Monochrome Must-See TV

Network television says brown people don't exist. It's not just network television. Cable says it. Movies say it. Either we don't exist, or we're psychotic, godless fiends.

By brown people, I'm referring to South Asians and South Asian-Americans. There are plenty of other groups that don't exist either, according to the much-venerated tube, but South Asians and South Asian-Americans happen to be my particular field of expertise.

I happen to be South Asian-American--Sri Lankan Tamil-American, to be exact. And I never see anything even remotely related to myself on television.

Envision, if you will, a normally dressed person of South Asian origin. Without a pocket protector. Without an accent. Have you ever seen that on TV? Of course not. And 35 percent of the world's population is South Asian or of South Asian origin. Now, I have nothing against either pocket protectors or accents. But I don't think that absolutely every person of South Asian origin has them.

I heartily agree with Kweisi Mfume, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who this summer declared television was "whitewashed." Quicker than you can say "tokenism," television honchos scrambled to add color to their casts.

A study by TN Media shows that while some networks such as United Paramount Network have a large percentage of African-American characters, only 3 percemt of prime-time characters are minorities other than black, even though Hispanics alone make up 9 percent of America's population.

The New York Times, in a Sept. 20 article, quoted respected television writer-producer Steven Bochco (responsible for such integrated shows as "NYPD Blue") as saying, "It doesn't matter to me if you hire as an afterthought... It doesn't matter if you hire me for the wrong reasons. At least you've done it."

Perhaps if Bochco were the "token" in question, he would feel differently. I'm not an actor, and I don't pretend to understand that craft in particular, but my guess is that just as in any other line of work, actors like to think they've been chosen for their merits, not to offset someone's guilt or cover their bases.

Bochco also said he thought any prejudice on television was "unthinking."

"It tends to be an unmindful reflection of self on the part of writers and developers and networks in general," he told the Times.

Just because prejudice is unconscious doesn't mean it's excusable. If "an unmindful reflection of self" is the problem, as Bochco implies, it wouldn't be that hard to hire more people of color to create shows.

Sadly, "whitewashing" isn't the only problemminorities have to deal with in entertainment. They also have to deal with the endless, consistent perpetuation of certain misleading stereotypes.

Strangely, I didn't really have a burning desire to explain to my elementary school classmates that I did not, in fact, consume insects and that neither did I tear people's hearts out while they were still alive. Thanks to "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doo," quite possibly the worst film ever (partially filmed in Sri Lanka!), I had to do that multiple times.

The film distorts religion--notice the villainous cult's poorly veiled similarities and references to South Asian religions, including Hinduism. As David Sterritt of the Christian Science Monitor wrote in 1989, "racist implications...became uncomfortably strong in 'Temple of Doom,' where Indy strutted like a Great White Hero among people of color who were consistently helpless, villainous, or both."

And although in my innocent youth I loved the film "Short Circuit," I became disillusioned when I realized that the white actor portraying the Indian immigrant inventor was acting like a caricature, not a person.

The problem even extends to commercials. A recent football commercial on ABC made fun of Indian movies. The ad, roughly summarized: ABC showed a cheesy clip from an Indian movie. "Monday night in India," the screen said. Then they showed a clip of football players. "Monday night in America," it explained.

Then the last line to scroll across the screen said, "Isn't America great?"

Advertising that promotes one thing by belittling another is inherently weak, but when the belittled object happens to be a different country and the commercial is making fun of its culture, it's offensive.

Yet another commercial example of this problem aired on a radio station that I was listening to over the summer. The ad, for efortress.com, began with audio of someone--South Asian, to judge by the intentionally distorted accent--leading a session of yoga. Then the efortress.com pitch line: Basically, they said, some things have to be slow. Your Internet service provider doesn't.

Again, the link between yoga and ISPs is tenuous at best. People of South Asian origin hardly ever make it into the main show--the movie or the sitcom. And when they're in commercials, they're inevitably the targets of some sort of mean-spirited joke.

Even admirable attempts to address the stereotypes fall short--if only because a lot of people don't recognize satire. Apu on The Simpsons is a ludicrously drawn character, a heavily accented and mustachioed man who runs a Kwik-E Mart and offers guru-like advice to his befuddled friend Homer (when he is not making his own gauche mistakes). I don't think most Americans even recognize that The Simpsons uses Apu to mock American conceptions of South-Asian Americans.

Fortunately, at least one recent film portrayed South Asians in the normal, everyday context in which they exist. The Sixth Sense, the surprise-hit ghost story starring Bruce Willis, featured not one, not two, but three South Asian actors. And none of them were portraying stereotyped characters. One was a doctor, and the other two played an engaged couple picking out a ring with the usual bickering.

But even in this example, South Asians were extras--side characters.

What to do? The enormity of the problem is almost overwhelming. I've only touched on the examples of one group. How many Asian American males have major roles on TV shows not involving martial arts?

It's time for people to recognize the racism of both omissions and stereotypes of minorities in the entertainment industry. And minorities have to be hired more frequently not only in acting positions, but in writing and producing positions--positions of control.

Last-minute additions of minorities aren't enough to change perceptions. We can't be an afterthought. We're part of the whole picture. It's a picture people are watching closely--and absorbing unconsciously--on big and small screens across the world.

Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan '02, a Crimson editor, is an English concentrator in Lowell House.