Shekhar Kapur has made the worst advertisement ever, for Schweppes. It stars Nicole Kidman, Arjun Rampal, Rubina Ali (the little girl from Slumdog Millionaire), the Lake Palace at Udaipur, and a thick, dripping heap of tacky, pseudo-sensual, Orientalist ambience. I think it’s sort of meant to be ironic, but the irony doesn’t really work:
What is the thing you hate most about it? I’d like to compile a complete list and send it to the man.
I used to really admire Shekhar Kapur, for Masoom, The Bandit Queen and for the first Elizabeth. More recently, I started to think something something had gone wrong when my wife and I wasted one of our rare babysitter nights to go see the half-baked Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Now, after watching this ad, I think I’ll abstain from Shekhar Kapur (and probably also Schweppes) entirely.
Love how the ‘Indian fair skin obsession’ gets shoe-horned into every conversation.
the person who made that comment is Prema and she’s well-known to twist everything South Asian as a negative to the point of making out lies. I thought the comment was stupid, but I’m glad you said what you did and you’re right, Indians like the Indian light skin, which is reflected in the mostly Indian bollywood stars and many members of our own family, north to south.
My sociology professor told me that a bias towards fair skin comes about in countries where being out in the sun is associated with poverty (having to work outside = manual labor.)
Apparently Americans didn’t start being all about bronzed skin until the 60s when laborers started spending more time indoors. Once that happened then getting a tan indicated that you had spare time to enjoy leisure and go outside rather than indicating that you’re too uneducated to get a job away from the sun.
Then again, I think my opinion of sociology as a discipline is well documented on this board. So take that with a grain of salt.
There may be something to it. I have observed my people (Telugu farming class) getting lighter skinned as generations go by and we make the transition from working the fields to working in AC rooms (which also translates into transitioning from monsoon-dependent low income levels to consistent high income levels).
Now conversely, I have also seen dark skin being lauded, in my grandpa’s case, as a sign of hardworking nature (“yeah, he is dark. What do you expect? He is out in the fields every freaking day”). But he may be an exception. People in general loved him. He was 6’4″ – built like a tree trunk and could charm the pants of a whole town.
Please, say wheatish!
This reminded me so much of Baz Luhrmann’s awful colonialist-fantasy “Walkabout” ad that I had to double-check that Nicole Kidman wasn’t in that one, too. The hands of a small brown child can save you too, pretty white lady! Barf.
I wonder, though — does the context make a difference here? I see this as really Orientalist in part because I know it was made for/aired in France. Would it come across as Orientalist if it was made for/aired in India?
Wheatish!
Hope that did it for you.
Shekhar, keep it up! What the man does well is create a textural sensuality. Elizabeth II was a lame storyline but you’ve got to admit it was beautifully shot. You feel the scratch of a ruff against your neck or the varied textures of the brocades under your finger tips.
The man can tell a sensorial story and with this ad, what’s done so well is how he lit Kidman in a way that made everything around her stand out and not her. Your eye catches the colors, the sequins, the curve in the architecture. She’s almost hard to look at (thus the negative comments about her paleness, I guess). And with keeping Rampal in darkened silhouette, then half light and then in full aching view – dmn! I don’t want Scweppes I want Rampal! Let’s hear it ladies. I can’t be the only one. And I liked the irreverent ending with Kidman swigging a wine cooler. ah memories! I can taste the peach fizzies and smell the polo blue…
rampal’s definitely one good looking dude. much better than tom cruise who’s getting goofier by the minute. i used to think kidman was butt but now she’s suddenly attractive and i don’t know why. must be the best cosmetic surgery ever b/c its unnoticable. she looks sharper and more sophisticated, which goes well with her affectation.
i wouldn’t be surprised if rampal ends up bagging her soon. he comes from the land of the kamasutra you know.
You can’t blame Shekhar if it was made for the French market. The French require that all matters that touch on issues of diversity be totally nonsensical. Really. It’s in their constitution.
“Apparently Americans didn’t start being all about bronzed skin until the 60s when laborers started spending more time indoors.”
It started a little earlier than that. In the second decade of the 20th century, with a transitional economy where the bulk of the workforce was increasingly indoors, and often sedentary, most of the time. Beaches became the place to go and fewer clothes could be worn there than any time in known history. Naturally the sign of leisure was to have spent time on the beach, or engaged in some outdoor sport. The rich and famous led this change. The last Czarina of Russia, shortly before the end of the family around 1917, was baffled at the “new fashion” of her daughters deliberately exposing their faces to the sun while they were on the train to Siberia. They couldn’t have gotten too far with those tans. I get that the Indian concept of “fair” is a relative one, as is the traditional Hollywood evocation of the tall, “dark” and handsome leading man, who would hardly be considered dark by most of the world. Just wondering though–are Indians ever rejected (by other Indians) as grooms or brides for being too pale? Do they face social discrimination? I’ve seen some whose coloring is hardly different from some Europeans. I guess they’d be considered odd in India. I’ve wondered about this and been embarrassed to ask my desi friend about it. She’d probably feel she’d have to say something to be polite. I once worked with a very nice, Christian Indian. One of her brothers needed a wife, so she was on the look out–or was it a husband for her sister? I forget–it’s been years. Anyway, I mentioned an Indian Christian I’d met, who I thought might be a good candidate based on the slim list of traits I’d been given for consideration. However, she kept asking “what’s his (or her) LOOK”. I didn’t get it at first, but then I realized she wanted to know the color. She wasn’t prejudiced–her sister-in-law, of whom she was very fond, was a white American–but I guess there are just certain expectations that must be adhered to.
If only I’d happened on this blog at the time, to facilitate cultural understanding, I could have answered with confidence, “wheatish of course.”
I found the ad incredibly creepy, because the last Kidman movie I considered going to see (and didn’t) was The Golden Compass, where she plays Mrs. Coulter–the head of the Gobblers organization which kidnaps children with promises of treats (especially poor children and street children) and does awful things to them. That was one of the last big releases she was in, and it makes the Rubina Ali juxtaposition super creepy, especially in light of no plot and the bizarre snub of the gorgeous Mr. Rampal.
is there no end to hollywood’s liberal bias?
It was very funny reading through all the comments…and some of them gave me a good laugh. After I saw the second ad, I felt that we can conclude whether this makes sense or not if somebody can translate exactly what was being said in french. Was it about beating the hot summer by gulping some nice cold drinks ?
Q: What did you expect? Me: It looked like memsaab was rushing for a bathroom break.
Seems like also some reference to her role in Australia as the noble white woman who loved the brown child…substitute Indian for aborigine….and voila! Schweppes ad!
62: liberal bias? The name Mrs. Coulter comes from the British novels the movie is based on; the first novel (and Mrs. Coulter’s appearance) was first published in 1995, well before Anne Coulter had a conservative media career, let alone any reputation in England. Don’t jump to conclusions.
“My sociology professor told me that a bias towards fair skin comes about in countries where being out in the sun is associated with poverty (having to work outside = manual labor.)”
Your sociology professor must be speaking of more homogeneous societies where skin colour is not a function of ethnicity. I think you have black boxed yourself in a convenient model and have not really tried to understand racial and colour prejudices as they exist on the ground in India. I pray its that and not some ideology induced denial. The difference in Indian skin tones is clearly a result of different ethnicities than a result of a ‘tan’, and the Indian elites are well aware of it in having attuned their prejudices against any darker underclass, and these prejudices get passed on as negative stereotypes. Talking of normative samples and not the sophistry using exceptions – the evidence is overwhelming that upper castes are lighter skinned as compared to the so called lower castes.
Also, please note its not exact to say ‘fair skin’ enjoys an exalted position in Indian consciousness as much as fair skinned with marked Caucasian features. The porcelain skinned North-easterners for example are treated worse than animals by the northern Indians (to the degree of being dehumanized) Racism and colour prejudice tends to decrease from the North to South, Punjab to Tamil Nadu, any observant native will attest to that.
Multiple genetic studies (including studies of Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA) have shown that there is no such thing as a “separate Dravidian race.” The only distinct ethnicities in South Asia are the Balochi, Brahui, Burusho, Hazara, Kalash, Pathan and Sindhi peoples.
Yes, this is true in India too. People will stay out of the sun there because they don’t want to get darker. So even though kola-nut-techie says its due to ethnicities in India, still, regardless what your natural skin tone be, if you hang in the sun, it will get darker. And darker skin is associated with “lower classes” in India, despite the fact that all classes run the gamut of skin tones. And Indian people who do labor long hours in the sun, do in fact, get darker than if they would not to be in the sun.
Or course people who are naturally dark and do not labor in the sun will be dark no matter what, but they will be trained from young childhood NOT to stay in the sun lest they become even darker.
Sometimes dark skinned Indians are said to “look like labor class”. That statement is un-pc on so many levels, but the East is not hung up on pc-ness like the West is, not yet anyway.
I finally saw the ad on French TV. All that raw footage has been happily edited –the incomprehensible slave girl is gone and Udaipur and Arjun are just an exotic silhouette. It’s rather nice if you know the “what did you expect” reference or like to be reminded of exotic Udaipur–a favorite French destination in India.
It’s possible they will re-edit and use other parts of the shoot later in the year. The George Clooney Nespresso ads, for instance, have many different versions. They make a lot more sense but just as with the Nicole ad, those ads are also only about the extremely sexy George Clooney.
Whoever would pass up a kiss from Arjun for a sugary soda needs to have their head examined. And the cliched sitar music … arrgghhh, my ears, my ears.