When a major US magazine or newspaper features an article about German business, are the businessmen depicted wearing lederhosen and the women in long blond braids? Does a story about Japanese politics invariably show a geisha in full dress regalia? Or the Chinese in colorful silk trousers? What is it about India that lends itself to irrelevant exotica? Granted that modern urban Indian women still dress in traditional clothing as is not the case in most other countries. But they dont’ go to work in an office or a call center dressed like this!
The Time article is purportedly about India’s exploding high tech economy and its ubiquitous call centers. The young woman featured with the headphone could be answering a call from an American consumer trying to locate lost lugggage, fix a computer glitch or clarify a mistake on the credit card billing. And she is wearing bridal finery ! Will Americans at the other end of the phone line feel more reassured about the answers they receive if they are led to believe that their technical question is being answered by an impeccably (and impossibly) bejewelled Indian beauty? Who is responsible for perpetuating this stale myth? Indian authors who write terrible books about India for western consumption? Indian Americans who publish silly articles in the New York Times? Inane Indian masala movies which to this day, refuse to show "real" people? Or could it be that American media outlets do not believe that a report about India can be convincing without titillating and stereotypical references to caste, cows, curry and coy women?
One day in 1983 in Oklahoma City, I had gone grocery shopping wearing a sari. An elderly, 6′ 5" tall Choctaw gentleman was chatting with store employees at the customer service counter. When I passed him, he pulled me to his side, put his arm around my waist and laughingly said, "Guys, now look at two kinds of Indians!" He said it good heartedly and with considerable humor but not entirely without an underlying sense of irony. The point was that both of us were "rare birds." (And perhaps targets of easy and wrong stereotyping.) Ethnic stereotyping of American minorities is no longer permissible in polite company or in the major media. The feather headdress, the tomahawk, fried chicken and watermelons do not serve as acceptable or effective marketing tools. But the manufactured and unrealistic depiction of foreign countries, especially India, is not only permissible but desirable – very often with the complicity of the "natives" willing to be exoticized. Stereotyping too has been outsourced!
Accidental Blogger 
10 responses to “Selling India and Other Myths”
By a strange coincidence, the WFMU stream I’m listening to as I read your post is playing A.R. Rahman singing “Chinna Chinna Aasai.” Lovely, but straight out of the Bollywood mold. Yes, American media are shameless stereotypers (and I’d include Bollywood in the American empire).
Several years ago, I attended an annual India festival in Long Beach at the Arena on the coast, near the Queen Mary. It featured dancers, singers, and other musicians (Lakshmi Shankar, among them!), and was attended mostly by Indian folks who wore traditional dress. (I’m guessing saris are traditional.) I was in traditional jeans and a t-shirt. Midway during the show, the woman sitting in front of me in a sari turned around and noted, “You’re the most comfortably dressed person here.”
LikeLike
The cover is pretty extreme. There’s a fascinating tension in it–it’s simultaneously trying to draw us in (given the model’s beautiful face and finery) and to surprise or shock us (given the nose ring, the incongruously bulky phone headset, etc). I think you’re exactly right to say that it’s a rather clumsy exercise in exoticization….in reality, the call center workers probably look much like the Indian (and most other) workers who take the subway at the Jersey City PATH station near where I live.
An interesting question: is there any way to undermine these types of stereotypes? or, perhaps, to discourage MSM outlets from radically decontextualizing (and perhaps even banalizing) a mode of dress and appearance that can be both spectacular and deeply meaningful for a given interpretive community?
LikeLike
Of course, another interesting example appears for the gay community, which seems to constantly get cast as the hysterical “Jack” figure in Will & Grace.
LikeLike
Although not quite as carefree as a t-shirt and a pair of well broken in jeans, a light cotton or silk sari is a very comfortable dress – unless you are caught in a rain storm or high wind. I have no problem if an Indian working woman is shown at work in a sari. Millions of urban, working women in India still do that and millions more do so for special occasions. The lovely sari has not fallen out of favor with Indian women as has the Japanese kimono in Japan. Although increasingly, women in India wear the more “sensible,” easy to control shalwar – kurta to work and the younger generation in large cities is equally at ease in skirts and trousers.
What really annoyed me about this picture is the heavy make up, old fashioned jewelry, including a septum piercing nose ring which is totally anachronistic in a modern urban setting. The woman shown is more appropriately dressed for a traditional wedding (uncommon even for that) or more likely for a classical dance recital like Bharat Natyam. This is literally the equivalent of the Native American war paint or traditional Japanese geisha ensemble including the ghostly white face paint. Not at all the true image of a young woman going for a nine to five (pm to am, mind you because of the time difference between India and the US) call center job in a bustling and jostling city.
As for what can be done to counter the phenomenon? I guess first and foremost, Indians and Indian Americans will have to revise their own approach to how they want India and Indiannes to be seen. Bollywood is a big culprit. As are Indian Americans who for the sake of cultural nostalgia, embrace that theatrical, unreal, ostentatious and increasingly uniform theme of Indianness at their weddings, parties and cultural extravaganzas. You can hardly protest something if you are perpetuating it. There is so much which is attractive about Indian literature, cuisine, music, folk tradition and about Indians themselves that this kind of artificial image boosting is not at all necessary. It is difficult for me to crack the chicken and egg nature of the conundrum here. Are the Indians doing it first and the MSM following suit or do the Indians feel compelled to nurture this image because lacking the exotic flavor, their thoughts, opinions and serious scholarship will not pass muster with the gatekeepers of the western MSM? I don’t know. But somebody must break the vicious and vitiating cycle!
LikeLike
I too feel outraged by the cover, but for reasons somewhat different from yours.
I see the cover as a way of saying that India is a truly different place with a unique thriving and yes, exotic culture; but, that it is also a place that, despite the exotica, is neither unknowable nor threatening. In fact, I see this picture as suggesting that Indians are managing to accomplish the impossible – to hold on to the old ways while also adapting to new ones.
Think about it: it is well nigh impossible to imagine a Japanese, Korean or Chinese woman portrayed in quite the same way.
My misgivings are more about the article than about the cover:
1. It uses the word “legitimating”. Shouldn’t it be “legitimizing”?!
2. I don’t think it is true that Indian society is managing to keep the old and adopt the new. Especially among the class of people exemplified by this story (IT/call center/urban folk), there is much less awareness of (let alone respect for) the spirituality, history (ancient as well as modern) and art/literature of India. And as for the ability to think critically, (or even to develop hobbies and other interests) it gets systematically stamped out in the hyper-competitive race to secure a (any) spot on the economic ladder.
So, even the exoticism that is being lauded is only a surface or faux exoticism. Would that it were the real thing!
3. This article and others like it turn a wilful blind eye to the discomfort that ordinary Americans might feel about the wholesale transfer of know-how/opportunity. If it is okay for CEOs to run after the top dollar and outsource everything, why is not okay for ordinary Americans to feel some angst about their potential losses? I am so tired of the rah rah cheerleading of this article, of Thomas Freidman and of others of their ilk.
4. The other thing that troubles me is that Indians are willing conspirators in our own exotification. As I wrote on my blog, so long as we are seen as exotic (call center workers in India, IT workers or doctors here – it is all the same to the average American), we have to work that much harder to be allowed to have our say when it comes to discussing other important issues which affect us and on which we have opinions; for instance: the environment, workplace issues, ethics/morality and religion/spirituality, women’s right to choose and so on.
Un-PC? Most likely. But then, that’s why we have blogs!
LikeLike
Since I am visiting India at this time, I thought that I would take the opportunity to comment upon the ‘exoticising’ of India that the Western media like to perpetuate. Leaving aside the fact that noone in reality would attend to a call centre operation in full Bharatanatyam/bridal finery, the photograph is, to me, trying to make a point regarding the marrying of two very different paradigms- that of India’s heritage and cultural richness, coupled with the vim and vigor of new India marching into the future,whether it be through call-centres or IT outsourcing. I don’t find the depiction quite as objectionable as others have.
India carries on as usual,regardless of our indignation, a curious melange of cell-phone wielding vegetable vendors trundling past traditional homes, people curled up on shopfronts in the dark, sweaty executives in suit/tie/RayBans huffing and puffing their way through rush hour traffic in Chennai. The fact is that both versions of India (rich and poor) still coexist and complement each other in a curious way. Newspapers and magazines overflow with pop trivia as well as scholarly treatises on the best prospects in IT and biotechnology, side by side with a zillion ‘massage parlor’ ads ( India’s version of the ‘singles ads’??) and other miscellany. CNN India anchors gurgle with strange expressions over reports of public kissing of starlets by would-be sugar daddies, side by side with hardhitting reports on the sale of children placed for adoption after being snatched from their birth parents.
I’ll have more to say on this when I get back, just trying to convey my sense of what I’ve noticed in the past 10 days.
LikeLike
Sujatha:
Will wait to hear more from you upon your return.
I wouldn’t say that I was outraged – more like irritated with the tired old “snake charmer” trick of presenting India to the west. I would have been equally annoyed by California’s Silicon Valley being represented by a picture of a blond bombshell in a bikini frolicking on the beach. Or a report on Japan’s economy accompanied by a photo of an old time geisha mincing about in a kimono. It would be irrelevant and unnecessary. I think India’s giant strides in the field of global IT dominance is by now a well known phenomenon. Everyone the world over, is keenly aware of it. That is why, IMO, the story does not have to be presented in this wild eyed, exotic manner.
I would like to bring to your attention another cover picture of Time. This one is from Time’s Asian version from the week before. The story is the same (or similar) – about India’s technology triumphs. Notice that it depicts two young Indian professionals, a man and a woman, striding confidently with files under their arms dressed in “sensible” clothing. I think that picture would have been more appropriate and equally appealing for the US version without resorting to the “cute” east-west, old – new amalgamation theme.
LikeLike
Great post. I agree entirely. But it goes both ways. The American media, when it is trying to make a point about India tries to place it in context for its audience by stereotyping. But Indians are guilty of stereotyping themselves too. What else could explain the Indian nomination for the Oscars, Devdas? That movie’s only qualification was its gaudy Indianness. We Indians also like to have the rest of the world think in terms of our exoticness, rather than the similarities we hold with the rest of the world. Another example, when Bush visited India, he was met by a delegation that included .. Aishwarya Rai? Why the hell Aishwarya Rai? Just because we Indians thought that she was India’s best known personality. Thus, we were stereotyping ourselves to put Bush at ease. Who knows, maybe they had snake charmers and elephants parading around him as well during his stay.
LikeLike
Just a quick note. While my son was channel flipping yesterday, here in India, I could have sworn that I saw an ad with precisely the same face(dancer with phone headset) in one of the ads. Unfortunately, the channel was flipped before I could register what the ad was for- but it certainly shows that Indians themselves are not shy of propagating the exotic stereotype even on Indian TV!
LikeLike
Ruchira, I just have to commend you on an important and well written post! This is a subject I rarely see discussed in blogs and it is one that really needs to be addressed. Marketing strategies should never incorporate stereoypes, in my opinion. Good for you for calling attention to this new “outsourcing”!
LikeLike