Karan Johar at 50: Revisiting filmmaker's work that often challenge our expectations of queerness in cinema

Karan Johar is easy to hate on. Some call him the flag-bearer of nepotism. Others trash his brand of filmmaking. Some insinuate that he is singularly responsible for depoliticising queerness in Indian popular culture. Others blame him for dressing up patriarchy and misogyny in designer clothes. While each criticism might be valid from the standpoint of the critics themselves, I think that it is petty to reduce Johar to the sum total of these judgements.  

What makes him successful? Why do people watch his movies? How does he capture our imagination, touch our hearts, make us laugh and cry? These too are important questions to ask, for people seek out cinema to fulfil a wide range of emotional and intellectual needs. Of course, we should not discount the fact that there are many who buy movie tickets so that they can sit comfortably in an airconditioned hall for three hours or get intimate with their partner. These are practical reasons, especially in a city like Mumbai with space constraints.

Born in this maya nagri in 1985, my earliest film viewing experiences are from the 1990s. No wonder then that I know Johar from his guest appearance as Paunchy, Raj Malhotra’s (Shah Rukh Khan) friend in Aditya Chopra’s film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). Little did I, or most of India, know back then that Johar would turn out to be so famous, prolific, huge! It seems like just yesterday that DDLJ released, so it seems a bit shocking that Johar is now 50!

While the photographs emerging from his birthday party give us a quick glimpse of his impressive filmography, they do not highlight what I believe to be Johar’s most significant contribution – the colourful and controversial legacy of queer cinema that we associate with him. On the one hand, he is panned for queerbaiting in  Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Dostana (2008) and  Student of the Year (2012). On the other hand, he is also appreciated for the sensitive portrayal of queer characters in Bombay Talkies (2013) and Kapoor & Sons (2016).

Kal Ho Naa Ho, directed by Nikkhil Advani, and produced by Johar, is still remembered for Kantaben (Sulbha Arya). I would be lying if I did not admit that she made me laugh. The joke was on her as the personification of homophobia. The portrayal was exaggerated but very much in keeping with the genre. In today’s times, it may not be politically correct to confess one’s enjoyment of something that is seen as coarse. We are used to smarter representation.

Dostana, directed by Tarun Mansukhani, and produced by Johar, will be remembered for more than John Abraham’s entry, which is nothing but an extended thirst trap. Rani Acharya (Kirron Kher) comes across as Kantaben 2.0 in the sense that she is yet another caricature of a homophobic person. Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan pretend to be gay in this film, while they try to win over the same woman. It is a weird premise but it did make me laugh. A lot.

I was able to place a finger on why I enjoyed these movies only after reading a scholarly article by Pawan Singh, which appeared in the academic journal South Asian Popular Culture in 2015. It has a long title – “Staging sexuality through the familial, the performative and the activist: Bollywood’s queer repertoire in the twenty-first century” – so catch your breath.  

Singh shows that Johar is more invested in “alternative logics of queer visibility” than in adhering to “universal markers” of LGBTQ+ culture. Johar attempts to “illustrate the familial and performative accommodation of queerness in Indian culture” through modes of expression like “gossip, humour, innuendo, ambiguity and importantly, the refusal to clearly name”.

This interpretation makes sense to me. It is quite consistent with my own experience as a queer person. I have met many people who enjoy queer intimacies but do not identify under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. They are not necessarily afraid or ashamed. I respect them.

By comparing the reception of Johar’s films with those made by Onir, an openly gay filmmaker who directed My Brother…Nikhil (2005) and I Am (2010), Singh emphasises the unfairness that is implicit in the “demand on Johar to be openly gay”. He does not owe this to anyone, not even to LGBTQ+ groups. This insistence assumes that self-acceptance and self-actualisation must happen in “globally resonant terms”. It is unfortunate that “coming out” is now constructed as a sort of public confession, almost a rite of passage on the way to pride.

I love Onir’s work, and Johar’s. Why do we need one kind of queer cinema? In the name of fighting heteronormativity, why do we want to enforce another kind of normativity? Onir’s memoir I Am Onir and I Am Gay (2022) reveals that it was Johar who spoke to Aditya Chopra about My Brother… Nikhil. He liked it, and Yash Raj Films decided to distribute it.  

As Ketaki Ranade affirms in the book Growing Up Gay in Urban India: A Critical Psychosocial Perspective (2018), there are numerous ways of being queer. For many people, their primarily self-identity is not woven around their sex, gender or sexuality. They might prioritise their membership of a clan, caste or religion over membership of a queer support group for emotional, social or economic reasons. Who are we to judge and to begrudge?

Coming back to Johar, Bombay Talkies took me by surprise. I had not expected to see that hot chemistry between Saqib Saleem and Randeep Hooda in the segment of the anthology that Johar directed. It also made me uncomfortable because of the violence. Kapoor & Sons, directed by Shakun Batra, and produced by Johar, seemed much kinder to the queer character played by Fawad Khan. It released before the Supreme Court read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, so the gay man was conveniently sent to the US to be himself. In Student of the Year, which Johar directed and produced, he got Rishi Kapoor to play a gay dean. These films are different from Kal Ho Naa Ho and Dostana, which have no queer people.

I agree with Singh when he writes, “Bollywood’s textuality is far too rich and complex to be reduced to any singular logic of queer visibility.” What we also need to look at is how Johar writes and directs his heterosexual characters – Anjali (Kajol) in the first half of  Kuch Kuch Hota Hai  (1998) and Poo (Kareena Kapoor) in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) – and how these resonate with queer audiences. Anjali is presented as a “tomboy”, a term that is considered offensive today but it is easy to see why she would speak to women and girls who do not want to fit into the scripts of femininity that their family elders expect them to follow. Poo is a favourite among numerous gay men as she likes to look at herself and throw shade.  

In a way, Johar invites us to challenge our own expectations of queerness in cinema and in life.  

Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, commentator, and book reviewer

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