26 October 2018
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Fabianinkatu 24, 3rd floor
12.00 – 13.00 h
key note lecture
Rohit Dasgupta (Loughborough University London)
Rituparno Ghosh: Radicalism, Sissyness and Stardom of India’s first queer auteur
In this paper I shall be discussing Rituparno Ghosh, the Bengali film maker. Ghosh emerged on the cultural scene of Bengal, India in the 1990’s with several critically acclaimed films changing the landscape of Bengali cinema. He pioneered a new trend of films which unabashedly celebrated queerness, gender transgression, female agency and sexuality. His sexuality and gender performance came under intense scrutiny during this period though he never talked about his sexuality publicly. With his famous queer trilogy he made the decision to publicly come out and became a cultural icon for queer men in Bengal and broadly India. As I have discussed elsewhere (Dasgupta and Bakshi, 2017) Ghosh’s star persona also relied heavily on his sartorial politics. He used androgynous and unisex clothing to push the boundaries of gender and queer visibility in India.
Through an exploration of his key films, writings, and television appearances this paper interrogates his queer stardom in an otherwise heteropatriarchal film industry. Finally the paper will argue that recognition of Ghosh’s queerness and effeminacy had wider implications around queer visibility, queer politics, and acceptance in the Indian film industry.