While American audiences sit in front of their TVs, captivated by the recent fad of metrosexuality — which I doubt has made any serious inroads into productive dialogue and understanding — with shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Boy Meets Boy,” Bollywood lesbians are faring less well.  

Karan Razdan’s latest film, “Girlfriend,” has been condemned both by conservatives and by women’s organizations. The plotline of “Girlfriend” is that possessiveness and envy tear apart a lesbian couple when one of the women swaps her Sapphic indulgences for a boyfriend. The snubbed lesbian, jealous and possessive, becomes psychotic.    

IndiaFM.com reports that members of the right-wing Shiv Sena group, incensed by what they perceive to be a film that runs counter to Indian culture, set the Sajjan cinema in Varanasi on fire when it screened “Girlfriend”, while the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena wing of the Shiv Sena party also protested and disrupted a matinee screening of the movie in Bombay.  

Right-wing Shiv Sena activists have denounced the movie as “regressive,” while women’s groups have condemned the film as “highly regressive” on the basis that it panders to heterosexual male titillation while incorporating “all the negative popular myths about lesbians.” According to women’s groups, “Girlfriend” is nothing more than a “pornographic and stereotypical portrayal” of a lesbian couple.

I suspect that some critics may quarrel with director Karan Razdan’s claim that his film addresses the issue of a woman who has chosen to become a lesbian as a result of her circumstances. Radzan’s I-refuse-to-take-a-clear-stance-about-my-own-film comment was that “whether my film generates good or bad publicity, my intention is to start a discussion about this subject, and create an awareness in society.” Radzan’s movie is certainly provocative, in so far as it has sparked anger and arson, but it seems, just as certainly, that it is socially unproductive for all parties involved.  

Mimi Hanaoka