If You're Not White, You're Colored

One of the scenes in Mississippi Masala that I found particularly intriguing was the one in which one of the Indian men in the motel approaches Demetrius and Tyrone trying to prevent Demetrius from suing for whiplash. It is one of the few (if not the only) instance in which he speaks in favor of solidarity among different minority groups. “As long as you’re not white, you’re colored,” he says. It’s interesting that these sentiments are only brought out when it’s strategically useful, in the context of a financial dilemma. This early scene, in which the idea of cooperation among minorities is exploited for a financial end, criticizes the possibility of genuine third-world solidarity.

I guess the story of the relationship between Mina and Demetrius demonstrates a reach across racial borders in a more genuine way than this manipulation-- and, of course, as the main storyline, this relationship is more important to the overall theme of the film. However, even this model of inter-minority cooperation is full of problems. In order to be together, both Mina and Demetrius have to leave their families, which suggests that their relationship is not possible within the spheres of their communities, and that it can only exist in some isolated limbo land (which is never shown in the film). Their ending isn’t exactly a happy one, or at least not one that holds much suggestion of future success.

As Mississipi Masala suggests, the relationship between the African-American and Asian-American communities is a problematic one. Why is it that two groups with similar histories of mistreatment by the white majority have such trouble getting along? I think a few important differences between these groups contribute to this. First, as we’ve discussed, the African-American community is larger, visible enough to create a black-white racial dichotomy that other races-- including Asians-- have trouble fitting into. Second, a key aspect of the Asian-American experience is the immigrant experience. The stories in Sa-I-Gu are part of a standard trope of the Asian-American narrative: couples who left everything in their home countries to struggle in the Land of Opportunity for their children’s sake.

I was struck by one interview in Sa-I-Gu, in which the woman tells of how she’d expected America to be, essentially, whiter. She’s surprised by the number of Hispanics in her new neighborhood and says she could have believed it was Mexico, but not America. It made me begin to wonder whether the Asian immigrant’s American dream was a _white American dream. This brings up an interesting idea. We’ve talked about the Asian-American as the perpetual foreigner; but this interview suggests that, at least to this Korean-American woman, all other ethnic minorities are just as foreign. If you’re not white, you’re colored-- and, perhaps, not quite American enough.

An early sequence of Sa-I-Gu shows a Korean church singing “Amazing Grace,” a traditional African-American spiritual. This clip perhaps suggests that Asian-Americans and African-Americans have more in common than either community will admit. Watching _Sa-I-Gu reminded me of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which deals with race in Brooklyn in the late ‘80s. While it mostly deals with black-white relations (no surprise there), the film also addresses tensions between other ethnic groups, and it features a corner grocery owned by a newly immigrated Korean couple. Below are a few clips from Do the Right Thing which focus on the Korean couple (it also includes the looting/burning scene, which I think is pertinent in light of the L.A. riots).  

Especially interesting is the moment in which the mob turns away from the burning, white-owned pizzeria, toward the Korean grocery, and decides to leave it alone after the owner yells, "I'm black! I'm black! You-- me-- same!"  Is this what it takes for people to even consider minority solidarity?  Angry mobs and threats of lawsuits?  Well, if these extreme situations are what it takes, then so be it.

Mississippi Masala

Mira Nair's film grapples with the idea of "home" in Diaspora culture. Twice displaced (as Mehta mentions on p. 218)--Indians by culture and tradition and Ugandan by birth--Mina's family constantly attempts to negotiate the conflicting notions of "home." Jay thinks he's Ugandan, for he was born and raised there among Africans, his wife thinks her family is Indian (and therefore Mina should marry an Indian), and Mina believes that she is American. The three members of this family seems to struggle with where they belong, and by the end of the movie, the differences are reconciled but only because they come to understand that being "home" doesn't mean being at a certain place as much as being with certain people. Jay writes to his wife from Uganda a somewhat cliché phrase "Home is where the heart is, and my heart is with you," implying that he belongs in the United States because of his wife. Jay seems to reach an epiphany that Uganda is not his "home" when finds out that Okelo, his best friend, no longer inhabits there. Okelo is Jay's link to "home," and without Okelo Uganda is nothing but a place foreign. In other words, a place becomes "home" only with someone familiar. This idea becomes more evident when Mina and Dexter share their ideas about places of their cultural origin; neither Mina nor Dexter have visited India or Africa and they do not believe they should identify themselves with those places. There, they do not have anyone who they belong with, and the place origin simply becomes nothing more than where it started, distant from where it is now. Mina thinks she's American because she belongs with Demitrius. In this sense, the definition of "home" constantly evolves in the Diaspora culture as the immigrants discover the family of kinship with whom they belong. 

Mississippi Masala: Race/Relationships

At its heart, Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala is a romance, an ethnically tinged take of Romeo and Juliet... with a happy ending. However, as many of my classmates have already mentioned, the relationship between Meena and Demetrius rings false, too brief and unbelievable to make the audience feel any real love between the two characters. Indeed, the relationship begins as a ploy for Demetrius to make his ex-girlfriend Alicia jealous.

Meena, too, seems to have an ulterior motive for dating Demetrius, one that is, in fact, arguably racially motivated. After sleeping with Demetrius, Meena asks him to "wish me a happy birthday." A flashback to Uganda reveals that a young Meena is sad that their family friend Okelo didn't sing happy birthday to her.

In this way, Meena's desire for Demetrius is figured as a desire for Okelo, which can be interpreted as the desire for black men. For Meena, Demetrius simply fits the role -- he reminds her of her life back in Uganda and of Okelo. And he does this by (I know I am oversimplifying here) being a black man.

In this instance, how is race/homeland linked to desire? What does it mean to love someone for the color of their skin? Is it OK for Meena to desire black men because she grew up in Uganda? Interestingly, many of these questions sounds a lot like the questions asked during the Interracial Dating Forum here at Brown.

Masala: “Creating something new out of old ingredients?”

Lots of interesting things going on in Mira Nair’s “Mississippi Masala.” First of all, I had forgotten how long ago the 90’s really were: the haircuts, the fashion, the music, like whoa... The race relations between blacks and Indians in the film were complex. In both Uganda and Mississippi, Meena’s family faces tense relations with blacks. At the beginning of the film her family is forced to flee Uganda because of the rise of nationalism in the country being told that “Africa is Africans, black Africans.” The deep seeded animosities between blacks and Indians accompany Meena’s family to Mississippi where Meena and Demetrius’ interracial relationship explodes into a feud between their families. Despite the potential for solidarity and unity between the two groups as non-white people of color, the Indians in the film are still seen as foreigners and out-of-place by both the black and white communities in Mississippi.

Throughout the film I found myself thinking about the relationship between South Asians and Asian Americans. One of the things that struck me on our first day of Asian Am Pop Culture class is the absence of South Asians in our class, which got me thinking about whether South Asians embrace Asian American as part of their identity or if Asian American is a distinctly East and Southeast Asian identity. This question extends into our readings and movies as well, in which South Asians have been mostly absent. This invisibility of SA in curriculum is concerning, but it is also a reflection of their representation of South Asians in mainstream culture. The only popular SA actor that comes to mind is Kal Penn from “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” The invisibility of South Asian identity in the United States was also present in the film. Even after he learns that Meena is Indian, Tyrone continues to believe that she is Demetrius’ “Mexican girlfriend.” One of the white character in the film complains to his friend that the “Indians” should be sent “back to the reservation,” confusing Meena’s family for American Indians. With the huge growth in the Indian/South Asian film industry (Bollywood), the invisibility of South Asians in our popular culture should change as Bollywood fosters a larger ethnic Indian cinema.

The one part of the movie that seemed ingenuine to me was the relationship between Meena and Demetrius. I just didn’t find their relationship believable. Maybe I have a narrow view/high expectations of romance in film, but I felt that there was a huge disconnect between the “love at first site” and the “we are going to leave Mississippi together” elope. I recognize that Nair was trying to do a lot with this relationship using it as the focal point for the tensions between the black and Indian communities, but considering how the brevity of their relationship AND the fact that Demetrius was just using Meena to get back at his ex-girlfriend Alicia. I guess I would have to side with her parents on this one: What was Meena thinking!?!?

watching mississippi masala was an interesting turn of discourse for me in context of this class for a couple of reasons. foremostly, this would be the first time we are focusing on an example of south asian 'pop culture' in the class. the prevailing stereotypes of south asian communities are usually very different from those of east asian nations like those we've studied so far. if anyone has read vijay prashad's the karma of brown folk, we know that historically south asians, especially indian immigrants in america have distinct histories of travelling and staying for good in the US, whether it is because of the "brain drain" or jsut because of economic troubles in the motherland and the bring-your-family-over policy offered to asian technicians by the american government. what i felt was really interesting in watching this film in particular is that the indian family was not from india, but from africa. the most meaningful line in the film seemed to be unassociated with the major love story but with the theme of belonging when the Ugandan African man says to mena's father, "uganda is for black africans." this raises an a couple important issues: 1. second-class citizenship due to racism in a country other than america and 2. skin color.

i raise the first issue because even though this situation is unique to the family in this story, it is important because it forces us to venture more into the historically complex diaspora of Indian populations throughout other continents and different forms and accounts of discrimination against Asians in the past. I have to admit, I did not know about the Asian deportation in Uganda and this movie made me do some research. I had American images of the taxi-driving-New-Yorker-Indian stereotype and the wealthy-traditional-indian-technician-from-north-carolina in my head but studying diaspora is important because like the family in the movie, many asians have travelled as fugitives from one country to another to wind up finally here.

the second issue is a little more interesting because it ties in the love story and the issue of miscegenation and mixed-race marriages. though the image of the strict traditional asian parents who wont allow mixed race marriages is something i've been exposed to a lot in the past, the line that really stuck out for me was when demetrius spoke to mena's father about the indians' skin tone being just a couple shades lighter than his own. the issue of "darkies" that the indian women gossip about in the film is also something i'd like to discuss in class because it really is pertinent more in the south asian context. how does skin color affect racism in the asian american community?

Narrative Masala

Mississippi Masala was an interesting movie in the context of our class because we often discuss Asian Americans and their relationships with white America, whereas this movie concentrated on the interaction between Asian Americans and African Americans. The relationship between these two groups is very complex, as can be seen in the movie. For example, the figure who closest adheres to the image of the model minority in his work ethic, composure, and drive to succeed is actually Demetrius, who is black and not Asian, providing evidence contrary to the common stereotype. Despite his success, not many people in the movie acknowledge Demetrius' hard work. Admittedly, being a carpet cleaner is not too glamorous a job, but it is still admirable that Demetrius is running his own business. In spite of his success, Demetrius doesn't seem to receive the proper amount of respect in the movie, whether it be from Meena's Indian family, the white loan officer in the bank, or even his own fellow African Americans. I think this irony (and inequity) is best commented on when Demetrius confronts Jay, saying that Jay shouldn't think (in a white manner) that he is better than Demetrius because of race when Jay and his family are not so different from Demetrius, save for a few shades of skin color difference.

I found this extremely interesting because Jay is not American, but Ugandan, yet the issues of racial division and perhaps superiority still make their ways into his actions. I thought that it would have made more sense that Jay feel more affinity to African Americans, seeing as how African people are who he grew up around. Additionally, I think minorities in the United States at least on a loose level, form solidarity due to a sense of common oppression from whites. On the other hand, Asians like Jay were kicked out of Uganda precisely because they were perceived as closed off and well off elitists by the black African majority, and in the United States, Asians are placed on a different tier of minority than blacks as well.

Ultimately, from a media point of view, the portrayal of Indians in this movie includes many Indian and Asian American stereotypes, including the ownership of motels, the closed traditions and community, the concern with money, and the sense of superiority and sacredness that the family seemed to show with regards to their traditions. At the same time, Meena's family's journey is also unique because they are not simply Indian Americans or Asian Americans, and as such, their narratives cannot be easily placed into those categories. Throughout the movie, there was no one way to term Meena's nationality/origin, masala being the best characterization of her identity. In this sense, I think this movie shows the complexities of identity well, showing viewers that there could be more to an individual than can be gleaned from a limiting categorical term like Asian American or Indian American.

Mississippi Masala - Response

This movie was unique in that it explored an interracial relationship between an African American man and Indian American woman (by way of Uganda). I thought it was an interesting layer of character to have Meena and her parents originate from Uganda, while most of the African Americans portrayed in the movie are “Americanized” and even admit that they have never been to Africa. With Meena and her parents being of affluent status in Uganda, I thought that their immigrant story was interesting in that they did not leave due to poor economy or to seek a better life for Meena, like many other immigrant stories we have watched. Instead, they are forcibly driven out due to their ethnicity, even with the father emphasizing how strongly he feels for Uganda. However, I thought that the tension between Meena and her parents has been seen many times before in movies about generational gaps, and thought that everyone’s reactions when they discovered that Meena was with a man of another race to be expected. It would have been interesting to have an Indian American character that sympathized with Meena. Much like other people mentioned, I also found Demetrius’s family’s negative reaction to his relationship to Meena a little incongruent, as they were originally welcoming when he first

In thinking about this movie in comparison to Better Luck Tomorrow and Dancing Monkeys, I felt that Meena shared some of the characteristics of the kids in Dancing Monkeys, particularly the fact that she decides to hold off on going to college until her father has more money, as seen in the conversation she has with her father in the Chinese restaurant. This reminded me a little bit about one of the subjects in Dancing Monkeys, who decides to go to a cheaper college because he does not want to burden his mother. On the other hand, the characters in Better Luck Tomorrow really do not have the same concept of money, as they make money off of selling drugs and cheatsheets but don’t really need it. Thus, these three movies go to show that class is a huge factor in shaping the lives of Asian American youth, especially in how having less money intertwines Asian American youth more with their family. In Better Luck Tomorrow, there was indeed an unspoken pressure coming from parents, but the characters were able to escape under the pretense of going to extracurricular activities for their college applications. However, in both Dancing Monkeys and Mississippi Masala, I got a greater sense that the Asian American youth are more tied to their families, as jobs were more of a necessity in terms of helping out the family.

Not quite a love story, no real political agenda

I was a bit disappointed with both the (lacking) political message and the supposed love story between Demetrius and Mina in Mississippi Masala. The chemistry between Mina and Demetrius was not very convincing, and it would have been nice if there were more development in that arena. I assume that Nair was going for the "love conquers all theme", especially when it comes to forbidden love, however I felt that the "forbidden love" part was as well not as convincing. The only part that I found interesting was the contrast between the love scene of Mina and Demetrius and that of the newly wed couple (Mina's relatives).

As for the political issues between Indian and African-Americans of the south, I felt they weren't portrayed strongly enough to warrant the opposition that ensued with the interracial relationship. Perhaps it was because I am not as familiar with South Asian-American stereotypes in the U.S. that it made me harder to pick up the more subtle details that could have been more apparent to someone who is. The reading in Feng's Screening Asian Americans did clarify a lot of the issues that I had overlooked when watching the movie. Using a motel as the setting for which the nuclear Indian family found a means for survival was peculiar yet seemed more appropriate to me after the reading. I was also not surprised to see the importance that immigrants place on family, which was the case for Mina and her parents.

I found Mina, Kinnu and Jay's struggles in the U.S. very interesting because unlike their relatives in Mississippi, they were born and raised in Uganda, and had no real reason to relate to Indian tradition and culture. Yet they seemed to uphold these views more after they moved to the U.S. During the chaos that ensued after Mina and Demetrius's relationship became public, it was apparent how much family matters both in the Indian and African-American communities.

making sense of masala

Although I think the film just touches the surface on many issues of race, color casting, class and ethnicity (etc.) I do have to agree with Rye-Jim's post below. This film presents a much more complex interracial dynamic then I think is typically seen in mainstream popular culture around race and even interracial dating.

The binary of black-white or asian-white (which we have seen throughout a number of the films in this course) is disrupted (finally). To disrupt the binary and break-out of our cultures "fixation" on black-versus white, which Mehta notes is "outdated" and "misleading," opens a space where we can talk about relations between different people/communities of color. These relations are often divided (divided we fall) and individuals/communities may not feel a sense of solidarity with other people of color despite historical and modern day racism, class oppression and exploitation.

Demetris's brother, Dexter, really stood out to me. I saw Dexter as this character representing the new wave of young black americans in the '90s. His love for hip-hop, wanting to go back to his roots through African nationalism (African Americans are Africans who've never been to Africa) and questioning why he should work in a racist system are some examples of this. I think Dexter in some ways was the character that most challenges this racial oppressive system we live in.

Mina's a really interesting character that I hope we can talk more in-depth about on the blog and in-class. I think she is both exotified and objectified by her male counterparts. Besides her looks, I wonder what attracts Demetris to Mina. He NEVER asks her any questions about herself besides where she's from and even that he never asks her questions about why she moved around.
Even from the beginning he "uses" her to get back at Alicia.

Does Mina (or any women in the film for that matter) have agency?

All Kinds of Asian

We were asked to watch Mississippi Masala with the previous two films in mind, so here I consider some similarities and differences between the three depictions of Asian Americans coming into adulthood.

In any of the films, one could see that being Asian American placed the main characters in unique social niches, affected to various degrees by economic status and social expectations. The teens in BLT and Monkey Dance, and Meena in Mississippi Masala, knew the culturally-based hopes their parents held for them even when they were silent. In BLT, these parental pressures were something the audience might infer, as there were never adult authority figures on screen. Yet the common result of cultural norms (expectations from inside) and American stereotypes (expectations from outside) was not an outright rejection by the young adults, but rather narratives of adolescents struggling to find their own identities while acutely aware of what everyone else expected. Trends have been discussed, but ultimately I feel as though the characters just wanted happiness for themselves and for their parents (except for maybe BLT’s Steve). It was the internal negotiation of opposing needs that we saw playing itself out.

How much did their specific ethnic backgrounds matter? I think that each Asian group depicted—East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian—arrived and continues to exist within its own American context. In Monkey Dance, the parents were refugees of the Khmer Rouge genocide; in Mississippi Masala, Meena’s parents were exiles of Idi Amin’s anti-Asian regime, originally affluent in their homeland of Uganda; in BLT, the high school seniors were raised by upper middle class parents, who I assume came to America and worked very hard within the system to provide comfortable lives for their children. The disempowerment associated with being a refugee was visible to various degrees between Meena’s parents and those of the Cambodian students. Choosing to flee to America out of some sort of necessity meant that the children would not be able to freely pursue personal desires, whether those were educational or social. The BLT characters, on the other hand, seemed to be getting exactly what they wanted. Socioeconomic conditions mattered here.

Regarding how outside communities perceived the main characters, I believe it really depends on the level of “threat” each immigrant group poses to previous settlers. It came out in Mississippi Masala that Indian families were seen as “foreigners,” and “nothing but trouble” because of their economic accomplishments upon entering the U.S. Demitrius receives the criticism: “[He] think he got a white chick.” He angrily asserts to Meena’s father that Indians have come in, and instead of siding with African Americans, chose to employ the same oppressive attitudes as white society. The stereotypically competitive Asian American students push white students out of positions that would otherwise be theirs in colleges. Though this specific theme was not addressed in BLT, I saw it as a factor in the tension between “white jocks” and the Asian American characters. But perhaps this is drawing too much from outside information. Lastly, the Cambodian American students did not address any feelings of racial conflict within their social and economic spheres, but you could see it in their parents’ generation—Cambodian immigrants who were trained as professionals in their home countries were regarded as uneducated once in the U.S., then relegated to cheap labor positions. Establishing Cambodian refugees as a low-threat population economically has allowed for existence of a harmoniously unfair social structure. But of course, this is changing.

Response: Mississippi Masala

I really enjoyed watching Mississippi Masala this past weekend. I think it added something to the discussion of growing up Asian American portrayed in Better Luck Tomorrow and Monkey Dance. Whereas these two movies focused mainly on the relationships between and among young Asian Americans, Mississippi Masala shifted the emphasis to the relationships between and among the different racial groups, and thus was able to pick up on issues that had largely been left untreated. I found its depiction of the racial tensions among minority groups intriguing, as it is a topic I know very little about, and not one that receives much media attention. I also felt that this week's readings were very effective at placing the phenomena depicted within a historical context. Finally, being a member of an interracial relationship, I always find it gratifying to see them represented in the media. As such, I admit that I may be biased in my enjoyment of this film, but I thought it did a good thing by taking on an under-discussed topic and that it did so rather effectively.

Mississippi Masala

Principally, I was impressed with how the film provided a history of Indians in Uganda. Director Mina Nair was able to vividly portray how an individual's assumed identity can abruptly change as a result of large-scale political and social upheaval. These uncontrollable events are a major factor in international migration, and consequently force all the members of Meena's family to rapidly adjust to a different society. While Meena's father remains tied to the label of a Ugandan Indian, Meena and her mother attempt to adjust to living amongst South Asian Americans in the United States. Meena's assimilation appears to have occurred in a gradual and almost natural sense, as she was quite young when the family settles in Mississippi. However, Meena does not attempt to become another Asian American stereotype that works hard solely to end up at a prestigious university. Aware of her family's financial situation, Meena decides to forge her own path in life, disregarding the racial and social norms prevalent throughout the South and within the local the Indian American community. Meena's mother thus fills in the gap between the two character extremes. Overall, both Meena and her father struggle to find a sense of place while her mother attempts to live by the phrase, "home is where the heart is."

Mississippi Masala: Different Cultures, Common Ground

Mississippi Masala explores the relationship of "the other" in a place away from home, dealing with family, assimilation, and discrimination. However, in this case, "home" is Uganda, the family is Indian, and the surrogate homeland is the American South. So, the dynamics are very different, and race relations are especially complex. Culture clashes and racism are prominent themes in this film, as well as family.

Anil and his wife, newlyweds of an arranged marriage, have a relationship without passion; this is in contrast to the intense love affair between Mina and Demetrius. They, I suppose, are meant to represent modernity and fusion, whereas Mina's family represents tradition and self-segregation. However, in both cultures, the concept of family is very important, and family relationships are tight-knit.

I found it interesting that the concept of color within race is similar between both Indians and African Americans (not always, but often among the older generation). Mina says, "Face it ma, you got a darky daughter", and skin color plays a role in the "correctness" of relationships, in the eyes of others. Anil says, "As long as you are not white, it means you are colored. Isn't that so?".

In the American South, both Indians and African Americans are discriminated against. Similarly, Mina's family is expelled from Uganda because "Africa is for Africans...black Africans", as Okelo says. Idi Amin wants Asians gone from Uganda because "they have refused to let their daughters marry Asian men." Interestingly, I feel that this is a mirroring of the race relations of the United States, where blacks are othered, interracial relationships are taboo, and nativists feel that whites are the only "real Americans." Also, I really liked the dialogue between Mina and Demetrius' brother, in which Mina says, "I don't know, I've never been to India," and he replies, "Well, you're just like us -- we've never been to Africa neither."

All in all, I thought this was a sweet, heartfelt movie, and a different take on American race relations than the usual black-white.