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Finale

My final blog post! I have really enjoyed watching and talking about the importance of South Asian representation in media. When you're not a part of a certain identity, it can be hard to see why having them be shown in media is important. I hope that through my blog some of you have seen why any and all representation is essential to the young. Thankfully, representation is getting better and better throughout the years. Of course, it is nowhere near perfect, but I hope these small steps will help raise the confidence of young kids everywhere and help stop and prevent stereotypes.

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Community

Daniel Pudi is my favorite!!! He does an incredible job not only of being brown representation but also of being autistic representation. Abed in Community is a fun quirky kid, he does play a bit into the “brown kids are smart” stereotype, but overall I love his character. Again, Community does play up quite a bit on the stereotyping. In one episode, they introduce Abed’s father, a Palestinian man who runs a falafel restaurant, who doesn’t support Abed’s dream of studying film. Britta goes off on him saying she is “a woman with rights and you can see my whole face” which in itself is pretty offensive to assume that someone who is Arab hates women and doesn’t believe they should have rights, also not all Arabs are Muslim. Abed’s father then goes on to tell her this and they leave it. The show continues to have some comments like this throughout the show, which isn’t my favorite, but I also understand that it’s kind of the premise of the show. There are a couple of characters in the show that repeatedly say offensive stuff, which sometimes gets questioned by other people in the show or is completely overlooked. Other than that, I love Abed and his little inkling of Arab representation on the show.

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Heartbreak High

Heartbreak High is a great example of the representation I was talking about. This show depicts an average brown girl feeling comfortable in her skin as she represents an underrepresented demographic. Although I don’t think young girls should watch this show, it makes my inner child happy. There is a lot of representation of colored boys and girls and people throughout the show. This show truly disregards skin color. Everyone plays their part because they, as an actor, are meant for it, not because it “fits the color of their skin.” There is very minimal stereotyping, and the show displays a bunch of teens just going through high school. The main character is an Indian Australian girl. I love her family as they display a later generation of immigrants in Australia. Usually, when Indians are portrayed in Western media, their parents are first-generation immigrants like mine, but Amerie’s family, although we don’t see a lot of them, seems to be more Westernized which I think is a good touch because you don’t really see it often in TV.

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New Girl

I can’t help but feel like I’m being repetitive with each and every post. New Girl, once again, has an Indian character that goes against stereotypes. She isn’t very smart, but she’s absolutely beautiful and a model in the show, which, again, makes my little brown heart so incredibly happy seeing that type of South Asian representation in media. Although I love the representation in shows like New Girl or The Good Place, there is definitely a reason why Ms. Marvel and Never Have I Ever stood out to me so much more. It might’ve been because the main character was the brown girl or the fact that they represent more of the brown community than Cece or Tahani. Hannah Simone and Jameela Jamil, the actors who play those characters, are both stunningly beautiful people, but that’s because they have more euro-centric features. Devi and Kamala, from Never Have I Ever and Ms. Marvel respectively, are both beautiful women whom I can actually see myself in. They could be my neighbors, my cousins, my peers, they look like me. The reason why I started this blog was because when I was growing up I felt so ugly and gross and a large part of that was due to the media I consumed as a kid. I never looked like the pretty white girl on screen, I looked more similar to the “ugly nerd” standing in the corner. I want brown girls to feel comfortable and confident with the hair on their bodies and the color of their skin, and with recent media portraying that I can’t help but feel we’ve gotten even a little bit closer.

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The Lovebirds

SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! It centers around a couple, a black woman and a South Asian man, and their weird run ins with criminal activity. There is commentary about how police officers and bystanders see people of color and other really interesting takes in a fun comedic way. Them being two people of color in the middle of a crime scene is the center point of the show. The representation is phenomenal. There is no stereotyping and they are both powerful leads. Seeing two brown people as the leads is so gooooood. It's not something you think about often, but in all of the movies I watched growing up, it was almost always focused around a white person. Which there is nothing wrong with, it's America and the majority is in fact white. But oooooh girl as a minority, I love me some poc. Seeing someone who looks like me on the big screen will always me me happy.

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Sex Education quickly became one of my favorite shows on Netflix (despite season 3👀) and not just for its fun, quirky comedy, but also for its representation! The two Indian characters in the show are both beautiful and popular amongst their peers which isn't typical casting for South Asians. The focus on either character isn't about the fact their Indian, but other issues in their life. One of the characters is an outwardly gay man which is really refreshing to see because many Indians (of the older generation) still have prejudice against gay people in general. Homosexuality only recently became legal in India (2018), so to have that type of representation for many young Indians in a household that may not support them is so important. To see themselves on the screen and see them being loved and treated well by everyone is really amazing. The other Indian character is this beautiful girl who is part of the “it” group at her school. For me personally, I was really excited to see this type of casting. When I was younger, I didn't really see myself as “cool” or “pretty” because I didn't look like the other girls at my school. This way of thinking brought my self esteem down so much and I became very shy and less outgoing. Seeing a girl that looks like me be so proud and seen as beautiful makes me so incredibly happy, and makes me wish little me could have seen it too.

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  THE GOOD PLACE!!! I am obsessed with this show, not only for the fantastic plotline but also for the amazing Asian American Representation. The fact that Tahani and Jason were Asian was not their character focus at all. In fact, they were almost opposite to their usual stereotypes. Although seemingly a monk at first, Jason is just your classic resident idiot who never really did well in school. This is so juxtaposed to Raj in The Big Bang Theory whose whole identity was that he was a nerd. With Tahani, her character was so focused on material things and being famous, once again juxtaposing that shy nerdy girl stereotype Indians often get. They both had beautiful character growth throughout the show, and really never hit any stereotype or bad representation. Seeing a beautiful Indian woman like Jameela Jamil on mainstream media when I was younger would most definitely have built up my confidence a bit. Indian women can be and are beautiful and Tahani does a wonderful job at expressing that. Kristen Bell’s character, Eleanor Shellstrop, being canonically in love with Tahani would have definitely boosted my ego if I had watched this when I was younger.  

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The Big Bang Theory

This is a show many people know and love, and I am not saying it’s a bad show. I have also laughed at episodes of this show and enjoyed all of the character's unique journeys, but Rajesh….. He really isn’t the most exemplary Indian representation on a show. Raj’s character is filled with Asian stereotypes. In a show full of nerds, he somehow comes out to be the nerdiest one of them all. Raj cannot talk to girls and is just simply extremely awkward all around. He has a thick accent and is constantly mocked. The Big Bang Theory also often mocks Indian culture and India in itself. Although I don’t have any particular hate towards the show, it most definitely popularized Asian American teasing. Many white people have watched this show and saw the mocking done to Raj and how he just puts up with it. The show does nothing to show how these remarks can seem rude and ignorant and only increased them when I was growing up.

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Ms. Marvel

Another fairly recent show with a bipoc female main character is Ms. Marvel!! Ms. Marvel follows Pakistani American Kamala Khan through her discovery of new powers and connecting with her ancestors. Now when I say I was excited about this, that’s an understatement. Although Ms. Marvel doesn’t really have any direct representation for me (I am neither Pakistani nor Muslim), I think I just truly am in love with any brown girl representation main stream media gives us. Now Ms. Marvel does what Never Have I Ever couldn’t, the main characters love and appreciate their culture. Kamala and her friend Nakia go to the mosque and are deeply involved with their community, even to the extent that Nakia runs for mosque board. I am so extremely happy that a franchise as big and as popular as Marvel is highlighting brown voices (despite the bad reviews because of their overtly misogynistic fanbase). The show highlights Pakistan and Pakistani culture. Kamala even goes to Pakistan to connect more with her roots (although the roots are alien). I think this show is great representation, and I truly wish I had this growing up. It shows strong brown women as leaders, something they are not normally depicted as in media.

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Never Have I Ever Pt. 2

As much as I love this show and the representation it brings, there are a few things I wish were different. Devi, the main character, does a great job of representing what it’s like being a second-generation Asian American. She shows our homelife and our struggles, yet she also shows our hesitance to really accept our own culture. A common experience of many Asian Americans was wanting to assimilate with their white peers when they were younger. For some that meant bringing sandwiches to school rather than their own ethnic foods; for others, it meant not learning your parent's language or truly celebrating the holidays they celebrated (Will Jay has a great song about this called “I Can Only Write My Name”). Devi also experiences this. In an episode about Diwali, there is a group of girls dancing to Bollywood music. Devi exclaims that she thinks they look “dorky” and despite her getting shut down by another girl immediately after she said that, I wish they had made Devi more accepting and loving of her culture. In the third season, Devi talks about how she would much rather go to a high school party, than celebrate a holiday with her family, and it kind of made me sad. Of course, this show shows an appreciation for Indian Culture in many other ways, but I wish celebrating your own culture wouldn’t seem as “dorky” to Devi, as it did in the show. Maybe that way young Indian girls would feel less embarrassed about it, and loving their own culture would feel more empowering.

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Never I Have Ever Pt. 1

To start of this series, one of my recent favs, Never Have I Ever! Of course starring the beautiful Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, this is the first show that follows a young Indian American girl as she faces highschool. 

First thoughts: I WAS SO EXCITED. An American show where the main character is an Indian girl! Unheard of! I was so excited. She looked like she could be one of my classmates, just an ordinary Indian American girl! I think I really related to certain aspects of the first couple of episodes. The fact that something so similar to my own experience was on TV was incredible in itself. I related a lot to the character's connections to her father, and I also have a father obsessed with tennis. (I actually showed the show to my dad because I was so incredibly happy and related to the show so much. He was excited about it because he really liked the narrator, tennis superstar John McEnroe, but he didn't end up watching too much of the show though, as the main premise being a teenager wanting to have sex was a bit off-putting to him). Anyways seeing something similar to my home experience on National TV was extremely exciting and I couldn't believe that I had never had that experience before, but so many other people in America had, and I started wondering how seeing this show growing up would have affected me. I am really hopeful that this show will help a lot of young Indian American girls feel more secure in their identities. A common experience of being a first gen Asian American is being embarrassed by your culture. Whether it's the food that you eat, the language you speak, or the holidays you celebrate, many have tried to assimilate themselves into white American culture in order to better fit in with their classmates, but I feel this show, as well as many up and coming will help make the younger generations feel more proud in the culture they were born in.

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Introduction

Hello! I am Kataleena and I am an Indian and Middle Eastern American. My father immigrated to America in his early 20s from India for work. My mother immigrated to America from Lebanon when she was 6 years old with her extended family. They met here and gave birth to little old me! I was born and raised in America, yet I never felt like I truly fit in. I would compare myself to my idols and wonder why I couldn't look like them. My self-image diminished and I just wanted to look like the standard white girl. I got teased a lot for the hair on my body and my big ol' nose. As I get older and as America progresses I am overwhelmed and totally in love with the amount of Indian and Middle Eastern Representation in mainstream media we are getting! In this blog, I will discuss various TV shows, movies, and more that showcase South Asian representation and how they make me feel. I hope you enjoy it!