How does the straight male gaze dilute Aligarh’s queer narrative?

 Aligarh is a deeply nuanced yet confusing film. As it follows the story of Professor Siras, it does so through the investigative lens of court proceedings and a journalist - Deepu Sebastian of the Indian Post. It is filled with powerful moments of pathos, where Prof. Siras’ anxieties, fears, and traumas are palpable and grip you through the screen, capturing the anxieties of the LGBTQ+ community. At the same time, a majority of the movie takes the form of a self-congratulatory, masturbatory narrative as heterosexual men are lauded for their work in fighting for gay rights, all the while not explicilty showing any scenes of queer solidarity on screen. In this paper, I shall attempt to explore how the straight male gaze dilutes the queer storyline of Aligarh, instead turning it into the story of how cis-het men have a saviour complex, and require validation about the same at every stage in the film. 

The “male gaze,” a term coined in 1975 by film theorist Laura Mulvey, describes how film — and art of all sorts — is created through the lens of a heterosexual man. Such a gaze has manifested itself in stereotypical roles for women and minorities, including the busty dumb blond and the sassy black woman.

This male gaze manifests itself in many ways. The first instance is when the cameraman and guard break into Prof. Siras’ apartment and accost him and Irfan. The guard and cameraman do not allow the half-naked men to redress, and instead make very visible attempts to strip them of their clothes further. This is a blatant attempt by the guard and cameraman to pigeonhole Prof. Siras and Irfan into the stereotype that all homosexual relationships are sustained through sexual activity and not deep emotional bonds. This argument is proven when Prof. Siras testifies in court that the cameraman made them pose in weird positions while he recorded them. These blatant attempts to pigeonhole Prof. Siras and Irfan into the sexed-up homosexual stereotype shows the perspective of the ordinary cis-het male gaze as it attempts to fit the two men into a heterosexual framework. 

This heterosexual framework is expanded further in the multiple attempts accussing Prof. Siras that he lied about his marriage. A lawyer in court and a landlord badger him about lying about his marital status, simply because he lives alone and his family lives in Nagpur, hundreds of kilometres away. The fact that Prof. Siras lives a bachelor’s life in a society of heterosexual families is exemplified as a state of being that makes him an ‘other’, an outsider.

A devastating realisation is that Prof. Siras is pigeonholed into heterosexual frameworks not just by his adversaries, but by those who come to his aid as well. Deepu Sebastian constantly uses the vocabulary that demeans and devalues queer relationshops. Phrases such as ‘lover’ and ‘sexual preference’ marginalise the queer experience and interpellate queer relationships as having less substance than heterosexual relationships, as explained by Adrienne Rich in Compulsory Heterosexuality. This is even pointed out in the film, as Prof. Siras lectures Deepu on how he doesn’t truly understand the meaning of love, how the word ‘lover’ sounds so dirty in Deepu’s mouth. The final nail in the coffin is when Prof. Siras asks the simple question: “How can someone understand my feelings in three letters?”

These constant attempts of attaching labels and materialities to queer relationships dilutes the essence of what is queer about the film. This dilution occurs through the repeated and constant marginalisation of what is queer, to evoke the sinister mechanism of Nivedita Menon’s “nude make-up”.

This unconscious, repetitive process occurs on two levels. One, as I have already explained, serves to dilute the queer in Aligarh. It, at the same time assures the straight male ego that it is needed to step in and save the day through scenes of constant, repeated validation, establishing the saviour complex that reigns supreme throughout the movie. The straight male gaze as a result is especially heightened and amplified in this movie as a majority of the characters in the film are cis-het men. The first instance of such vivid stroking of the straight male ego occurs when Deepu pleads with Namita that “I need this story”. This selfishness of pursuing Prof. Siras’ story for his own benefit transforms into hypocrisy as Deepu reprimands his cameraman for taking pictures, when Deepu is the one who hid his true identity from Prof. Siras. Prof. Siras calling Vijay Grover ‘brave’ instead of vice versa being the focus, Deepu being complimented for asking the ‘right questions’ at the press conference,  and Deepu receiving congratulations before Prof. Siras regarding the court verdict are just some of the scenes which keep reaffirming the belief of the straight male ego that it is needed to step in and save the day, because these helpless minorities can’t help themselves. 

The most damning moment in the film is when Deepu proclaims, “This has nothing to do with being gay or straight. The question is how did six people enter his [Prof. Siras’] house without permission?”. This is the moment where Aligarh loses its essence as a queer film, and instead takes on a legal, heterosexual framework. A cinematic parallel in the movie itself proves this: Prof. Siras and Irfan face dire consequences for making love in the privacy of a bedroom, while Deepu and Namita get away scot free for drinking and hooking up on a rooftop. This parallel is a clear demonstration of the privilege of heterosexuals. Deepu’s proclamation operates under the assumption that if Prof. Siras had been caught with a woman and not a man, the consequences would have been the same. Yet he refuses to ask the quintessential question: if Prof. Siras were straight, would the sting operation have been planned and executed in the first place?

In conclusion, through the constant and repetitive attempts of queer identities being typecast, stereotyped, marginalised, and forced into a heterosexual framework, a lot of the queer essence of the story is lost, leaving substantial gaps. These gaps are then filled by self-aggrandising dialogue and scenes of cis-het men, and the queer essence of the story is diluted almost entirely. It is, however, salvaged and bandaged with the interspersed scenes of Prof. Siras’ solitude, his empathy, his actions of love with Irfan and Deepu. Prof. Siras’ empathy is, at the the end of the day, what makes the film queer - to understand others and the world around him while the world tries to fit him into a shoebox.

Works Cited:

Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs, 5(4), 631–660. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173834 

Menon N. (2012). Seeing Like A Feminist. Published by Zubaan in collaboration with Penguin Books.

Anderson, T. (2018, March 16). What Hollywood can gain by placing the ‘queer gaze’ in the spotlight. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-lgbtq-filmmakers-love-simon-20180316-story.html 

Filmography:

Mehta, H. (Director). (2016). Aligarh [Film]. Eros Entertainment, Karma Pictures.