Dostana Response

Dostana Response

In the film Dostana, director Tarun Mansukhani blurs the line of filmatic norms in Bollywood by portraying two of Bollywood’s biggest stars, Abhishek Bhachan and Johnny Abraham, as a (fake) gay couple. Despite this being a potentially risky move, Dostana was an unequivocal success in India, receiving critical and public acclaim as well as being one of the highest grossing Bollywood films of 2008. In my response, I will analyze some of the key scenes in which Mansukhani portrays and accentuate several societal stereotypes. I will further consider the film in the context of the traditionally conservative Indian society and analyze why I think the film was such a success despite challenging the norms of Bollywood films and Indian culture as a whole.

Throughout the film, Mansukhani consistently caricatures both gay relationships as well as stereotypical notions of masculinity/femininity. The clearest instance of the satirized depiction of gay couples in the film is when Samir is recounting the story of him meeting Kunal. In the scene, Bhachan both acts and speaks in a manner that pokes fun of gay people, flailing his arms around, acting eccentrically feminine, and even referring to Abraham as his “jiggly-poo.” Later on in the film, Abraham returns the favor; in the scene where the inspector checks up on the couple, Abraham is told to act gay by “[thinking] like a woman but [feeling] like a man,” and he does just that, complementing people on their shoes and acting overtly feminine. It is ironic that two of Bollywood’s heterosexual studs and Indian sex-symbols are used to comment on what is the cliché gay person; indeed, by casting these real-life Casanovas as a gay couple, Mansukhani is able to make the contrast between gay and straight more stark and actually amplifies the stereotype of a “typical gay person.”

Mansukhani further caricatures traditional ideas of what it means to be a man/woman. As we saw previously, being a woman equated to talking about shoes and hair. Conversely, there are several scenes where Samir and Kunal showcase their “masculinity” by staring at Neha’s butt and shamelessly hitting on women. Men are also objectified in the film; several times during the movie, Kunal and Samir are catcalled by women, and the strip club scene is the zenith of Samir’s objectification as a man.  Mansukhani shows the objectification of men and women by the opposite sex in almost equal measures, but it does not seem that Mansukhani is doing this as a social commentary. There is no indication that Mansukhani seeks to deplore gender stereotypes or elevate the status of gay couples in the conservative India. Rather, these caricatures likely exist only for comedic effect. In my estimation, this does not diminish the legacy of the film; perhaps Mansukhani realized that pushing a social message about gay rights would not go over well in such an edgy and mainstream film.

It is also important to consider the historical context of the film in order to understand why it was a landmark movie in Bollywood. In India, homosexuality is largely considered a taboo topic by both society as well as the government, and homophobia is common in the country. Up until as late as 2009 (after the film was released) Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code made sex with person of the same gender punishable by law. The law was found unconstitutional in 2009, but even that ruling was later overturned on a technicality; thus, it is still technically illegal for gays to have sex in India! It seems counterintuitive, then, that such a socially edge film could be so successful in such a conservative country. I think the reason for this is best summarized by Oscar Wilde: if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. Although Mansukhani may not have been trying to show society any sort of “truth,” he was certainly able to get away with being edgy in the eyes of the public by framing the movie as a lighthearted comedy.