The Bollywood Rom Com Goes Global, Truly Madly Deeply

I watched a Hindi film called London Paris New York (often referred to as 'LPNY') last night, and was pleasantly surprised with some of the more neo-liberal layers that the classical Bollywood romantic comedy has acquired in recent years. By this, I do not mean that the wooing dances have merely moved to shopping malls from the neighbourhood park, but that there is a certain degree of moral latitude displayed by the central characters. Nikhil (Ali Zafar) and Lalitha (Aditi Rao) have far more sexual agency, and personally-formulated professional ambitions than the characters in comparable films set in foreign locales, such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, to name a few.

The treatment of 'feminism' in the film, however superficial, is a welcome change from the girly girls of yesteryear who may be willing to defy parental control of their marital choices, but do not display any desire for participating in the workforce. At the same time, Aditi's push for equal rights and greater political participation need not kill feminine expression and romance. There is a telling scene in the film where, after spending a drunk (but chaste) night in a hotel room in Paris, Aditi has soiled her clothes and Nikhil offers her the choice of a feminine (pink) or a feminist (purple) dress. Although she chooses pink, I read this as a more complex decision than simply conceding to (and consenting with) the male gaze. As is typical of many contemporary street fashionistas, Aditi combines the silky pink dress with a tough black leather jacket and a short hair-do. She walks the city as though she owns it, speaks fluent French, and tells Nikhil (when he complains about Indian girls not paying enough attention to their countrymen once they are treated well by the 'goras') that perhaps Indian males have an inferiority complex. To my ears, conversations and scenes of this kind ring refreshingly true for contemporary Indians of a certain class living, studying and/or working overseas.

Of course all this means that the poor boy meets rich girl (or vice versa) story may be gone for good, at least for urban and semi-urban dwellers. While Nikhil is the son of a wealthy film producer, Aditi proudly declares herself a member of the educated Indian middle class. This difference is of enough interest, and again taps into recent changes in India's demographics as well as greater association of its middle-income groups with the overall narrative of the nation's growth. The lower classes, it appears, will have to make do without malls and multiplexes, let alone envisaging romantic sojourns in London, Paris or New York.

The Asian Century and all that Jazz

I've had an overdose of this term since the beginning of 2012 (mostly in a good way). From my academic grant applications, to my formal and informal conversations with friends and colleagues, and even my leisurely viewings of Q&A on the ABC - it has been a hell of an inter-disciplinary discourse on the importance of Asia, and the decline of Europe. So far, so good.

On some occasions, the discussion wanders into perilous non-economic territory, and you begin to hear a degree of soft grumbling about the drop in the study of Asian languages in Australian schools. I distinctly recall a research scholar on a panel discussion show suggesting that we need to try and find a way of making Indonesian as cool as Japanese. Amen to that!

So it appears that we might begin to do something about Asian literacy. Perhaps a combination of institutional and grassroots endeavours is ideal. The higher education sector could lead the way, as indicated by a recent story in 'The Australian'. But the other side of the problem, as pointed out by  Jason Li in a remarkably cross-cultural keynote address, is being comfortable with Asia (and Asians) in Australia. In that respect, I believe, we have more pressing yet more easily addressable concerns. The framework of the multicultural talk-and-action in this country needs to shift from tolerance, co-existence and the occasional curry or yum-cha to much more engagement with each other's morphing communities (as opposed to stereotypes of frozen cultures).

Let me clarify my position on ethnic ghettoes by saying that all groups, white and non-white, seem prone to this phenomenon. In other words, there is no point getting into a blame game and, for instance, holding this or that international student group culpable. I have seen local initiatives work splendidly in forging inter-cultural links, and perhaps they need to stand up as models and show us the way. The Asian Century may sound like the grandest of narratives, but it needs to take off with the daily stuff.

Ageing Creatively

Unlike previous years on this blog when my musings on bygone months happened towards December, the last couple of years have been a bit of an anomaly. While I stopped blogging altogether after my PhD completion, and due to the pressures of sessional teaching in 2010, I resolved to rejuvenate this creative outlet (albeit for largely academic reasons) in 2011. In the first couple of weeks of 2012, I took it upon myself to read old blog posts and realised with some degree of surprise that it was not merely the content of my writing that had changed, but also the style and presentation. The new coloured background cannot compensate for the fact that, by and large, the creativity of my posts has been on a downward slide.

Perhaps this is reflection on my life too - more 'settled' now, at least intrinsically, and with less time and inclination to be an intellectual wanderer. However, this also feels like a bit of a loss, as though I cannot be silly and dramatic, and write freely in the third person about personal-political 'stuff' like dating across cultures any longer.

While the last year has been a gift in more ways than I can fully comprehend right now (both professionally and personally), I think I should make a bit more of an effort to use this blog as a creative outlet as much as an experimental intellectual space. Using pictures (as I did in previous years) is one way to accomplish this, but only when it feels natural. I also do wish I could write poetry again, however un-publishable, but perhaps that will also have to emerge in its own time. It could even be a new discourse for critiquing global media!

Ethnic Diversity on Australian Television

When I wrote my piece on memory, migration and MasterChef for Issue Seven of Kill Your Darlings, I mentioned that Poh Ling-Yeow (Adelaide-based visual artist and cook of Malaysian-Chinese origin) had become a role model of sorts. Not only was she the runners-up in the first series of Channel Ten’s MasterChef, but subsequent series have continue to feature “ethnic” contestants. Still, I feel none of the later participants complicated the non-White representation discourse on mainstream, commercial television in the same giggling yet dead-serious manner as Poh.

Off the Beaten Track

It recently dawned on me that my living room bookshelf houses nearly everything ever written by Salman Rushdie, Alain de Botton, bell hooks and Gail Jones. What an assorted collection of nationalities (British-Indian/Pakistani, Swiss, African-American, and Australian, respectively), genres (magic realism, new-age philosophy, cultural theory, and poetic fiction), and personalities (I won't try and pin that down). Does this say anything about me? Other than I like reading postcolonial fiction, feminist tomes, philosophical essays and lyrical prose? Perhaps it is also a marker of the different stages of growth I have been through in the last decade or so. The story it is telling is one that I have written and imbibed, but one that is also accessible to those who visit my place. It is likely that each one of these visitors picks up a different version of the bookshelf story, yet it is a rare insight into my inner world for someone new in my life. For that reason alone, I am loathe to remove or add a volume for the sake of conjuring up a certain impression.

What does your bookshelf say about you?

Mine, along with my eclectic collection of necklaces (yes, jewellery on a "serious" blog) from around the world is likely to be a legacy for my kids in case I happen to have them or adopt them. That is one hell of an inheritance off the beaten track. 

India - assertively and repressively itself

I've just come back from an attempted visit to my sister's college in Bangalore which I shall not name here. Despite being fully clothed, I was stopped by the guard because of my three-quarter pants (the girls have to wear full-length bottoms with a long shirt, and the boys professional attire as part of the institutional dress code). As I disappointedly turned away, I marvelled at the young ones' displays of confident sensuality, even sexuality in their ostensibly conservative clothes.

This seems to parallel India's unique strain of traditional modernity that I am seeing unfold on my current trip more than ever before. The medium I have chosen to investigate this phenomenon, namely, television, is both reflective of, and an aggressive participant in the building of an urban middle class that simultaneously worships at the altars of consumerist aspiration and primordial identification. Needless to say, Anna Hazare's much-publicised anti-corruption campaign has captured this class precisely because it appeals to both of the above sentiments. Even though the news networks suggest this is a homogeneous group of people, confessional yet strangely puritanical about the systemic corruption in their lives, a closer look at the streets, malls and airports tells a more nuanced story. Yes, I think there is more agency behind that struggling facade than we are willing to admit. 

Twice the Burden (of Representation)

I am trying to make scholarly sense of the coverage of the Indian student attacks (and the "hysterical" reaction to the same in the Indian media) in Australia's Fairfax publications. As I write, the "riots" unfolding in several cities in the UK are increasingly being touted as symptomatic of deep class and racial divides. While playing a blame-game is simplistic in both cases, there appears to be little doubt that ethnic minorities in the west, especially those without access to higher education and leafy suburbs, are also deprived of realistic media representations.

Kobena Mercer has written extensively on the "burden of representation", especially in relation to Black art. Can any individual creative practitioner or media worker do justice to this obligation to represent his/her ethnic community in a credible light? More importantly, should this burden be imposed in the first place?

Simon Cottle refers to Mercer's work in his analysis of British television, and takes it a step further by suggesting that there might be double the burden of representation for producers from ethnic minorities. Not only is there an implicit pressure from their own community to render it in a positive light, but also great resistance from white commissioning editors if they wish to create a text without a single Black character.

In my own writing, I find myself criticising the sense of alarm created by the Indian media even as I attribute its "sensational" reporting to the logic of a competitive media market and a resurgent urban middle class. At the same time, I can't help but detect orientalist undertones in some editorials and opinion pieces in the Australian media even as I put it down to a lack of cultural astuteness rather than outright racism. Perhaps this double-sided burden of representation, however loaded it may feel in the present, is the beginning of a paradigm for cross-cultural communication in a world with multiple centres and peripheries. 

Wearing Ethnicity, Performing Gender

One of my favourite feminist design blogs is shutting shop. Not only will I miss their sartorial inspiration, but also their very useful attempts to theorise fashion and identity performance for women (and men) who are academically inclined and also between worlds. Here's one of my favourite posts, which I shall certainly keep in mind for my upcoming work/family trip to India:
Academichic: Insider/Outsider

Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie

Just posting this YouTube video of Deepa Mehta's lecture at Emory University on her upcoming film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight Children. This apparently took place only a month after I submitted my doctoral thesis on Mehta's "elements" trilogy. I was pretty certain I didn't want to write another word on the matter, but this talk makes me want to write DM's biography!

Female Reporters, Hollywood and Bollywood Style

Last weekend, by sheer chance, I ended up hiring Roger Michell's latest romantic comedy, Morning Glory, which turned out be based on morning television in the USA. With a stellar cast including Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford, the film doesn't do anything entirely surprising within the rom-com genre, but I was interested to note that at least some of its sub-texts engaged with wider social issues. These include the news versus infotainment debate, the female anchor and producer championing the cause of soft news, and the old-guard male journalist who only believes in serious stories. This is not unlike the increasing tabloidisation of television in contemporary India, even though there is a plethora of women in the Indian print and electronic media doing the hard news rounds. Yet the problem seems to be that when represented in films such as Page 3, the female reporter is not merely feminised, but also infantilised.

Academics like Brian McNair and Matthew Ehrlich have written extensively on the how Hollywood renders journalist and the profession of journalism on film. In terms of female reporters in the west, there has been a shift from the "sob sister" of yesteryears to the modern supergirl journalist who struts her stuff on the most difficult of beats (although these stories are more likely to be maternal or fashion-centred than those assigned to their male counterparts). There is yet to be an extensive study on whether there has been a corresponding trend in Bollywood. If my anecdotal knowledge of the industry is anything to go by, recent films such as Peepli Live and No One Killed Jessica show us more empowered versions of the Indian female journalist. Their journalistic practices may not be perfectly ethical, and they may still be puppets of an increasingly corporate media ecology, but they are neither submissive nor chaste. Is the particular genre of Bollywood that is generating such filmic renditions of career women possibly ahead of Hollywood in some respects?