How the stereotypical portrayal of LGBTQ characters in Bollywood is slowly transforming?

While India as a country has come a long way in terms of how we function as a societyThere are still certain aspects where we are way behind from where we should be i. e. our perception towards the LGBT community. Indians consider it unnatural for a person to love another person belonging to the same gender . Even though the Supreme Court’s historical judgement of decriminalizing homosexuality in India is considered a huge victory for the LGBTQ community in the country , this thought has not transpired in the minds of common people. While the conversation about the community has caused a momentum around the globe, The Hindi film industry still has a long way to go in terms of show casting the queer men and women. For a long time, LGBTQ characters in Bollywood movies have been represented on the sidelines, shown either as cross-dressers or as mere caricatures defined by their clothes and bodily movements. The gay characters in the Hindi films are often used to provide comic relief in the narrative . The concept of same sex attraction, more often than not, is treated as a joke in the big budgeted Hindi dramas. Top mainstream Hindi movies such as Kaal Ho Na Ho, Dostaana, Student of the Year, Bol Bachchan, Dishoom, performed quite well at the box office but failed to portray LGBT community in a respectful manner. Dostaana gained popularity as the first big budgeted film to have any open storyline about the LGBT characters. But despite being a movie that profited off homosexuality, its plot did not actually revolve around homosexuality.What little bit it did have about homosexuality Came with the digs and comedic remarks about it.But after that for a long time People forgot that queer people even existed. There were a few scattered representation here and there in low budgeted films like Aligarh and Margarita with a Straw. Back then Bollywood had the excuse of the same sex relationship being criminalised And so there was more stigma attached to it. However, In the post-377 India, Bollywood’s attitude towards the LGBTQ community has been improving. In recent years there are some big budgeted films have been made which have portrayed theLGBT characters in a positive light. A few of them are: Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga(2019) : this film told a typical love story in a traditional way but it was uniquely about a queer couple. The film truly won in its intent to normalize how love transcends gender while it showed us a lesbian’s journey of loneliness, internalization of shame, and finally finding the courage to come out. Subh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan(2020) : Seeking to portray queer people in a more realistic and dignified manner through humour, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan tells the story of Kartik Singh who overcomes social obstacles to be with his lover, Aman Tripathi – a tried and tested Bollywood plotline, except that the main characters are openly masculine and gay. Laxmmi Bomb (2020): This is an upcoming film featuring Akshay Kumar that deals with the transgender community. This is the first bollywood film with a transwoman as its protagonist. Recently , Bollywood Web series have also started featuring LGBT plots. From Sacred Games’ Kukkoo to Made in Heaven’s Karan, we saw queer characters who finally seemed to be getting the storylines and romances they deserved. Right now we have scratched the surface of the LGBTQ with masculine looking gay men or hyper feminine lesbians, in romantic comedies. We need scripts with more authentic queer character portrayal. I also feel Bollywood as a whole needs to apologise to Bobby Darling specifically, transwomen, the ''Hijra'' community and effeminate men, as their ''comical relief'' which did get us laughs, had a strong negative effect on the queer community which we still battle till today. Another thing that seems to plague Bollywood is tokenism. Despite some well etched out queer characters, the truth is they have mostly been played by heterosexual and cisgender actors. The industry profits off the community, but hardly seems to give anything back to those from the community. Thus, Bollywood still has a long way to go in terms of gender equality.