Director Paul Mayeda Berges was quoted in DNA today about his new movie The Mistress of Spices:
The other key element was to… give each spice its own Indian instrument so you could know when they were calling out to Tilo. The chillies warn her with a tabla. Chandan, kala jeera, tulsi, hing and cinnamon each have their own sounds.
I’ll bet that what the spices are telling Tilo is, ‘Stop exoticizing us, wench!’ Spice-tabla-Chocolat-sex: Tilo Does Oakland 
“The only thing sadder to count is flicks involving desi same sex relationships.”
Haven’t you heard? Desi only relationships don’t exist anymore in the West. It’s in liberal Hollywood’s best interest to keep it that way.
Hmm .. interesting that all of Aamir Khan’s latest movies involve brown boy/white girl relationships – maybe he’s living out a fantasy through his movies.
I was under the impression that Gurinder Chadha was not directing this movie, but Paul Berges was.
ohhhh they’re married. i get it now.
On an unrelated note- -did anyone here happen to read “How Opal Mehta” by the famed Harvard sophomore Kaavya V? I’ve read it and frankly, not impressed at all. Which high school student wears Manhlos and Jimmy Choos and carries a Miu Miu gold lame bag?! In addition to a gazillion other brands that I can’t count on my fingers anymore., Oh and apprently high school girls get makeovers at Fredrric Fekkai and shop at Saks. I’m curious- -what did other mutineers think? I am the only nut who thinks that the only thing Kaavya is good at doing is hiring an excellent publicist. Bring it on mutineers– !
Re #27
That was Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss. I didn’t think it was so bad…
haven’t read the opal mehta book and will probably wait for the paperback or the library to read it, but what does shock me (or i guess it actually doesn’t) is that parents will pay $10,000-$20,000 to college application preparation companies just to help their kids get into an ivy league college. like most of the people on this board, i have benefited from a good and expensive education, so it seems hypocritical, but if this is the trend (and the things mentioned in the L.A. Times review about the shenanigans at a private school) it seems higher education is becoming increasingly and alarmingly elitist (although it probably always has been).
heh heh, theres no becoming about it, it always has been… prolly likely always going to be…
Oh…of course Chadha is making this movie…
Way back at #8, yes, Mschiana, she is supposed to be old! From the photos Sonia linked to, I can’t see any wrinkles. Keeping your hair tied up must b the plain bit. And did they have to get Dylan McDermott to play wotizname? Spices was before Chocolat but Chocolat was better. There were some ok elements to the story but ffs, did we have to have the whole “spice island,” [milks the giant cow] “I…was Queen of the Pirates!….[Kate Bush wuthering heights dance]” and “the spices…are angry” bits?
QUESTION:
did anyone think ‘Mistress of Spices’ was a terrible, god-awful, fist-eatingly boring book? Ugh and then that stupid Opal Mehta ones and others like them are just the gross ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ wannabes commodifying and cutesy-ing up our culture(s). They’re the ‘omgs’ and ‘lols’ that ruin sentences.
Lovers of Indian and South Asian literature should read Amit Chaudhary’s Picador book of Modern Indian Literature. He discusses how SOME Indian writers have internalised a perception of ourselves and our country as:
exotic, kaleidoscopic, epic, crazy, a great dramatic stage of humanity, overly-emotional, full of grotesque caricatures, colourful beggars/old ladies/eunuchs etc etc.
There are times when this really works (as with Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or with writers who specifically use more elaborate styles like Zadie Smith or Arundhati Roy)
Where it falls flat is with trite symbolism a la ‘the mistress of spices’ with her little powers of cardamom and cloves and whatever.
Look at that Q and A book which already has a movie deal. A Hindu-Muslim-Christian guy who is symbolic of modern-day India. Even Rushdie notes with alarm the growing cases of Rushdie-itis that many seem to have caught.
Yes we need those big, loud, colourful voices, but we also need a range of styles that all have their own merits. Isn’t that what our ‘diversity’ is all about?
At least Chocolat was some poor British woman’s love affair with the French. The Mistress of Spices was written by someone who seems happy to view her country through a Cliffsnotes viewpoint.
And now it’s being translated into film for all to see. No doubt many of us will encounter it through people trying to highlight how ‘cosmpolitan’ they are in understanding Indians:
‘I lurrved Mistress of Spices! Indians are just sooo exotic! You’re so lucky to have all that colour and life and culture!!!’
Thanks writer and film-makers. Thanks a lot.
Hmm .. interesting that all of Aamir Khan’s latest movies involve brown boy/white girl relationships – maybe he’s living out a fantasy through his movies
Well, all his latest movies have to do with iconic personalities vis-a-vis pre-Independence India, so I think it’s fair to say he’s been typecast. Now, if he were to make lub to the white girl, that would be a different story…
yo, while i share much of your sentiment, i don’t agree with the conclusion. everyone here has a bit of writer in them — you had to write to post your comment, right? we’re making media right here right now by being at this site.
let a hundred flowers blossom.
peace
v true, siddhartha m. i stand corrected.
but what if some flowers are uuuugggglllyyy??? she whines.
oh well a little bit of everythin’ for all i guess.
yay for peace 🙂 please visit the right-wing areas of this blog and spread some there too…
tash, i’m cool with the right-wingers. most of them are good sports, and the one who’s on the mutiny core team is a smart dude (whom i still want to talk to us about immigration!)
it’s the self-haters i got problems with. yeah, i said it.
Hollywood’s white-guy/color-girl is wish fulfillment. AND, Bollywood’s brown-guy/FAIR-girl is wish fulfillment. (Indian fair or occasional but increasing white girl; while “dusky” women too often play second fiddle, or don’t get cast.)
In both industries, men generally are the financiers — and thus it’s their idea of beauty that gets made.
It’s true color-guy/white-girl is still a tough sell in mainstream audience America. But I think that gap is bigger in the minds of financiers than in reality. There IS some audience of people who would like to see other hues of humanity on the screen, but their wish fufilment doesn’t hit the mainstreem industry’s radar screen — because it’s not the wish fufilment of the money men.
Over time filmmakers bend their stories to meet what the financiers like/think/feel. I think it’s that simple. So, eg, even someone who as committed to multiculturalism as Chadha, is attached to direct I Dream of Jeannie.
(Btw, possible off, but i just saw a movie called Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0485513/) about an short, average Indian get married to a taller, lighter bride — and all the ensuing insecurities he feels in their new life together. Recommend it purely on the basis of how preciously rare it is to see emotions like that sensitively depicted on the screen.)
Finally, question…. Is there possibly less tolerance of Chadha’s mixing races since, as someone put it, MoS is her “third strike”? Does Aamir Khan’s mixing seem more acceptable simply because he’s been successful — with three hits (Lagaan, Mandel Pandey Rising, Rang De Basanti)? Or is it perhaps that his mixing raises fewer comments here because he’s not been so overtly trying to make “cross-over” films?
siddhartha m:
i’m not a self-hater! :-(… dunno if that was what u were saying.
also re: right winger comment. they are all good and very good to debate with, what i meant was that the right wing discussion goin on on this blog was getting v serious and sometimes its nice to just, as u said, have some flowers and peace. i’m not saying that these are impossible in a right-wing world, they were jst gettin hard to find in the ‘race aint first’ convo.
everyone does have a bit of a writer in them, but anyone who’s studied postcolonial and postmodern literature would say that it burns some of us to see some stereotypes being internalised and then regurgitated in all their colourful, ‘exotic’ glory.
i still kept goin’ through the book though, so guess maybe those spices ARE magical…maybe indian chick lit has more to it than i thought…
Sonia,
“Mangal Pandey” didn’t — the main romance was between Aamir Khan and Rani Mukherjee’s character, although there was a secondary romance between Toby Stevens and Amisha Patel’s character.
With regards to him “living out a fantasy” — well, maybe 😉 {although bear in mind that, unlike Gurinder Chadha, Aamir Khan is not actually making these films himself}…..Having said that, didn’t he supposedly have an affair with a white crew member during the making of “Lagaan”, which resulted in the birth of a child…..So perhaps this isn’t such a fictional scenario for him after all 😉
Zack,
You’ve made a good point, although I should clarify that I used the term “third strike” in the baseball sense just because this is the third film in a row where she’s deliberately focused on a white male-desi female romance, and whereas I was happy to cut her some slack and, as mentioned, even forcefully defend her after the first two movies, “MoS” just raised some questions in my mind as to what her underlying agenda is, if any.
Also, “Bend It…..” and “Bride & Prejudice” were both successful films, especially the former, so I don’t think we can necessarily define Ms Chadha as being “unsuccessful” in comparison with Aamir Khan — in fact, the opposite may well be true, at least in the sense of English-language “crossover” films.
I really don’t see what’s so wrong with them. I, for one, am not always in the mood to read a great piece of literature. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for some chick-lit and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Arranged Marriages by Chitra still is one of my favorite books, along with Crime and Punishment. Bring some variety into your life with mangoes and spices! (Well, in limited dosages)
of course i wasn’t, tashie. it was a random inflammatory comment — though at the same time, i did want to draw a distinction between those with well-argued “conservative” views, and those who, well, seem to have “issues” about their roots. clearly, neither of these describes you. shine on, lil’ kiwi sista, shine on.
peace
Holla! I think we found ChadhaÂ’s next screen-writing partner.
Whose God is it anyways –
True. I can digest the fact that parent’s spend 10K – 20K for ivy-school “coaching,” but I couldn’t digest Kaavya’s depiction of the Mehta’s. The Mehta’s apparently set up websites, encourage Opal to kiss, get wild oh.. and hide behind trees to watch Opal kiss a boy and take pictures of high school kids partying. So unreal.
no, you di-int!!!
Ha..I love it. Stop apologizing for it. I agree.
Tashie, You’re brave! And because I agree with you, I’ll throw my two cents in… I’m always wary of “new brilliant South Asian authors”. All too often, they seem to repeat the same tropes about desi culture over and over and over and I have to think that somewhere, there’s a quota that supports it. I do love, for example, Ice Candy Man or Midnight’s Children – and of course a large part of it has to do with their insight into desi culture – but those glimpses are such skillful tools in Sidwa’s or Rushdie’s hands and there’s such a complex political message that’s wrought from those images that you can see the intention and the point of what they’re doing. Novels like that are bigger than just a colourful tapestry of truisms. All too often though I feel like the
is just a way for second-rate writers to peddle thier wares of shiney new baubles. I always get asked if I’ve read the latest brown author and as much as I’d like to support a sister’s or brother’s efforts – yeesh. And then I have to spend a bunch of time qualifying everything I say because all of a sudden there’s a hurt or bewildered or just plain offended look in the other person’s eyes – like I’ve just trashed their daughter’s or spouse’s novel or something. But sometimes, no matter how exotic or recognizable-by-default the novel is, it it’s banal, it’s banal. I’ve stayed away from the Mistress of Spices exactly for that reason and since it made you want to eat your fist – perhaps I’ve made the right decision 🙂
ProgessiveTypeGuy,
Someone’s already beaten them to it. Aishwarya’s next English-language film is “Provoked” — and although it is based on a true story, and the issues concerned certainly need to be addressed, it’s yet another mainstream film which further perpetuates certain negative stereotypes, ie. of desi men being wife-beating misogynistic thugs.
Again, these matters definitely need to be publicised and the culprits condemned, but — as someone further up this thread already mentioned — the problem is the lack of a counterbalance with regards to correspondingly positive depictions of South Asian males.
The only film in recent years I can think of which didn’t show desi men as being jerks was the movie version of Meera Syal’s novel “Anita & Me”.
The thing is that everyone got a different definition of self-hater. I would say that someone who only wants to see sexism, colorism, prejudice in his own culture would have some issues with his identity.
Peace.
I just watched “A Fond Kiss” tonight and I was impressed. As a member of a white/brown relationship that was sunk by parental disapproval (on both sides) the movie rang very true to me.
i just wanna lend my voice to the “this is an awful book” chorus
and raise it to give love to the many many shades of brown
and to Siddhartha M for catching that blackstar reference on the Sepia Destiny thread
I have the same opinion. I love espresso.
That was Karate Kid Part II, KKIII was Daniel back in the states getting trained by evil sensei Terry Silver, to fight against his own competitor, Mike Barnes.