Happy Pride Week! Let’s Look at Against the Grain Versus With the Grain Readings!

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I was going to do “gayest scenes” to go along with “gayest songs”, but then I realized it really doesn’t work since there is such a difference between against the grain and with the grain scenes. So, change of purpose! Let’s look at different categories of scenes.

Is this post mostly an attempt to force as many people as possible to watch the best bits of Main Khiladi Tu Anari? YES! It is!!!! It’s 3 minutes of your life, and it will bring you so much joy!

Main Khiladi Tu Anari is 100% not about a gay couple. Saif and Akshay are the central “couple”, and it is their relationship that is the center of the film, but each of their characters are also involved in a heterosexual relationship with a woman. However, the chemistry between the two actors, and the way their scenes are written to follow the usual paces of a romance (first meeting, fight and make-up, deep conversation in the rain, so on and so forth), makes it easy to watch parts of the film and imagine a different interpretation.

Just for example, go 9 minutes into this video for their magical love at first sight first meeting:

Watch the last two minutes of this video for the make-up after their big fight:

So, that’s “against the grain”. The plot of the film does not support the interpretation, but certain specific scenes encourage it.

Then there’s the “with the grain” readings. Ones where the filmmakers set out to show two men together. At least in Indian film, it feels like homosexuality is still so uncomfortable that the “with the grain” readings sometimes end up feeling more unnatural than the “against the grain” ones. For instance, the fantasy sequence of John and Abhishek’s first meeting from Dostana. (starting about 5 minutes in, sorry no subtitles)

And then there is the in between ones. The ones where the filmmakers had determined that a particular character was gay but did not explicitly show it on film. For instance, in Aaja Nachle, “Doctor Sahib” was clearly the life partner of Madhuri’s Guru, but no one ever really said it, it was just in the far far backgound.

Now, I don’t know about you, but after looking at all of those options I still think Main Khiladi Tu Anari is the sexiest most romantic and real feeling one. Somehow being free to just act from the heart without putting a label on it allowed the performers to build a bond that feels natural.

25 thoughts on “Happy Pride Week! Let’s Look at Against the Grain Versus With the Grain Readings!”

    • It’s not even “gay”, is it? It’s just “Person A and Person B are the central romantic couple of this film”. Only in this case, Person A and Person B are two men instead of a man and a woman. And, continuing our discussion from the post with the Dosti song, once again Akshay is surprisingly bottom feeling! You would think different, since the very title of the film identifies him as the “player”, but his shy smile when Saif opens his arms shows him clearly following the lead of Saif.

      And THANK YOU! Finally, someone watches those scenes so I am not alone in loving them. Did you catch the moment when Akshay uses Saif’s jacket to light his lighter? So sexy, so romantic.

      On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 10:50 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  2. What do you think about Onir? he is one of those who made movies with clearly gay people…and then there is Karan’s contribution to Bombay Talkies.

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    • It seems like there are two branches to movies with queer content in India, stuff like Onir’s films and Bombay Talkies and Made in Heaven, which are very open and aware of what they are doing, no hiding it and no discomfort, but only get an extremely limited audience. And the mainstream stuff which tends to fall into the categories above, either against the grain, or hidden, or with the grain but over the top and fake feeling.

      I guess the same thing is true in America, We still have more independent films with same sex love stories than mainstream.

      On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 9:48 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. The first thing I think of immediatly is SOTY. The tension between Siharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan was so thick there were several times I was convinced they were going to kiss, despite also knowing that that wasn’t going to happen at all. And all of that was counterbalanced by the obvious innuendos coming from Rishi Kapoor. A friend of mine suggested all of this was KJo’s pushing the envelope as much as he felt like he could at the time.

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    • I wrote a paper on that! On KJo pushing the envelope as much as he could. I find it fascinating how he presented queerness in SOTY and Dostana for a mainstream audience, versus in Bombay Talkies for a more limited audience.

      And oh boy yes, similar to Main Khiladi Tu Anari I feel like SOTY was about the relationship between the two boys more than between either of them and Alia. And the relationship ended up following the pattern of a standard romance scene by scene, even though it involved two men.

      On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 11:13 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Maybe it’s the secret wish of a (closeted) gay director to bring a gay love story on screen under the pretence to show a hetero love story.
        Interestingly Karan did only once a gay subplot with ShahRukh (and that not as the official director).

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        • My theory is that both KKHH and KANK are also queer love stories, just with a woman playing the role of one of the love interests. KKHH deals with “yaari” love, two close friends where one of them is in love and wants more. And KANK deals with a forbidden sexual desire outside of marriage, and with general lack of sexual attraction to your correct heterosexual partner.

          On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 1:39 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • AHHH okay so I definitely need to see Dostana and rewatch KHNH (Oh the horror!) with this new interpretation in mind. I mean, obviously I had picked up on the SRK and SAK bit in that I thought SRK’s character just enjoyed making people slightly uncomfortable and pushing back societal norms but not that he was actually gay. Though I can totally see it now. And how clever of Johar to frame it in that way that you mentioned in the other post about Kabir Singh. The surface interpretation and then the deeper one!

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          • And of course ADHM came out after I wrote that, the film where the script doesn’t actually make sense with two straight characters as well as it would with one gay and one straight.

            On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 2:54 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • I took KKHH and KANK at face value…did not have for one moment the feeling of a queer wishful thinking…that was different while watching KHNH.

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          • Kal Ho Na Ho. All the misunderstandings between him and Saif. Karan wrote the script but did not direct.

            On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 2:10 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • Ooooh Okay yes! A personal favorite ❤ I just didn't realize Karan didn't direct it!

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          • I thought you’d seen it!

            On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 2:15 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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