Dr. Jai Maharaj
2017-07-07 18:50:42 UTC
I'm Tired of Watching Brown Men Fall in Love With White
Women Onscreen
By Aditi Natasha Kini
jezebel.com
Thursday, July 6, 2017
"The Big Sick" has been roundly lauded in the press
lately, including here at Jezebel, and not without good
reason: it's a funny, heartwarming love story based on
the true-life experiences of cowriters/married couple
Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. But as much as I
liked it -- and I did -- I also found myself exhausted,
yet again, by the onscreen depiction of a brown man
wanting to date a white woman, while brown women are
portrayed alternately as caricatures, stereotypes,
inconsequential, and/or the butts of a joke.
I know, I know: isn't it progress to see Asian men get
the girl for once, instead of stand-in as a prop, token
or joke? Sure, it's great that Hollywood is putting its
money behind narratives with brown men at the helm, as in
"The Big Sick" and Master of None. But both also center
white women as the love interest -- a concept which, in
the complex hierarchy of power and race in America, pays
lip-service to the one notion that has shaped the history
of South Asian and American culture alike: Whiteness as
the ultimate desire, the highest goal in defining oneself
as an American. Both of these works are part of a larger
trend that's common in films in media portraying the desi
community, that the pursuit of white love is a mode of
acceptance into American culture, and a way of
"transcending" the confines of immigrant culture -- the
notion that white love is a gateway drug to the American
dream.
John Cho recognized this trend last March, in a
conversation with Kumail Nanjiani at Sundance. Cho noted
that while he gets a lot of "Attaboys!" from people
excited to see an Asian guy with a white woman
(particularly other Asian guys), they don't seem to want
two Asian people on the screen together: "The screen
might set on fire," he said. Nanjiani sidestepped this
critique by noting "The Big Sick"'s depiction of his
brother in a happy relationship with a Pakistani woman
satisfies those optics.
Onscreen Asian men have been depicted coveting or
romancing white women through the ages: from the 1915
silent film "The Cheat" to modern examples like Raj in
"The Big Bang Theory", Gogol in "The Namesake", Ravi in
"Meet the Patels", Tom Haverford in "Parks and
Recreation", and Dev Shah in "Master of None". It seems
that directors and writers have sought to solve a lack of
Asian representation onscreen by casting Asian men
opposite white women -- but that tack almost inevitably
erases interracial relationships between people of color.
In choosing an Asian man, these white women also
symbolically reject all the white men who have oppressed
Asian men for centuries. And by earning white love, the
Asian man gains acceptance in a society that has thwarted
them from the very beginning. When an Asian is loved as a
white man, he is taken on a road to realization (as
Frantz Fanon puts it in "Black Skin White Masks", one
"marries white culture, white beauty, white whiteness").
It is at once an act of love, and of revenge. Fanon,
specifically writing about black-white relations in the
1950s, offers an understanding of white love and its
complex relationship to colonialism, something black
women activists have been contending with for centuries.
The mating dance between Asian men and white women is
rife with exotification and cringe-worthy othering. As
bell hooks puts it, in "the commodification of
Otherness," ethnicity becomes spice to a dull, mainstream
white dish. In "The Big Sick", "Kumail" picks up "Emily"
by writing her name out in Urdu in the beginning of the
film. (Apparently Pete Holmes recommended Nanjiani use
"Once you go Pakistan, you never go Backistan," a line
that would have made me vomit just from the pronunciation
of "Pakistan.") We later see "Kumail" pull the write-her-
name-in-Urdu move on another white chick. (He sleeps only
with white women throughout "The Big Sick".)
That's not to say he doesn't consider relationships with
brown women. . . .
Continues at:
http://themuse.jezebel.com/i-m-tired-of-watching-brown-men-fall-in-love-with-white-1796522590?utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://bit.do/jaimaharaj
Women Onscreen
By Aditi Natasha Kini
jezebel.com
Thursday, July 6, 2017
"The Big Sick" has been roundly lauded in the press
lately, including here at Jezebel, and not without good
reason: it's a funny, heartwarming love story based on
the true-life experiences of cowriters/married couple
Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. But as much as I
liked it -- and I did -- I also found myself exhausted,
yet again, by the onscreen depiction of a brown man
wanting to date a white woman, while brown women are
portrayed alternately as caricatures, stereotypes,
inconsequential, and/or the butts of a joke.
I know, I know: isn't it progress to see Asian men get
the girl for once, instead of stand-in as a prop, token
or joke? Sure, it's great that Hollywood is putting its
money behind narratives with brown men at the helm, as in
"The Big Sick" and Master of None. But both also center
white women as the love interest -- a concept which, in
the complex hierarchy of power and race in America, pays
lip-service to the one notion that has shaped the history
of South Asian and American culture alike: Whiteness as
the ultimate desire, the highest goal in defining oneself
as an American. Both of these works are part of a larger
trend that's common in films in media portraying the desi
community, that the pursuit of white love is a mode of
acceptance into American culture, and a way of
"transcending" the confines of immigrant culture -- the
notion that white love is a gateway drug to the American
dream.
John Cho recognized this trend last March, in a
conversation with Kumail Nanjiani at Sundance. Cho noted
that while he gets a lot of "Attaboys!" from people
excited to see an Asian guy with a white woman
(particularly other Asian guys), they don't seem to want
two Asian people on the screen together: "The screen
might set on fire," he said. Nanjiani sidestepped this
critique by noting "The Big Sick"'s depiction of his
brother in a happy relationship with a Pakistani woman
satisfies those optics.
Onscreen Asian men have been depicted coveting or
romancing white women through the ages: from the 1915
silent film "The Cheat" to modern examples like Raj in
"The Big Bang Theory", Gogol in "The Namesake", Ravi in
"Meet the Patels", Tom Haverford in "Parks and
Recreation", and Dev Shah in "Master of None". It seems
that directors and writers have sought to solve a lack of
Asian representation onscreen by casting Asian men
opposite white women -- but that tack almost inevitably
erases interracial relationships between people of color.
In choosing an Asian man, these white women also
symbolically reject all the white men who have oppressed
Asian men for centuries. And by earning white love, the
Asian man gains acceptance in a society that has thwarted
them from the very beginning. When an Asian is loved as a
white man, he is taken on a road to realization (as
Frantz Fanon puts it in "Black Skin White Masks", one
"marries white culture, white beauty, white whiteness").
It is at once an act of love, and of revenge. Fanon,
specifically writing about black-white relations in the
1950s, offers an understanding of white love and its
complex relationship to colonialism, something black
women activists have been contending with for centuries.
The mating dance between Asian men and white women is
rife with exotification and cringe-worthy othering. As
bell hooks puts it, in "the commodification of
Otherness," ethnicity becomes spice to a dull, mainstream
white dish. In "The Big Sick", "Kumail" picks up "Emily"
by writing her name out in Urdu in the beginning of the
film. (Apparently Pete Holmes recommended Nanjiani use
"Once you go Pakistan, you never go Backistan," a line
that would have made me vomit just from the pronunciation
of "Pakistan.") We later see "Kumail" pull the write-her-
name-in-Urdu move on another white chick. (He sleeps only
with white women throughout "The Big Sick".)
That's not to say he doesn't consider relationships with
brown women. . . .
Continues at:
http://themuse.jezebel.com/i-m-tired-of-watching-brown-men-fall-in-love-with-white-1796522590?utm_campaign=socialfow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://bit.do/jaimaharaj