Queerness in Indian Media
↳Film: RRR (2022, Telugu), dir. S.S. RAJAMOULI
RRR is a historical fantasy action drama that follows Bheem (NTR Jr), a Gond warrior who is in search of a Gond girl who was taken away from their home, and Ram (Ram Charan), the British Army officer assigned to catch him. Ram and Bheem meet under false identities and quickly grow closer, but everything is thrown into chaos once the truth is revealed and Ram is forced to choose between his ambitions and his attachment to Bheem.
Long before any white person had ever heard of RRR, queer Indians were cautiously optimistic that there would be something for us in this movie. There was the song Dosti, which felt more romantic than the average song about friendship; Bheem's intense declaration toward Ram in the trailer; Rajamouli explaining that there is no boy-girl romantic song (a staple of masala Indian cinema in any language) because "the romance angle is between these two guys only...bromance...they are the heroes, they are the hero and heroine, and they are the hero and villain"; the lead actors repeatedly questioning interviewers who referred to Jenny and Seetha as Bheem and Ram's love interests; and the writer, V. Vijayendra Prasad, being a huge fan of Salim-Javed movies, particularly Sholay, whose homosocial pairing has been read as queer by queer Indians for decades.
The movie itself gave us more than we could have hoped for from a project made on such a huge scale. Ram and Bheem mimic many of the "hero and heroine" pairings in so many masala movies, doing everything from the "slow-mo staring" for the first meeting, to getting a whole montage song for the progression of their bond, to dressing each other up, to dancing together at a party, to carrying each other, to rescuing each other.
The final rescue scene is perhaps the most telling, as it twists a well-known myth from the Ramayana by putting Ram and Bheem in the position of heroine and hero. It is not Hanuman who tells Rama where to find Sita in Lanka, but instead Seetha who tells Bheem where to find Ram. Bheem, upon finding him, promises to get him out 'even if [he has] to burn this Lanka down to do it'--then promptly carries him on his shoulders the way Hanuman carried Rama, to do away with any suspicions from homophobic audiences.
Those homophobic audiences still made their complaints--a glance at the oldest comments on any clip or behind the scenes video for RRR will make that clear--but they were drowned out by the many fans of the movie. Ultimately, like with any coded movie, the interpretation is up to the individual, but it is undeniable that a number of queer Indians felt that there was a romantic bond between Ram and Bheem. To dismiss that would do a disservice to the many queer people who have, are, and always will work quietly behind the scenes to write our stories, even if they can never say so directly.
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oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT
oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.
SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)
so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!
so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.
the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!
now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.
here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.
but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.
so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.
anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.
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The Hazbin Graduate’s Guide to Homicide (3)
HAZBIN'S MIDSEMESTER STUDENT REPORT
Student: Vox Vanhal
Supervising Staff: Professor Enoch Leviathan
Sponsor: Not Applicable
To the Board:
Vox Vanhal may be one of the most brilliant students this school has seen in decades. In all my years of teaching at Hazbin, I have never met a student more insanely ready to learn and apply their skills- due in part, of course, to said student's own possible insanity. I mean this in a jovial way, of course, but I will admit that when young Vanhal's true identity was revealed to me that my first thought was along the lines of 'is this student insane?' Whether or not my student's reason should be called into question is something myself and my fellow professor Asmodeus have discussed in length, but there is one thing that we can definitively agree on: If there is any one student in this school who I would choose to place my bets on, it would be Vox Vanhal. There is nothing more to say at this time of report evaluation.
Sincerely, Professor Leviathan.
May God's blessings be with you now and at the hour of our deaths, Amen.
[ 1 ] / [ 2 ] (<- read these first for context and more murder academy radiostatic content!)
Though Alastor may have thought that Vox was much more knowledgable in how Hazbin's Institution for Homicide worked, the truth was, Vox was still fully flying on the seat of his own coattails.
He had no damn clue what he was doing still, and although it'd been two weeks since he'd arrived, part of him still felt like how he did when he'd first arrived: hesitant, scared, not knowing where to go or what to do besides the want to make his boss suffer as he killed him.
That level of animosity might sound strange to anyone not a Hazbin student or alumnus, but it was perfectly normal for any student enrolled in the academy to have such feelings. After all, there was quite a rigorous process involved in the application, and for Vox, this application process (and what led to it) was perhaps more intense than most.
There had once been a time where Vox had dreamed of becoming a Hollywood starlet, one who lit up the silver screen and was blessed by hundreds of thousands of cheering, dedicated fans who would fawn over his every move and action. He'd wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps, at one point. But after taking on his first roles in Carmine Studios, the glamour of Hollywood had shattered like fine glass.
"Miss Vesper! Would you please look over here for a second?"
"Miss Vesper, when is your next movie coming out?!"
"Miss Vesper, is it true that you and your co-star on Anna Karenina, Valentino Vega had an affair-?"
"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! That- fucking bastard!" Vox rushed into the privacy of his and Val's shared apartment, slamming the door behind him as he collapsed into the couch, head cradled in his hands. He couldn't even begin to start detailing the number of ways he'd wanted to fucking butcher and rip apart his boss.
Andrealphus Goetia was no stranger to the spotlight, naturally. One of Hollywood's top directors, the man had been an influential cornerstone in the history of movie-making, a real legend to light the days. But behind that picturesque platinum reputation laid a monstrous piece of shit.
It had been a complete accident that Andrealphus had found out about Vox's identity.
Vox himself hadn't even really planned out what to do about himself at that point, only that he'd known that the dresses he wore on screen were far more suited to his best friend than they were for him. Knew that the copious amounts of makeup flattened on him everyday made him feel more like a clown than a princess, that it was the most uncomfortable feeling to have to sit and play the pretty face for the audience's sake.
But he persisted, telling himself, one more year, one more year til my savings account has enough to supply Val and I with a comfortable life and we can leave.
But of course- of course Andrealphus had to ruin it for him.
The man had found out and immediately proceeded to blackmailing Vox with the information, holding things such as promotions, media gossip and rumors over his head. And now... now... Vox stared down at the script he held clutched in his hand, his knuckles turning white as he grasped it with an iron grip.
"Dieser verdammte bastard," Vox muttered under his breath.
Though he'd never loved the spotlight that came with his first taste of fame, he had loved acting. Had loved being adored for his skill, applauded for the emotions that he could evoke in crowds of people and the way he could twist people's hearts. He had wanted to be one of the best, a household name.
And now, he stared down at the script for a movie that Andrealphus knew would tank his reputation. It was absolute bullshit. The plot was held together by thin strings and a bit of glue, despite being an adaptation of one of the past decade's best selling books. Not only that, but the moment he left the safety of the apartment once more, he would also have to contend with the rumors that were steadily piling against him and dragging his loved ones and friends into it too.
All this, because Vox had refused to sleep with his shitty boss.
He could still hear the fucker's voice- come on, don't you wanna say that you got a piece of me? I'll even leave out the part about you being a transvestite, darling, just the fact that I got a piece of you is enough.
God. If only.... if only he could see that bastard's face when he crushed his fucking skull in between his hands. He wanted to see Andrealphus' stupid face contort in revulsion and terror when Vox finally did the deed, wanted to bathe in the the fotze's inbred blood. He'd do anything for the chance to just kill that piece of shit-
"Amorcito?"
Val's voice makes Vox jump on the spot, quickly shifting to hide the script from view. His friend comes around the corner, eyebrows furrowed with concern, and it's this that makes Vox break his composure, a single tear falling down his face as Val frowns, taking a seat next to him on the couch. "Voxxy, amor... tell me what's wrong."
And because he can never keep his mouth shut when it comes to his best friend, Vox tells him everything. Val nods along, pauses at the right moments, all of that stuff that friends do when they're trying to let you know that they'd rip apart your shitty boss if not for the law.
But- and perhaps this is something that Vox knew deep down to be true anyway- Val was a bit different in that aspect. He'd met the man under... less than legal circumstances, after all, and he knew that Val was the heir to quite the illustrous cartel career.
So when Valentino stops him with a firm hand on the shoulder and hands him an application paper for Hazbin, telling him to think it through, Vox barely takes even a second glance at it before filling it out.
Now, two months later and sitting in the auditorium of Hazbin's famed Music Hall, Vox doesn't find himself regretting the decision. Sure, it's a bit lonely without Val's supporting presence by his side, but the students he's met so far have proved to be some of the friendliest people he's had the pleasure of knowing: ironic, considering the kind of school they're studying at. And he's even managed to make a friend! Not that bad a start, altogether.
Vox absentmindedly doodles on the edge of his notes as Professor Leviathan's soothing voice lectures them on the importance of a proper alibi. "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, but it has an airtight alibi, it is...?"
"Not a duck," the auditorium echoes back to the professor, who nods, looking satisfied with the class's response. "So, then! The first step to alibi making is...? Miss Velvette, perhaps you'd like to answer this one for us?"
The girl sitting beside Vox shoots up in her seat, looking as if she'd just fallen asleep and was awoken by the professor's question. "Uh... the..."
After a moment of silence and stuttering, Vox takes pity on the girl, sliding Velvette over a slide of paper that she squints at before reading. "Make sure you're in a different place from the crime?"
"And how would I do that?"
"I... uh. Use an accomplice...?" Velvette stutters.
Professor Leviathan shakes his head, looking disappointed. "Not quite. One thing you will have to learn at Hazbin's is that you should never rely on any other person to carry your deed out for you. No hiring accomplices- after all, paid personnel's loyalty is shaky and they have no honor code preventing them from taking you to the police- and absolutely no committing crimes as lovers, unless you can guarantee that neither of you will be snitching. Would anyone else like to take a try?"
Vox raises his hand hesitantly. "Move the crime scene or otherwise obscure the culprit?"
Professor Leviathan snaps his fingers, "Yes! Absolutely. One of the best ways to make yourself an iron clad alibi is, if the pope is shot in the church at midnight, make sure that you are seen halfway across town in the bar at midnight; so drunk that you cannot even leave until your wife comes to pick you up at two- and no one will suspect you, even if he was actually killed right outside the pub and moved to the church instead. By moving the crime scene, you can make yourself an ironclad alibi. Obscuring the identity of the perpetrator and making it someone who couldn't possibly be you also works splendidly. After all, if the police believe the murderer to be a six foot tall adult man, then the actual perpetrator, a four foot tall young woman, would be able to pass by completely unnoticed. Thank you for that input, Vox. Now, onto the actual creation of such an alibi..."
When class ends, Vox is the first to leave his seat and head for the door, intending on leaving and getting to Track with Professor Satan as quick as possible when someone stops him in his tracks with a firm grip on his shoulder.
"Hey. Vox Vanhal, right?"
"That would be me, yes," Vox turns to face the person he's talking to, only to be met with the young woman that Professor Leviathan had called out in class earlier. "You were... Velvette?"
"Yep, that's me," the chipper young woman responds. "Listen, I know you don't know me at all, but I really need to get through this school year. Like- look, okay, I'm in a little bit over my head right now. I still want to go here and do what everyone here does, of course, I'd love to just go and plunge a damn butcher's knife into my cunt of an ex-friend's neck, but... well, you saw how I did back in class- look, what I'm trying to get at is I need someone to help me. And you're like, Leviathan's star student. So- I don't care what I have to do, I'll-"
Vox holds up a hand to stop her.
"I don't need you to do anything for me, unless you've got any tips on how to kill my boss and make him suffer during it. But I'll help you with whatever you need to study during your courses. Just..." He pauses, taking a moment to think out what he's about to ask. "Could you teach me how you did your makeup on your own?"
Velvette blinks, clearly not expecting that response. She laughs, a shrill, sharp bark and grabs his hand to shake it firmly. "Yeah, 'course I can. So, do we have a deal?"
"We do," Vox smiles. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."
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