The default smear

Posted on November 14, 2005 by manish

As you know, Indian-American city council candidate Tom Abraham was smeared as a potential terrorist for being desi.

It’s ba-a-ack. We now know what the default political smear is going to be for Americans with brown skin for the next quarter-century. Hint: it’s identical to racist insults spewed by yahoos in 4×4’s:

Fliers that denounced [Prospect Park, NJ] Councilman Mohamed Khairullah as unpatriotic and a criminal were anonymously sent to borough residents last week… The message, delivered in a white envelope with no return address, was written in English and Spanish. It characterized Khairullah, a Muslim, as “a betrayer living among us” who would “try to poison our thoughts about our great country” and had ties to people responsible for the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. [Link]An anonymous attack flier claimed a Muslim candidate was ‘a betrayer living among us’ with 9/11 ties

The mailing said Mohamed Khairullah “should not be living in our clean town…” [Link]

Khairullah [is] a Syrian native and former Saudi Arabian resident… Arab-Americans and Muslims make up about 15 percent of this half-square-mile borough’s population of nearly 5,800; Hispanics account for about 40 percent, with Caucasians and African-Americans representing most of the remainder…

He said the flier… misrepresented… comments he made at a pro-Palestinian rally in Paterson last year in which he said American Muslims need to do their part to affect change in the Middle East, either through political activism or economic boycotts… [Link]

This is exactly the same smear an American shell company tried to use to prevent Jet Airways from flying to America. And it sometimes works. A desi candidate in another NJ town was smeared last year for being foreign-born, a classic political tactic. You get the sense that outside California, where that was never explicitly made a political issue with (cough, cough) Governor (I can never keep a straight face) Terminator, politics are pitched to the reptilian sub-brain and argued with the subtlety of a junior high playground fight:

The mailing is similar to one that went out the night before the 2004 election to voters in Bedminster, accusing township committee candidate Zaheer Jan and his running mate of being funded by “foreign nationals, not local residents.” Jan, who was born in India and grew up in Pakistan, said it was a scare tactic designed to make people fear he might have terrorist ties; he lost the election by 14 votes out of nearly 3,600 cast. [Link]

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Home rule

Posted on November 14, 2005 by manish

The Great Bongmeister chronicles the sexual revolution on Indian cable TV with the fondness of a grandfather sharing his stash of classic Playboys:

Sushma Swaraj, Minister of Virtue

The cable revolution of the early 90s came as a blessing from heaven (or hell) for the raging hormones of my generation who were henceforth liberated from the oppressive censorship of state-owned television… ladies with Sachin Tendulkar shoulders and Ramesh Krishnan waistlines heaved and thrusted away. As a result, Silk Smitha, Nylon Nalini and the other goddesses of the wet sari pantheon became part of our nightly vocabulary… [Link]

Alas, the uprising was choked nightly by a minister inappositely named Swaraj:

In the north rose a fell presence, an evil Eye that never slept… minister Sushma Swaraj.. launched a war against flesh tones on the airwaves! Soon she was passing one dictat after another–Star Movies censored all their sugar and spice, Sun TV followed suit… [Link]

One frustrated victim of fowlstrangulum interruptus commented:

Uff, Sushma Swaraj… how we cursed her… [Link]

But the sexing up of daily media soon made blue channels and pr0n sites irrelevant:

People stopped going to websites for their porn–instead they started making them themselves armed with… camera phones and webcams. School kids in respectable institutions were shooting their own sex videos and marketing them through auction sites… Who would go to Desibaba [a porn site] to watch digitally morphed pictures when people like Tanushree Dutta were going topless in songs in reality…

Indians were being sexed up too fast and Desibaba was now a relic of a more innocent bygone era… I would like to believe that Desibaba is still alive–spread out over thousands of hard drives where pictures and stories from it have been downloaded over the years… there is a little bit of Desibaba in each of us–in the memories we carry. [Link]

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Proud of ‘Prejudice’

Posted on November 13, 2005 by manish

Did you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your timing? From the first moment I met you, your derivativeness made me realize you were the last movie in the world I could ever love. But I’ve come to make confession: you have bewitched me body and soul.

I entered the new Pride and Prejudice movie with extreme prejudice and exited a believer.

Nimbooda in a wig

As cultural crossover, the new flick has outdone Mira Nair: it’s the new Vanity Fair, it’s British Bollywood. It’s truer to the form than Bride and Prejudice, which was preoccupied with Stiff White Guy and tongue-in-cheek cultural mashup. Namely this: A family with five daughters must spend its time snaring men. One daughter’s elopement means utter family ruination. Musical interludes. Cheesy picturesque cliff scenes. Melodramatic mom. Full-on bawling. No kissing. Its own Johnny Lever. All it needed was an item number.

The producers were going for Gone With the Wind, but they ended up with Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. It’s the same Bollywood lighting, the same night scene with the romantic leads sitting before water, lit in gold. British group dances were like dandia raas and served the same virtuous end, hooking up the young’uns. The dance scene was like that amazing, flirty song in in HDDCS, ‘Aankhon Ki Gustakhiyan.’ Keira is sharper, Aishwarya prettier. Rai with that John-Cusack-lookalike-in-a-wig would have been ideal.

HDDCS was more emotional, but this was definitely lump-in-throat territory. I rarely see intelligent romantic sparring any more, the last was Clooney and Zeta in Intolerable Cruelty. And the gender role inversion at the end is delicious. The beseechers and hand-kissers are not whom you’d expect.

Elna Bannat and Dharsi sahib

This film left me misty-eyed despite the ’70s Bollycheese: the man walking through morning field in fog, a near-kiss with sunrise strategically positioned between the lips. It had showy, fluid camera work reminiscent of Brian De Palma. Its memorable piano theme was repeated in variations through the score, another Bollywood signature. Balle balle, they’ve out-Bollied Bolly! I rarely feel anything human in mainstream Hollywood flicks, they’re afraid of mashing the emotional buttons. This movie pulled me out of my life entirely.

Someone stop me before I play some South Park Chef.

Watch the trailer. Here’s the A. Lane review, less snarktastic than usual.

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Indo indie

Posted on November 13, 2005 by manish

The NYT takes a look at new wave Indian cinema:

Being Cyrus

Lately, a third type of Hindi cinema has emerged. It’s composed of smaller, offbeat films that are more realistic than Bollywood tales and edgier than art-house ones. The films have an urbane, uniquely Indian sensibility. Many, though not all, are in Hinglish, the hybrid of Hindi and English that is spoken in metropolitan India.

These films have none of the overt glamour or sunny disposition of mainstream movies. Emotions are messy, characters have pasts and endings aren’t always happy. But neither are the movies treatises on social issues far removed from the filmmakers’ own experience, like so much art-house cinema was… Grimness is no longer box office poison, however. The first hit of 2005 was “Page 3,” the director Madhur Bhandarkar’s scathing look at high society in Mumbai. It featured pedophilia, drug-fueled rave parties and unabashed nastiness… [Link]

Distribution is key:

But the current crop of Indian independents can count on far wider release, thanks in large part to the arrival of more multiplexes. The first Indian multiplex, the PVR Anupam, opened in New Delhi in June 1997. Until then most filmgoers patronized cavernous theaters with 1,000 to 1,500 seats…

After the PVR Anupam opened, some state governments announced entertainment tax exemptions and prompted a multiplex boom. There are 73 multiplexes in India, with 276 screens and about 89,470 seats. The numbers are expected to increase to 135 multiplexes with more than 160,000 seats by the end of 2006…

The more affluent multiplex viewers have given filmmakers new fiscal and artistic freedom. “A film is a conversation,” said the director-producer Ram Gopal Varma… “The multiplex gives me flexibility and enables me to have a conversation with my intended target audience without worrying about small towns and villages…” [Link]

Related comments: Third I film fest

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Mortified

Posted on November 13, 2005 by manish

‘The Boondocks,’ a leftist, angry-black-man comic drawn like anime, reeeeeeaches for a punchline. This is more puerile than its usual fare and conflates Hinduism with Islam, though it’s more a comment on the grandfather character’s bumbling.

Mohandas Gandhi’s hunger strikes have long been the object of derision in cultures without ascetic tradition. Churchill dismissing Gandhi as ‘nauseating’ and a ‘half-naked fakir’ wasn’t just the poisoned fruit of an embittered colonialist, it was also gut-level cultural revulsion which transcends political orientation. When Jon Stewart makes fun of ululating Arabs on the Daily Show, or show alumnus Stephen Colbert cracks a Gandhi starvation joke, they’re expressing culture clash. Personally, I draw the line at the Shi’as’ bloody self-flagellation during the Ashura festival and the self-mortifying skin hooks for the Thaipusam festival shown in the ‘Mundeyan To Bach Ke’ video (thanks, jeet).

But dissidents like Mandela have long gone on hunger strike, and many African countries are much poorer than India. The American shorthand for starvation used to be Ethiopian famine — why now Gandhi?

I blame Richard Attenborough. There’s nothing you can teach an American about what’s outside our borders that we can’t make fun of

In 2003, Maxim beat up an icon.

Update: Ennis points out that pork chops are Southern food, like yams and greens. But pork is still laden with cultural connotations with which I’m sure Aaron McGruder is familiar, and he uses it for comic effect.

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M-m-me so hungry

Posted on November 12, 2005 by manish

Legions of gastrophilic blurb writers drown South Asian lit in a very nice bÃ©arnaise sauce with a hint of tarragon:

Choli ke peechhe kya hai?

(What’s behind the choli?)

ALSO BY ROHINTON MISTRY: … Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new. Swimming Lessons is an intoxicating literary experience, as elegantly composed as a classic raga and as intensely flavored as a lamb korma.

Yes, and it’s as exciting as baseball and as delicious as a BLT. Pardon me while I light a few sticks of air freshener, put on some Christian rock and bask in exawtique, mystical Occidentalism.

Guess what borders the Vintage Books softcover edition of Mistry’s Family Matters:

Photograph… from Traditional Indian Textiles…

A Rajasthani choli. Sit down, the shock could kill you.

Press bias

Posted on November 10, 2005 by manish

As Abhi posted earlier, here’s how the Orlando Sentinel reported the results of the Don Sherrill – Tom Abraham election. You’ll recall this is the race where Sherrill called his Indian-American opponent a potential embed and 9/11 terrorist, purely because of Abraham’s ethnicity:

With a difference of less than two dozen votes, a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday. [Link]

The ‘off-color’ statements in question:

“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.” [Link]

Statements calling an Indian-American an embed and a 9/11 terrorist: ‘off-color.’ Same statements about blacks or Hispanics: ‘racist’ and ‘bigoted.’ The difference? Visibility. Those ethnicities show up on the cultural radar. This kind of revisionist euphemism in the press is itself a kind of racism.

Send your own email now:

To: Charlene Hager-Van Dyke (reporter), chagervandyke@orlandosentinel.com
Cc: Manning Pynn (public editor), mpynn@orlandosentinel.com; Letters to the Editor, insight@orlandosentinel.com

Subject: Re: Sherrill wins by 19 — Mahoney waltzes in

I enjoyed your story about the results of the Don Sherrill – Tom Abraham election. However, I am dismayed by the story’s inappropriate use of the phrase “off-color”:
“… a two-term council member who recently made off-color statements about his Indian-born opponent’s ethnicity was returned to serve on the City Council on Tuesday.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-voc09_105nov09,0,673927.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-volusia
The statements which Don Sherrill made:
“… I don’t want an Indian in my government… these kind of people get embedded over here… You remember 9-11.”
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Neighbors/West/03WVolV01POL102805.htm

Let’s call it what it is. These statements aren’t “off-color,” they’re openly racist.

Previous posts: My opponent is undecipherable and probably an “embed”, Abraham vs. Sherrill to the Supreme Court???

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Stigmata

Posted on November 10, 2005 by manish

Singled Out [by New Light Productions] will be an hour-long documentary exploring… [the lives of] single South Asian thirtysomethings in North America… To many elders… that many not-so-young people are remaining unmarried is puzzling, worrisome, and even scandalous… Singled Out will… examine the… anxieties and coping mechanisms of this often stigmatized group.

South Asian Singles Research Survey

We wish to capture the experiences of single, never-married South Asian Americans from 30-49. Jumpin’ jehoshaphat, you’re old. Here, have a Prozac.

1. As a single person, are you looking to meet people for dating or marriage?

Yes
No
What is this ‘dating’ you speak of?

2. Do you feel pressure to get married?

Yes
Yes

3. If yes, where is this pressure coming from?

My S.O.
My psycho ex
Sad fatty aunties
Gay marriages
Circus clowns

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Shiver me timbers

Posted on November 10, 2005 by manish

Gurkhas repelled a pirate attack on a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia on Monday:

Keep ya head down

“They launched two rocket-propelled grenades in our direction, one of which hit the ship about 10 feet from our cabin…” [Link]
… the world’s largest cruise line didn’t carry firearms, but had defenses like pepper spray. He said the company’s security staff recruited heavily among Gurkhas, elite Nepalese soldiers renowned for their fearlessness. [Link]

“This time the head of security was an ex-Gurkha from Nepal, and he made some good quick decisions…” [Link]

The stealthiest soldiers now man the loudest weapons:

“On the back of these ships they have a sonic deflector (which can send) out sonic waves which when they hit you on the chest… pound you,” Mr Meagher said. “It’s like being hit with a big rubber bullet and it bursts your ear drums… This device was being manipulated on the rear of the ship by a security guard – a former Gurkha soldier… He was, fortunately for him, kneeling down behind this device because the device was hit and shrapnel from the hit took him in the head… He’s recovering okay. He was the only individual who had any injury. (He was) a very brave man standing by his post…” [Link]

Escape from Draconia

Posted on November 9, 2005 by manish

Tony Blair’s idea of throwing British Muslims in jail for three months without charge has been resoundingly rejected.

Hecklers shouted, ‘We aren’t a police state!’The House of Commons rejected a crucial provision of the government’s anti-terrorism bill today by a vote of 322-291, handing the once-invincible Prime Minister Tony Blair his first Commons defeat since he came to power eight years ago…
49 Labor members broke ranks and helped reject the government’s proposal, which would have increased to 90 days the time that terror suspects can be held without charge… Immediately after defeating the 90-day plan, the House of Commons passed an alternative proposal… to extend the detention period to 28 days…

To jeers and heckling from his opponents, one of whom shouted out, “We aren’t a police state!” Mr. Blair made it clear he believed that extreme times called for extreme measures… “Let’s not pretend that we can win the war on terror by passing every single law the government throws up,” Mr. Davis said. [Link]

I would have taken great pride in writing, ‘England learns well from its former colony,’ but that was only true before massive spying on ordinary Americans, legalized torture, secret CIA prisons, secret evidence, gag rules, suspension of jury trials and the Fascist Act.

How very un-American America has become worshipping the false god of political advantage. In casting off one draconian ruler, how did we become its student? In fighting another evil empire, did we become one ourselves? Stripping away what makes this America is a mark of weakness, not strength. The real problem is not police powers, it’s bureaucratic ineffectiveness. ‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’

Sepia Mutiny

All that flavorful brownness in one savory packet

Author Archives: manish

The default smear

Home rule

Proud of ‘Prejudice’

Indo indie

Mortified

M-m-me so hungry

Press bias

Stigmata

Shiver me timbers

Escape from Draconia