Is the 'Hipster' the New 'Flaneur'?

A photobook sent to the author by an anonymous sender

She walks along Glebe Point Road, wishing she could live in one of those adorable terrace houses and be walking distance to Gleebooks, Central Station, and the eccentricties of Newtown. Such wishful thinking involves conveniently glossing over the high cost of rentals in the area, her new job in a regional city, and the bittersweet memories of traversing those paths with a past flame. As if on cue to dispel such thoughts, she fishes out her recently purchased Diana F+ camera (an analog camera manufactured by Lomography), fires the attached flash, and aims at a shop sign advertising Asian groceries.


She hopes the apolitical hipsterdom epitomised by her Diana is at least partially overcome by the ethnic marking of her subjects. Most of all, she tries to reassure herself that her resurgent interest in street photography and reflective shop windows in urban spaces is not a mere affectation, and not too ironic for her self-righteous academic alter ego. Something tells her that this poetics of the personal is imbued with the political; that her roaming of the streets as a woman (of colour) armed with fancy cameras is nothing short of an overthrow of the power relations of the public gaze. She is a voyeur who looks as well as appears. Both John Berger, and Germaine Greer would approve!


But she can't say the same for her folks who would rather she have a roaming companion at all times, or her close friends who would admonish her for taking late trains and wandering into 'dodgy' suburbs. She dislodges her discomfort with this thought by turning to her own version of worry beads - the camera reel dial, and turns it to prepare to shoot a passing cyclist with a wicker basket full of fresh veggies. Even hipsters eat bok choy.


She recalls trying to make herself invisible at a Vietnamese grocery store near her new apartment. Perhaps it was the sheer size of her Canon 600D that made the store owner abandon his ledger book to come ask her if she was looking for something in particular. 'Coffee', she answered, recalling the velvety texture of the ca phe da (iced coffee) she had tried in Marrickville before officially moving to New South Wales, and wondering why she didn't carry a camera around then.


Perhaps she was trying to make memories again, to feel settled in her new surroundings, yet unsettled enough to reawaken her creativity. Perhaps she wanted to be a slightly belated backpacker of sorts so as not to miss out on the youthful joys of leisurely exploration. Perhaps she also wanted to appropriate the streets of inner city Sydney, and its 'ethnic' suburbs such as Parramatta and Harris Park for the solitary coloured woman; to proclaim that we don't just walk around in groups or pairs, that we don't always have spouses and prams in tow. Perhaps she wanted her photographs to tell the tale of the contemporary flaneuse - a woman who cares about her mind and her accessories, but doesn't just visit the shopping mall.


On the train ride home, the iPad replaces the camera, and the researcher takes over. I find out that the flaneur of 19th century Paris was male, privileged, and known to be a 'connoisseur of the streets'. There has been recent interest amongst feminist art historians and literary scholars suggesting that there were also female equivalents of the flaneur during this era, but that the worlds they inhabited (and hence their viewing lenses) were different from those of the men. In the contemporary western world, the idea of flanerie appears to be undergoing a resurgence, particularly in the blogosphere ( see, for instance, Modern Flaneurs) and in street and fashion photography.


I switch off from all devices and take a look at my co-passengers. I realise that I am still possibly distant yet curious, the classic yet updated flaneur. I also reason that Baudelaire's notion of modernity (and its association with flanerie) is as applicable to contemporary Sydney as it once was to an urbanising Paris. This is because my world, and that of many other men and women of my generation constantly on the move for work, love and travel is inherently 'ephemeral, contingent, fugitive'. Our acts of looking through the course of these journeys are still intertwined with our race, class and gender identities. But perhaps these acts, and the ways in which they are documented, are a little bit freer now. And, there is newfound creative pleasure in such ambivalence.

I'll have a Brown Cosmopolitan, thanks: Musings on Bollywood, Australian multiculturalism, and the Asian Century

British Indian Artist Anish Kapoor's exhibit at the MCA

When I announced to strangers more than a decade ago that I had flown all this way to embark on a degree in media in Australia, I was sometimes asked if I was doing that to work in Bollywood. I always felt a tad uncomfortable with that suggestion, but didn't have the conceptual armour at the time to name my discomfort and shame those assumptions.

More inexplicable however, is the inadvertent conjecture of many a colleague now that having a background in film studies implies I have an automatic expertise in Bollywood. I was recently introduced by someone in a professional setting as an 'Indian film and television academic'. On hearing that, I wanted to cast a magic spell and make Deepa Mehta's 'elements trilogy' appear from ether. I also felt an excruciating urge to explain that studying South Asian diasporic cinema for my doctoral project implied looking at the influences and production contexts of these crossover directors - a vast body of global work ranging from the more traditional arthouse fare of Ingmar Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, and Satyajit Ray, to the avant garde films of feminist film makers such as Trinh Minh-ha and Pratibha Parmar. Just in case my explanations fell short, I wished my Honours supervisor could be summoned to produce an on the spot reference to attest to the fact that I wrote a first class thesis on Jane Campion's film 'The Piano', and Gail Jones's novel 'Sixty Lights'. While I have since written one paper that critiques the representation of Indian female journalists in Bollywood cinema, and co-written another one that considers the implications of having stereotypical Anglo characters in Bollywood films set in theWest, I would hardly call these definitive of my career, or unproblematic additions to the growing worldwide canon of 'Bollywood Studies'.

If this is not my primary area of interest, and given that I have programmed for mainstream Australian film festivals in addition to being engaged with South Asian cultural communities in Australia, why does the current Australian obsession with courting Bollywood bother me? Perhaps I am one of the biopolitical subjects described by Dr Goldie Osuri in her wonderful article on Bollywood in Australia. Perhaps I am so tired of being typecast and being expected to play native expert (not just getting away with 'native informant' status after a PhD), that I feel compelled to write/talk back. As someone who has dabbled in creative practice, I also feel an urge to write/talk/visualise myself into being in a way that both the Australian media sphere and most Indian films set in Australia have failed to do. I want to encourage professional creatives in Australia to produce their own stories instead of waiting for Bollywood to come up with the right script, or for Screen Australia to realise they have a diversity problem. Easier said than done, but the growing number of recognised Indian-Australian writers might be the perfect collaborators for innovative screenplays.

What does the notion of being, and wanting to be around 'brown cosmopolitans' have to do with Australian multiculturalism and the Asian Century? As Dr Osuri mentions in her piece, contemporary manifestations of Australian multiculturalism are increasingly neo-liberal, with state and national tourism bodies courting Bollywood productions to help sell particular icons of 'Brand Australia'. Add India's own neo-liberalism to the mix, and you have a lethal combination - Saif Ali Khan in an ultra-modern apartment with a sea view and a sports car in spunky Melbourne. I am not suggesting that this kind of wealth and lifestyle is unattainable for the average Indian-Australian, but that it is certainly not the lived reality (or lived memory) of most of us. While we mostly applauded when 'Bollywood Star' made an appearance on SBS and the judges told off the 'goras' for not knowing the difference between 'Monsoon Wedding' and Bollywood, the pedagogical mission does have its limitations. Cast an eye out to see what other 'ethnic' communities have done to be creatively visible in the Australian media landscape, and you come across the path-breaking 'Salaam Cafe' or the controversial but ratings-winning 'Once upon a time in Cabramatta'. Why do the self-representations of the Indian communities living in Australian still have to be defined with or against the trope and perceptions of Bollywood?

I think Indians in Australian have come of age in all sectors - corporate, academic, and creative. The time is ripe to chart our own paths, fight our own battles, tell our own stories, and use the interest in the Asian Century to demand (and work towards) more genuine engagement with all Asian communities residing in Australia. We need to produce our own Deepa Mehtas and Jhumpa Lahiris, and not just be content with a visiting Bollywood celebrity.

Harmony Mart: A Photo Essay (Part 2: Lines and Curves)

Harmony Mart: A Photo Essay (Part 1: Seeing Red)

International Women's Day Post: On 'Choice' and 'Luck'

I want to celebrate strong women today. I also want to remember the pain I have gone through to better appreciate the strength I have today. And finally, I want to disarm anyone who claims that I, or other women like me just got lucky.

Sure, good fortune and serendipity play a role in the life of every person who is an achiever of some sort. But, in women's case, to attribute this simply and unequivocally to their singledom, their elegance, their expressive eyes, their way with words, or any manner of 'soft skills' is often erroneous and not entirely complimentary.

Of late, I have found myself getting a tad edgy and defensive when explaining why I entered academic life at 'such a young age'. Surely, she must be a careerist, one on those who will step on anyone's shoes to become a professor before the age of  40 - these are the undertones I feel I have to address even though they are never openly uttered.

Even as I am enormously grateful to all my mentors, peers, and the opportunities that I have been given, I know that I have made many personal sacrifices, and that I never set out to be a career academic. I also know that while it remains an important and meaningful part of my life (with some ups and downs), I don't worship my career and wonder if I would need all these disclaimers if I were a man?

In the summer of 2004-2005, I ploughed my way through a part-time job at Coles, an internship at a university publication, and a research assistantship on an African diaspora project. This was shortly followed by a difficult house move, a laptop theft, and being diagnosed with RSI in my right wrist and a slipped disc around the time of my 21st birthday. I am aware it sounds dramatic now, but at the time, it felt as though the Reuters cadetship application I had been drafting, and the foreign correspondent gig I had been dreaming about were nothing but cruel jokes. Consciously or sub-consciously, I moved towards a research pathway (with short stints in media monitoring and all manner of part-time jobs to pay the rent) and also made peace with being 'stuck' in Adelaide.

Almost eight years later, I have none of those health constraints, and have been craving to live the life I never lived at 21. I am not referring here to drunken nights and/or backpacker's hostels, but just that youthful spirit that lets one experiment with leisure activities, hobbies, and generally living more in the moment. My mapping skills work perfectly at work, but I am using my freedom in other parts of my life to create, re-create and be a cartographer without a compass. Frightening, yes, but I am feeling the fear and doing it anyway!

Friends joke that this is almost a Benjamin Button story, albeit a female one. Need I add that it has its perils, not to mention the biological clock warnings from all and sundry. There are also those who cannot undo the categories they put you into, no matter how much you try to show them the 'other' side. So this women's day, I promise to stop showing and apologising, and start doing and celebrating!

Ethnography over a Candle-lit Dinner

You speak to the dainty blonde waitress
And let me pick the wine
I show off my knowledge
Say 'tis the season for whites
You still opt for a red
I notice it is organic
You make a joke about compost
And pass me the mains menu
Both of us order pizzas
Yours gleams with pink prawns
I forget the taste of mine
But recall the pine nuts
You and I walk through the rain
And settle on a hot chocolate
Yours is spicy too
I explain my hot food aversion
You nod and gaze at your cup
And walk me to my car
I rev up the engine and the heating
And picture the exotic tea leaves
Patiently awaiting my return.

CFP for India Australia Symposium

CFP for ‘Gondwanalandings: Indian-Australian Perspectives on Cultural Understanding’

(First symposium of the Indian Diaspora in Australia)

Sponsor

Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne

Venue

Village Show Theatrette

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

Date

27 September 2013 (Friday)

Summary

This symposium aims to reinforce the work being done by the Australia India Institute (through its tiffin talks, public seminars and conferences) in boosting Australia’s cultural literacy about South Asia, as well as in facilitating Australia-India relations at both the cultural policy and people-to-people levels. It is also expected to play a key role in generating a framework for cultural understanding between the two nations that capitalises on the strengths of the vibrant South Asian diaspora in Australia, and addresses the following goals:

1. Enabling the discussion of the social-cultural as well as the political issues faced by the vast array of people of Indian origin living in Australia.

2. Showcasing Indian-Australian artistic talent, whether in the form of writing, film, music, or other forms.

3. Sharing research and stories that shed light on the benefits of inter-cultural dialogue, and the hurdles encountered in facilitating the same.

4. Finding ways to engage the broader Indian community in the mainstream Australian arts sector to encourage stronger social cohesion and more vigorous political cooperation between Indian communities and mainstream Australian communities.

5. Building partnerships between Indian businesses and cultural projects in Australia so that the voices of Indian Australian communities may be heard in mainstream Australia.

Background

According to the 2011 census, India is the biggest source of recent migrants to Australia. Mainstream and community news outlets quickly picked up this statistic, with the Indian-Australian publication Indian Herald reporting that Hinduism is Australia’s fastest-growing religion, and Melbourne’s The Age claiming that the city’s one in five Asian-born residents are making it a more socially conservative place. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ quantitative research is yet to be backed up by a qualitative dimension, and the media stories only provide anecdotal (and sometimes suspiciously simplistic) perspectives on this development. It is important to more accurately consider the composition and migration histories of the growing numbers of Indian-Australians, to explore proper ways to assess their immediate and future needs, and to examine the quality of their interactions with the wider Australian community.

Therefore, critical, creative or community-based presentation proposals that address any of the following questions are welcome:

Who represents the Indian community when there is a crisis, or an important issue on the table?

What is the history of this group, its current activities and everyday practices, and its aspirations for the future?

What does it mean to be Indian-Australian? As a new diasporic group, this needs in-depth research and discussion. It cannot always be grouped together with Indian expatriates living in comparable nations such as the US, the UK and Canada.

How can inter-cultural dialogue be promoted, especially through arts and community initiatives?

Please send a 200-word proposal and a 50-word bio by Monday, 25 March 2013 to:

gondwanalandings@gmail.com

Organising Committee: Sukhmani Khorana, Roanna Gonsalves, Ana Tiwary, Devaki Monani

Dr. Sukhmani Khorana

School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication

Faculty of Arts

University of Wollongong

NSW 2522, Australia

Watching MasterChef Australia in India

When we think of MasterChef Australia in our cozy suburban abodes, we momentarily forget monetary and lifestyle woes - it conjures up images of beautifully-plated food, of tears followed by happy endings, of cuddling up in front on the telly on a cold and windy southern evening. What we can barely fathom is that the aforementioned plating and pathos wins equal traction, and perhaps even more coolness points in an unlikely part of the world - India.

I first encountered season one on a popular lifestyle channel while visiting family in India a few years ago, and was more than a little amused that George's Greek-Aussie aphorisms had been lost in translation (the program was dubbed in American-accented English for the nation's urban youth audience). While conducting fieldwork for a television project last year, I shared an apartment with female undergraduates in Bangalore who were glued to the show, and even watched the kiddy version.

This year, I was pleased to note that the Australian Government had looked beyond cricket to source cultural ambassadors for the inaugural OzFest in The subcontinent. When a picture of MasterChef Australia judges Gary and George riding a motorbike on Delhi's streets appeared on my Facebook feed (as part of OzFest's updates), I realized this was a transnational meme worth examining, and tapping into further for understanding and facilitating inter-cultural communication. Star World, the English-language channel on which MasteChef Australia airs in India has arguably 'localised' the content by designing promos with ordinary people talking about their love of food, bringing judge Matt Preston to India to speak with clients, promoting Indian-origin contestants on the show, as well as showcasing ingredients and dishes at specialist stores. Still, my interviews with the Bangalore-based group of young females, as well as conversations with friends and family uncovered something beyond a simple appreciation of culinary skills or identification with participants of the same ethnicity. I knew all those high school mates suddenly carving time out of their busy Indian metropolitan schedules to blog about baking were telling a cultural tale potentially more interesting than the details of their recipes.

What I am suggesting here is not just Australia and Australian food have become overnight successes in contemporary, middle class, urban, youthful India. Rather, a very particular cultural product, by being representative of the diversity and tastes of its body politic (but not necessarily being politically correct, possibly due to its commercial format) seems to have transcended the geographic boundaries of popularity precisely due to its particularity. Most of those I talked to liked MasterChef despite the fact that many of the dishes plated by the contestants were unheard of in India, and a number of ingredients were either unavailable in smaller cities or just hard to find in corner stores. Perhaps they were seeking 'international' cultural capital by watching successive seasons, but their engagement with social media and support for participants is also indicative of an affective response and a building fandom.

Some of my respondents suggested that their male friends and colleagues were also watching the show. I found this of interest because gende roles remain entrenched in most sections of Indian society, and are often only marginally changed by increasing levels of education and economic growth. It remains to be seen whether future generations of urban and semi-urban Indian men will embrace a role in the home and the hearth, and if their female counterparts will encourage this shift. If the popularity of Julia Gillard's 'misogyny speech' amongst career-oriented Indian women is any indication, there may already be a wave of unrest that is likely to find voice as these women fight for, and win battles for equity and justice in both the personal and public spheres.

Speaking of the personal, the latest Aussie television export to India is the family drama series, Packed to the Rafters. The promo for the series, airing at the time of writing on Star World, shows well-known Bollywood director of transnational family sagas, Karan Johar talking about his own mother and siblings. It would be simplistic to jump to conclusions here about the universal trope of the family, but perhaps the Rafters may just become a household name in middle class India. We can only hope that Australian television audiences will similarly begin to welcome contemporary Indian cultural products without expecting it to be about Bollywood, curry or cricket. Many talented people of Indian origin currently calling Australia home, such as journalist Sushi Das, may just be the perfect intermediaries. As Das writes of British and Australian attitudes to migration in her recently-released memoir, 'Deranged Marriage', 'Multiculturalism is all very well, but if feel-good policies that promote the so-called melting-pot theory of people living side by side, sharing each other's cuisine, is all that it has to offer, then it's not much'. It looks like those of glued to MasterChef, whether in Australia or in India, may just have to get off the couch to at least invite our foreign-born neighbors or our male family members to watch with us. It may just lead to more.

Racism and Narrative, Diversity and Food

What happened in the vibrant Australian media sphere while I was conferencing at the Sorbonne, and skipping television in favour of ethnographic experiences in Parramatta?

A list that clearly reflects my democratic taste:
1. Simon Sheikh, National Director of GetUp!, collapsed on Q&A
2. Sophie Mirabella, Federal Liberal MP, was slammed for not assisting Sheikh
3. 'Dumb, Drunk and Racist' continued to get love and hate mail (feel free to correct me on this one)
4. 'The Shire' trended far more than 'Abstudy' on Twitter
5. Amina, the headscarf-clad MasterChef contestant, was eliminated from the Kitchen

If you notice implicit or explicit links between any of the above listed items, you would have guessed that underlying my democratic taste is a culturally diverse palate. This palate is in turn shaped by reading vast tomes of race, postcolonial and globalisation literature, and through sharing difficult and enriching 'identity' anecdotes with friends and colleagues. At the same time, most of the academic sessions on racism and multiculturalism that I have attended over the last couple of weeks have convinced me of the need to approach these issues via narrative rather than theory. Slamming 'white privilege' in the face of someone who comes from a working-class suburb or has just been retrenched will not go down well without context, history and experiential telling.

Case in point is the last item on the list, which happened to coincide with the large number of papers I heard on transnational versions of MasterChef, national cuisine and identity, and food and inter-cultural relations. Reality shows such as MasterChef, or films featuring central characters making beautiful food, or the experience of visiting a kebab shop in the middle of a riot are useful tools for broaching the subject of race in classrooms and public forums. Moreover, they function as clues and cues for large sections of the national and international media on representing diverse populations. Of course there will be plenty of hate mail, offensive online comments, and perhaps even a 'that was brave' remark or two from fellow storytellers. Empirical evidence, another kind of narrative, may come in handy on such occasions!

Take, for instance, the results of the 2011 Australian Census. I will not reiterate here what are now widely known statistics about the rise in Mandarin, Korean, Arabic and Hindi-speaking members of the Australian community. What did come as a surprise, however, is the subsequent assumption in the editorial of 'The Weekend Australian' which stated that these numbers are a testament to our tolerance, and prove that 'Dumb, Drunk and Racist' is a tabloid documentary. A News Limited publication referring to an ABC-comminissioned series as 'tabloid' is more than just a case of the pot calling the kettle black. What is more significant, however, is that it signals a popular perception regarding cultural and religious diversity.

The integration idea of the 1970s has clearly given way to ghettoisation (on all sides), and the rhetoric of tolerance. We don't seem to have moved beyond displaying our cosmopolitanism by eating butter chicken, or occasionally buying the sauce at Coles. My own experience of this dates back to my undergraduate days in the Adelaide University Union - interaction between local and international students was recognised as a glaring issue, but one that no side was willing to take a lead on. Almost a decade on, I heard the same problem discussed at the recent Asian Studies Association of Australia conference, where Dr Ken Henry shared thoughts on his 'Australia in the Asian Century' white paper. Let's hope this report is a narrative of policy as well as hope, and that it gives us both a framework for future action, and also a dose of much-needed initiative.

Enforced Televisual Domesticity

Was it just me, or was there a rather large dose of the Indian sub-continent on Australian television in the last month or so? Admittedly, I was much more of a couch surfer than usual due to a petulant viral infection that took its own sweet time to leave my body. In any case, I counted 'Bollywood Star' on SBS, a Hindu wedding-themed team challenge on Channel Ten's 'MasterChef', a long leg in Rajasthan on Channel Seven's 'Amazing Race Australia', and a still-going documentary titled 'Dumb, Drunk and Racist' on ABC2 that is centred around the experiences of four middle class Indians visiting Down Under. Perhaps this recent India overload is just fortuitous and I shouldn't over-think it. Still, if it is documenting Aussies visiting and sampling the new India, and Indians seeing Australia through their own eyes (not those of the increasingly tabloid news channels), then it is a welcome development.