South Asians in American Media with a Big Bang

Greg Daniels’s and Michael Schur’s Parks and Recreation’s Tom Haverford is an 
Indian character who does not conform to a racial stereotype. However, the show does not 
often touch on the concept of race after the first season. Tom Haverford’s character is, as 
a result, detached from his race for the majority of the series. In one episode, Haverford is 
asked where he is from, ethnically speaking, but he diverts the question by stating his origins 
growing up in the United States. Similar to Parks and Recreation, Elizabeth Meriwether’s  
New Girl has an Indian character, Cece Parikh, whose race is alluded to often but does not 
define her as a person. Instead of pursuing a STEM career in the manner that Indian 
characters are often expected to, Cece pursues a career in modeling. Another character, 
Schmidt, refers to her race every so often as a fun one-liner rather than as a plot point. 
When Cece decides to marry outside of her race, however, the racial issues of Indian 
tradition surface and the series starts to focus on Cece’s relationship with her mother as 
her mother initially refuses to attend her daughter’s wedding but eventually concedes. 
The wedding and following marriage demonstrate a combination of Jewish and Indian 
cultures, including the naming of their first house “Jaipur Aviv."
Contrasting with The Office’s, Parks and Recreation’s, and New Girl’s portrayal 
of an Indian character and the presence Indian people in its writers room, we have CBS’s 
 The Big Bang Theory. One main characters on the show is Raj Koothrappali, a walking 
Indian stereotype complete with the accent used as the butt on jokes, meekness, and 
incompetence around women. The show features primarily white characters with a few 
token characters thrown in for the sake of diversity. Raj develops his character, improving 
himself as a person. However, his self-care efforts appear to correspond to the effeminate 
gay stereotype. One episode goes as far as to imply Raj is gay according to stereotypes. As 
the show goes on, however, Raj is seen less as a racially-charged stereotype and more as 
a regular character with his own personality, while remaining scholarly. To the show’s credit, 
Kunal Nayyar, the actor who portrays Raj, has confirmed that Raj’s accent is authentic rather 
than exaggerated, as many Indian actors have to perform.

Mark Waters’s iconic film Mean Girls explores and spoofs several stereotypes, namely 
in the scene in which the token lesbian and the token gay character introduce the main character 
Cady to the different cliques at school, some with racial associations, such as “Nerdy Asians,” 
“Cool Asians,” and “Unfriendly Black Hotties.” Mathlete Kevin Gnapoor is an recognizable 
character in the movie who appears to be a stereotypical Indian nerd initially but later on proves 
to be an individual who is well-respected by his peers. He goes on to perform an impressive rap 
at a show at his school. He also tells Cady near the end of Mean Girls, “Don’t let the haters stop 
you from doing your thang,” which can be interpreted as advice for breaking stereotypes, both 
for fictional characters and for the audience. 

Additionally, people are exposed to Indian stereotypes at a young age. Disney Channel, a 
well-known channel whose demographic is primarily children, often employs a token Indian 
character in order to employ diversity. For example, Jessie is a show in which they have a 
character of Indian origin, Ravi, whom the show portrays as an dissimilated, uncool immigrant 
who is unable to make friends or partake in relationships the way that his white, American 
peers do effortlessly. He also has an over-exaggerated accent in order to demonstrate how 
different he is due to his culture in an attempt to isolate him from his peers. For example, one 
episode demonstrates Ravi’s lack of cultural understanding regarding America as he decides 
to wear a traditional Indian sherwani—which the show pronounces as “sherkani”—to his first 
day of school despite the fact that he wears traditional American clothes daily. Even in India, 
boys of Ravi’s age generally wear a t-shirt and shorts, so there would be no reason for Ravi 
to drastically change the way he dresses other than cheap comedic effect. Disney’s Wizards 
of Waverly Place, by contrast, has a recurring character who also has an accent; however, 
the accent is considered to be acceptable due to the fact that it is a natural British accent, 
ie. an accent known for being used primarily by white people. Similarly, Disney’s Phineas 
and Ferb, a show older than Jessie, features an Indian kid named Baljeet who is also a walking 
Indian stereotype, as he is uncool and nerdy and is bullied often; however, Baljeet is a different 
type of Indian stereotype because he embarks on journeys that people of an Indian stereotype 
would be too afraid to do. As the show progresses, so does the portrayal of the character.  
Phineas and Ferb makes fun of the bully-victim relationship between Buford and Baljeet. The 
show does not revolve around the children’s relationships because they are too young to delve 
into deep, meaningful relationships. However, some episodes focus on Baljeet’s romantic life 
and end up with him in mutual love with a childhood friend. Conversely, Indians in many 
comedy TV shows find romance hard to handle due to their nerdiness.

-Puja

Indians in South Asian Movies and DDLJ

Compared to South Asian portrayals in American shows, South Asian portrayals in Indian shows are pretty different. Since South Asians understand their own traditions and customs, their portrayal of their own people are more accurate and non stereotypical than American movies. However, they depict non-resident Indians, or NRIs, as caricatures or villians, people who have lost connection to their culture and traditions. For example, the film, Pardes (1997), manifests the “corrupting influence of American society” in the antagonist’s lifestyle of cigarettes, alcohol, unfaithfulness and disregard of others. In contrast, the protagonists holds onto his Indian values and does not go against his elders and respects women. In addition, one character who has a love of his Indian culture breaks out into a song literally called “I Love My India” (2:34-2:45). This shows how important culture and custom is in India and it is portrayed strongly by South Asians.

Another movie made by South Asians is the iconic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a popular film about first generation British Indians who fall in love. The female protagonist, Simran, promises her father that she would marry a family friend, arranged by her father and his friend, and follow Indian values after going on a European tour with her friends (Amazon prime DDLJ 28:00-28:16). Due to some complications from meeting Raj, the male protagonist, she ends up being stuck in Europe with him, eventually falling in love with him during their time together in Europe. This resulted to her father selling the house and moving to India for her to marry the family friend right away after overhearing her conversation with her mother about Raj. The movie portrays Simran as a non-resident Indian, who does not follow the traditions of her parents who immigrated to London from India due to wanting a love marriage instead of an arranged marriage. Aside from catching feelings for someone outside of an arranged marriage, the characters in the movie, mostly Raj, do other acts outside of Indian values such as drinking, partying, disrespecting elders, (Amazon prime DDLJ 24:20-24:30) and talking about girls in a way that would not be acceptable in Indian culture.

-Mimi

Orientalism and Kelly Kapoor and Street Fighter 2

 

The late Columbia Professor Edward Said defined orientalism as

a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on

the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is ... the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other..., the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet ... The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, and even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles (Said, 1978)

To really dissect what Said it saying we need to define what is meant by “The Orient”. In this context where he’s talking about European culture and colonization the term refers to the part of the world East of Europe, specifically North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In most American context its used to refer to East Asia countries like China, Korea, or Japan, this is because of stuff like differing immigration waves and different ideas of what that mean by a person from “the East”. And despite this definition being focused on European colonialism, or actually because it is focused on European colonialism which shaped the current cultures of America and a lot of the rest of the world, this concept of orientalism has seeped into the media of a lot of the world and shapes the way people from “the orient”, and for the purposes of this video specifically South Asian people are portrayed in media. And this is like especially apparent if you put examples of South Asian people written by and presented by orientalist cultures next to examples of South Asian people being written and presented by South Asian people. And the point of this isn’t to be exclusionary and say something along the lines of “White people can’t make brown characters” but more a set of examples of the benefits of diverse writers rooms and some ques that any writers room of any combinations of backgrounds can take.

    A good examples to start with would be to use pieces of media that almost everyone is probably 

universally familiar with, whether they like it or not. NBC’s The Office was a sitcom that ran for 9 

seasons with a mockumentary format that unconventionally had a team of actor-writer-directors 

(Insert screenshots of “written by Mindy Kaling” s6e4, “written by BJ Novak” s2e15, “directed by John 

Krasinski” s6e15) including Mindy Kaling who played the character of Kelly Kapoor. I believe that this 

was a huge reason why the show and its side characters remained fresh and for a sitcom, fleshed 

out without falling back on stereotypes. Oscar never felt like the token gay character or the token 

Mexican character, Darrell and Stanley never felt like token black characters, and Kelly Kapoor is the 

furthest thing from the token, stereotypical, exotic Indian. Likely do to Kaling’s presence in the writing 

room Kelly’s character is not defined by Indian stereotypes and can’t be reduced to “because she’s  

Indian” while also not making the mistake of trying to be ignorant of race. All things considered with 

Kelly being a side character, she is an excellent portrayal of the diasporic Indian. She is 

unquestionably Indian and that isn’t ignored by characters like Michael Scott . It's important to 

acknowledge that Kelly is by no means a perfect person and an unflawed character with an 

overwhelmingly positive story arc. Kelly is a flawed person, she starts the series as an obnoxious 

character who thrives on gossip and craves drama, her series arc sees her in an on and off 

relationship where both parties are toxic to each other. None of her character is defined by orientalist 

ideas of her Indianness, but it also doesn’t fall into the pitfall of ignoring the ways that being Indian in 

the setting of the show would affect her. Kelly Kapoor is a multidimensional character and gets the 

same amount of development and complexity a non-Indian character filling her role would receive, 

and much of that is likely due to Kaling's presence in the writer’s room.

While most of this blog has American and Indian portrayals of South Asians, the orientalist views of South Asians has, without failed spread to other culture’s media. Japanese video game company Capcom’s Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, originally released in Japanese arcades in 1991, has reached nearly iconic status despite the ample use of stereotypes in its portrayal of an international cast. Nearly all of the characters in the game are based off of stereotypes of different cultures referencing game’s World Warrior subtitle, save for the Brazilian character Blanka who appears only to be based on the concept of a beast man in the rainforest, and Thailand’s Sagat who at this point in the series is a straightforward Muay Thai fighter. The interesting thing about these characters is that they appear to all be based on stereotypes stemming from media of the places they are stereotyping from, which still is not a positive portrayal but is important to note the difference between the other types of portrayals in the game. The American Guille comes from Schwarzenegger and Van-Damme American action movies, Chun Li comes from tropes of heroines in 1980’s Hong Kong cinema, the games Japanese characters Ryu and E Honda come from fantasy infused versions of actual Japanese martial arts, but two characters in the game distinctively come from other the media portrayals of these cultures by Western media. One of these characters in the Russian Zangief who comes from the Cold War Era American action cinema archetypal Russian bad guys. The other character is the strange and exotic Dhalsim, coming from India. With a name that comes from a combination of the foods daal and shim bata, two dishes seen on the menu of an Osaka Indian restaurant the game’s developers would frequent, Dhalsim sports a necklace of skulls and vermillion body markings. He fights using yoga that allows his limbs to extend like rubber while also being able to teleport and breath fire (an ability dubbed “Yoga Flame” which Capcom’s American branch had once said comes from all of the curry he eats, but that was later contradicted in the manual for a 1993 re release where it was stated that the ability came from his kundalini (while this is related to Hatha Yoga, this in no way is related to the ability to breath fire), and again in the series latest installment, 2018’s Street Fighter V where it was said the ability came as a blessing from the Hindu god Agni. Dhalsim’s portrayal comes from orientalist stereotypes that appear from Western media, in essence Dhalsim is the product of two different layers of South Asians being portrayed by non South Asians.

Contrasting with this portrayal of a South Asian character in a video game, 2016’s Overwatch takes cues from positive portrayals of a South Asian character despite the lore of the game not being made by South Asians. Overwatch’s morally gray Satya Vaswani, most often referred to as her alias “Symmetra” is an architect who happens to be on the autism spectrum and grew up in poverty in Hyderabad India who uses hard light constructs and drones of her own inventio to fight. Because of her history living in poverty she is willing to work outside of the law and morality to improve living conditions and housing when the she ends up working in Rio de Janeiro. Symmetra’s story doesn’t ignore her Indianness and makes it a part of her history and character motivations, but she isn’t defined my being Indian. Her childhood living in poverty isn’t an orientalist Indian stereotype and the way it is handled is as true to life as can make sense in a game set in the far future. And much like Kelly Kapoor she isn’t written as a perfect infallible person, she is a multidimensional and flawed character who is morally questionable fueled by an interesting background that creates a nuanced character. And while it isn’t exactly the focus on this blog, Symmetra is also a positive portrayal of a character on the autistic spectrum as her character doesn’t begin and end at being autistic. Symmetra’s autism affects her life and informs her behavior just as her Indianness does but it doesn’t define who she is.

-Zaheer