Outsourced Rant
I decided to catch the pilot episode of NBC’s latest show, “Outsourced”. I had heard a lot about this show and was hoping to watch a show that wasn’t some random American’s interpretation of everything India was, but I was wrong. It was. Do American’s honestly believe that this is how India is? That they know nothing about American culture? Do American’s think that all Indians sound like Apu from the Simpsons?
It was so frustrating to watch this show. Yes our food is spicy, yes a lot of India follows the caste system although it was legally outlawed, yes there are such things as arranged marriages and cows are allowed to roam the streets.. get over it! Why does it have to be this huge “OMG” moment that HAS to be commented on? Why couldn’t the writers for this show just have a cow in the background for authenticity rather than making it a “moment” on the show that they have to exclaim over? I mean at the very least get the Indian accents right! The actors themselves can’t seem to finalize their character’s accents! Some start off with pronouncing their R’s as if they were born in England and then midway through their sentence they say a hard R as if they’re Apu again. Clearly nobody actually studied an accent from someone who went to a British convent school in India, or just any middle class Indian families’ accent, nor did they seem to do any research at all other than maybe watching a few movies like American Desi or Where’s the Party Yaar? Honestly, I could have written the script for this episode in gr.7. It was that bad. I’m just so sick of the stereotypes; the goofy/cute American, the silent ,angry Sikh… ok I’m watching episode 2 right now I really, really cannot stand their accents. They can’t keep them straight?! What kind of actors are these? I bet by the third episode they’re all going to speak in a pure American accent.
In short there are two good things about this show, one being thatt I get to see “my people” on tv and the other is the BOLLYWOOD SOUNDTRACK BABYYYY. I hope this show turns it around in the next couple of episodes because I do want to see it survive it just needs more meat. No pun intended.
It's racist and disgusting, but this is how the western world has usually portrayed the peoples it has oppressed and continues to oppress. Take a look at how African Americans were portrayed during the advent of films. They were satirized and made into objects of comedy. Disney would often portray minority groups as undignified, uncivilized savages (blacks to Asians) and others as wanton, violent and fundamentalists (arabs). This hasn’t changed.
ReplyDeleteThe movie, Avatar the Last Air Bender is a great example – a better example would be 300- of how Hollywood is trying to tell us something about dark skinned peoples. In the original cartoon the characters come from various ethnic minority groups from across the world; in the movie the main characters are either white or brown. The white characters are the heros and the brown are the obvious villains. What’s more: in the original cartoon, the villains were Japanese.
I’m very happy that you posted this; it’s good to know that there still are elements in our community that can think critically and have a good head on their shoulders.
A very good friend of mine posted on this:
http://muslimreverie.wordpress.com/?s=300
His blog is something you should favorite and have a read through.
Be good, Sharin
Thanks for reading Deep and thank you for your comment.
ReplyDelete