Why Naatu Naatu’s Oscar Win Isn’t a Slam Dunk for Diversity

You would think being the first song from an Indian film to win an Oscar would be a sign of a major step forward. Some sort of ethnic glass ceiling shattering at Hollywood’s most glittering evening. But that is actually the opposite of what this year’s performance of the Best Song nominee showcased.

I have to admit – they got me. Put a guy with a black beard on stage in one of the leading roles – just like in the movie – and I assumed it was some up-and-coming South Asian dancer who would all soon hear about. But no. Billy Mustapha and Jason Glover, while clearly super talented, have no roots from the Indian subcontinent.

Why Naatu Naatu's Oscar Win Isn't a Slam Dunk for Diversity by @moha_doha #diversity #theoscars #indian

Because while the steps were well executed and the celebration was around the pivotal scene of a film criticizing the colonial outlook on Indian culture – there was not one person of Indian descent on the stage. Not even when half the scene was played by Indians in India demonstrating to the British the local stamina far outpacing the colonizer in dancing.

Why The Lack Of Diversity?

We could speculate on all the reasons how this came to pass, or why the stars of the film, purportedly wanting the focus to be on the vocalists, were not available to perform the dance themselves. (Was it really because one of them thought there wouldn’t be enough rehearsal time?) Visa complications apparently kept the original choreographer away until the dress rehearsals.

But the award of the choreography to Nappytabs, a dancing duo associated with the So You Think You Can Dance reality TV franchise, left most South Asian Americans in the industry, and otherwise shaking their heads.

If indeed, Ram Charan and NTR Jr. felt they got enough out of the film, and didn’t need the pressure of a rushed performance, the rest of us sure could have used the boost…

Click here to watch the performance on YouTube.

We Still Have Work To Do On Diversity

From years of being told they don’t have enough experience, to now being told that they weren’t being chosen because they weren’t among the dancers Nappytabs knew, it feels like the same old story in Tinseltown: a referral club that shuts out anyone new. And if you can’t get cast as an Indian dancer for an Indian song from an Indian movie at the Oscars… then, what hope is there?

The Oscar performance of Naatu Naatu shows the system-wide disregard for authenticity or recognition of how a moment like this could showcase a song, a film, and indeed, a nation, through its specificity. Imagine not one person on set saying – hang on who’s doing the Indian check? Even if it is as token. Blatant disregard for acknowledgment of the culture from which this song and film stem is a stark example of cultural appropriation. One that further underlines what has been true for a long time – brown people have very few public spaces to occupy – even when creating our own cultural representations.

So, Oscar night was a double slap – first because using non-South Indian dancers, choreographers, and producers undercuts the film’s overall message: stand up to colonialism. Second, it also erases the specificity of Indianness since the film was made in Tollywood – not Bollywood – the Telugu-speaking areas of the south, and the original dance moves are inspired from that folk tradition.

Those of us from the Southern states, my family included, have long felt our cultures play second fiddle to Hindi or Punjabi, Northern languages that tend to dominate the film and music industries.

While the film’s popularity and the song’s win are a watershed moment for Indian cinema as a whole, it also showcases how high the barriers within the American entertainment system remain.

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Wordless Wednesday: Fund the Kind of Movie You'd Like to Watch

Traces of Sandalwood: the kind of movie I want to watch so I supported it on Indiegogo.

Muna is a 13-year-old orphan Indian girl who works as a domestic servant for a rich family in Mumbai. Not a single day goes by without her thinking of her younger sister, Sita, from whom she was forced to separate one day, and dreaming about finding her. Muna will end up becoming a Bollywood star and marrying the oldest son of the family she worked for. As a famous actress in her 40s, she will finally meet her sister again, in Barcelona. But Sita’s adoptive parents have erased all her past tracks. She is now called Paula, she is 35 and works in the Center of Regenerative Medicine as a biologist doing cells research. Paula will take a long journey to discover who she really is, with the help of a handsome Indian immigrant selling Bollywood films in a dvd store in downtown Barcelona. Muna and Sita/Paula will meet many years later, having crossed borders and cultures, far beyond a common past. Muna could be seen as a modern Cinderella in India, reaching the summit of Bollywood from poverty and reunited with her ??younger sister in a totally different culture.

The script has been written by Anna Soler-Pont, with Coral Cruz as script editor.

Traces of Sandalwood Indiegogo campaignCheck out the project on Facebook.

 

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