Last weekend I saw Inside Man, currently the top movie in America. In Spike Lee’s excellent caper mystery, actor Waris Singh Ahluwalia explains the significance of the Sikh turban, covering your head in the presence of god, to the largest American audience to date. It’s very cool of Lee to carve out screen time for this exposition, and more such movies might reduce Sikh harassment in America.
 |
|
The hollow men |
On the other hand, Denzel Washington’s rejoinder (‘Bet you can catch a cab…’) feels like shuffling, not dancing. I didn’t catch Ahluwalia’s smack-back because the audience was laughing too hard at the turban-cabbie joke. Ick. Ahluwalia gets the lion’s share of the desi actors’ screen time. Reena Shah has a couple of seconds as a hostage, and Jay Charan is barely seen as a bank teller.
The movie opens with ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya‘ from Dil Se, and Punjabi MC raps over an orchestra-enhanced mix during the closing credits. The inclusion of ‘Chaiyya’ has nothing to do with Hindi samples in hip-hop or Bombay Dreams — Lee draws directly from the source (thanks, mallika). At some point desi influence in American pop culture will melt in so thoroughly, it won’t even be worthy of remark. Then the Uighur-Americans will start blogging about how poorly they’re represented in popular American culture. Viva la Uighur Mutiny.
Viva la
Uighur MutinyThe flick reminds me of Gurinder Chadha’s newer movies: it’s a thoroughly commercial film, a bid for mainstream relevance which still shouts out to the brotherhood (minorities, blue-collar workers, Brooklyn and polyglot NYC). It finesses the task of melding social commentary, such as a violent Grand Theft Auto parody, with product placements galore. As unfocused as it is, just one of Lee’s movies gives you more to chew on than three normal Hollywood flicks. Unlike Chadha’s work, Inside Man objectifies women as much as She Hate Me reportedly did, with an extended joke about big tits.
The movie name-checks ’70s cops ‘n robber movies like Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon and pulls some of those glorious, cheesy ’70s orchestral riffs and fast zooms, Munich–style homage. Lee once again uses his favorite shrinking-background, actor-on-a-track effect. But the movie is too slackly paced for an action flick, and none of the bank heist gang, who call each other variations on ‘Steve,’ work up physical presence or verbal menace. A lot of the interplay between criminal mastermind Clive Owen and police detective Washington feels less like a hostage negotiation than a coffee date.
As in Mississippi Masala, Washington is again in a flick with some desi themes. His preppy style, casually slurred tone and stepper gait make him marketable in the mainstream. He scans as a boyish, non-threatening black man, like Dave Chappelle and much of the Block Party crew (Mos Def, Common and Kanye West, as opposed to the more militant Dead Prez). But at his age and at this stage in his career, Washington just isn’t believable as a young rookie detective.
In contrast, Owen is the paragon of an amoral don. It feels like the last time I saw Owen smile was in Closer. And though he’s pot-bellied in a jumpsuit with a trick American accent, Owen still rocks. Lee also pulls in his loyalists including Kim Director and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was in She Hate Me with Sarita Choudhury. (This is also Ahluwalia’s second movie with Willem Dafoe.)
The movie has such weak, dilatory action atmospherics, even revealing a couple of the robbers’ tricks up front wouldn’t have changed much. Where it really scores is with its Usual Suspects-style mental game. Inside Man flips the plan not once but twice, doubling back into what you were told not to expect. It also leaves a solution in plain sight, dropping clues about the final gambit in the opening scene.
Over and over, Lee proves he’s still a punk. The robbers turn the power structure’s tactics against itself by nicking a ploy from the police. In retaliation, Washington breaks the chief robber’s rhythm by assaulting him when he least expects. The only part that doesn’t work for me is the lengthy, absurdly wordy exposition by the Man (Christopher Plummer) towards the end of the movie. It’s all too Scooby-Doo-ish: ‘And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you kids…’
The multilayered film title is as much a riddle. On the surface, it’s just the argot of criminals. After watching, you realize it hints at the denouement. But ‘inside Man’ is also a reference to the conflict between convenience and human morality, a Spikean flourish of a title. In one of the closing scenes, Jodie Foster’s queen bitch irrevocably links the Man with Osama bin Laden, and the look on his face is priceless. Like Rang De Basanti, Lee’s morality play damns those who subject ethics to expedience.
i don’t think Shruti is critizing the tradition or culture of people or that individual people don’t deserve to suceed based on their efforts. I think she’s pointing to the idea that on a broader level, we’re not simply individuals acting in society. I think the idea is that Desi success in the US is a combination of individual effort and societal affect. Some may not agree, but the idea is that more goes into a person’s sucess than their ability or native intelligence. There is also a part that’s played by one’s position in society — race, gender, caste (in some cases), religion.
I think part of this is where one is looking for evidence. One can see at some level a meritocracy in the US. But one can also see society in which meritocracy is not purely in play. Its innaccurate to imply that a person is not situated in a social system that plays a part in whether they succeed in education or in jobs.
How this might play out in terms of a model minority is that, for instance, if structurally the black poor class is given many fewer avenues of success, one can point to Desis, or the Black middle class as evidence that, if a black person is poor, it’s because of their fault, and not because of inequalities at the level of society that could potentially be remidiated. If one excepts that, Brown is the same as Black, and since Desis apparently can do it, so can poor African Americans, then there is much less of a need to investigate whether their are societal inequalities making it more difficult for poor Black people to gain employment, education, and access to safe neighborhoods. Also to keep in mind that a number of Desis are not becoming exceptionally well off, and these people also lose from a world view in which societal inequalities aren’t taken into account.
there is probably not an either or here. It would be a strange world in which a person’s hard work or ability to be respectful of other people is not a factor in his or her success. But that does not mean it might be the only factor
How does it play a part in what one achieves? These can affect opportunities as in the case of my cousin who was forced to take needlework at one Kendriya Vidyalaya while the boys got to do electrical gadets for craft. But here in the US how does it play a part in what the model minority myth affected do and achieve? Since I want to confine this discussion to those of Indian subcontinental origin/descent let us not get into a discussion of general achievement. There’s an excellent book by Dr.Mano Singham who teaches at Case The Achievement Gap… on the subject with lots of research.
So if it is not shd one not work hard. Same thing I asked Shruti.
no, by all means work hard. but i would just say there’s more to it than that. if one were asking my opinion, which i know one is not, i’d say, be grateful you’re lucky enough that if you work hard you stand a good chance of being rewarded.
there’s people out there who work hard and in the end, tragically it might still come to naught.
its all the more tragic when that comes about due to inequalities that might be changed if we collectively as a society thought to do so.
that’s not to say everyone deserves a six figure income. but some basic things that used to define the American Middle Class circa 1940-2000
That’s interesting Sahej. How much more meaningful it is when hard to make sense of terms such as “model minority myth”, “dichotomous identities appropriated/otherwise” etc., are cast aside.
Gaurav (#46):
Can you please explain this further?
Example:
I worked for the computing center in my college, and at some point we were understaffed, so our boss asked us to recommend students to staff the labs. The next week I brought along my Bangladeshi friend who didn’t know a damn thing more about computers than most of the people who used the labs. For the record, the rest of us working there did know a good bit about the hardware/software in the labs, and most of the students using the labs didn’t.
My boss took one look at him, asked him a few questions that didn’t at all reveal my friend’s knowledge of computers, and hired him on the spot. Clearly, this worked in favor of the Brown, and against anyone non-Brown who’d been recommended and who had better qualifications.
Have you considered the possibility that you were forming a steretype of the identity of the group your boss belongs to? For all you know the boss may have had good reasons not to look for certain abilities (the job may not have required it and such like). Assuming that the boss generalized to make a hire is itself a generalization about bosses and the boss’s group. Identity politics and polemic serves no purpose because at first it creates a permanent set of groups and then clothes these groups with some fixed abilities and attitudes. This is absolutely out of place in a fast changing society.
Shiva where were you raised and where are you located now? If I’m going to respond to your comments (which are getting repetitive), I think it would be helpful if you let me know where you’re coming from so that I also don’t repeat myself and go in circles with this discussion. I noticed how you are just not able to contextualize, imagine and accept the possibility of certain things that desi Americans like Sahej, Madurai and myself know exist (i.e. lack of/inconsistent meritocracy and the model minority myth). “Model minority myth” and the other terms that are associated with racial hierarchies and identity politics in the United States are specific to U.S. society, and therefore likely to be esoteric to those who don’t have a substancial background in it. The “hard to make sense of terms” that I use represent complex but well established discourses in the United States, and most conscientious Americans have at least a basic understanding of what they are, so I generally wouldn’t need to explain things further than I already have.
I can understand the criticism that my terms are too pretentiously academic for a general blog discussion (like sometimes I just don’t get Razib’s scientific explanations), but Spike Lee’s film is critical about racial dynamics in the United States, particularly post-9/11. I’m not claiming to be an authority on it, but my academic training has always had a focus on critical race and gender theory, so I’m just accustomed to using it in discussing the implications of minority representations in U.S. society (on which I have as much authority as any person has on the geopolitical area that she/he was raised). Plus, my use of definite terms serves to indicate that the issues I’ve brought up are systemic and significant enough to warrant the great amount of scholarship that has gone into their theorization.
Shruti,
Let’s see. What can “model minority myth” mean?
That the so called model minority
-does not present a single model rather several ‘little models’ OR -presents a single model not worth ‘modelling after’ because it does not lead to the expected reward
That shouldn’t be a problem if you have an “operational definition” of the idea. Madurai tried providing one that wasn’t useful. There could be a number of reasons why some people can’t contextualize, imagine and accept Shouldn’t that be of interest to anyone coming from a field of study with a great deal of scholarship? Maybe the ‘model minority myth’ is a myth? And what use is a theory if it settles all questions once and for all? Theories aren’t interesting unless they raise questions. And what are those laws that institutionalize the isms?
I’m assuming that was shiva in #59 and not Shruti?
It wasn’t me. And I’m getting annoyed.
Admin, Shruti and Madurai,
Pardon me if I posted as Shruti – entirely my fault – careless of me not to review before I hit Post. #59 of course is me.
May we continue the discussion?
shiva (#59):
The “model” in model minority refers to an ideal, a role model. Someone to look at as an example of how to be. A model minority is an individual or group from a minority community who personif(y)(ies) certain ideals vis. work ethic, social status, etc., and whom the dominant culture holds up as an example of how all minorities should be/behave. The idea is that all minorities, if they work hard enough, should be able to be like this model minority.
It is a myth because:
-it imposes uniform ideals/values upon all members of a particular group -it ignores the fact that most members of this group were able to climb the socio-economic ladder because of the intellectual capital they’d brought from their countries of origin
shiva (#50:
I don’t think there’s a parent in the world who doesn’t tell his/her child to work hard. The model minority myth looks over the fact that some parents can’t provide the same opportunities to their children as other parents can.
Vivekan You are saying the model minority ‘model’ is a myth
A] it imposes uniform ideals/values upon all members of a particular group
while at the same time saying
B] that most members of this group were able to climb the socio-economic ladder because of the intellectual capital they’d brought from their countries of origin
So in rejecting one imposition/generalization another one is imposed. Can [B] be taken for granted? And for [B] to be of any use in analysis yet another generalization is used this time wrt the dominant culture and its practitioners who hold up the ‘model minority myth’.
What are those opportunities? If they come at a price there’s a problem – if not economic it’s worth looking into. We can get hard work out of the way as we agree it is universal.
I was trying to follow everyones arguments/propositions whatever, but I was overwhelmed with the “dichotomous” whatever or the “minority myth” I was just wondering about how old everyone is/ if everyone is law student?