Heterosexism Takes Viswaroopam

Finally, when Kamal’s magnum opus, Viswaroopam, managed to see the light of day in Tamil Nadu, his fans thronged the theatres to watch this much-awaited and controversy stricken film. While, there will be a continuing debate on the movie’s representation of a particular religious community, it would not be surprising if those same critics ignore the movie’s problematic portrayal of another minority community. For the minority status of this community is not because of its religious faith but the group’s sexual and gender identities. Viswaroopam, apart from being totally one sided in its pro-American troops storyline, laughs up its sleeves, a misguided portrayal of the queer community.

Like has been the case with many movies in the past, Vettayadu Vilayadu, Dostana and Goa to name a few, it is very likely that any argument against Viswaroopam in favour of queer community will only be rubbished with furor by the mainstream audience. On second thoughts, it may also be quite an injustice to group Goa and Dostana under the likes of Viswaroopam, because the problem with these two movies has more to do with the heteronormative portrayal of the gay relationships and less about how “normal” they are. Coming back to Viswaroopam’s portrayal, it is much more dangerous and harmful just for the reason that it uses the word “normal” from an uncomfortable dilemmatic viewpoint in the dialogue rendered by the femme-phobic wife as an introduction to the effeminate Kamal Hassan. And few scenes later, when the wife realizes that he is macho enough and not as “umanly” as she suspected him to be, falls desperately in love with him. And this falling in love just happens in a scene in which he walks down the stairs exhibiting his machismo. While, this scene alone is heterosexist enough and portrays a nauseatingly shallow understanding about falling in love, the problem with the movie is much deeper than this. It goes back to the earlier introduction scene which indirectly questions the normality of any sexual identity other than heterosexual orientation. This outlines the movie’s strong prejudice against the queer community. It may be easy to trivialize the issue as too petty be taken seriously by the larger section of the audience. And we can be totally certain that such a trivialization is what we would be hearing in future, if at all this criticism gathers any momentum. But only the queer and queer-sensitized people would be aware of the potential of such a portrayal to cause a deep psychological scar in the minds of sexual and gender minorities. For years now, the queer community has been bearing a heavy burden of the labels such as “normal” and “abnormal”, which has been used as instruments to create hatred and prejudices against the community. At this juncture, where we have only taken few baby steps of success in bringing forward a change to the society’s larger mindset towards sexual and gender minorities, movies like Viswaroopam are an unfortunate hindrance towards the fight for equality and social justice. For the sake of few laughs here and there, it has become a recent norm in Indian movies to take a dig at queer community. But a movie like Viswaroopam goes a step ahead, and has gone back in ages by portraying homosexuality as a deviant beahviour. Well, yes, it is not explicitly told in the movie. But such indirect references portrayed by a mass hero will only reinforce the already prevalent hatred and prejudices against the much maligned sexual and gender minorities.

It is very clear that Kamal Hassan, in his efforts to showcase his acting prowess, has gone ahead and essayed this role of an effeminate man, as has the case been in his earlier movies like Dasavatharam and Avvai Shanmugi. He has sketched this initial part of the story to set a platform for such a character. And so the queer community ends up being exploited for him to exhibit his skills as an actor and director. This alone acts as antithesis to Kamal’s claims over his own intellectual capabilities in storytelling.

It’s time that we stopped expecting anything more than ordinary from his movies as this is proof enough that his stories can sink well below the standards of average masala movies to pull in the crowds to theatres. It’s a caveat for us to stop thinking that there is hope in the horizon for Tamil movies and audience. Movies like Viswaroopam are made often to teach us a lesson or two. A lesson that Tamil movies will continue to be hopeless as they are now!