reneGAYd

 Among the ab, fab and drab in the movie Student of the Year, there is an issue staring at the audience face. The dean in Student of the Year is shown to have homosexual tendencies.

The role is played of Dean Vahisht is played by Rishi Kapoor. ‘Student of the Year’ award is Dean Vashisht’s brain child. The student who excels in academics, athletics and arts is named Student of the Year. Toward the end, he is accused of using the competition as a means of pitting friends against each other and inculcating spite (That was a spoiler BTW). He himself is a lonely man and spends most of his time with his mom, saplings or dreaming about the coach.

Looking at this character portrayal, I realised how far Indians or atleast Indian cinema has come in accepting homosexuality.

Here are some things that I noticed:

  1. He is in a position of power: He has runs a school and is respected for the work he does. More importantly, he was accepted for the way he was.

   2.He didn’t fall in ‘love’ with every man he saw: Though they show him eyeing a magazine that focuses on John Abraham’s muscles, they didn’t make him seem overtly desperate for any man. He was infatuated by the already married Football Coach played by Ronit Roy. They could have gone over board and shown him groping the school students, but they didn’t. Smart move.

 3. He wasn’t shown to be overly feminine

4. Crude jokes were kept to the very very very minimum.

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Even with all these pointers that the cinema is making forward thinking movies for the masses, there were things that left me in two minds. He is always wearing pink in some form or the other. He is shown to be bit of a loony. But in most KJo movies, the Dean is shown to be a little gone in the head so that’s okay. The movie ends with the Dean dying alone and unloved. He hopes to meet the love of his life in the next janam. I really don’t understand what they are trying to tell us here.

In stark contrast, Modern Family makes the Gays look Good.

Cam and Mitch are the envy of every couple-gay and straight.

Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is an attorney and Cam(Eric Stonestreet) is a house-husband.

They adopted an Asian baby named Lily.

You have to watch the show to know how awesome they are.

It doesn’t focus on the confusion of being gay. It doesn’t even talk about how difficult it is to find a partner. It focuses on how they embrace parenthood. Lilly is the focal point of almost everything they do. Sometimes, they use the gay stereotypes to their advantage (like the episode they find out being gay gives them an upper hand in pre-school admission for their daughter.) It also shows how they balance each other out. Cameron is the moody, overt, fat and sensitive man. Mitch is the rational, ‘what will people say’,Troga (Treadmill + Yoga) man.  Sure there are a few gay jokes in the series, but they are all in good humour. Cam, be mine.


So, we still have a long way to go.