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Gender-bender: Bollywood in a 'trans' phase
Updated On: 23 February, 2020 11:26 AM IST | Mumbai | IANS
In an early photograph of Laxmmi Bomb, Akshay Kumar was seen applying kohl in his eyes. In another image he sports a saree. The film is slated to hit the screens on June 5, 2020
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Akshay Kumar
When mainstream superstar Akshay Kumar takes up playing a transgender in "Laxmmi Bomb", you know change is happening in commercial Bollywood. Once upon a time, Bollywood heroism was about hypermasculinity, machismo and testosterone, and about following the formula of a guy saving a girl from five men and the two eventually falling in love. Now, mainstream actors are increasingly in the mood to experiment, and cross-gender roles -- where actors and actresses go for a gender reversal with the characters they portray -- are becoming commonplace.
Experiments as these in the past were restricted to supporting cast or arthouse actors. Forget playing the transgender, even cross-dressing appearances of leading men in commercial cinema was a rare incidence, mostly restricted to song-and-dance sequences. Who can forget Amitabh Bachchan's cross-dressing gig "Mere angane mein" in "Laawaris" or Aamir Khan's "Dole dole" in "Baazi". Shah Rukh Khan in "Duplicate" and Salman Khan in "Hum Aapke Hain Koun!" had brief appearances as cross-dressers, and Kamal Haasan in "Chachi 420" or Govinda in "Aunty No.1" were essentially male characters that dressed as women driven by a reason in the story.
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