This past Sunday I went down to the University of Pennsylvania for a rare, open Q&A session with Kal Penn. As readers may remember from Anna’s earlier post on the subject, Penn is at Penn this spring, teaching a class on representations of Asian Americans in the Media. He’s also shooting episodes of “House” (go, House), and stumping for Obama in his free time, though with that schedule I’m not sure how he has any.
As I understand it, there was initially some controversy about the class — is this going to be a stunt, or a real asset to a the Asian American Studies curriculum?
If it were just about bringing a little glamor to campus, I would be skeptical too. But I think it’s fair to say Penn is both an actor and a careful observer of the representation of Desis in both Hollywood and the Indie film world. If you listen to him talk, it’s clear that he’s thought carefully and self-critically about his experiences and choices (he’s very aware that his role as a home-grown, Muslim-American terrorist on 24 might be seen as “problematic,” for instance — though he still defends the choice to take the role). He’s self-conscious enough to know what a racist representation of a South Asian character is, and call it by that name. But at the same time, he’s open about the fact that minority actors sometimes need to play ball to get an entree in Hollywood.
In response to one of the questions posed by a student at the Q&A Kal Penn effectively acknowledged that this was the dilemma he faced when he auditioned for his first Hollywood movie, “Van Wilder.” Unfortunately, Penn also suggested, in response to another question, that things aren’t all that much better even now, for actors who are just starting out:
“I think things for me personally as an artist have changed dramatically, but I know that overall, that change has been slow and incremental. There is no shortage of truly talented actors of South Asian descent in places like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London. There are folks who majored in theater, studied film, and are experiencing the same struggles I went through when I was starting out. I think that was my main point: things for me have begun to change, but things for others are perhaps remaining the same.” (Kal Penn, from an email)
For instance, Penn was asked not long ago to do an Indian accent for a small role he had in a big studio film, but the respectful rendition of an Indian accent he attempted on camera was found to be insufficiently comical by the studio. After the film was shot, the studio execs actually asked him to go back and re-dub his lines with a thicker, more comical accent. To his credit, Penn refused to do it — and there wasn’t really anything the studio people could do (the film was destined to flop in any case). As Penn put it in his answer to the question, “They were using racism to hide a bad script. Racism was their marketing strategy.”
(That last comment strikes me as dead on, but still distressing. It’s not that racism or sexism sneaks into scripts by accident — it might be that in some ways studios know this is exactly what they need to sell product…)
Penn pointed out that part of the problem is with the writers and studios that make this stuff — and note that the alternative to unfortunate images of Asians in the media is often the complete erasure of all people of color from the fantasy world presented on TV and in the movies. “Friends” and “Seinfeld” were both shows with all white casts, set, improbably, in New York, one of the most diverse cities in the world. In the Q&A, Penn asked, “How come there are no people of color in their New York City?”
But of course, it’s not totally irrelevant to this that most South Asians in the U.S. are professionally oriented — there aren’t many of us trying to be writers or media people. “We’re too busy trying to be doctors and engineers,” Penn suggested, to think of this as a serious career option. If more of us were in the business there might be fewer characters like Apu (or Taj Mahal Badalandabad), and more characters like Gogol Ganguli.
I also stood up to ask a question myself, about naming — since this is one of the things that some readers at Sepia Mutiny have sometimes grumbled about vis a vis Mr. Kalpen Modi (not to mention, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal…). My question was this: I completely understand why you chose a stage name when you were first starting out. But now that you’ve achieved a measure of success as an actor, have you considered going back to your given name?
Some parts of the answer were expected. For one thing, quite a number of professional actors use stage names. Penn did recount that he had been advised by friends to adopt a more “Anglo-sounding” name when he was first starting out. But he also mentioned something I hadn’t known about before, that “Indian uncles” had suggested that, based on Hindu numerology, it would be good luck for him to try and keep his real first name, but add an extra letter to it. And voila: Kalpen became Kal Penn.
As for whether Kal Penn might ever revert to his given name, not likely — once you started getting credited under one name, he suggested, it’s hard to change it. Still, on several of his recent films, he’s lobbied to get his real name introduced on the credits somewhere, perhaps as production assistant. On “The Namesake,” he was fittingly credited for Nikhil as “Kalpen Modi,” and for Gogol as “Kal Penn.”
50 · melbourne desi said
Not quite. While I ran in to some ignorance regarding it over the course of my life (it sounds unbelievable, but there are people of North Indian descent in California who are unaware that Kerala exists, let alone that it has Christians and THEN, that those Christians have been there for a while), to me, it appears to be a current, SM-specific issue, one born of frustration over Jindal.
Pre-Piyush, there was far less vitriol about having a white-washed name. Now, there is so much nastiness, it occasionally snatches up Christians (both ABD and DBD) along with it– though I don’t think some of the people who are upset mean to do that or realize that such blanket condemnation is often worded in a way so that what’s meant to be a dig at a politician can also be applied to Annas, Robs et al.
just to add to the name conundrum: our neighbor, a white midwestern lady in her 60s, asked if she could call my wife and I “Harry” and “Mary” instead of Harminder and Amrit. We thought it was quite sweet of her to be polite, and said, “sure”! Things aren’t much better in Singapore where we come from: Amrit’s become “Armpit” and I’ve been called “Hamidah”, which is a ladies name among South-east Asian Muslims!
It would be interesting to compare the experience of South Asians/other “brownies” in US media, with that of other minorities in Asian media, e.g. Indians in Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia, the Chinese in Indonesia, the backward castes in India, etc. Maybe there are some similarities…
My first day of medical school in Milwaukee-a second year student went to the podium and pulled random names from a basket to call people (from the freshman class) up and let them know they won something. Kind of a welcome to this school thing. My roommates were both brownies-Ashok and Devang (Andhra and Gujarat). First pronunciation of Ashok was AyShock! Some nervous laughter-then Ass-Hock then AssCock! Now people were rollin in aisles! Devang was called DeeWang.
For the next four years all the Indians in the class referred to them as ‘ The Wang’ and AssCock although all the white kids took pains to learn the proper pronunciations.
30 · Gruhasthu said
I’m glad you brought this up. Pre-Obama, can you imagine NBC’s The West Wing naming the president Hussein? No way. But now, it’s conceivable.
And on that point, Josiah Bartlet is good for Martin Sheen, but if Sydney Poitier had been cast, the writers probably would have named the character differently.
Now imagine if next time it’s an open casting call — and the president could be named anything.
I can see the point of changing a name for brevity (“Thomas Jeffrey Hanks”) or branding (“Brook Busey” –> “Diablo Cody”). And in some cases, it’s just plain better (“Thomas Cruise Mapother IV,” anyone?).
But given that Obama did make “Obama” mainstream, was it really necessary for desi actors to Anglocize their name in the past?
And looking to the future, given Obama, does any desi actor ever have to Anglocize their name going forward?
Not quite. While I ran in to some ignorance regarding it over the course of my life (it sounds unbelievable, but there are people of North Indian descent in California who are unaware that Kerala exists, let alone that it has Christians and THEN, that those Christians have been there for a while)
I’m one person of North Indian descent that well aware that Kerala exists, and that it has a large christian population. It is also the home of the parents of the greatest desi-american of all time. None other then the great Kim Thayil.
In fact I wish that the immigrants from North India were more like the people from Kerala who comes to the west.
lol will he be teaching this class next year?? cuz my friend got into U Penn, lol.
And see, those people who say that are lumping all of South Asian descent into one category: if so-and-so who has no other connection to you than a (supposedly) common cultural/racial identity exhibits behavior X, so should you.
I like Rahul´s answer, or alternatively you could insist on calling them a Desi name of your choice.
54 · Zacko said
Exactly. What Obama’s campaign for presidential nomination is doing to non-mainstream names/people is one of the key reasons I am so enamored with the great Hussein. But, my unfortunate obsession with my Indian passport is not letting me convert that into a vote for the good guy.
I was therefore trying to use this name related logic on my wife whose voice does count on election day, but she told me off saying ‘it ain’t your vote and you ain’t a woman.
This naming issue is completely overblown. Go to India and you’ll see a great diversity of names. Bobby and Sunny Deol are really Ajay and Vijay. The old actor Dilip Kumar is really Yusuf Khan. There are actors with mixed Hindu and muslim names such as Sanjay Khan or even muslim christian names like Suzanne Khan. As far as Bobby Jindal goes, I don’t completely believe his Brady Bunch story. Why didn’t he choose Greg or Peter. Why Bobby? Because Bobby is a common Punjabi nickname. Most likely his name change to Bobby coincided with his Brady Bunch infatuation and this is the story he tells.
59 · vardaan said
One person’s mole hill is another person’s mountain.
I don’t think you can talk about these two in the same breath. The Deols went with Bobby and Sunny more likely out of their own volition and probably to sound more modern (again, the whole western-name-modern-prerequisite question). Yusuf Khan had to go with Dilip Kumar to get into Hindi film industry.
I have an issue with both these types of name changes, but more with the later because of the ‘pressured into’ aspect.
That’s it from me on this. I am tired of talking about this too much plus my OCD is starting to show. Later all!
Regarding anglicising names. Ben Kinglsley changed his name from Krishna Bamji. A few other desi actors have done the same. But Parminder Nagra and others seem to do OK now so maybe it’s not so bad as it used to be.
But anyway, I read somewhere that Pakistani celebrities and actresses sometimes change their names to more ‘Hindu sounding’ names like Meera because they are so enamoured of Bollywood.
Another example of an Anglocized name: Mindy Kaling from The Office Her real name is Vera Chokalingam.
Vera sounds like a perfectly valid Anglo name? It’s prettier too.
Heh, talking about names reminds me of this article:
http://sidin.blogspot.com/2004/05/travails-of-single-south-indian-men-of.html
My family regularly refers to our neighbor, John, as Janrao or Janardhan.
the anglicized name thing is an interesting one for me. i’m bengali/bangladeshi and having done the middle east childhood thing and american adolescence thing, i decided to jettison my “muslim” name (which my molobi-shaheb told me wasn’t a decent muslim name anyways) for my bengali name… well a short form that was little bit less difficult to pronounce. all my cousins think i’m totally weird for using my “secret” name with all these non-family people. i didn’t switch over to be more mainstream, its still not an anglicized name by any standard and is frequently misspelled and mispronounced. i just think the process of defining oneself is powerful, and i think that’s something every minority kid goes through in their own way, and the journey is mediated by any number of things (for me it was growing up in the middle east and then america, not having an accent, being too brown for the americans and not brown enough for the rest of my “community”) switching over names wasn’t the catch-all that figured out all my stuff, but it meant a lot because it felt like i chose it. for minority kids who don’t feel like they fit any of the molds, its nice to make any stand for oneself. look, i’d love to go off and be an actor, but my family would literally laugh me out of the room, so props to kal…
Did anyone mention about this video from youtube yet? Its from a British show called Goodness Gracious Me and is about changing of names.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0oXPotfT_I
isn’t it obvious why a name change matters?
those who change their names to something more “palatable” want to “fit in”, in essence, they want to assimilate (or at the very least they want less of a hassle being “other”). whether that helps them assimilate and at what cost is another set of questions.
Obviously your parents lovingly named you yuckwheat. To even think of a namechange is blasphemy!
I think the name change with Kal Penn is a total non issue. Many white performers have changed their name more than that.(Let’s give props to Arnold Swarzenegger for sticking with his name) And Kalpen’s changed name is at least part of his real name. Besides, I see a lot more of a sellout in Bollywood where Indian actors have names like Bobby, Chunky, Binky, Slinky, Twinky, whatever.
I would give him the benefit of doubt because he has succeeded in the nice balance of acting in non Indian American, Indian American, and Indian roles without distancing himself from any of them. He went mainstream with Harold and Kumar but he still did The Namesake. He is acting in roles where he is either Jewish(some Ben Affleck movie) or some undetermined origin(Superman, House). I think he has a good sense of balance in his roles(hell he even did the atrocious Epic MOvie).
hey don’t get it twisted, i’m not saying it’s wrong to change your name for whatever reason BUT if you choose to anglicize/americanize your name, you’re doing it for reasons that have to do with fitting in, making your life easier in western society…
like it or not you can’t get around that, so that’s what makes it an “issue”.
see i’m changing my name all of the time…ha
Just curious if anyone knows whether Chinese and other Asian cultures went through similar issues when they Anglicized their 1st names? I know they came here over a century before Desis, but hey, everyone was an immigrant at one point or another.
When I worked at a University, almost ALL the applicants from East Asia had a Western 1st name thrown in there. Why is there no stigma in their cultures but it exists amongst South Asians?
Incidentally, do Desis in the UK have the same problems, or is their “Westernization” more accepted since they’ve been integrated into the culture longer?
hey don’t get it twisted, i’m not saying it’s wrong to change your name for whatever reason BUT if you choose to anglicize/americanize your name, you’re doing it for reasons that have to do with fitting in, making your life easier in western society…
like it or not you can’t get around that, so that’s what makes it an “issue”.
But what’s wrong with wanting to fit in, to make my life easier in Western society? I still fail to see why people who choose to Americanize their names are being vilified as some traitor to Desis everywhere. Incidentally, I would change my name in a heartbeat if my mother wasn’t so deadset against it.
74 · Twit said
Well, what wouldn’t you change to “fit in”?
Did you ever wonder why your mother is so deadset against it?
It’s a matter of ethnic pride. Right or wrong is really irrelevant, that’s up for you to decide personally, but it should be understandable why some people including your mother would have a problem with it. Their ethno-cultural identity matters to them, that’s why.