Entertainment
In the footsteps of Hollywood, homoeroticism hits Bollywood (Column: Bollywood Spotlight)
By Subhash K. Jha
In the West it’s Armie Hammer and Timothy Chalamet giving interviews as a couple for their gay love story “Call Me By Your Name”. We haven’t reached that nirvanic stage in India.
But Ranveer Singh and Jim Sarbh’s homoerotic act in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Padmaavat” comes closest to obtaining a kind of legitimacy for same-sex relationships that this country has so far only seen in fringe films by Hansal Mehta (“Aligarh”) and Onir (“My Brother Nikhil”).
Of course, detractors will argue that showing the villain as bisexual in “Padmaavat” doesn’t legitimise homosexuality as much as demonise it.
Then there will always be those who will look at mainstream cinema’s attempts to validate non-mainstream sections and relationships with suspicion and distrust. But the fact remains that Ranveer Singh playing a man who is sexually attracted to another man is a big deal in Indian cinema.
He even gets into a bath-tub with Sarbh and at one point in the nubile narration, Sarbh gestures to ask if he can join his lord and monster…, pardon me, master, in bed.
Says Onir, “I love the chemistry between Ranveer and Jim Sarbh. I really like the shades that Sarbh has brought to his gay character.”
We can now tell you that there was a lot of debate on the sets of “Padmaavat” as to how Sarbh should play Ranveer’s “doosri begum”, the first one being Aditi Rao. The director wanted the character to be ruthlessly macho and not the least effeminate, so that when Sarbh bursts into an evocative erotic number about unrequited love we almost feel the stretched-out strains of a gender-free love that has no definition or demarcation, only rejection and ridicule.
And then there is the tenderness between the two men. There is a sequence where Sarbh takes Ranveer’s hand and places his face in it… the tenderness and anguish of that moment are clear. Call him by any name, but the gay lover is finally here to stay. Indeed, there is more chemistry between Ranveer and Sarbh than there is between Ranveer and his screen wife Aditi Rao.
In the global cinema, though, the movement towards mainstream legitimisation of same-sex relations has been in the making for years, with the mould being perhaps broken by “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005.
In the new flamboyant franchise film “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” we see another homoerotic relationship being given a healthy fillip — in the intense relationship between Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and Newt (Thomas Brody-Sangster). Not that anyone says they are gay. But their passionate friendship runs through the course of this sinewy tale of dystopian derring-do, almost topping the hero’s passionate relationship with the film’s official female lead.
The film ends with Dylan reading a posthumous love letter written to him by Newt which very clearly states the passionate nature of their mutual affection. All this is in the domain of the forbidden being forced out of the uncapped tube of moral freefalling that would have been frowned at by the moral police in the past.
Now that there is, what shall I say, more acceptance, a forthcoming film, “Surmayee Sham” directed by Sridhar Rangayan, talks about a young man coming out of the closet on the eve of his marriage.
Just two years back, it took a Fawad Khan from another country to play a gay son of Delhi business family in “Kapoor & Sons”.
Given a chance, would Karan Johar have cast Ranveer Singh in Fawad’s role? And more importantly, are we ready for the long-delayed sexual revolution in Hindi cinema?
–IANS
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International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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