Indeed, the number of black actors rewarded at the SAGs is a significant step up from the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that has plagued the Academy this year. (Not one person of colour has been nominated in an acting category.) Apart from the best ensemble award at the SAGs, OITNB took home best actress in a comedy for Uzo Aduba, a black actor on the show.
That said, even as Prepon made a strong statement surrounded by fellow black and latina (and white) cast members, something was amiss about her pronouncement. Standing as she did at the centre of a huge gathering of talented actors, it was hard to shake the impression that Prepon was only being the “good white”, donning the mantle of bestowing dignity on those at the fringes.
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Last week, was also when Coldplay released their India-themed video Hymn for the Weekend in collaboration with Beyonce. Twitter went berserk debating whether the video is well-intentioned or whether it caters to the same stereotypes that India has been burdened with in the western imagination since forever.
It would be reasonable to give Coldplay, and Chris Martin, the band’s lead singer who is in nearly every frame in the video, the benefit of the doubt. But the video is drowning in banalities, regurgitating stock images of the White Man in India. Sundry boys dappled in colour make one wonder if it is Holi. (Since it is not explicitly stated in the video, it may give the foreigner the impression that Indians go about powdering their faces with colours for no reason.) All manner of props and people are showcased with in-your-face Hindu imagery. Sadhus and Shiv and Krishna and the ghats make rather forced entries.
Beyonce dresses in gaudy attire, her face encased in heavy jewellery that screams exotica. It makes one wonder if she or Martin never came across the graceful designs of a Ritu Kumar. Sonam Kapoor, in a blink-and-miss appearance, adds to this narrative of clichés, running beatifically for no reason except to throw flowers into the sky in the manner of a practised (if lapsed) royal. The flowers defy gravity and rise into the air, as Martin’s voice rises to a crescendo. Are we to glean some uplifting message in all of this?
It can pass for well-meaning schmaltz, except I don’t think it is. It is another addition to the long list of culture products borne of the white person’s gaze that cannot help poisoning whatever it touches. Due to historical guilt over colonialism or bleeding-heart do-gooder-ness, white people tinge their travels to the Third World with a faux-benevolent weightlessness that is entirely shorn of history or context. If they then produce art out of this experience, it can be lethal for the imagination and abysmal as a learning platform.
Who, say, are the actors in the Hymn for the Weekend video? Why are they so consistently upbeat? As Martin enters a dilapidated cinema hall (let me belabour the point: white people must enter degrading premises in the Third World in order that their cultural cachet and the spirit of their journey – purification and penance – remains intact) to watch Beyonce in an in-joke that has her play a rani, earnest-looking Indians sit around him, basking in the glory of the White Man’s presence.
The problem with race, in spite of our post-Barack Obama times, is that it refuses to go away. One of Amy Schumer’s recurring jokes on her stand-up show has her play a white woman who fails to recognise the colour of the person she is talking to and offers tone-deaf comments. When a person of colour takes offence, she says: “I didn’t even notice. I am race-blind.”
Martin and Prepon are, thankfully, ahead of the curve. They see the problem. They understand that the global narrative has been hijacked by those with their skin colour for far too long. But in standing up for the others, they either pander to stereotypes, as Martin does in his video, or perpetuate their power by becoming the spokesperson, as Prepon did at the SAGs. While overflowing with the milk of human kindness, their actions not permit genuine understanding or real transfer of power.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy and a black woman herself, has spoken of her agony at this year’s Oscars being so white. She said she is taking steps to make the Academy more diverse in order that voting for the Oscars reflects the America of today, not the version of a white Baby Boomer.
That would be wonderful, should it happen, not just because it would right matters but because a black woman in a position of authority would have laid the groundwork. It is time people of colour shaped narratives about race. This would ensure, among other things, that songs about India go beyond smiling children and sycophantic adults. It would also ensure that well-meaning whites are saved from themselves.