down posters of the recently released film Girlfriend. The film deals with lesbianism and related themes. The fundamentalists see this as an affront to Indian culture.
The most censorious critics, however, have been India’s gay and lesbian activists. They say the film is a 'homophobic, hetero-patriarchal' portrayal of lesbianism in India. They charge director Karan Razdan of creating a "conscious, articulated homophobia" for mass consumption.
Girlfriend is a candyfloss drama about two close women friends who sleep in the same bed and share—explicitly, on screen—a single sexual encounter. When one of them later falls in love with a man, the other becomes consumed by a psychopathic jealousy that leads to a sexual obsession.
In its first week several screenings of the film were disrupted by the fringe Hindu protestors, some of whom also burned effigies of the film’s director. A dozen of them were arrested for breaking windows and ransacking a cinema in the central Indian town of Indore. One protestor even threatened immolation if the film continued to be screened. Police officers, fearing similar attacks, are now guarding other cinemas across the country.
Lesbianism is a rare theme for Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. Girlfriend, starring Isha Koppikar and Amrita Arora, has set anger aflame by situating what is often regarded as decadent Western sexual morals on the Bollywood silver screen.
Indian actresses typically don't want to lose their conservative fans, nor do they want to endure salacious flak from journalists. So they're not too keen on even kissing on-screen, and many proudly trumpet their refusal to do it.
Bollywood starlet Ish Koppikar (left)
Bollywood starlet Isha Koppikar, who plays the traumatized lesbian Tanya, doesn’t mind being known as a sexually-liberated shocker. "It was just another role for me…nothing more, nothing less," she told the Hindustan Times. "I’ve already moved on. Girlfriend is history. If others want to hold on to it and create controversies because it suits their purpose, they are welcome to their moment of glory. I’ll have none of it."
Razdan, who also has a reputation in India as a shocker, notes that his film passed the federal censor board and pointed out that Girlfriend "hardly has any bare skin."
"The next time I make a movie I will not take it to the censor board," the Times of India quoted Razdan as saying. "I’ll try to get approval from these custodians of morality." He added that it is not up to protestors to decide whether a film should be shown.
"We’re going to push the government to order the deletion of objectionable scenes in the film," Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the vice-president of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya party, told the Associated Press. "Shots which are against Indian culture should be removed."
Shiv Sena, a Hindu fringe group often referred to as India’s morals brigade, have long charged that western TV shows and films are corrupting Indian minds. They believe Razdan has imported decadent Western morals with his Girlfriend.
"What one does in the bedroom and the bathroom should not be displayed publicly," Arun Pathak, a Shiv Sena leader declared publicly during the protests.
Despite the physical attacks from fringe Hindus, the more vitriolic attacks have come from gay and lesbian groups who say Girlfriend is a warped and negative portrayal of lesbianism.
Koppikar begs to differ. "Though some of my close friends are gay," she admitted to the Hindustan Times, "I knew nothing about how they think or behave. So I had to work very hard on getting the body language and attitude right. Which I did… I’ve worked so hard on being convincing as a butch that now I’m afraid men will be scared away."
Mumbai’s Humjinsi thinks not. In an hysterical denunciation published in Outlook India magazine, the lesbian activist group characterizes Koppikar’s role as a "sexually abused, violent, obsessive killer, psychopath lesbian," and scores the film as "homophobic" and "hetero-patriarchal."
"The movie tears away the anonymity of lesbian existence," the denunciation goes on to say. "The word lesbian is actually used in the film and the image created is a ghastly and revolting one."
Chatura, head of the Pune-based Organized Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Action (OLAVA), called Girlfriend "a cheap and titillation-oriented film masquerading as one that’s liberal." The single-name lesbian activist claims that the film "reinforces all the negative stereotypes about lesbian and bisexual women."
Gay activist Ashok Row Kavi went one step further. He accused Razdan of "demonizing" lesbians. "The film takes our sexual identities and makes a joke of them," he said.
In an open letter to the director, activist Tejal Shah wrote that he feared the "homophobic" film would be a major setback for the decades-long campaign by gay rights activists in India.
In sum, these critics object to Razdan’s film for portraying lesbianism as "unnatural"—as "abnormal…people who must die at the end of the film, so that they are aptly punished for their unnatural existence."
What bothers Shah and other gay and lesbian activists is that (in Shah’s words) "values of heterosexual love, marriage and normal families" are upheld in the end.
It is highly ironic that while Shah criticizes Razdan’s depiction of Koppikar’s character as an obsessive psychopath, his own language could be construed as "obsessive":
"Every time I hear of another lesbian suicide, another girl who hanged herself for being teased…I will think of this film and I will be reminded of the power that Bollywood wields in creating a mass consciousness of one sort or the other. In this case, it will be a conscious, articulated, homophobia."
Shah concludes with a memorable and censorious remark: "It’s time that we stopped separating the issues that films address and their impact on the audience/citizen within a given socio-political context/environment. It is also high time that we stand in protest against any film that causes damage to the rights of any minority group."
Ironically, the activist protestors also condemn the Hindu fundamentalists for their own protestations, seemingly unable to recognize that they too believe that it’s time to stop separating the issues addressed in films and their impact on viewing audiences. While the gay and lesbian activists are concerned with the film’s effects on the lesbian subculture in India, the fringe Hindus are concerned with the film’s effect on public morals in traditional Indian culture.
Despite Razdan’s obvious contempt for the fundamentalist protestors and shock at the lesbian activists’ shrill objections, the director Razdan has said the debate his film has provoked is ‘healthy’ for India. In an interview with BBC Radio, Razdan said he is pleased. "Now obviously it’s all out in the open, and people are talking about it. I think that is healthy."
It’s healthy at least for Razdan’s pocketbook. The film’s popularity has skyrocketed since the protests. Indians are reportedly thronging the cinemas before the film gets yanked. It is instructive to note that prior to the protests film critics panned Girlfriend as a C-grade movie "redolent with cliches." Given the unrest provoked by the film, Razdan believes that Girlfriend will now finds its way into cinemas in the United States and Britain.
Michael S. Rose is the author a several books including the New York Times bestseller Goodbye, Good Men. He is Executive Editor of Cruxnews.com.
Ok, you claim (apparently) that there is nothing intrinsically wrong or harmful about same sex acts. You are singularly ill-informed considering that you have been registered as a FR member for several years.
Here's a link to the Categorical Index of Articles about homosexuality in all its aspects:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1026551/posts
Therein are contained all manner of topics such as: spread of disease and other health problems, higher levels of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse, higher rates of child molestation and seduction, higher levels of being molested as children, the propaganda of the "gay" activists, how they indoctrinate children in schools, the wild promiscuity of the "gay" life, the undeniable fact that homosexuals can change, the causes of homosexuality (NOT proven to be genetic or inborn), and so on.
Read and learn!
Excellent observation, Little Jeremiah. A wise person once said, "Evil needs no encouragement, only toleration." If good and evil are equally acceptable, why be good? Look where toleration has gotten us -- evil has pushed out good. Evil mocks good. It's even subsidized at the taxpayer's expense.
All body organs have proper uses. The eyes are for seeing, the ears for hearing, the digestive system for digesting, and the reproductive system for reproducing.
The pleasurable nature of intercourse was designed to bring male and female together. All of this is simply a matter of observing the design of the plumbing.
But we can also know with certainty that intercourse was intended for married couples. How can we know this through unaided reason? Simply by observing the raising of children. Who today can argue that a child raised by a single mother is better off than a child raised by a mother and father? Surely the latter is what was intended by our Creator.
And it doesn't tell us that we shouldn't. Remember the woman caught in adultery? Did Jesus say that the law was unjust? Or that the State had no authority to permit stoning?
Ah, maybe you're right about vulgarity. The thing is, as some sins cry out for vengeance, some statements cry out for a vulgar retort.
"The Bible does not tell us we should forcefully prevent other people from doing evil if that's what they want to do."
Excuse me? To which bible do you refer? Not the one I was introduced to 50 years ago, that's for sure.
"Some people are just as naturally attracted to the same sex, as others are to the opposite."
No, sorry to contradict, but that's simply not so.
No one is "naturally" attracted to the same sex, nor ever has been, nor ever will be.
Everyone is intrinsically normal.
So called "attraction" to the same sex is a maladaptive response to molestation or seduction by a person of the same sex during a person's pre-adult years.
I refer to it as "so-called attraction" because it is not the same phenomenon as attraction of man for woman and vice versa, but merely a perverted and evil lust.
Same-sex attraction disorder is AFAIK the only contagious mental disorder. A sufferer can pass it on by traumatizing others. Not with 100% efficiency, of course. Not every molested boy develops the disorder, and sometimes it doesn't manifest for decades.
But that's how homosexuals "reproduce." The vampire legend, bitten becoming biter, is a metaphor for the way homosexuals create new homosexuals.
Trace any liberal position back far enough, and you will encounter an error of fact. Yours here is this notion that some people are "naturally" unnatural.
Excuse me, my #85 should have been addressed to Decombobulator.
Blast, that should have been "my #87."
I find it highly amusing that people feel in any way threatened by a Bollywood movie involving a couple of women kissing. A culture that is endangered by that is probably not a worthwhile culture to begin with.
Now which is that 'culture' you're referring to? The culture of 0.000000001 % of India's population of a billion who ransacked theatres like thugs, or that of the larger majority which just couldn't help but not bother.
I was speaking hypothetically. Anyone who claims that a movie is a danger to their culture is implying that their culture is weak. I have no fear that this movie is in any way a threat to Indian culture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.