Transgenders in Telugu Cinema

Transgenders are no strangers to
Telugu movies. Screenshots from scenes
from various movies that
have featured transgenders.

The transgender community is not a stranger to Telugu movies. A long list comes to mind when I think of movies that have a few transgender characters thrown in for the humour element, and their role has generally been limited to marginal and small characters who were humiliated for their identity for comedic value. However, recent times have seen two famous movies, Lawrence’s “Kanchana”(2011) and Shankar’s “I”(2015), having transgender characters in their main plots. This post attempts to analyse the depiction of transgenders in these two movies, and to evaluate the deeper meanings of such portrayals. This post is further a rant and critique against the depiction of Osma Jasmine in I, which has gone against the progressive standards set by Kanchana.

Kanchana scores on two points: for the first time in contemporary Telugu cinema, a transgender character held an integral role in the plot, and two, the role was essayed by a prominent actor, Sarath Kumar. Kanchana, among other things, tells the story of the difficult life of a transgender, from her life as a young boy to an adoptive mother who fights against society’s stereotypes against her community and supports her transgender daughter study to become a doctor. For what seemed like the first time, Telugu audiences were exposed to the harsh life of a boy who realizes he does not want to be one. His family, who recognizes that he acts rather femininely, throws him out of home when the young boy tries to explain that his behavior is out of his control, that he was just born that way. Now homeless and left to fend for himself, he starts begging for money and food. An elder man who has a mentally challenged child finds him on the roads and takes him under his wing. The man is very supportive and boy is encouraged to be himself in his new family. He takes a new identity as Kanchana and dresses up as a woman.

Kanchana constantly remembers that her formative years were a fight to realize her identity, a process that deprived her of higher education. She is determined to not let her adoptive transgender daughter, Geetha, suffer the same fate, and perseveres to support her ambition to become a doctor. Kanchana is shown to physically engage with men who harass her daughter and ask her to sleep with them, and she vehemently argues that members of her community feel threatened to lead normal lives and educate themselves because of a persisting fear of violence from a society that brands them as ‘abnormal’.

For me this scene depicts the importance 

of support at the community level for an individual

 to achieve their full capabilities.

A striking scene for me from the movie is when Kanchana is invited on stage during her daughter’s felicitation ceremony after topping the state higher secondary board exams. Her daughter emphasizes the importance of her mother’s support throughout her life. Kanchana herself holds the elder man who gave her a new family responsible for the success in her endeavor to gain a respectable position in the society. For me this scene is an important depiction of one, how society responds with violence to what it considers abnormal or deviant, and two, how such groups continue to become marginalized and lose out on avenues to achieve their capabilities. Kanchana’s speech is also a reminder about the importance of support and respect for an individual (especially for someone from a marginalized community) at the community level to realize their full self-development.

The rest of the story is mostly a plot of revenge, when Kanchana is brutally murdered by her enemies and her ghost possesses the protagonist to extract her vengeance. The last scene of the movie shows her daughter, who returns as a qualified doctor, establish a hospital in the memory of her mother.

The movie is remarkably progressive for its depiction of a repressed community whose role had till then only been limited to nameless inferiors whose humiliation was designed to produce a few laughs. It depicted the struggle of a person who was rejected by his family (and society) for who he was, and the daily violence that the members of such a marginalized community face. It gives a face to the continuous battles that transgenders have to face if they dare to challenge the society’s stereotypes against them, to aspire to live a life of dignity, to feel entitled to basic necessities in life such as education, safety and respect. Finally it shows that Geetha, despite facing many hurdles in her journey, realizes her dream of becoming a doctor, a profession that is greatly respected by the society.

The first few scenes of Kanchana start with the protagonist being possessed by what seems like a female ghost. Interestingly, a few scenes where he is shown to be possessed by the ghost and acts rather effeminately seem to be intended to produce laughs. In fact, one of these scenes has gone down as a high rated comedy scene and remains to this day a very famous one liner in jokes. The latter half of the film introduces Kanchana, and the story becomes serious as the protagonist is deeply moved by her story and offers to help her. I have thought of whether even the initial scenes which seem humorous were designed to provoke the audience to think twice before their reaction to when a man (or a young boy) behaves in ways considered to be feminine.

Kanchana was a step towards breaking social prejudices against transgenders, a community which has generally been associated with begging and prostitution. Bringing transgenders into mainstream popular culture by giving them an integral character in a movie and depicting the difficulties they face in their lives, was a crucial step in bringing the community into popular discourse and to spark a discussion about their condition. It is precisely this reason why I have serious issues with the depiction of Osma Jasmine in Shankar’s movie, I.

The plot of I is rather basic: the protagonist is the embodiment of innocence and hard work, he rises to great heights in his career, wins the love of a beautiful model, and in the process makes many enemies who get together to scheme revenge against him; the hero falls, but gets back up, plots his own intricate plan of vengeance and wins back everything he lost. A transgender named Osma Jasmine, along with three other characters, is one of the villains in the movie.

Osma Jasmine is shown to be a top stylist for movie stars in the country. In fact, her very introduction is as a “top paid professional”, and she is also shown to be a very proficient hair stylist and beautician. Our joy of such a positive depiction is cut down abruptly, since this remains the only good thing about it.

The protagonist, Lee, is transphobic, and makes it clear that he does not like to be touched by a transgender, even though she is a professional who was hired to style him. He winces his face in disgust every time she her hand touches his face and when she casually flirts with him, and he also says spiteful things to her face. His lack of respect for such a highly skilled professional is never remarked against; no one is appalled by it, moreover, everyone seems to condone his behavior and laugh it away as a natural reaction to feel threatened and disgusted about members of the transgender community. Several other male characters, those even on her side, make sexual and other degrading remarks against Osma throughout, and she never stands up for her dignity. She is shown to have accepted it as a part of her identity and her life as a transgender. Not in one scene does she feel entitled to respectful or equal treatment as other members on her crew.

However, what she is shown to feel entitled to is sex.

Osma falls in love with Lee somewhere as the story progresses. She repeatedly makes moves towards him and makes sexual suggestions when they are having dinner alone. How she feels attracted to someone who treats her with as much respect as he treats a disgusting piece of trash and actually expects him to return such feelings for her is something I have not comprehended. In one incident when Osma asks Lee to think about how beautiful they both would look as a couple, he replies saying that the couple would be ugly and disgusting. In another scene, referring to her transgender identity, he says that she is not even human.

It is a testimonial of how a person who may have a lot of money can be denied respect and a life of dignity because of their identity as a member of a stigmatized group.

The archetype of the pure Indian woman- Diya, 

the supermodel who dresses up traditionally 

(complete with bindi and flowers) and attends

 to her husband when he is sick.

Another statement that the movie makes is in its attempt to distinguish the ‘normal’ and ‘good’ woman and the ‘abnormal’ and ‘bad’ other is when the characters are in China for the shooting of an advertisement. Right after the shooting wraps up, the heroine, Amy Jackson is shown to dress up in a fully traditional Indian look, complete with a bindi she otherwise rarely wears. What I initially thought was an attempt to make the English actress look more Indian, on a closer examination, looks like an insidious attempt at establishing what is morally right and wrong. In the same frame, we see Diya ,Amy’s character, who dresses like a decent girl, who does not lust for sex, feels terrible and distraught if she hurts a man she barely knows, does not hang out with men much (and who later nurses her diseased husband to health). She is the epitome of the good Indian woman. We also see Osma, who only wears knee-length dresses, openly lusts for the man she wants, is not afraid to flirt, who has to face violence as the necessary consequence of the way she chooses to be.

Much of the story afterwards shows Lee and Diya rise in their careers, fall in love and decide to get married; make enemies on their way, one of who is Osma, who is shown to be a sex craving monster who decides that if Lee can’t be hers then he can be no one’s- the stereotypical female spurned lover; and fall victim to the villains’ ingenious plot of revenge.  Lee is injected with a deadly virus called “I” (that’s what the movie is named after), and he contracts a rare disease that results in terrible deformities. He does not want Diya to be burdened by someone like him and fakes his own death.

He begins to plot his own scheme of revenge against the people who took away everything from him. He plans different types of torture on each of them to inflict upon them, a fate ‘worse than death’.His plan of vengeance against Osma is of particular interest. He goes to great lengths to procure substances that cause and accelerate hair growth and prepares a powerful concoction that causes hair to grow wherever it is applied on the body. He mixes this chemical substance with all of Osma’s soaps, cosmetics and body creams. The result is that she is left with thick hair all over her body and face, and any attempts to remove the hair would only accelerate the hair growth. A state that we are told to believe is worse than death. This seems like the movie somewhere accepts her to be feminine; chooses body and facial hair, something that all women should and will be shocked and disgusted about, as an equal punishment to a person who caused the hero great pain and suffering and an incurable fatal disease.  

Is facial and body hair on a female body so shocking 

and disgusting that it is 'a fate worse than death'?

The movie thus makes many statements subtly: that transgenders cannot feel entitled to respect even though they are highly paid and talented professionals, your identity as a member of a marginalized group determines the treatment that society gives you, and that such sub-human treatment is normal or acceptable; if you wish to be a woman, you cannot have any facial or body hair and you need to feel disgusted about it (indeed, if you have a lot of it, your fate is worse than death), and that the ideal woman is one who dresses in Indian clothes, does not openly lust after men, flees the scene when a man flirts with her, and takes care of her husband when he needs her.

 Rose Vekatesan is a popular face in Tamil Nadu 

and hosted her own show called Ippadikku Rose on Star Vijay.

The release of “I” was followed by protests against the movie for the depiction of Osma Jasmine’s character. This provoked the response of Ojas Rajani, the person who played the role of Osma Jasmine in the movie. Ojas is a transgender and a top- paid stylist in Bollywood, who was a personal styler for celebrities like Aishwarya Rai. She came out with a statement that the transgender community must stop their protests because the scenes were only supposed to be funny and were never meant to offend anyone. There was some support to her from those who said that perhaps she found it a good opportunity to represent her community in an important character of such a big-budget movie. But Kanchana had already proved that transgenders could be portrayed as individuals who were entitled to respect and an equal status. Also, the situation is quite ironical since the movie comes from the same state that has been otherwise very progressive when it came to transgenders, from the constitution of a transgender welfare board to accepting Rose Venkatesan as a popular host on local channels. (Watch Rose respond to the depiction of Osma in ‘I’ here)

The movie is also curious, because it is inconsistent with its acceptance of Osma as feminine. On the one hand, Lee does not accept her to be a woman, openly shows his loathing and revulsion at someone so abnormal as her. On the other hand, there are repeated suggestions of distinctions and differences between the ‘good’ and ‘pure’ woman and the indecent and impure one, as well as when the hero decides that body and facial hair is the apt punishment for Osma.

My understanding is that the movie’s attempt (and inability) to place Osma as a woman is only a reflection of a culture that does not understand transgender experiences. Society’s general dualistic understanding of man and woman as separate and distinct categories means that it does not recognize an experience that might exhibit both masculine and feminine characteristics. The confusion is just a result of the lack of understanding, which in turn is a result of the absence of a transgender perspective in the public domain. The first step towards inclusion is recognizing the members of the community as equals deserving respect, who are capable of achieving their full potential given support and care from their families and communities. Such a recognition is easily brought by the popular media such as movies and TV serials, and even more so when they humanize the experiences by showing the characters as individuals aspiring to and leading lives with dignity just like any other individual.

Kanchana did exactly this. It was a much needed step towards the inclusion of transgenders in popular culture, and for a first timer, the movie is progressive. My main issue with Shankar's I is that it negates everything that its predecessor built. It should have been clear that Kanchana (which was a very high grosser at the box office) set certain standards of expectations about the depiction of transgenders. Whereas the former was met with happy surprise and gratitude from the community, the release of “I” was followed by widespread protests and rallies against Shankar, the director of the movie.

I believe it is time for the Telugu and Tamil movie industry to realize that they play an important role in the inclusion process of those groups which have so far been marginalized by the society. In such a context, caricatured portrayal of members of those communities is very regressive and does not help to bring social change. Depicting transgenders as equals deserving respect is the first step in making the community less ‘abnormal’ and removing the social stereotypes and prejudices attached to their community.