One of the difficulties in being a non-Christian in a predominantly Christian country is the relentless onslaught of Christmas jingles you hear around this time of the year. The latest culprit in my mindspace is the JCPenney’s ad featuring Bing Crosby’s voice and Fatboy Slim’s beats, which makes for a ridiculously catchy breakbeat version of “Here Comes Santa Claus” (via Tamasha). Earlier, we talked about “Songs for the Sleepless”; this is more like “songs for the hyper-caffeinated.”
The “original” video to the Fatboy Slim song is here, but it’s so bad I actually prefer this Youtube-ified anime remake.
Speaking of Youtube and Fatboy Slim, I was reading a Jon Pareles article about the phenomenon over the weekend, and thinking about the possible desi connections. The paragraph that stood out to me was this one:
In the process, another thing users generate is back talk. Surfing YouTube can be a survey of individual reactions to pop culture: movie and television characters transplanted out of their original plots or synched to improbable songs, pop hits revamped as comedy or attached to new, unauthorized imagery. (Try searching for Justin Timberlake on YouTube to see all the variations, loving and snide, on his single “Sexyback.”) (link)
While Youtube has millions of teenagers doing dance karaoke with varying levels of skill, as far as I can tell the current younger generation of desis hasn’t really taken advantage of it as much as one might expect. Part of the problem, of course, is that there aren’t really very many iconic desi figures to “personalize” (or travesty) to begin with. Probably the biggest mainstream western pop hit by any desi artist, ever, was Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha.” Though it’s now been nearly a decade since it came out, the song even holds up today, though admittedly the upbeat Fatboy Slim version of it is superior to the original mix of the song. Just as one would expect with any pop song, there are quite a number of personalized karaoke versions of “Brimful of Asha” up at Youtube. My “favorites”:
- Two guys dressed as waiters. Imaginative dancing, energy, and a clear concept.
- A caucasian family having quality time with the camcorder. The kids are cute, though the whole thing’s a little self-indulgent.
- A pop punk band attempts a cover. Not half bad, though he gets the lyrics wrong.
- Brimful of Dogs. Professional mash-up of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and “Brimful of Asha.”
- Generic suburban white kids. “We were bored, so we made this video”
- Starts slow, gets better. Your basic, “I was sitting at my cube, now watch me go crazy” video.
What strikes me about these and the others I’ve seen is the fact that they’re basically all white kids (and some parents), and as far as I can tell there’s no awareness of the significance of the song, its subject (i.e., Asha Bhosle), or the idea of second generation nostalgia for classic Hindi film music. (Here is a nice old blog post on the song lyrics at Kuro5hin)
All of which is really too bad, because in a way, the song itself, “Brimful of Asha,” is a rock n roll version of exactly the kind of thing Jon Pareles is talking about, albeit in a different medium: it’s an individual reaction to a pop phenomenon, which itself became a pop phenomenon. “She’s the one that keeps the dream alive,/ From the morning, past the evening, till the end of the light.” It was filmi music that kept the dream alive for lots of people during the rough times back in the 1970s, and this catchy guitar pop song — which is not even remotely filmi — is an idiosyncratic attempt to celebrate it.
So here’s what we need: really good Youtube video versions of desi pop artifacts that suggest that the people doing nutty things in front of a camera actually understand the music they’re having fun with. (Perhaps it’s out there already — readers, do enlighten.)
What multi-pronged siege? What wall? I’m confused.
“What multi-pronged siege? What wall? I’m confused” My apologies then. The implication was that there should be acceptance of exogamy, otherwise it led to folks becoming areligious. My point is “there is nothing wrong with that”. I would actually prefer to see that happen than the rise of Hindutva. But I cannot help but see that there is a point to the Hindutva that Westerners seem to label as “jingoism” or “nationalism” without taking the time to understand its origins.
Amardeep: I don’t see the self-hatred in Curry N Rice girl, at all. I mean, what? What’s self-hating about that? Are we never to comment on our lives, honestly, even if that includes seeing humor in certain situations?
What I was saying was that if intermarriage was such a big deal because it leads to people becoming areligious then more acceptance would decrease that possibility. I agree, being a areligious is not necessarily a bad thing, but many people see it as one. But anyway, I was talking about Jews, not Hindus.
desishiksa,
i tend to think that the arrow of causality flows the way you suggest, that the less ‘religious tend to intermarry. i think the only way for jews to accept intermarriage is to acknowledge that the united states is a multiconfessional state where creedal assertions are the hallmark of religions and that personal choice is paramount. but jews don’t view judaism that way, the reformed movement has shifted more toward the idea of ‘peoplehood’ as opposed ‘just a religion’ in the 20th century (they repudiated national peoplehood in the 19th century as a move toward becoming another denomination). i don’t care if jews exist or not into the future, i simply believe that judaism as we know it in the united states (e.g., the range between ‘cultural jews’ and the haredi) necessitates a level of ethnic consciousness which intermarriage tends to dilute.
IIT Madras Video 🙂
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5076726029835117895&q=iit+madras
Wow..this statement kind of bugs me……would you appreciate a non Hindu or non Sikh in India saying : One of the difficulties of being in a non-Hindu in a Hindu country is the relenteless onslaught of loudspeaker bhajans during Ganpati, Navratri etc….
Its no big deal, I grew up Christian in India, we had daily bhajans blaring round the corner, azaan ringin out,I suppose I should have been bugged or scarred , worried about assimilation and what not..guess what ..we accepted it as part of growing up in a diverse country.
Why do Americans insist on overanalyzing every little thing..in India,festivals are one of the better manifestations of India’s secular culture. Hindu festivals are a blast..Diwali, Holi etc ..I don’t recall having any identity issues while bursting crackers or throwing water balloons…I just don’t get not celebrating Christmas as a way to not assimilate..is your culture so fragile that a Christmas tree is going to lead to assimilation?…
IC, I agree with you…I was also going to ask Amardeep why Christmas carols were really such a big difficulty.
desishiksa,
Having a Christmas tree is lifestyle change, and any change that brings you closer to your host culture is a form of assimilation, whether it’s a conscious change or not. Look, I’m not arguing for or against non-Christians celebrating it, but I think it’s the very definition of assimilation; discourse on whether Christmas is theistic or not is besides the point. Thanksgiving is fairly secular and many Europeans in the U.S. don’t bother celebrating it. Whether someone undertakes a change boils down to costs and benefits. The cost is overcoming inertia. The benefits are all the social benefits of participating in a community event. In hindsight, another cost is losing some of the social benefits of participating in the counter-community event of quiescence. Having many Jewish friends and such, I found, for my life, the costs of changing outweighed the benefits.
IC,
I suspect you don’t recall having any identity issues because your parents might have participated in it as well? The idea of “change” is the difference between parents (in the general sense including all sources of one’s memes) and child. If, for example, Hindu parents started celebrating Christmas, I doubt that the child would have any identity issues concerning it because it’s not a voluntary change brought upon by conscious decision-making; rather, Christmas becomes a meme inherited through its parents. The people most likely to feel awkward around the Christmas season are those who did not inherit the Christmas meme and have refrained from consciously deciding to begin participating in it. I would suspect that Americans, Christian or not, who are on an involuntary trip to India would embrace Holi or any other festivals that would require them to overcome a fair amount of inertia. Even non-theistic changes like wearing a dhoti would frighten many non-Indians.
…would suspect that Americans, Christian or not, who are on an involuntary trip to India would not embrace Holi or a…
Amitabh (and IC), they aren’t. In fact, this post was meant to be somewhat humorous. I thought the references to advertising jingles and so on might have signaled that I’m not really bothered by Christmas, except in the way one is always slightly maddened by persistent advertising jingles of any sort. (And there has never been a better advertising jingle than “Here Comes Santa Claus”)
If I were really bothered, I would have approached this topic quite differently — I might have said more about the Sikh tradition and so on. Instead, I focused on Brimful of Asha, Youtube, and Fatboy Slim.
One could, if inclined, say that the continuing exclusion of non-Western religious orthopraxy on the one hand and the overarching hegemony of alleged Western religions such as Christianity — itself a neo-enlightenment hybrid of orthodox formalized post-pagan Roman imperial theology and trans-European, proto-Middle Eastern pagan traditions — is symptomatic of the institutionalized American bias towards the ongoing neo-European domination of continental North American society and the associated intraborder culture along with the deliberate “Otherification”, if you will, of so-called Eastern religions and cultural practices, resulting in the latter’s exotification, exotificationization, and dare I say it, even exotificationalizationism at the hands of those in the dominant societal spheres with a pro- and anti-Orientalist bias respectively. The legacy of this mindset is to culturally and psychologically castrate the South Asian man with regards to his functioning within the United States, resulting in a self-created, self-perpetuating cycle of self-hatred due to the entrenched power dynamics heavily biased towards The Man, which in turn both objectifies and oppresses South Asian women both assimilated & unassimilated, integrated & non-integrated, at the hands of both mainstream American society as a whole and, internally — especially with regards to those deliberately and/or involuntarily perpetuating endogamic practices — continues to impose misogynistic attitudes and behaviours, often perpetrated and self-stereotyped by the women themselves as a result of the heavily-reinforced orthodox patriacharal South Asian societal/cultural superstructure.
And that is why some desis react weirdly at the notion of celebrating Christmas while others don’t.
And why Rudolph’s big red nose is an insidious emblem of the continuing tyrannisation of brown folk everywhere by “whitey”.
Haha man, you guys took my fairly lighthearted “gee isn’t this odd” comment and ran with it…
Jai Singh, that was hilarious!!! thanks for popping the bubble:). Now I need to get back to listening to christmas jingles and promise to be naughty, not nice.
The Turnip,
I’d thank you for your response, but I’m worried that I’d be accused by some of our more politically-astute commenters of being self-referentially self-congratulatory and thereby being a non-cognisant participant in the various psycho-social paradigms encapsulated within post #62.
While we’re on this topic, what’s all this crap about “White Christmas ?”. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas ” ??? “Let’s hope we have a white Christmas this year, it would be so festive” ??? What the hell is all that about ? What’s wrong with having a Brown Christmas ?
Why does it have to be “white” ? What’s next — Santa Claus sliding down chimneys and planting burning crosses in front of the fireplace ?!
It’s institutionalised oppression and racism, I tell ya…..You gotta keep an eye out on these things, cos whitey’s a sneaky fellow and he’ll do just about anything to keep you down nods head sagely
Vat! Jaisingh, my understanding about ‘white’ christmas has to do with snow, not race if that’s what you mean. I mean what with Santa Claus is cold-gear, reindear, sledge-buggy etc. and you don’t got snow? I’m sure this has to do with the christian celebrations in the cold climates. By contrast, I don’t think I’ve heard of that term in Christian households or schools in hot and humid India.
Jai Singh, brown christmas! horrible visions spring to mind. I am sure the Aussies look forward to a white and gold christmas – white foam and gold ale. i vote for converting the designation “brown” to “golden”. aren’t our indian beauties golden? i dare say, with that conversion we would then have a colorful designation. the things that spring to mind it was a golden letter day we had a golden christmas golden sunday cricketers wear gold goldi (not gori)
what? and I am supposed to feed this guy cookies and milk? there is going be a fire roaring in my lovely natural wood burning fireplace this winter. Thanks for wising me upto this “institutionalised oppression and racism” Jai! I would just like to see him sliding down and taking all the credit for the gifts that I have to buy and plant in his stead.
While we are at it, isn’t St. Patrick’s day pretty racist too? What if you don’t like green?
It always pains me to see non christian desi families, especially those with younger kids, putting up Christimas trees and decorations so that their kids don’t get left out… Sometimes I wish Christmas was much more religious so that we don’t have an excuse to participate.
Chitrana,
That’s a damn good point. It’s a blatant European stratagem to misappropriate the sanctity of the colour green in Islam and thereby disenfranchise the latter’s monopoly and authority over this area. Even more heinous that St. Patrick’s Day is frequently combined with copious amounts of alcohol consumption. All this is tangible evidence of the ongoing Neo-ZioNazi conspiracy and is definitely worthy of a fatwa or three.
The Turnip,
It gets even worse. Why are there no brown elves ? Hell, why is Santa Claus white ? Why do they think the world’s children need free handouts from some old white dude shacked up with a bunch of vertically-challenged squeaky-voiced Scandinavians in the North Pole ? And what’s all this crap about “good children vs bad children” ? Why should brown children be judged according to highly-subjective standards of morality skewed by a post-modern neo-Christian neo-European ethical framework ?
Seeker,
It all depends on whether you think I’m actually being serious about all this 😉
chitrana: Why should it pain you that some people put up Christmas trees for their kids? If you are a Christian growing up in India, in a state with few Christians, don’t you think you will end up celebrating some Hindu holidays? Anyway, some people are not that religious so it doesn’t matter to them. My family wasn’t particularly religious, so why should we stress ourselves out over this stuff? Or are you kidding, like jaisingh? The problem with PC-speak is that is has so jumped the shark you can’t tell real from fake anymore. Sort of like that contest where a professor submitted a fake article to a Po-Mo journal and it got accepted.
Ah oui, the Sokal affair. I had to read Fashionable Nonsense for a calculus course but that prof was militantly opposed to the notion that the humanities add any value to life.
This is only part kidding, at least for me. I would like to see my kids believing in Santa and the innocence of it all simply because that is the metaphor they are growing up with. Children need something to look forward to and believe in, in a world where everything is rational and scientific. However the alternate problem that Chitrana has expressed is that if I deliberately set out making my kids think about whether a being like Santa can exist, in the eyes of some, I could be seen as anti-christian, when really I am anti-religious. It would have been easier for me, living in India, to gently poke fun at Ganesha and Krishna without being seen as anti something because I am Hindu. So yes, unfortunately, I cave in to the whole Christmas thing, because it is just easier and because, well, it is a whole lot of fun and I had my Deepavali, let them have their Christmas with friends. Why take the fun out of Christmas? There is time enough for that when the grow up:-) Actually, I do like the fact that Christmas is not so blatantly religious, because that was exactly how Deepavali was for me. It was all about good food, adults who did not care if I did not do my homework, lots of fireworks, new clothes and pure fun. I doubt most kids from India including me delved into the history of Deepavali and all that business of Ravana etc…Why spoil the myths with morals and religiousness?
Hey, thanks for the thoughtful reply, the Turnip (why oh why didn’t I come up with a more blog interesting handle?). I guess my parents solved this by stopping the christmas tree when we were old enough to know ‘better.’ And, I don’t really celebrate it except in the most secular way. I like Thanksgiving.
I wasn’t kidding actually. My concern isn’t so much with celebrating Christmas but rather with celebrating Christmas as an alternative to traditional holidays. When I was growing up, my parents used to put up a Christmas tree and I even got gifts but we rarely even acknowledged Diwali or Ugadi except for a passing request by mom to go pray for a little bit.
Also, where do you draw the line? Easter is almost as secularized as Christmas but I don’t see too many of us celebrating it.
I cave in too, I agree kids shouldn’t be left out and at least then don’t have to worry so much about the awkward question of “You don’t celebrate Christmas do you?” The point I was trying to make was that we do get roped in exactly because it is has largely become secular and assimilation is important.
parody of “ek din bik jayega’
Ek din mar jaayega Kutte ki mauth ghar wale keh jaayenge margaya madar chod
maa chod… behen chod…
i want more of this kind