Gender Minority and its Changing Portrayal in Bollywood Films

Abstract

This paper outlines how the sexual minorities like LGBTQ are represented in Bollywood films. Cinema is the most important medium that influences people’s opinion and it has contributed a lot to the spread of queer awareness and queer movement. This paper aims to give some idea about how LGBTQ is portrayed in cinema and how such portrayal influences peoples’ perceptions about them. The paper talks about how Hindi films have represented different discourses on the LGBT theme over time. It took almost 40 years for Indian cinema to portray a homosexual character. Since then, there have been differential representations of the LGBT community and the audience in this homophobic society has also reacted differentially.