Lust Stories 2: The Dialogue around Sex, the Male Gaze, & the Fetishisation of the Oppressed
In 2018, RSVP and Flying Unicorn Entertainment partnered with Netflix to come up with an anthology that explores desire, sex, and lust. And thus was born the Emmy - nominated Lust Stories - directed by some of the finest filmmakers of the country - Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, and Karan Johar. Its release in 2018 opened conversations about lust and infidelity.
In a country like India, wherein such thoughts and conversations are taboo, the show started influencing pop culture, with the younger generation getting more woke on the concepts of infidelity, lust, and female satisfaction. (Johar’s short showed Kiara Advani using a vibrator for self pleasure in front of her fiance’s family).
Cut to 2023, and the second part of the franchise is released. This time, four different filmmakers - R. Balki, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sujoy Ghosh, and Amit R. Sharma explore the same concepts through their own stories.
Four filmmakers - R. Balki, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sujoy Ghosh, and Amit R. Sharma explore the concepts of sex, desire, and lust, in the second franchise of the emmy nominated Lust Stories.
Two male directed shorts in Lust Stories 2 are pre-occupied with big breasts and cleavage shots. At one point, the camera zooms into a bra size to vividly erotisize 36DD written in fine print. Yes, sex on screen is a great eyeball grabber - What was once considered taboo or hush hush, is now shown on screen, without censorship. However, within the 5 years between the two parts, it makes me wonder if the concept of sex and discourse around sexuality and pleasure has changed, and if the only projection for lust is this ‘male gaze’.
Most films in the anthology, even the first part, are through the male point of view. Women characters, their actions, and motivations are defined by the male gaze. Their characterisation is also subverted by the patriarchal and regressive mindsets of older men. Women are treated as one-dimensional ‘sex objects’, and are rarely seen as complex human beings in their own right.
And this is where Konkona Sen Sharma’s segment in Lust Stories 2, titled The Mirror stands out.
L: A still from Konkona Sen Sharma’s The Mirror; R: Konkona Sen Sharma with the cast of her short.
The Mirror explores nuanced characterisation with dynamic camera movements, shedding light on female satisfaction. Both her characters are women in their own right, owning up to their own flaws and desires. It gives me a lot of joy to see women, written by women, especially in the concepts of love and lust. Shonali Bose’s Margharita with a Straw at a point explores the lesbian relationship between Laila and Khanum (played by Kalki Koechlin and Sayani Gupta) with such ease and grace. It helps you root for the character more, as you are in their world - you know what they want, their aspirations, and more importantly, who they are as beings.
Konkona’s willingness to view lust as a human emotion – and characterise women who experience it as ordinary people who don’t exist solely for male fantasies, makes her short tower above the other three.
Lust Stories 2 also made me wonder about various power dynamics at play. Two of the four shorts explore lust between the employer and the employed. In a country where domestic workers experience sexual exploitation in their workplace, it is dangerous and insensitive to eroticise the unequal power dynamic and cook up a popular fetish. There is also a possibility that such a narrative could add to the perception that people from the lower classes have “loose” morals and a lesser need to maintain their dignity.
And it is not like these concepts have not been explored before. Zoya Akhtar’s segment in Lust Stories (2018) shows the love and lust between a bachelor, Ajit and his maid, Sudha who comes to clean his apartment everyday. They share a secret passionate sexual relationship. However, in the end of the film, Sudha is left heartbroken as a family comes with a relationship for Ajit, and she carries on with her day to day chores.
L: Bhumi Pednekar and Neil Bhoopalam in Zoya Akhtar’s segment of Lust Stories; R: A still from Rohena Gera’s Sir: Is Love Enough.
This concept of unfulfilled desire is also explored somewhat in Rohena Gera’s critically acclaimed film Sir: Is Love Enough. Starring Vivek Gomber and Tillothoma Shome, the film follows a maid who comes from a remote village with aspirations. She starts working at a wealthy man’s house, as a live-in maid. They eventually fall in love, but find their relationship forbidden.
While reading an interview of Shome on preparing for the role of Sir, she said how there is a lack of reference points in Hindi cinema for a comparable love story. “The absence of domestic workers as romantic leads in Hindi cinema is an odd erasure, considering that they have never been missing from films. The only place that had any allusion to a relationship between a domestic [worker] and her employer was Indian pornography,” Shome said.
The prevalence of “Indian maids” as a sub-genre of porn holds a clue to their rampant fetishization in Indian culture and the movies, wherein a display of class and caste supremacy is an unending dialogue. On one of the porn sites, there is even a clip from Zoya Akhtar’s segment in Lust Stories (2018) – titled “Bhumi Pednekar hot sex fuck scene.”
Taken out of context, this just made me think about the representation of power dynamics between the employer and employee at play, the dynamics between such a couple - making consensual sex come across as a challenge, and reducing the domestic worker to sexual objects that are meant to be owned. In fact, in The Mirror, when Seema, the maid eventually reveals how she would see her employer (played by Shome) touching herself while she performed sex, Shome tells her “I pay you. This is my house.”
Does that mean that the employer has a right over her maid and her actions just because of the wealth disparity that exists? It is definitely food for thought!
Lust Stories however, achieved something that Hindi cinema has long considered unimaginable: depicting a domestic worker as a sexual being. And in Sen Sharma’s segment, we can see who a domestic worker is, beyond the kitchen, and that is something I really liked.
Kajol in a still from Amit R. Sharma’s Tilchatta.
The second film which explores the relationship between the employed and employer is Amit R. Sharma’s Tilchatta. Starring Kajol and Kumud Mishra in the lead roles, the fetishisation of the domestic help is explored in this segment too. However, what is interesting about this film is that it is about revenge - but the revenge never gets fulfilled at the end. The film put into context the deep rooted upper caste rapist male gaze, at the same time, focussed on the crisp characterisation of each character. It is not clear what the end is - but surely opens up conversation about sexual harassment and sexual diseases, is what I got from the short.
In R. Balki’s Made for Each Other, a grandmother suggests that her grand-daughter have a ‘test drive’ before marriage.
The third film out of the four for me, is R. Balki’s Made for Each Other. A meet-cute set up with the stunning Mrunal Thakur and Angad Bedi, with a ‘modern day’ dadi advocating for the couple to have sex before marriage. However, a little unrealistic in today’s times, the premise is short and sweet. Neena Gupta is flawless as the modern day daadi, who adds a spice of taunt to her son and daughter in law about the marriage not working out because of the lack of sex. In today’s time, it would be lovely to have older people and generations talk about sex openly and freely, just like how Gupta did.
When the first season of India’s entrepreneurial show Shark Tank came out, people from all age groups, including grandmothers started delving into their own enterprenurial journeys. Women were not restricted to have conversation on money, finance, wealth, and the like. In fact, two of the top funded women enterpreneurs were from the field of men’s personal hygeine, and period products. If older women can have conversations on that in today’s time, why not sex?
Also Read: How ‘Shark Tank India’ Has Given A Boost To Women Entrepreneurs
Vijay Varma and Tamannah Bhatia share a sizzling on-screen chemistry in Sujoy Ghosh’s Sex with Ex, but the film falls flat.
Sujoy’s Sex with Ex, was a big dissapointment. Heavily filled with VFX and computer generated imagery, the film starring Vijay Varma and Tamannah Bhatia is about a man who dies in a car accident - and in the process dreams about his ex wife who he wants to get back together with. To be honest, Sujoy’s segment was one I was really looking forward to. I have always loved the themes and characterisations he has explored in his films such as Kahaani, Badla, and Ahalya. Sujoy pays great attention to detail in his films - right from the colour pallettes to the nuanced casting with strong characterisation; but Sex with Ex could not match up to his previous works.
Overall, what Lust Stories as a franchise has done, is brave. Films have explored concepts of sexuality and the expression of Indian woman before in various ways - The Dirty Picture, Angry Indian Goddesses, Lipstick Under My Burkha, to name a few. However, like I said earlier - in the context of India’s regressive and patriarchal mindset and household, it is important to rethink conversations around sex and sexuality, and open a dialogue, which the show has somewhat achieved. However, there is still a long way to go.
