badhaai do & filmfare and how it affects the queer movement
badhaai do won 6 filmfare awards!! and apart from that, 14 nominations. this is such a welcome surprise to me considering how much the filmfare panders to popular films and celebrities. while i'm convinced that best actor in a supporting role was robbed from gulshan devaiah (who played guru) as well as best dialogues + best director, let's not dwell on that negativity. the war to get same-sex marriage is still on. and i'd like to thank the team for dedicating their awards to the queer community. for those who have been complaining yet again that this was a profitable venture for the people involved, think again about how much it tanked in the box office. and yes, bhumi pednekar has addressed the on-going legal battle for same sex marriage here. i would ask for jaded queer individuals like me to step back and think that there are different ways of coming together to support a social cause. making an entire film is one of them. green lighting such a film is one of them. acting in such a film is one of them. considering what the extremely homophobic government is capable of, we must take all such things into account. and when queer icons like onir also come out in support of badhaai do (btw his red carpet look on filmfare >>>), we should take a page from their book to see where they are coming from. also i went and checked out the team behind badhaai do (not just the actors). apparently the director (harshavardhan kulkarni) and the editor (kirti nakhwa) are already in hot soup with the government since they returned a NATIONAL AWARD a few years back. their reason? the growing intolerance of the government. kinda iconic. and a reminder that this is the same government that routinely sends journalists, activists, historians to jail while dabbling in the same fields and falsifying facts and history. (lmao calling our trauma an "urban elite" problem is so ironic considering they are the urban elites). badhaai do getting the second highest number of filmfare awards is one of the many victories that we have secured. please remind yourself to not alienate any sort of support whatsoever just because it doesn't fit the stereotypical narrative of activism. and after all, activism in art is the most powerful of its kind, is it not?
