Hollywood productions (and English language films in general) have to go a long way in terms of representation of identities like the so-called 'brown identity'. While brown-skinned characters from India and its neighbors have been featured in English films for a long time, they often fall prey to stereotypes or appropriation. Even though portraying an Indian character and their struggles might seem like 'Oscar bait', some of the elements in these stories hardly feel relatable to local Indians as well as the Indian-American diaspora.

Actors and filmmakers like Aziz Ansari, Gurinder Chadha, Hasan Minhaj, and Dev Patel are changing the perspective to an extent, portraying characters and writing stories beyond the 'curry-eating', 'mystical and exotic' narratives. Otherwise, with popular shows and movies, some stereotypes can, unfortunately, be formed in the heads of non-Indian viewers.

Updated on 25th October by Fawzia Khan:

Indian culture has been more in focus than ever with shows and movies like Indian Matchmaking and Wedding Season going viral on Netflix. The unraveling of harmful stereotypes about brown heritage, their occupations and their roles in the world is a slow process, and Hollywood has given plenty of tropes that inaccurately describe Indians and their lifestyle. With Indians shattering ceilings in every sector, these need to be done away with, for good.

Cows, Dirty Roads And A Lack Of Infrastructure

India's climate change in Invisible Demons

More often that not, Hollywood tends to juxtapose the beauty of the West with the "dirty" East. Shots of a sterile white country cut to filth, pollution, dusty slums, and bad roads in India, which is not accurate at all. The biggest metros of India are highly modernized, with expressways, skyscrapers, and the like, but this is rarely depicted in the movies.

RELATED: 9 Best Twitter Reactions and Memes To Indian Matchmaking Season 2For some reason, cows are always part of these visuals. One would be surprised to visit the country and see that cows are mostly found in pastoral lands and rarely in an urban setting. Slumdog Millionaire is the biggest offender.

Everybody Does Not Work In Call Centers Or Medicine

A promo shot for Outsourced

Indians also tend to be boxed into the professions that they can be shown in on the big screen. Whether it was the influence of Outsourced or other external stereotypes, constantly depicting Indians as call center workers just doesn't work anymore. Still, shows like Family Guy make whole episodes about it (like “Road to India,” for example).

Similarly, the second profession that is assigned to the brown man or woman is that of a doctor. As a people, Indians are very intelligent, but they do excel in several other fields too, which is obvious from the Indian actors excelling in Hollywood itself.

Inaccurate Clothing

Devi, Kamala, and Nalini together in Never Have I Ever

Every single time an Indian appears on-screen, in India, they are adorned in elaborate saris and heavy jewelry. This was even seen in Never Have I Ever when Nalini visited Chennai, despite the fact that the show aims to undo these kinds of stereotypes. Weighty gold jewels and silk saris are reserved for weddings and festivals, and most Indians dress in casual western wear like jeans, blouses, and dresses at most times.

Netflix's romantic comedy Wedding Season actually provided an accurate picture of wedding wear too, which was not gaudy and outdated like most other brown-depicting movies.

The Shy/ Nerdy Character

Jamal wins a cash prize in Slumdog Millionaire.

A prerequisite to being an Indian character seems to be awkwardness, which is the gross generalization of an entire population. Everyone in the country is not a Raj Koothrapalli or Jamal Malik — there are Kumars and Tom Haverfords (with his brilliant ideas) too who have more to their personality.

Assigning Indians the role of the nerd is a thinly veiled way to sideline a brown character, and Indians would like to be seen in leading roles which do not reinforce this cookie-cutter stereotype onto them.

The Tour Guide For White People

Dev Patel in Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Another banal trope role which is handed to Indians is that of the token tour guide to a fascinated white character visiting the country. This guide also doubles as a spiritual guru for said character, often showing them how India can cleanse them.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel typecast Dev Patel into this role, and this character archetype has been handed out to many brown actors, often not even named, in several "feel-good" movies.

Hinduism Isn't The Only Religion In India

Julia Roberts praying in a Hindu temple in scene from Eat, Pray, Love

In many depictions, Indians are equated to Hinduism. Surely, Hinduism is a major religion in the country, but its diverse landscape also harbors Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism, and other faiths. Hence, showing all American-Indians as worshipers of the idols of Hindu gods and goddesses, complete with Hindu-style offerings and incense sticks, is just generalizing Indians under one category.

Further, even with the Hindu Indians, not all of them are intensely devout believers. Just like the generic and dominant American Christian characters in popular media, some might be of stronger faith while some might hardly worship their deities at all.

Tacky Accents

Apu With Marge And Maggie In The Simpsons

It has been automatically assumed that all Indian accents are more than often funny-sounding and grammatically incorrect. The root cause of this was racial ignorance and the earlier depictions of Indians by white actors (wearing brownface) like Peter Sellers in The Party and Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.

Of course, the stereotypical 'Indian accent' reached disastrous heights with the character Apu in The Simpsons. Apu was so offensive to the diaspora that even a documentary called The Problem With Apu was released in 2017, dissecting the stereotypes and racial micro-aggressions the character presented. Actor Kal Penn even revealed on Twitter how some studios wanted him to have an 'authentic Apu accent' in his roles! Recently, Apu's voice actor Hank Azaria apologized on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and stepped down from the role.

Romanticizing Poverty

A still from Slumdog Millionaire

India has a concerning rate of social inequality and poverty. Some films like Lion have tried showing a financially-troubled protagonist in a realistic and empathetic light. But otherwise, foreign films often tend to romanticize poverty (or show 'poverty porn' as some might say) or paint the entirety of India as a backward nation with no modern infrastructure. The Darjeeling Limited, Million Dollar Arm, and many others mock and generalize Indian cities as having nothing but shoddy shacks of buildings and half-naked children.

Indian directors frame their scenes in the backdrops of ruined buildings, crowded streets, and cows in the middle of traffic, but they paint the context as being from a particular area in India rather than generalizing the entire country as an undeveloped urban jungle.

The White Savior Narrative

A still from Million Dollar Arm

Movies that deal with the interaction of foreign and Indian characters evoke pity and sympathy, but maybe they can do better with a more empathetic portrayal rather than a sympathetic one. Lion and Million Dollar Arm both depict white characters changing the fates of poor Indians. Both are based on true stories and do justice to their source material to an extent.

However, Indian representation should also involve portrayals of independent characters who can make it on their own, rather than depending on white people all the time. Colonial cultural hegemony is unfortunately still engrained in India after two centuries of British rule. 'Fair skin' is still glorified even in Indian communities, with fairness being equated to a very desirable quality. Hence, bolder Indian lead characters are needed not just to fight the generic white savior narrative, but the racist biases that some Indians themselves internalize in their thoughts.

Bollywood Isn't The Only Indian Film Industry

Raj and Bernadette do a Bollywood dance in his dream on The Big Bang Theory

Bollywood and Hollywood may share scenes, but the Hindi film industry is not the only mode of filmmaking. India produces films in the rest of its languages too, with some modern gems acquiring critical acclaim at international film festivals as well. These languages range from Assamese to Malayalam to Bengali, and so on. Further, not every Indian film is riddled with Bollywood clichés like musical numbers, grandiose sets, and gestures of romance.

Scenes like the final dance to Jai Ho in Slumdog Millionaire and the wedding scene in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel reinforce the notions that Indian celebrations mostly involve grand, choreographed songs and dances like a typical Bollywood film.

Exoticism and Mysticism

George Lucas filming Temple of Doom

Cults like those in Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom, and the spiritual journeys in India as shown in Eat, Pray, Love, paint India as a highly 'exotic' land filled with mysticism and superstitious beliefs.

RELATED: 10 Things From The Indiana Jones Franchise That Haven't Aged Well

The argument against this stereotype can again be explained as the point for India's multi-religious identity. Not all Indians are blind worshipers of bearded mystics and gurus. As of last year, about 2.9 million Indians are atheists (via The Print), while some consider themselves to be rationalists despite holding onto their religious identity. Otherwise, India is a diverse land of its own, rather than an exotic, archaic, and divine fantasy world of sorts.

There's More To Music Than Just Classical

Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar maestro

India does boast of historic classical and folk music styles, having exported maestros like sitarist Ravi Shankar to the rest of the world. Still, such forms of music hardly make their way to the Indian music mainstream in today's times. Film music or independent music usually dominates the playlists of many Indian demographics. Many independent artists are experimenting or reinterpreting foreign genres too, be it hip-hop or electronica.

That's why rather than relying on a 'traditional' sound, films shot in India can feature several new-age Indian artists and their musical styles.

Purposely Complicated Or Inaccurate Names

Apu and Homer Simpson in The Simpsons

Indians, Arabs, Koreans, and many other immigrants get mocked for their names that are difficult to pronounce by the dominant citizen groups in the countries they settle. Some even have to Anglicize or shorten their names for the convenience of Westerners. Instead of mispronouncing or changing the names of the people from this diaspora, maybe the Hollywood narrative can make an effort to accurately show some Indian names, as it's not always that difficult.

Even though today, foreign productions do try to accurately portray Indian characters and their names, there used to be Indian characters with names complicated and exaggerated beyond measure. The biggest case yet again is Apu's surname, Nahasapeemapetilon. Older films were even more careless in christening their Indian characters. In Annie (1978), an Indian bodyguard was simply named Punjab (an Indian state, hardly ever used as a person's name).

The Cuisine Doesn't Always Make Non-Indians Sick

A still from The Hundred Foot Journey

Indian food might provide a spicier culinary experience to Americans or English people who are not used to the taste. There's an actual term 'Delhi Belly,' referring to the upset stomach that foreign tourists have when they visit India.

RELATED: No Reservations And 9 Other Delicious Movies Where Food Is The Star

Western portrayals have often reduced Indian food as something heavily spicy or gooey that leads to diarrhea. Such tropes are played around with Jon Hamm and Alan Arkin's characters in Million Dollar Arm. Another done-to-death stereotype is referring to Indian gravy dishes as 'curry'. There are so many diverse meat and vegetable-based dishes from all Indian states that it's hard to categorize any particular Indian dish as a curry. A good alternative to such clichés can be The Hundred-Foot Journey which normalizes the cooking habits of Indians.

Supporting Characters For Comic Relief

Kunal Nayyar as Rajesh Raj Koothrappali talking to Howard in the comic book store in The Big Bang Theory

Indian-Americans were often shown as shop clerks, drivers, doctors, or any other supporting character. Often reduced to caricatures with the aforementioned accents, they were hardly given any scope for character development or background stories.

However, now, with slightly higher representation, this attitude is changing. Examples like Aziz Ansari's lead role in Master of None and Rahul Kohli in The Haunting Of Bly Manor are helping in giving Indian-origin American and British actors a more nuanced and multi-layered portrayal.

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