Filmic Analysis of Joyland

Gender issues, in general, and transgender issues, in particular, are highly contentious hot button issues in contemporary America. Issues such as the incidence of gender reassignment procedures, transgender women’s participation in female sports and their usage of gender reserved-bathrooms are hysterically discussed by news pundits, politicians, and influencers of various stripes alike. These issues have pervaded our societal conscious to the point that one cannot help but hear of them. Admittedly, though this has certainly allowed me to become better aware of the prevailing gender-related controversies, as a largely unaffected heterosexual male, I have always been disinterested in, and capable of thinking only very coldly about, this subject. However, that has at least slightly changed upon my recent viewing of Joyland, Saim Sadiq's brilliantly-directed film that won awards in the Un Certain Regard and Queer Palm categories at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. While Joyland explores issues of gender and sexuality in the Pakistani context, the implications are perhaps even more relevant to those of us in the West.

The film revolves around an unemployed married man, Haider, who after finding employment at an erotic dance theater is soon besotted with its gender non-conforming starlet, Biba. By the way, Biba has been universally described as a transgender woman (“transwoman”) but I believe this is imprecise. Her gender’s biological or sexual orientation is never sufficiently disambiguated during the course of the film thereby leaving the final judgment to the audience. Per my reading of the film, she is not a transwoman; rather, she is either an intersex/hermaphroditic person or a homosexual-transvestite (for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to Biba as an “intersex person” hereinafter). This is an important distinction to keep in mind otherwise the viewer will misunderstand Haider’s impulses, drives, and motivations, thereby leading to a serious misunderstanding of the film (at least within the framework of my analysis). To wit, Biba’s intersex condition coheres much stronger with Haider’s homosexuality than does her condition as a transwoman. Though Haider is never explicitly revealed as being homosexual, there are numerous subtle signs throughout the film that Haider is gay. I will briefly point out a few filmic instances connoting Haider’s homosexuality:

• Though Haider is not effeminate, he is, nonetheless, not a masculine man. Domestically, he plays the traditionally female role of homemaker (i.e., of a wife).
• Despite being proclaimed by his father as a “grown son” (i.e., a man), when commanded to slaughter the goat, he is unable to do so. Instead his wife, Mumtaz, realizing his inability, snatches the butcher’s knife out of his hand and slaughters the goat. Upon witnessing Haider’s impotence, Haider’s father facially expresses silent but strong disapproval. This scene was a clear visual representation that both Haider and Mumtaz were locked into a role reversal that extended far beyond Mumtaz’ voluntary employment at the beauty salon.
• Haider’s father questions his heterosexual performative abilities as the basis for Haider and Mumtaz not having a child.
• He played the role of Juliet (i.e., a feminine woman) in his school’s rendition of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
• He is chided by Saleem, his brother, to “take care” of his wife and to do so “properly” once Saleem realizes that Haider is not satisfying Mumtaz’ carnal needs. Saleem also later blames Mumtaz’ eventual suicide on Haider, stating it could have been prevented had Haider kept her satisfied.
• He is harassed by his dance troupe for being gay when Qaiser declares that he always knew that Haider would “go for someone special.” Another troupe member then asserts that this necessarily means that Haider is himself “special.” They then force a female wig on his head (i.e., they liken him to a female) and proceed to photograph and humiliate him. Homosexual men are often humiliated and derogatorily likened to females, even called cruel names such as “fairy.”
• Haider is chronically sexually dispassionate toward his attractive wife. It is also shown, in a brief flashback, that he was hesitant to marry her. He confesses his uncertainty regarding their prospective union to her in a way as if he were cryptically communicating, perhaps forewarning her, that he would not be able to satisfy her.
• He is unenthusiastic about Biba's planned surgery for “Being a girl.” Though it is never spelled out, the context of the conversation can lead me only to conclude that she was referring to a gender reassignment procedure, i.e., to eventually become a transwoman.
• Lastly, what was for me the smoking gun, while engaging Biba in foreplay during one of their sexual escapades, he bends over and tacitly requests penetration (by the way, these last two points simultaneously speak to Biba’s intersex condition and I will develop these more fully ahead.)

As you can see, there is plenty of evidence pointing toward Haider’s closeted homosexuality. That said, I for one do not believe that it is true to say, as was evidently stated for the justification of Joyland’s local banning, that Joyland promotes homosexuality or marital infidelity. Rather, I believe Joyland, in portraying marital infidelity, is trying to expose something much more tragic and complex. And in doing so, it indicts rigid societal norms and social structures that disregard those who find themselves in such structures’ corners. In this case, Joyland was highlighting the emotional-psychological unwellness and social maladjustment that homosexuals can suffer in suffocatingly conservative social environments. Haider is a gay man but is within a society that will not offer him free expression of this fact. Unable to present himself as he is, he must present himself as something he is not in order to conform to social norms. This is heralded at the beginning of the film when in the opening shot we see Haider appear with a bedsheet covering him from head to toe. This is a sign that we are about to witness a man whose outward appearance is not what it seems. Just as the cloak of an apparition, that of a spirit, conceals his humanity, the cloak of his heterosexual marriage conceals his homosexuality. His marriage is merely a sham marriage to appease conservative social norms.

Turning to Biba’s intersex nature, as she falls in love with Haider, she shares with him that she is saving money for a surgery for “Being a girl.” She further expresses that her contemporary, Geeta, has been long waiting on Biba to get onboard with this idea and that they have “always wanted to get it done together.” My interpretation of Biba’s expression is that she is mentioning to Haider a gender reassignment procedure. I have three main premises for my conclusion. First, appearance-wise, Biba is already more womanly than manly and this, to my mind, diminishes the need to merely look more feminine. Second, her articulation of her and Geeta wanting to “get it done” implies either a singular major procedure or a number of procedures to treat a singular major issue. Routine plastic surgeries such as nose jobs and breast enhancements that women routinely undergo are not alluded to in this manner. However, procedures to convert male genitalia into female ones routinely are. Ergo, the correct way to interpret Biba’s statement of “Being a girl” is that Biba is saying that she will undergo “it” to anatomically "[be] a girl.” Third, at her transgender friend’s wedding to a man, Biba keenly asks the bride how she sexually satisfies Ahmad, her groom. Biba is undoubtedly asking these questions to learn how to better please Haider in her capacity as a woman. The bride responds by saying that she does “Whatever he wants… what men always want… nothing special.” Biba would appropriately interpret this advice to mean that Haider, a man, would desire to be with an anatomical woman, whether cisgender or transgender. I think that taken in totality, these scenes make it rather clear that Biba is contemplating gender reassignment rather than anything else for “Being a girl” and this means that she is by necessity not a transwoman, at least not during the course of the filmic narrative.

One thing that Joyland is very unambiguous about is that Biba, though her exact gender/sexual orientation is left ambiguous, is correctly understood as a woman. She clearly self-identifies, dresses, and carries herself as a woman and she desires a cisgender male’s sexual companionship. This is metaphorically conveyed to us very early in the film through the visual image of Saleem and Nucchi’s newborn baby. Just as we are expecting the arrival of a male, we are instead greeted by a female. This newborn is a visual anagram to Biba, informing us that Biba is, irrespective of our predilections, a woman. Upon expressing her plans to more completely realize her womanhood (i.e., undergo gender reassignment), she is visibly hurt when Haider instead expresses disapproval at this thought, telling her that he likes her as she is. Later in the film Biba is traumatized upon realizing Haider is gay. She becomes disgusted with Haider, calling him a “faggot” and in a delirious outburst forces him out of her quarters. Her emotional state is attributable to the fact that the man she has fallen for, Haider, as he is, is incapable of having Biba come into her womanhood. This is an achingly difficult thing for Biba to accept; especially when considering that her opportunities for love, companionship, and happiness are extremely limited due to her situation.

While it is difficult for me to envision myself ever condoning marital infidelity, to me, the value of this film is that it makes an appeal to recognize the humanity of intersex and homosexual persons, two groups of people that are routinely mistreated in society. It is axiomatic that intersex persons are involuntarily so. I think this much we recognize and therefore I think it is easier for us to pardon intersex persons for their condition. However I think there is less recognition of homosexuality being involuntary. I will not comment as to whether homosexuality can definitely be biological or genetic as I do not intend to study research findings in this area. Notwithstanding, I have been advised at-length by a gay friend that it was not, at least for this gentleman, a conscious decision to seek men but instead a natural preference since puberty. I cannot speak for others but I find it mightily difficult to conclude that same-sex fascination by a minority of young children is evidence of their sexual corruption. Perhaps the hard stance against homosexuality results from the religious underpinnings of most societal norms that treat homosexuality, an inherently complex phenomenon, in reductive ways. Its general treatment is that it is a consequence of sexual depravity or immoral sexual proclivities, without making room for the possibility that it may be involuntary.

Joyland also made me think about the possibility of transwomen increasingly supplanting cisgender women's role in the future. From my observations, cisgender-gender relations are acrimonious, the rates of involuntary male loneliness are disturbingly high with no signs of slowing, and women are popularly rejecting traditional roles (this is causing many to perceive Western women as becoming masculine). I do not agree with all these claims and perceptions but, regardless, the confluence of such phenomena has created a void in society. The widening perception that Western women are becoming diminishingly unfeminine can unintendedly create the opportunity for transwomen to become even more feminine and womanly than, and directly compete against, cisgender women. I can imagine transwomen eventually stepping in to fill this void in some measure. Male homosexuality is not as acceptable in the U.S. as is female homosexuality and for this reason I think that there is some room for male-transwoman relations to be more acceptable than traditional male homosexuality. The unadulterated ontological state of femininity aside, I can imagine the potential for many men’s subjective desire for female companionship to be fulfilled through proxy. This is, of course, a wild speculation on my part. I am not, by any means, purporting that this is probable, but it does seem at least remotely possible to me. Making comments as to whether this is right, wrong, amoral, or immoral is not the goal of this post so I will refrain from doing so. I am simply extrapolating from Joyland an implication for the West, which I believe has a chance of materializing, in a matter-of-fact manner.

All in all, this is a superb film. It has moments of real tenderness and levity but is hauntingly tragic. The use of symbolism and visual metaphor is masterful. The (semi)sex scenes convey an overwhelming sense of transgression, of unforgivable sin. When Haider follows Biba around the corner into a dark alleyway at night for their initial sexual contact, we understand that he is now traversing into a forbidden zone from which there is no return. A dog almost immediately begins barking in the distance when Haider and Biba passionately kiss, momentarily shaking them, an audible sign that something illegitimate, that a trespass has been detected by a guardian overseer. When Mumtaz’ corpse is being carried away through the alleyway to the graveyard, we see and loudly hear a pigeon ascending toward the sky, an unmistakable reminder that a precious life has come to an end within the temporal realm and is now ascending into the spiritual. Shabbo denigrates Biba to Ashfaaq, the theater owner, telling him that the patrons come to see her and not the “lizard” (i.e., Biba). However, Joyland’s own visual narrative itself later refutes Shabbo’s claim when in the aftermath of Mumtaz’ suicide the camera focuses intensely on a lizard on the screen door reminding us that though we do not see Biba in the film from that point onward, her presence is undoubtedly embedded in the fabric of the film, guiding its path, fueling its forward movement. Most importantly, Joyland impels us to consider the myriad implications of often neglected complex human and societal issues that have a hand in shaping our environment.