Identity and Identification in Bombay Talkies (Michelle Okereke)

Cinema has the power infiltrate and reshape our lived experience. Memories of our favorite movie stars and moments imprint on us, and occupy a permanent place in mind. Bombay Talkies addresses the many ways in which cinema touches the lives of all Indians. Film is the thread that connects its four otherwise unrelated stories. In Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh, a love of old Bollywood film music becomes the emotional bridge between an openly gay man and his boss’s closeted gay husband. In Star, a failed actor gets a chance to prove himself when he stumbles into a role as an extra in a movie with Ranbir Kapoor. Sheila Ki Jawaani tells the story of someone at the early stages of their life journey, and how a viewing of a Katrina Kaif movie inspires his dreams. Finally, Murabba follows a man attempting to fulfill his father’s deathbed wish of meeting Amitabh Bachchan. Of the four shorts, I was most intrigued by Sheila Ki Jawaani. Unlike the other stories, it takes the audience back to the time when cinema has the most power to affect one’s worldview—childhood. Moreover, it puts us in the shoes of a character we would not typically see in Bollywood, demonstrating film’s ability to reach even the most marginalized of individuals. By telling the story of a young boy on the precipice of discovering his “dream,” Sheila Ki Jawaani suggests a relationship between identity and cinema.

At the very least, Sheila Ki Jawaani is a critical analysis of the rigidity of gender norms. But I believe it goes beyond gender norms into gender identity. Vicky is a child struggling to balance his own interests with his father’s expectations of him as a boy. His father wants him to play football, because “all boys play football.” Vicky tells his parents he hates the sport, but they continue to pay for his lessons—even at the expense of his sister, who wants to use the money for a school trip. What Vicky really wants is to take dance classes. Sports are associated with the “male” identity, and dance and music with the “female” identity. Vicky represents a challenge to this binary, and must learn to hide his atypical identity as a result. Most articles reviewing the film describe Vicky as “effeminate” or “homosexual”. The former is a fair conclusion, but the latter is entirely unsupported. There is no indication that Vicky has developed sexual feelings yet—for girls or boys. These articles make the mistake of conflating sexual identity with sexual orientation. What they are afraid to say is that Vicky is most likely transgender, or hijra as it would be referred to in India. His fascination with the female identity is depicted through close-up slow motion shots on female accessories like lipstick, jewelry, and clothing attire. He dons girl clothing and a full face of makeup early on in the film, and again in his performance of “My Name is Sheila” at the end. When his sister tells him that his father was upset because he was dressed as a girl, he asks “what’s wrong with being a girl?” And most important to the question of Vicky’s gender identity is his idolization of Katrina Kaif. It goes beyond mere fan worship into complete identification. When Vicky announces his life’s dream to his sister, he does not say he wants to be a Bollywood dancer. He says, “I want to be Sheila.”

 Seeing Kaif’s performance as Sheila does not “turn” Vicky transgender. Rather than creating his identity, watching Kaif on screen clarifies and validates it. In Sheila, he sees himself, and that self is not necessarily a “he.” The role of identification has been a hotly debated topic in film theory. The Hollywood studio system relied on identification to pull audiences in emotionally. Italian Neorealism told the stories of the socioeconomically disadvantaged, in order for the public to identify with these issues. By contrast, the Counter-Cinema movement of the French New Wave argued that identification numbs the mind of the audience, and only serves an entertainment purpose. Instead, it argued that estrangement from characters was necessary to affect the audience intellectually. If Bombay Talkies is a reflection of Bollywood cinema, then Bollywood is clearly in the camp of identification. In particular, Sheila Ki Jawaani suggests that identification in film is essential to self-discovery. Although Vicky’s case is on the more extreme side of identity validation, the story captures cinema’s ability to create figures with which anyone can identify with, and grow to understand themselves through this.