Last Friday my boyfriend and I went to the theater to watch The Social Network, a movie that tells the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of the ubiquitous social media site. The film itself was fantastic – cleverly told, with fast-paced, witty dialogue and a group of young, talented actors. To nobody’s surprise, it garnered excellent reviews and made a respectful first-place opening at the box-office. But one detail did bother me – and many others that I spoke with – the fact that the only major minority character in the film, Indian-American Divya Narendra, was played by Italian-American Max Minghella. For all this talk of desis representing in American television today, film roles for brown folks playing actual brown characters seem to be few and far between. Or is just my imagination? Need another recent example? Guess who’s playing Parsi, Indian-born Farrokh Bulsara aka Freddie Mercury in the new biopic about Queen? English actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Okay, so a white guy can play a brown guy — but when’s the last time you saw a brown guy playing John Lennon?
Sure, when it comes to casting, you can’t always get it right. (For instance, take a look at the actual Narendra who is wayyyy cuter than his screen twin.) And I’m sure Mr. Minghella and Mr. Cohen are fine, fine actors who will do justice to their brown counterparts. No doubt Hollywood directors feel with a big-budget film like the Queen biopic, it makes sense to go with a tried-and-true actor like Cohen over a relatively unknown desi actor. But what about minor roles like Narendra’s. There are plenty of unemployed brown actors with a similar pedigree who could do justice to Narendra’s role as well.
It may be time for a good old letter writing campaign. It worked for television, didn’t it?
According to Karen Narasaki, who heads the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, the rise in primetime Asians is also the result of advocacy. Her organization and its partners have been working with the networks to develop diversity initiatives for the past decade, ever since 1999’s infamously “whitewashed” primetime season, in which not a single freshman show had a leading minority character.
What did you folks think? Did the casting in The Social Network bother you? Why or why not?
Photo Credit: Guest of a Guest
Indian-American Divya Narendra, was played by Italian-American Max Minghella.
max minghella’s mother is carolyn choa, born in hong kong, and going by photos at least eurasian (she could be just plain cantonese too, i’m not that clued into physiognomy of this sort, believe it or not not). so though he is italian-american, he is also asian american.
Guess who’s playing Parsi, Indian-born Farrokh Bulsara aka Freddie Mercury in the new biopic about Queen? English actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Okay, so a white guy can play a brown guy — but when’s the last time you saw a brown guy playing John Lennon?
baron cohen’s mother is a persian jew. and genetically ashkenazi jews are substantially middle eastern as well (his father is ashkenazi). in terms of physical appearance freddie mercury is clearly what i like to term contextually-brown. freddie mercury is white, farrokh bulsara is brown. i, on the other hand am not contextually brown. razib khan is brown. robert kahn is still brown (i’d be assumed to be an indian kid adopted by a white jewish family). if salman rushdie was sal ribello he’d be white 🙂 sasha baron cohen looks a whole lot more like freddie mercury than most south asians. i understand physical appearance isn’t the only variable, but this reality needs to be stated in the case of white-looking-brown-people.
but when’s the last time you saw a brown guy playing John Lennon?
this is fair. but note that light-skinned half-browns like ben kingsely and norah jones regularly play white characters (rhona mitra, 1/4 bengali, never plays non-whites). there are white, black, latino, polynesian, and east asian, actors who can credibly play some brown (south asian) people because we’re a physically diverse group. i think we should be careful about making essentialist/authenticity arguments about casting, because that’s where we’d need to go because there are many people who “look indian” even if they aren’t.
No doubt Hollywood directors feel with a big-budget film like the Queen biopic, it makes sense to go with a tried-and-true actor like Cohen over a relatively unknown desi actor. But what about minor roles like Narendra’s. There are plenty of unemployed brown actors with a similar pedigree who could do justice to Narendra’s role as well.
i think this is a really valid point. but from what i have heard connections matter a lot in showbiz. minghella and cohen both have connections which allows them to “get their foot in the door,” and keep others out. that’s really the main issue. the romantic leads may be assigned to some extent purely through meritocracy of good looks and luck, but a lot of the supporting casts crystallize through nepotism.
clarification on max minghella.
1) his mother is ethnic chinese & scottish born in hong kong
2) his father is is half english, and italian and scottish (the surname comes from an ancestor who left lazio)
3) his father was born in england, as was he
so, he’s not italian american. he’s an english actor who happens to have italian, english, scottish, and chinese ancestry. i guess it is a warning not to judge a book by its cover or title (name).
Fair points, Razib, you’ve clearly done your research.
But casting a Part-Chinese actor to play an Indian isn’t any better than casting a white actor.
e.g. Many fans were upset by the white-washed main cast of Shymalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. The casting of Indian actor Dev Patel for one of the lead East Asian roles did nothing to appease them.
Great article, Phillygrrl!
Yup, it’s called something like above line package. Basically, the financiers want a guarantee on their investment and the stronger your package, the more money you’re likely to get. In this case Sacha Baron Cohen has made films that generate a large box office return and they’ll be counting on the large Queen fan base to bring in the remainder of the revenue – a particularly good package as it will mean two very different audiences.
Plus they need someone largely recognisable to American audiences (film wise, not television) in the lead role as Freddy Mercury has been out of the spotlight for gulp 20 years now …
just be clear, i’m all for employing actors of all stripes, and breaking the nepotistic nature of of modern show business. but as a strategic matter i think fixating on the necessity of mapping ethnic identities of actors to their roles in a fine-grained manner is probably not the best course. in some cases cultural awareness and physical characteristics are going to be important, but over the long term i think the best option is for minority actors is to push the envelope of race-blind/neutral casting. they’ll always be able to find parts as terrorists, chinese restaurant employees and muggers. additionally, the demand for ethnic correspondence starts to get ridiculous after a while, i vaguely recall a film with some native americans in it once where they hired some novice actors from a particular tribe and they spoke a particular language to add “authenticity.” of course the historical material was based on a totally different tribe with a different language. some activists complained about this miscasting, because obviously native americans aren’t interchangeable substantively. but for the purposes of that story they kind of were really.
more specifically we need to evaluate on a case-by-case basis. freddie mercury had a cosmopolitan childhood in africa and india, and his family moved to england when he was 17. additionally, he didn’t look typically south asian, though there are plenty of south asians that look like him. sasha baron cohen is a british man whose mother is an israel-born persian jew, and father is a jew born in wales. he’s played characters of ambiguous ethnicity before, so i don’t see very strong grounds for objecting to that casting choice, aside from the fact that he doesn’t have much gravitas in the eyes of the public (american at least).
the social network is i assume a case where the supporting role wasn’t seen as so important where cultural authenticity was necessary, and so was open to the normal hollywood practice of placing someone with some industry pull into the role. max minghella doesn’t look much the original, but he could certainly pass a very light skinned south asian, so it’s not farcical on the face of it.
razib,
you may be thinking of “The New World.” A close relative was contacted to ‘help choreograph” the dance sequences (classical indian dance = native american folk dance for the director apparently)for a piddling $100 (extra’s pay).
how many of those shows, allegedly created in response to the advocacy group’s letter-writing campaign, ran for more than a season? Connected desi actors with other roles/jobs/etc? Do Arab-Americans have cause to complain that Naveen Andrews sat on a prime Iraqi torturer role for the entire run of Lost?
in my ardent POCO days, I recall reading Dipesh Chakraborty whingeing about how western academics never use the Mahabharata as a cultural reference yet feel comfortable citing all Victorian literature–the battle you will see during your lifetimes is simply to get the story made, not to have ethnic correspondence.
[Reposted as I could sign in for some reason earlier – apologies for double post]
Yup, it’s called something like above line package. Basically, the financiers want a guarantee on their investment and the stronger your package, the more money you’re likely to get. In this case Sacha Baron Cohen has made films that generate a large box office return and they’ll be counting on the large Queen fan base to bring in the remainder of the revenue – a particularly good package as it will mean two very different audiences.
Plus they need someone largely recognisable to American audiences (film wise, not television) in the lead role as Freddy Mercury has been out of the spotlight for gulp 20 years now …
Put it like this, every movie he’s starred in has made money, not lost it:
Ali G – made for £5m, grossed £10m Borat – made for $18m, grossed $26m on opening weekend in the US, finally grossed $128m in the US and $133m elsewhere Bruno – made for $42m, grossed $60m in the US and $78m elsewhere (plus there was that incident at the MTV awards which garnered a hell of a lot of free publicity).
That counts for everything.
Although this doesn’t mean he’s entirely bankable, this will be his first time leading a film as in a (er) straight role. It does mean he’s just a little less risky.
That and he has a very good likeness to Freddie, when I heard the casting, I couldn’t think of anyone better.
That and he has a very good likeness to Freddie
i’d never thought about it before (as you say, FM has been out of the public mind for 20 years now), but when i google imaged FM an hour ago it was pretty shocking. they do look very similar.
You’re all missing the point, which is that they cast a non-Indian in an Indian role, when there are already so few substantial roles available for Indian actors that aren’t stereotypical and offensive.
And regardless of whether or not brown actors in the past have inhabited white roles, the fact of the matter is, more often than not white people are cast in roles that should’ve been given to a South-Asian/Asian/Latino based off the source material.
Dev Patel even commented recently about the lack of major roles being offered to him, saying:
“Asian actors tend not to be sent Hollywood scripts that are substantial or challenging. I’m likely to be offered the roles of a terrorist, cab driver and smart geek… I want to show that I have versatility. You have to remember that, before Slumdog, the last film about India that went big at the Oscars was Gandhi, as played by Ben Kingsley. The fact that me and Freida [Pinto] have any kind of platform in Hollywood is a big step forward.”
“I’m buzzing with adrenaline and raring to go, but I have to be realistic. Being an Asian actor, it’s never going to be easy. Hopefully the industry is changing and the casting directors will be less focused on colour so that people like myself can get through the door.”
Could they not have cast the now well-known Patel as Divya? Wouldn’t this have made more sense?
Phillygrrl is simply calling on Hollywood to cast minorities in roles that were clearly made for them.
There are no hard and fast rules for this, but…
Sacha Baron Cohen as Freddie Mercury: Pass. Cohen looks a hell of a lot like Mercury. And it’s not as if Cohen is typically “white”, and neither is Mercury typically “Indian”.
Max Minghella as Divya Narenda: Fail. No beef with Minghella or his performance, which I haven’t yet seen. But I’m sure there are plenty of desis who could play that role. Minghella being a bit Chinese isn’t really relevant. If Narendra was played by a Pakistani- or Sri-Lankan-American actor, that would be OK by me.
I agree that the minor nature of the Narendra role makes the whole thing even more insulting. Minghella is not a big name, so it’s not like there’s a whole audience that is going to be drawn to watch the movie based on his inclusion.
Okay, so a white guy can play a brown guy — but when’s the last time you saw a brown guy playing John Lennon? This does seem possible to SOME extent – perhaps not yet evidenced with desi actors, but the likes of Keanu Reeves, Kristin Kreuk, Jennifer Lopez and Jessica Alba have all played roles in which their ethnicity was not a factor. (So effectively, they were “white” or at least “ethnicity-neutral” roles.) Perhaps this shows this is possible, at least if the right desi actor comes along. He’d have to be a lighter shade of brown though.
you may be thinking of “The New World.” A close relative was contacted to ‘help choreograph” the dance sequences (classical indian dance = native american folk dance for the director apparently)for a piddling $100 (extra’s pay).
no, it wasn’t that. it was something like where they got a bunch of navajos, and them speak in navajo, but really they were playing lakota sioux or something. though the lead actress in the new world is half-bolivian and half-white american (she’s jewel’s cousin).
how many of those shows, allegedly created in response to the advocacy group’s letter-writing campaign, ran for more than a season? Connected desi actors with other roles/jobs/etc? Do Arab-Americans have cause to complain that Naveen Andrews sat on a prime Iraqi torturer role for the entire run of Lost?
arab americans are mostly too white looking to play what americans think arabs look like since they’re disproportionately syrian-lebanese. south asians are dark-skinned enough to look like the american image of “arabs.” arab american actors can play italians, like tony shalhoub. in fact, shalhoub has OK italian, apparently he has a much more authentic accent in the big night than stanley tucci (but who knows, tucci may have been using a dialect accent while shalhoub learned standard italian).
Perhaps this shows this is possible, at least if the right desi actor comes along. He’d have to be a lighter shade of brown though.
eurasians have a strong tendency to be coded “white” in american culture, especially if they don’t look too asian. half-brown south asians can do this too. no one thinks of norah jones (geethali shankar) and ben kingsely (krishna banji) as indian (yes, we who read SM might be aware of their mixed background, but the general public is not. i was at a party once where some woman was complaining about underrepresentation of minorities in film and she assumed that ben kingsley was a white guy in heavy brown face in gandhi. though depending on how you look at it this is kind of true from what i heard re: his makeup). interestingly, but kruek and reeves have played south asians (remember reeves was in little buddha). matt yglesias the liberal blogger has talked about this:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/karen_o_and_the_future_of_whiteness/
Heck – look at Cliff Curtis – he’s ethnically Maori from new Zealan but I’ve see him play a whole whack of ethnicities – from Arab to Latino.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Curtis
But agreed – they could have found some Indian actors to play a side character. This would not have made or broke the movie. Unless they tried and no one made it past the auditions, though that seems unlikely with all the aspiring actors out there of all ethnicities.
perhaps not yet evidenced with desi actors
in college i used to watch sitcoms, and joey lawrence had one where there was an episode where there were two “french” twins. i put french in quotes cuz they were supposed to be french, but they sure as hell looked indian to me. here’s the episode:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1643323/
the actresses: Neena Bidasha as Eva as Veena Bidasha as Ava
you can google image them, they look pretty brown, albeit on the “fair” side for brown people.
the average human is pretty stupid. just like you can do brown or yellow face on white actors, you can have non-whites play finns because americans have no idea what finns look like.
Though in social gatherings I often claim Freddie Mercury for India, he was born in Zanzibar of Parsi (i.e. Persian) origin, so a Persian Jew would seem to be a reasonable choice to depict him.
Do we really want to claim Divya Narendra, to have him define our brand? I sure as hell don’t.
“arab americans are mostly too white looking to play what americans think arabs look like since they’re disproportionately syrian-lebanese. south asians are dark-skinned enough to look like the american image of “arabs.”
This is true – in college I had a discussion with a girl who was babbling on how Ralph Nader is a white supremacist (based on some stupid comment he made about Obama back when) and she was very surprised when I told her his parents are from Lebanon and his whole family speaks Arabic. Many Americans lump South Asians/Arabs (anyone between Lebanon and Bangladesh) together in one big Brown heap of turbans, curry and belly-dancing.
I say let it be. Don’t try to push the issue. In due time there will be enough Indian actors and directors that just like in television, you will find Indians slowly represented out of proportion to their population. I don’t believe that the current surge is actors on television is because of activism for affirmative action.To say that would be insulting to the Desis who made it because of sheer talent and hard work. It is just the result of a lot of talented Indians in the system both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. After all, all those Indians who graduated from fancy colleges and who are not Doctors, Engineers and Lawyers have to end up somewhere and the entertainment Industry is a popular choice. I predict that the Jews are going to get some stiff competition from Indians like in every other field,
Well, this to me is a perfect example of how Shyamalan was used as a scapegoat for the whole alleged “racist” casting in The Last Airbender. Now, tell me where all the Eberts and other critics are who lambasted that film for using the wrong ethicities in key roles (let’s not even get in to the fact that it was based on an ambiguous anime cartoon and written by two Americans etc)? Why is there no stink about this ? This is clearly racist miscasting, yet nobody says a word. Why is that?
I think people would do well to examine and investigate this point.
I think John Jacobi has an alternative agenda for this board. Interesting name too. Where are you from John, just out of interest?
I think we should protest, and vehemently so. I would be glad to write a letter – who do we send it to?
While we’re at it, I think we should continue to bring up how much of a fuss there was about The Last Airbender – how is this different? Targetting the Asian Director for something white Hollywood has done for decades and is still doing now?
A few examples from my last comment about advocacy not being the reason for the rise in Indian representation. Aziz Ansari got is job on screen because he was just that good (Nothing to do with campaigns). He is writing and acting in about three upcoming movies. For his TV in P&R role, they hired him first and wrote the part later. I am sure it happened in a similar way for Mindy Kaling. Sendhil R auditioned and they liked him so much that they rewrote the role to be that of a younger Indian. Aasif Mandvi got a job because he did well in the audition. Divya in Royal Pains was created by the writer based on an Indian girl he knew growing up. What I am saying is that as soon as there are enough Indians in the process, some of them will be so good that people have no choice to hire them and make adjustments to the script if necessary. With each passing year more and more second generation (and some first generation) Indians are rejecting traditional occupations and choosing to go into entertainment and at least some of them will actually make it in spite of their ethnicity. No need to force the issue.
PS. To @spy. My name is just a random one I made up. Just like spy.
Shame for trying to cast SBCohen as “white”.
Perhaps. But trying to cast him as solidly white and thereby denying his identity is BS.
For a minute I thought that this post was in jest. I realized it wasn’t when I saw the responses, especially Razib’s – brilliant as usual – comment. If you hadn’t seen the accompanying pic of Minghella, the original post would have you believe that this was Al Jolson and Donna Reed redone. There are many things to get outraged about. This is not one of them. One could even argue that the original post gets quite to being racist. Not what Phillygrrl has written:
“film roles for brown folks playing actual brown characters” “And I’m sure Mr. Minghella and Mr. Cohen are fine, fine actors who will do justice to their brown counterparts” “There are plenty of unemployed brown actors with a similar pedigree “
Again, refer to the pic of Minghella. In what way is he not brown when compared to the person standing next to him? Or to put the same question in another fashion, if his pic were to be compared to blue eyed, pink skinned Raj Kapoor, he would be browner than the latter. Or did the writer write ‘brown’ when she meant to imply that a person of South Asian heritage should only be played by a person of South Asian heritage? If so, this discussion would get into a whole new rathole. Ben Kingsley would not find any role in Hollywood. And I.S. Johar wouldn’t have played an Arab in ‘awrence of Arabia.
typos. I meant to write, “the original post gets quite close to being racist. Note what Phillygrrl has written: “
Quizman,
Ah yes, the old classic. Accuse the underrepresented and discriminated-against minority of being racist when they lament the fact that parts that should, in theory, go to people who most closely match the role, do, in fact go to the powerful majority. Surely you can do better than that?
classic: you haven’t written a single thing clarifying or contradicting my comment or providing more information relating to Phillygrrl’s post. All you’re doing is constructing a strawman.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m a first gen immigrant from India. Read Razib’s comments again and perhaps, be a bit more informed about ethnicity before bandying about the ‘minority’ term loosely. Discrimination is a fact and trivializing it in the fashion that was done by Phillygrrl does grave injustice to the cases of very real discrimination faced by individuals. And yes, I call racism when I see it.
Lastly, brown Italians are themselves subject to racial stereotypes. Crude jokes on them are just the beginning. (e.g. during the run-up the 2003-war, “Which is the only Arab province in Europe to support Iraq”, Ans: Sicily.)
So tell me, do you believe that Naveen Andrews should NOT have gotten the role of the Arab? Arabs are a totally under-represented minority right?
Btw, even the term ‘brown’ is a ridiculous synonym for South Asian. (I’ve argued about this on Sepia more than 5 years back). Anyway, what would you make of this thrash metal band from India? Are they brown? What about the other bands on the links there?
Phillygirl,
A crucial thing to understand is that any film represents a huge financial risk…on the low budget side 5 to 10 mil and upwards to 300 mil if you’re Cameron. not including marketing costs!
The key thing that producers/studios think about when hiring talent is one word BANKABILITY
when m night was in his prime he was making 12 mil a movie off of the 600 mil 6th sense did worldwide.
Now his upfront salary is 1/4 of that (they give him high net points but that’s worthless…in Hollywood there is no net:)… why? His movies haven’t performed at the box office.
desi actors are pretty low on the totem pole as far as bankability goes, this is why you don’t see us in the juicy roles. its as simple as that.
@Quizman: “Brown” is simply a colloquial term that has become popular in America (and maybe elsewhere) to describe Americans of South Asian or Arab descent, sometimes Latinos too. It’s used the same way “White” is used to describe people of European descent and “Black” for those of African descent. So don’t play dumb and try to counter with silly arguments about dark-skinned white people and light-skinned arabs blahblah. At the end of the day the dark-skinned Italian is White and light-skinned Indian is Brown in 2010 America. Keep in mind what’s “White” changes over time; Italians and Irish were not “White” at one point, etc….but I’m sure you know all of this.
I don’t think Phillygirl is trying to minimalize discrimination. I think a better example of what she’s trying to point out would be that movie where Kristin Kreuk (Dutch and Chinese descent) plays a Pakistani refugee girl. I have to admit that annoyed me a bit – Kristin looks nothing like a Desi or even Arab girl! To be blunt, she looks like a White girl with slightly Asian facial features to me.
Ah Quizman. Delightful clip from True Romance. Vintage Tarantino. Thanks for the link.
The sign-in link is not showing up on my browser. Firefox 3.6.10 on Ubuntu 10.04.
Alina wrote [a lot of stuff]
Again, you’re countering with strawmen. Are you saying that a brown person of European/Chinese origin is disqualified from playing an American of Indian origin? That the producers should’ve looked specifically for an Indian to play an Indian? Likewise, it would not be enough for Naveen Andrews to have good acting ability, he should’ve specifically been an Arab to play one?
And somehow that isn’t racist?
my comments here are one of the top results on google blog search! i guess “watch what you say” 🙂
Yep, the sign-in link is also not working for me – using Firefox as well and I always use it, weird.
“Are you saying that a brown person of European/Chinese origin is disqualified from playing an American of Indian origin?” That the producers should’ve looked specifically for an Indian to play an Indian?”
Now it’s you who are clutching at straws. Let me make an analogy so my point is more clear: If Bollywood made a movie about Princess Diana, I would expect Diana to be played by a White blonde woman, not Aishwarya Rai in a wig. Similarly, this character in Social Network was specifically based on a Brown Indian guy and some random White guy who looks nothing like him gets to play him. It’s not even offensive, it’s actually kind of funny, but would it really have been so hard to get someone who vaguely looks like him? I’m not saying we need an “Indian to play an Indian”.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I have had problems with the Hollywood casting for years. It started, innocently enough, with Star Trek. I was a HUGE Star Trek fan. Gene Roddenberry was a casting stud and he was actually far more visionary than all of the Hollywood producers/directors combined when it comes to multiculturalism.
The original Star Trek series had a Japanese/Indonesian, a Kenyan, a Vulcan, a Russian, and finally, an American in the lead character roles. And that was way back in the 1960s!
Fast forward to “Star Trek: Next Generation”. What do we have? An ALL-WHITE cast with the token black and a Klingon that is supposed to be the “exotic” non-white character.
Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back – that failure of a series, “Enterprise”. Not even a token black. An all-white, all-American cast. Even the Vulcan was white. And the final insult to injury? Padma Lakshmi was cast as this exotic brown-skinned alien queen. Apparently, the American sci-fi audience has regressed to the point where brown-skinned Asians are now considered an exotic alien race.
What is the point of my ranting above, you ask? Quite simply, Hollywood is very myopic when it comes to casting roles that require non-white characters. Yes, making money is important but so is giving the audience some VARIETY. When you introduce variety in casting, like Gene Roddenberry did, and you go against conventions, you might actually make MORE MONEY. Exhibit A: the TV show, “Heroes”.
When that TV show came out, I was very surprised at the casting of Sendhil Ramamurthy and Masi Oka. Such casting were so out of the left field that I thought the show would be canceled quickly as the American audience might not be able to stomach watching the exotic brown-skinned/Japanese-speaking aliens playing human beings. But guess what? That show was a success and we have learned that with the right story and BELIEVABLE casting, the show will succeed.
So is Minghella more believable in that role than, say, Rizwan Manji or even Kalpen Modi? Maybe the American audience of the 1960s may have found it believable but today’s Facebook generation KNOW better. Maybe the movie will be a middling success but the producers and the casting directors must ask themselves this question: could the movie have been MORE successful with a more diverse casting that reflects the reality and the multiculturalism of the Facebook generation?
Only time will tell.
Alina,
Your analogy would make sense if Divya Narendra’s character were played by a blond blue eyed man. He wasn’t. He was played by a brown person of a different ethnicity. Similarly, if an East Indian (such as the persons in the metal video I linked) was played by a person from Thailand or Vietnam, I would be far more comfortable with the authenticity than I would, if he was played by a Tamilian or a Punjabi. As I’ve stated before, Minghella did not do a Al Jolson or a Donna Reed here.
I really don’t know what you’re objecting to at all. And I find terms such as “some random White guy” rather disconcerting. Do you know that Minghella was specifically chosen for the role without any other auditions? Do you know whether South Asians were excluded from the auditions? Or conversely, if a bunch of “brown persons” of varied ethnicities had applied and auditioned for the role, should the producers have specifically limited their choices to only South Asians and kicked out Minghella with the words, “Sorry dude, you’re not brown enough.”
Phillygrrl seemed to indicate that either (a) Minghella is not brown enough or (b) that he’s not South Asian enough. My point was that this sort of discussion will always get us into a rathole if you look at only one side of the prism.
I promise this is my last comment on this topic. These are images of the Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky, And these are images of Krishna bhai. (correction, Sir. Krishna bhai)
Minghella is a not a “brown person of a different ethnicity” though, he is a white person of mostly European ancestry (with some Chinese) and I have no clue how that equates to brown.
“if an East Indian (such as the persons in the metal video I linked) was played by a person from Thailand or Vietnam, I would be far more comfortable with the authenticity than I would, if he was played by a Tamilian or a Punjabi”
Your analogy would be valid if Narendra was an Italian-looking Indian, but as it is, he’s your fairly typical Indian guy with dark brown skin who looks nothing like Minghella. If I was casting for those Indian metal band guys you posted, I wouldn’t care about the ethnicity of the actor either, so long as they looked the part.
It’s interesting how White + Chinese = Desi in Hollywood. First Kristin Kreuk playing the Pakistani girl and now Mighella the Indian guy…hahah.
Exactly. Quizman is full of BS. Neither Europeans nor Chinese are brown but according to this genius a mix of these two races qualifies as brown!
Look at the picture of these two guys together, one is obviously desi the other is obviously not the stereotypical south Asian.
To add to Quizman’s point, would it be ok if a Pakistani played an Indian’s role? Or vice versa? What if Sendhil Ramamurthy, a South Indian, played Divya Narendra? What is the approved boundary of outrage? Please educate me.
To add to Quizman’s point, would it be ok if a Pakistani played an Indian’s role? Or vice versa? What if Sendhil Ramamurthy, a South Indian, played Divya Narendra? What is the approved boundary of outrage? Please educate me.
i think there are reasonable objections as to plausibility one can make. but i think this is the main issue i have too. who is the decider? i mean, how is freddie mercury brown and sasha baron cohen white, when they look a lot more like each other than either does in relation to a northern european or a south asian? well, we know how, there are culturally conditioned criteria which americans internalize. middle easterners who are jewish or christian are white. middle easterners who are muslim are brown. etc. black ancestry trumps all other ancestry (e.g., tiger woods = black, even if he’s twice as asian ancestrally, and religiously a theravada buddhist).
there’s a major issue with nepotism in showbiz, and i think there is probably some distance to go in terms of allowing for ethnic-appropriate casting. but, i think being very specific about what the nature of the objections are always smells a bit too much like apartheid south africa in methodology, as we cut & divide people into their categories. and we in the USA should be careful, because the categories are getting really confusing as we marry and procreate across cultural and racial barriers. i recently had a discussion with an old friend whose father is bangladeshi, and mother is irish american. unlike me he actually can read bengali, and he speaks it well too (his grandmother lived at home). he doesn’t “look bengali” though. he told me that several times that people said blatantly racist things about him in college at bangladeshi student union parties because they assumed he was a white guy who didn’t know bengali.
anyway, the whitefication of casting bugs me too. and i understand that livelihoods do hang in the balance. but unfortunately remediation always seems to then go into crass details of authenticity which americans of all people should avoid (i have no expectation that non-americans who live in a more culturall homogeneous environment feel any need to avoid racism, so that’s why i’m focusing on americans).
As fascinating as this discussion is, all I have to say is the real-life Divya Narendra is absolutely smokin’!!! His screen counterpart simply does not do him justice, looks-wise.
all I have to say is the real-life Divya Narendra is absolutely smokin’!!! His screen counterpart simply does not do him justice, looks-wise.
can you please chill on the objectification of the brown male? i feel otherized, marginalized, and dehumanized. let’s keep this a safe public space.
Sorry razib. I’ll try to roll my tongue back into my head and wipe the drool off my face.
Sorry. I could not resist adding one more example of why brown != South Asian. The star of Indian Idol a couple of years back; 100% Tangra!
“Last Friday my boyfriend and I went to the theater to watch The Social Network,”
I’m going to call out the bit of potential irony in this statement.
Is your boyfriend South Asian ?
Before you respond “Well, golly gee willakers, what does THAT have to do with anything!?”, understand that, if not, maybe the same forces that influence female choices in mates, influences choices in who or what we see as acceptable on screen. In the end, under all of it, it’s all about choices, relatability, and what find “acceptable” right?
Lee Siolong (aka. Bruce Lee) was passed up for the role of “Kung Fu” for David Carradine, why ? simply because he looked “too Asian”
Also, I want to point out that Hollywood movies have much larger to make up financially speaking than TV-shows, and have a smaller window of time in which to do it.
That poll you have up there has weird options. Can we not take the attitude:
Yes, it would have been ideal if he had been played by a South Asian, but the quality of the performance is also important? 🙂
On your point about brown people not playing white people – well yes, that’s true and it’s an issue. And always has been. Have you seen any picture of Jesus lately in the United States. He usually doesn’t look like someone from the Middle East. Annoying, possibly worth doing something about, but really, old hat.
“I could not resist adding one more example of why brown != South Asian. The star of Indian Idol a couple of years back; 100% Tangra!”
Based on this and your previous comments, I don’t think you understand what “brown” means at all. You called Minghella “Brown” even though he’s obviously White, and you repeatedly post links of random musicians; I don’t know what you’re trying to say at all.
Maybe since you’re Indian you’re thinking literally in terms of skin color. In America, “brown” is just slang for someone of Arab, South Asian, or often Hispanic descent, just like White is for Europeans and Black for Africans. “Brown” people are diverse looking – people from Nepal might look more East Asian, some Arabs look White, some Indians look nearly Black, etc. Being South Asian, we are all still “Brown”. Those Indian musicians you linked to are Brown. If someone is South Asian, they are “Brown” regardless of skin tone, hair color, eye color, facial features, etc. Just like how an African American is “Black” regardless of whether they’re very very dark skinned or light-skinned with light eyes and “caucasian features”. I think the only reason you object to this term is because you take it too literally as a skin color. It’s really just slang and I hear people use it interchangeably with the word Desi sometimes.
This might just be a younger generation thing. I’ve yet to hear any middle-aged desi’s use “brown” as slang before.
Rushabh: Maybe the American audience of the 1960s may have found it believable but today’s Facebook generation KNOW better. I found a lot of things in the movie annoying and very much based on inter-generational disjoint and competitiveness. It is entirely old hat on a fairly obvious level, what with only one great-grandson of Armand Hammer cast as the twin Winklevi, who are supposed to look like they go from their final clubs to full service lives at home and abroad, and supposedly these two (and Divya, sure, but what to do with him in this narrative?)spur a passionate need in Zuckerberg to score in that world or similar, plus a single verbal flip of the bird from a pretty girl makes it so much more urgent, never mind that the actual Zuck had a real girlfriend the whole time covered in the movie. It bothered me a lot that all other girls are ho’s in this story. And speaking as a member of an older generation, I wasn’t totally happy to see the music and lyrics of John Lennon misapplied at the end.
But what do you expect when the script was written by Backchat Uncle, aka Alan Sorkin, then produced and directed by a bunch of manopausal denizens of lala land? Casting Minghella as Narendra is just part of that mindset.
So is the approved circle of camaraderie and should outrage be triggered if this boundary is crossed? Just clarifying to make sure I get the memo on the updated codes of authenticity for future.
Razib Khan, the Atheist, is a genius. He is SM’s version of Fareed Zakaria. I have always made it a point to read his articles. He is SO logical and concise with words.
On another note, I saw the Facebook movie, and I was surprised that the guy who played Divya was not an Indian. He looked just like an Indian to me.
It would be awfully difficult to get an authentic Indian to play divya. You’d have to convince him to drop out of medschool first.