All of a sudden, India is all over the American pop-cultural mindscape. Case in point, The Colbert Report. Tonight, for instance, Stephen Colbert made joke about Bollywood dancing, and then about India's space program, including a breezy reference to poverty and a graphic of one of the turrets flying off the Taj Mahal as a rocket. All in the space of about five minutes. And this isn't a one off. India's getting more face time on The Daily Show as well. (Yes, I do realize that this one hour of TV is not the sum of all American pop culture, but I think it's an interesting sample.)
What's going on here? A few years ago, India mattered very little to anyone, as far as I could see. And now it's all cows and Bollywood and the Taj Mahal floating about everywhere. Is it all because of Slumdog? Is that what's put us on the map? Suddenly we're interesting? Suddenly we're relevant enough to be a subject for political comedy? That's it, though. That's the extent of it. Interest in India doesn't seem to have been expansive; just more reductive.
Maybe this is just a result of my increasing disenchantment with the Colbert/Stewart universe. Monday morning, I had a brief conversation about comedy with someone I think knows it pretty well. I asked what he thought made good comedy, and if it was a difference between laughing at and just laughing. He said that laughing at can often be cruel, especially when alienating the subject of comedy as in the case of these shows, but it doesn't have to be, as long as the person (place or thing) that's being laughed at, is laughing as well. I'm not sure I am anymore.
Perhaps there's some sort of rule of proportionality involved. You enjoy comedy increasingly in proportion to the amount you know about its subject, but you get to a certain point when you know enough and, more importantly, CARE enough that the reductive nature of the comedy really begins to bother you. I, for one, no longer have a sense of humour when Uzbekistan is just goats, and Iran is just anti-modern ayatollahs (which it barely is AT ALL).
I know somebody will turn around and tell me I'm hypersensitive, but I'm not okay with the appropriation of fragments of a culture so that somebody who knows nothing about it can have a giggle at its expense. It's lazy and condescending and I don't think I should have to get over myself and laugh.
What's going on here? A few years ago, India mattered very little to anyone, as far as I could see. And now it's all cows and Bollywood and the Taj Mahal floating about everywhere. Is it all because of Slumdog? Is that what's put us on the map? Suddenly we're interesting? Suddenly we're relevant enough to be a subject for political comedy? That's it, though. That's the extent of it. Interest in India doesn't seem to have been expansive; just more reductive.
Maybe this is just a result of my increasing disenchantment with the Colbert/Stewart universe. Monday morning, I had a brief conversation about comedy with someone I think knows it pretty well. I asked what he thought made good comedy, and if it was a difference between laughing at and just laughing. He said that laughing at can often be cruel, especially when alienating the subject of comedy as in the case of these shows, but it doesn't have to be, as long as the person (place or thing) that's being laughed at, is laughing as well. I'm not sure I am anymore.
Perhaps there's some sort of rule of proportionality involved. You enjoy comedy increasingly in proportion to the amount you know about its subject, but you get to a certain point when you know enough and, more importantly, CARE enough that the reductive nature of the comedy really begins to bother you. I, for one, no longer have a sense of humour when Uzbekistan is just goats, and Iran is just anti-modern ayatollahs (which it barely is AT ALL).
I know somebody will turn around and tell me I'm hypersensitive, but I'm not okay with the appropriation of fragments of a culture so that somebody who knows nothing about it can have a giggle at its expense. It's lazy and condescending and I don't think I should have to get over myself and laugh.
1 comment:
It's tough. There is a lot of garbage out there. And the garbage is what sells, babe.
Thanks for speaking out.
Post a Comment