Hollywood Masala

I think it`s a wonderful thing to see so many talented filmmakers emerge out of the South Asian Community. The South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) has provided a terrific medium in which artists from all walks of life and backgrounds can demonstrate their skills and insight through film. Their forums allow for freedom of expression through which many of the issues that face our origins, our communities and us are addressed.

Unfortunately, at times some of the intentions of filmmaking are not so pure.
In attending the recent South Asian International Film Festival in New York, I was disappointed to see one of the picks.

Digvijay Singh`s, MAYA was at best a poor attempt at filmmaking in both style as well as content. Simply put, it was an insult to India and Hinduism.

The film is about a 12 year old girl, Maya who leads a simple life in a rural Indian village. She has a cousin-brother of the same age, Sanjay with whom she spends all her time and who is meant to be her protective companion. The essence of the film is meant to be about this young girl Maya, falling victim to an apparent disgusting ancient ritual of gang rape by Hindu priests from which her cousin attempts unsuccessfully to rescue her.

First, in trying to establish the relationship between Maya and Sanjay, Singh tries to convey a normal, jovial, fraternal love by spending what seems like an eternity on the two of them playing, laughing, hanging out with ma, and endulging in childish mischief. In between all of this, in a perverted twist, Singh skips to a scene where Sanjay demands Maya to show him her private parts during play. It is unclear, what exactly the motive of this sudden odd interaction is. The point of Sanjay`s character as we find out near the end of the film was to be a protective, loving brother. There was no reason for this perverted scene except an attempt of falsely arousing the audience.

Next, there is no establishment of what the film is about until the very end. The first turning point does not occur until about half way through the film when Maya discovers she has started menstruating and at this point it is still completely unclear where the story is headed. A lot of the film is spent concentrating on the nuances that occur in this little rural household. In specific on the alcoholic servant Ganesh and his oddities and also on annoying lizards infesting the house. These nuances soon became a nuisance when they are repeated and overused so much, it leaves the audience rolling their eyes. It is obvious Singh was trying to fill in time without any real substance.

Last but most importantly, this film puts India and ancient hindu practices in an embarrassing, disgusting, and false light. In the last 20 minutes of the film, the true point of the film is finally revealed -a depiction of a so called ancient ritual that occurs in some apparent obscure villages in India in which young girls are gang raped by priests in order to welcome their womanhood (menstrual cycles). A kind of a ‘coming of age` perverse tradition.
The footnotes at the end of the movie reveal that this ritual is practiced on 5000- 15,0000 woman a year. I am not sure the validity of this fact at all but lets put this claim in perspective. Out of a population of over a billion, 10,000 people is 0.001 percent! There are sick and twisted practices that occur to girls, boys, men, women and animals all over the world in strange obscure cults and organizations. To make a movie out of something that is not part of any hindu text or teaching and portray it as an ancient hindu ritual is very disappointing and insulting. Admittedly, there are plenty of prevalent disturbing issues in India and in our community that can and should be addressed and that effect the lives of our people every day. And our culture is also full of beauty and morality which should also be addressed, especially when we are trying to teach the western world about how rich and cultured our heritage really is.

Why would any Indian film maker want to portray such a nasty image of our culture and religion except to cause controversy and gain recognition? A high price to pay. I hope it was worth it.

I haven't seen this film - so my comments are general in nature.

We are increasingly becoming a media driven world. People's perceptions are shaped, if not entirely created by media. This is a double-edged sword. Even as you can use media to shape a positive image for your community - whether it be based on your religious persuasion, your sexual orientation, skin color, language what have you, it can also be used to create a negative image as well - either by those who dislike you, or those who do so unknowingly/unwittingly.

So what is the solution to this? A balanced and equitable distribution of positive/negative images helps viewers to get enough of the whole to form a balanced perspective. And needless to say, there is a huge lack of positive images.

My personal opinion is that within the so-called artistic/socially oriented communities, there is a tendency to see places like India in an exotic light. As those "others" who are so "different", and so "interesting" simply because they are so "different".

You can see this happening in film festivals that will program a film like the one described above way before they'll program a film coming from India that shows us as normal people like any other. Infact, one south asian film festival rejected my film "Indian Cowboy" as being too "commercial" for them. Meaning ofcourse, that my film didn't insist on showing Indians as exotic creatures from an exotic land, but simply as people with their own unique foibles. [The idea of commercial is with a wink and a nod ofcourse. When your film is a super-duper hit, then they don't care that it is commercial, they program it anyways!]

Another south asian festival rejected it saying that the film had a "confusing value system". Meaning that the male-female relationships in the film were turned on their head, and didn't conform to their ideas of how south asian men and women should interact. At a screening at the Jacob Burns Center in NY, where "Indian Cowboy" was selected to be part of a series, an audience member asked me - "are women in India really this free?" She meant in terms of their sexual mores. I said, some are, some aren't. It is not a given in today's India. Whereas the perception she had was that every woman from India was really uptight about sex.

Fortunately, with all the festivals I've gone to with my film, I've had the opportunity to interact with audiences and show them a different side of south asians that they may not normally get to see. But its not enough. We need MORE visibility for south asians in the media. Showing the world our well-rounded and diverse collective personality.

I hope the world opens its eyes to the new India - with its MANY issues, but with its many positive contributions as well. And I see journalists/filmmakers/writers/etc as being the primary catalysts in making it happen.

Just my thoughts as I ponder the fact that over 70000 people died in just a few hours. Nature is more powerful than we give it credit for.

Ciao!
Nikhil K

Dear Dita,

Your angst is understandable, but you needn't worry.

Art, whether it comes out of the South Asian community or any other place will have its share of uplifting work and highly acidic trash.

It is neither the responsibility of art to truly represent the human condition nor is it bound by it. It exists for its own sake - and the more we pay attention to what we disapprove, the more it thrives. I am by no means suggesting that you should walk away from a misrepresentation of a culture you belong to without reacting to it.

On the other hand, how can you stop a piece of work from putting out its voice regardless of the "truth" it fails to represent? You simply can't.

When I saw Mira Nair's "Salaam Bombay", I felt pretty much the same way as you have expressed yourself here. My only reaction to that has been to not recommend that film to anyone I know.

Continue to speak up for what you believe, but don't let it get to you when one more artist falls for the gimmick of selling sensationalism instead of something truly artistic.

That's not your loss, it remains on the artist's sole wall of shame.