{"id":45413,"date":"2012-03-06T12:50:56","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T17:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=45413"},"modified":"2012-03-01T16:36:29","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T21:36:29","slug":"a-critique-of-sociological-images-india-as-a-magical-negro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/06\/a-critique-of-sociological-images-india-as-a-magical-negro\/","title":{"rendered":"A Critique Of Sociological Images\u2019 “India As A Magical Negro”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at In Transit<\/a> and Racialicious<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still trying to work my way through my discomfort and analyze exactly where my discomfort of\u00a0this Sociological Images post<\/a>\u00a0is coming from, so if this critique seems a bit scattered, it\u2019s because my thoughts about it, at the moment, are that way.<\/p>\n

First: I agree with where the post is coming from, in that the disenfranchised rarely ever have a voice of their own in mainstream Western culture, are always portrayed as the Other, which is defined as everything that said mainstream Western culture isn\u2019t (at best as something that props it up and provides an aesthetically pleasing contrast, at worst as something that must be exterminated). And this leads to remarkably similar cycles of dehumanization and disenfranchisement. As so many minority thinkers\/activists have noted, manufactured binaries between the privileged West and everyone else, even seemingly positive ones, ultimately end up reinforcing destructive hierarchies.<\/p>\n

Where I disagree with the poster is the framing, which I feel makes the post, in some ways, as reductive as what it\u2019s critiquing. Because there are different contexts in which the above cycle\/process of exotification occurs, and those contexts matter and shouldn\u2019t be handwaved, even (and I would say especially) if you\u2019re taking the pov of the white outsider and attempting to deconstruct it. Social justice discourse loses its meaning\u00a0when it becomes divorced from one of power relations.<\/a><\/p>\n

In this specific example, while making its comparison of India as a magical negro, the post fails to both note and appreciate the following bits of context:<\/p>\n

That both the main white actress and the main desi actor in the film are British, with Dev Patel adopting an Indian accent and playing the part of a \u201cnative\u201d. That all the featured Indian characters are coded as middle\/upper class (the dress, able to speak fluent English, etc) and light skinned. That in many ways this is how India is actively marketed by its tourism sector (and also its government. Did a project once which involved collecting promo material from the Indian consul \u2014 I think in Chicago? \u2014 and it was quite hilariously illuminating), because they\u2019ve judged that this type of pandering will bring in the tourist dollars.<\/p>\n

And this exotification of India in the West has been happening since before the time of Columbus, and reducing said things to a \u201cphenomenon in which a white character in a tv show or movie finds enlightenment\u2026\u201d seems rather glib. (Just because it appears in tvtropes does not mean TV created it!) And that\u2019s not even getting into how most isms seem to inevitably become just like the racism that blacks (had) face(d) in the US.<\/p>\n

I also thought it was telling how none of the links elaborating on the “magical negro” trope went to one of the many black writers who\u2019ve done the major work of deconstructing and dissecting it, much less linking to desi writers talking about colonialism and othering.<\/p>\n

So what my disagreement boils down to, I think, is this: that this is a discussion about the Othering\/exotification of India in mainstream Western culture that succeeds in further marginalizing\/disenfranchising desis and other minorities. It doesn\u2019t consider that we might be among the audience for this post (much less making room in the conversation for us, much less acknowledging all the times we\u2019ve already discussed this), and in the way it takes something that rose out of certain contexts, misidentifies said contexts while applying it to different ones with no mention of the consequences of the differences, makes it, again, similar to what it\u2019s aiming to critique.<\/p>\n

And it brings home the point that, for all its social justice aims, this is a blog for a specific group of white people, by a specific group of white people, with all the marginalizations that entails.<\/p>\n

Another note: it is interesting to read the comments, to see all the places East\/West binaries crop up. For example,\u00a0this comment<\/a>\u00a0(which thankfully was critiqued):<\/p>\n

So, this is probably why you\u2019ll never find a movie about a Westerner in Latvia trying to find himself- \u201cfinding oneself\u201d usually requires immersing oneself in a setting completely different from the everyday humdrum norm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I do find India humdrum normy, actually. And infrastructure specifically designed to ape the west is increasingly common in cities, and you can always find people in the touristy parts who speak English and cater to Western tastes in a thousand and one ways. (Actually, you won\u2019t need to find them, if you are white they will find you and you will not be able to escape them!) Latvia, I am assuming not so much?<\/p>\n

I feel as if the manufactured differences that so many Westerners create for India, while completely missing the deeper and more significant ones, are part of the same binary that Fanon was talking about when he said: \u201cThe settler is all that is good and of value. The native is the negation of the settler\u2019s value\u201d. And a lot of the appeal of India, the reason for it not being \u201ceveryday humdrum normy\u201d, is that it still gives middle class white Westerners who go there chances to personally experience the colonial British sahib lifestyle.<\/p>\n

————————-<\/p>\n

Colorblue blogs at\u00a0In Transit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at In Transit and Racialicious. I\u2019m still trying to work my way through my discomfort and analyze exactly where my discomfort of\u00a0this Sociological Images post\u00a0is coming from, so if this critique seems a bit scattered, it\u2019s because my thoughts about it, at the moment, are that way. First: I agree with where the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,232,15,253,778,701,1784],"class_list":["post-45413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-cultural-imperialismneocolonialism","tag-culture","tag-history","tag-intersectionality","tag-modernprimitive","tag-nation-india"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45416,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45413\/revisions\/45416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}