The Apology Dorothy Left Me With…
A movie that left me with more than tears: a little guilt, a lot of reflection, and a desire to do better.
I recently watched Dorothy, one of the most beautiful LGBTQ+ films I’ve watched in a long time, and, to my surprise, one with a happy ending!!!
The last time I watched such a film that left me feeling this emotionally overwhelmed was Call Me by Your Name, The Danish Girl, Kaathal: The Core. All had heartbreaking endings, and I remember sobbing for days after watching them.
Somehow, Dorothy affected me just as deeply, if not more. I couldn’t stop crying through the entire second half. It’s one of those films I don’t think I could bring myself to watch again, not because it wasn’t beautiful, but because of how devastated it made me feel.
What’s strange is that even after the film ended, something inside me refused to settle. There was this lingering ache that I couldn’t quite explain. The story had a happy ending, yet I found myself carrying a heaviness that stayed with me long.
One scene, in particular, kept replaying in my head. When Subbu cries, Karthi tells him to stop behaving like a girl, not to cry, to behave like a man and to fight like a man. I don’t think I can adequately explain how much that scene affected me. Here was a human being experiencing emotions that were perfectly natural, yet he wasn’t even allowed the freedom to feel them. His tears had to be justified. His vulnerability had to be corrected. Even in a moment when all he needed was the space to feel what he was feeling, he was reminded that he was supposed to behave like a man.
And that got me thinking. How often do we make people feel that they have to suppress a part of themselves just to fit into what we consider normal? How often do we turn femininity into an insult, vulnerability into weakness and someone’s identity into a punchline?
Somewhere in the middle of all those emotions, I began confronting something rather uncomfortable about myself.
I started thinking about how casually a lot of us had used words associated with the LGBTQ+ community as slurs. How easily we had thrown around the word ‘gay’ to pull someone’s leg, to mock someone, or to make a passing remark about someone behaving a little differently. If someone acted a little girly, I wouldn’t think twice before saying something like, “That’s so gay”. This was quite normalized around me. I had made it part of my everyday vocabulary, something I could say, laugh about and move on from.
I would probably have defended myself by saying that I never meant it that way. That it was just a joke. That I didn’t actually have anything against anyone. But the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with that defense.
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I had unknowingly made someone’s sexuality a punchline. I had taken something so deeply personal to another human being and turned it into a convenient word for mockery, an insult, or a joke. And perhaps the most unsettling part was realizing that I had never stopped to think about what those words might sound like to someone who was actually gay. Someone sitting right beside me. Someone who might have heard me say those things and quietly wondered what I would think of them if I knew.
What if someone around me had been struggling to accept themselves, gathering the courage to be who they were, only to hear me use their identity as an insult? What if my casual laughter had added to a hurt they were already trying so hard to overcome?
That thought genuinely hurts…!!!
I don’t know how many times I have used those words, how many times I have laughed along, or whether someone was silently hurt by something I said. I cannot go back and take those words away, nor can I undo the ignorance with which I used them. And I think that’s where much of my guilt comes from. Realizing that something I considered insignificant might not have been insignificant to someone else at all.
If I could feel so deeply for Subbu, if his pain could make me cry and leave me emotionally unsettled, then how could I possibly remain indifferent to the possibility of someone around me experiencing that same pain? How could I continue being careless with words when I now understand that there are people who have to fight so hard simply to be accepted for who they are?
I am sorry for the times I used those words without thinking. I am sorry for treating something so personal to someone else as a source of humour. And I am especially sorry for assuming that because I didn’t intend to hurt anyone, nobody could possibly be hurt.
I know that feeling guilty doesn’t undo anything. An apology doesn’t automatically make me a better person either. But perhaps acknowledging where I went wrong is where I need to begin. I want to be more conscious of the language I use, the jokes I make, and the things I have normalized without ever questioning them.
I don’t want this to be just another movie that made me cry for a couple of hours before I moved on with my life.
I want to carry what it made me realize.
Because sometimes, a film doesn’t just tell you someone else’s story. It makes you look at your own behaviour in a way you can no longer look away from. It became an uncomfortable mirror to my own, making me question the words I’ve used, the assumptions I’ve carried and the things I’ve so casually overlooked.
And Dorothy did exactly that to me.
