“Seeing brown, singing gori: Hindi film music's colour problem - Livemint” plus 2 more |
- Seeing brown, singing gori: Hindi film music's colour problem - Livemint
- RUSSEL RICKFORD - The Pitfalls of African Consciousness - The Elephant
- The Cuties Backlash and Policing of Girlhood Are All Too Familiar - The Mary Sue
| Seeing brown, singing gori: Hindi film music's colour problem - Livemint Posted: 19 Sep 2020 11:35 PM PDT Without the comparison to Beyoncé, it's possible the goriya (fair-complexioned woman) that precedes it might have flown under the radar, like the thousands of other goris and goriyas in Hindi film songs in the last 80 or so years. But lyricists Kumaar and Raj Shekhar made the mistake of name-checking the most famous singer in the world—someone who's celebrated dark skin in her music and art. Suddenly, Indian Twitter was screaming racism. The face-saving also left something to be desired—six days later, the song was retitled Beyonse Sharma Jaayegi, which only brought on more ridicule. Finally, it was changed to Duniya Sharma Jaayegi and the original video removed from YouTube. Director Maqbool Khan said, "We assure you that the lyric in question was never intended racially. In fact, the term 'goriya' has been so often and traditionally used in Indian songs to address a girl, that it didn't occur to any of us to interpret it in the literal manner." That Hindi cinema has a colour bias is not even up for debate. Darker-skinned actors continue to be rare—a Radhika Apte here, a Nawazuddin Siddiqui there. Worse, fairer actors are often darkened when they're playing roles associated with a lower economic class or oppressed caste. The fascination with white skin dates almost to the beginning of cinema in the country. In Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010, Bhawana Somaaya, Jigna Kothari and Supriya Madangarli write that, in the 1920s, "It was white-skinned actresses... who were more popular and in demand, with advertisements of plays often highlighting the presence of a 'Gori Miss' (white lady) or 'houris' (fairies) from paradise." Hindi film music has, often unwittingly, perpetuated this colour bias. The word gori and its variants appear in countless tracks over the years, from folk numbers to item songs. The list is endless: Gori Zara Hans De Tu (Asli Naqli, 1962), Go Go Go Go Gori (Baadal, 1985), Chura Ke Dil Mera Goriya Chali (Main Khiladi Tu Anari, 1994), Gore Gore Mukhde Pe (Suhaag, 1994), Gori Gori (Main Hoon Na, 2004) and hundreds more have the word in their title, thousands have it in the lyrics, and there are cross-language variations like Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan—literally, 'white wrists' (Roy, 2015). "I don't think the usage of gori and goriya is intentionally a racist slur," lyricist-screenwriter Kausar Munir told me over the phone. "There's a long tradition in our Hindi-Urdu poetry of using these to praise a woman's beauty. Having said that, that doesn't make it right, especially in the modern age." Sometimes there's a poetry to the use of the word that merits its inclusion, like with Gulzar's Mora gora ang lai le/ Mohe shaam rang dai de/ Chhup jaaungi raat hi mein, from Bandini (1963). Most of the time, though, it's dropped in as an unthinking term for a beautiful woman. Munir calls it a default setting and gives another example: sanam. "It actually means statue," she says. "But it has developed the connotation of 'beloved'." Lyricist-screenwriter Varun Grover says that history, caste, poetics and gender are "interlocked in various proportions in this innocuous-sounding word". "In many Hindi songs, gori is not even an adjective anymore but a proper noun (goriya chura na mera jiya) which could just be a mindless (but in-meter) replacement for any other term of endearment like jaaniya, sajna, piya, saiyyaan etc. It's a blind spot aided by culture and cliché." This is the problem in a nutshell—the word continues to extract a heavy toll in society but is largely shorn of its original meaning when placed in songs, which encourages its widespread usage. Most actresses in Hindi cinema are on the fair-to-'wheatish' spectrum, but even when they aren't, they're apt to get addressed as gori. A much-quoted instance of this is Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein from Baazigar (1993), in which Shah Rukh Khan sings "yeh gore gore gaal (these fair, fair cheeks)" to Kajol, a relatively dark-complexioned actor. The same can be seen in Chitchor (1976), with Amol Palekar singing "gori tera gaon bada pyara" to the dusky Zarina Wahab. And in Lagaan (2001), Aamir Khan stretches goriya over three elongated syllables singing to Gracy Singh, who, ironically, is jealous because he's spending time with the 'gori mem' who's teaching the villagers cricket. Sometimes the problem is in the visuals, not the words. Hum Bewafa from Shalimar (1978) had extras dressed up as tribal people, faces darkened, in skimpy clothes, shouting "jhingalala". So many have tried to block out from their happy memories of Mr. India (1987) the sight of dancers in blackface in Hawa Hawaii. The popular Amitabh Bachchan number from Laawaris (1981), Mere Angne Mein, is a fascinating example of Hindi cinema's ease of othering dark skin. In the comic song, Bachchan suggests the virtues, in turn, of a tall, short, dark and fair wife. He appears as the wives himself, in drag—all except for the gori one, for which the camera settles on actual women. Drag and blackface for the kaali biwi are fine but poking fun at fair complexions is apparently a bridge too far. Gore Gore O Banke Chhore, from Samadhi (1950), applied the fair-skin standard to the man. But heroes rarely had to be gora, and Hindi heroines almost always had to be gori. There's a mythological underpinning to this. In most tellings, Radha is fair and Krishna is dark. In fact, shyam (dark-hued) is another name for the god, and is imbued with appropriately desirable qualities. The charming Shyam Rang Ranga Re in Apne Paraye (1980), picturized on Amol Palekar and sung by Yesudas, is from the perspective of someone intoxicated by Krishna's dark hue, "as Meera was, as Radha was". Shyam also turns up in the Bumbro number from Mission Kashmir (2000). A reworking of a popular Kashmiri song, in it the groom, or bumbro (bumblebee), is 'shyam rang'—though some versions have it as shaam (evening) rang, also meaning dark-hued—while the palms of the bride's hands are gori. A more emphatic placement of darker shades in song is Kaala Re, a moody track from Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) written by Grover. Nawazuddin Siddiqui's gangster is in the coal business and everything about him is kaala—his clothes, his words, his heart and his skin. The word is sung 43 times, as if to make up for the paucity of black in Bollywood lyrics. Grover said he "just wrote a song celebrating a man who did illegal stuff in a coal-town". "Not all art is subversive by design," he added. Six years after Wasseypur, the Tamil film Kaala used the colour to celebrate Dalit-Bahujan identity and subvert notions of purity associated with white. While no one's writing lyrics like "hum kaale hain to kya hua dilwale hain (so what if I'm black, I have a large heart)" anymore, it will be a while before gori leaves Hindi film music. The debate stirred up by Beyonce Sharma Jayegi might be a good conversation-starter, Munir feels. "We can't put everybody (who's used gori) from time immemorial in the katghara (witness box)," she says. "But in today's day and age we have enough knowledge to, if nothing else, just be careful." There is, however, one usage of gori we can get behind. In Aao Gori Aao Shyama, from Tansen (1943), a woman calls her grazing cattle home at dusk. Charmingly, Gori and Shyama turn out to be a white cow and a black one. |
| RUSSEL RICKFORD - The Pitfalls of African Consciousness - The Elephant Posted: 25 Sep 2020 09:00 AM PDT  Sometimes tensions between continental Africans and their African American brethren mount over trivial things due to their ostensibly deep-rooted differences. But really these differences ought not be so significant as to weaken the quest to confront and defeat racism wherever it is found. The deaths of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are all testimonies as to why white supremacy is so toxic. African Americans are undoubtedly best equipped to read, analyse and deconstruct white supremacy, having been on the battle lines for over four hundred and fifty years. From centuries of slavery to Jim Crow segregation, systematic lynching, civil rights activism and disillusionment and the present age of mass incarceration, African Americans have seen it all, and continue to suffer the devastating effects of living in the trenches of institutionalised racism. Being minorities in a white-dominated United States, contained in bleak urban ghettoes that are now undergoing steady gentrification, they also have to endure the traumas of constant police brutality. They are a community under siege on multiple fronts as their neighbourhoods are being decimated by fractured and disappearing families, targeted gentrification, mass incarceration, drug abuse and despair. During the COVID-19 pandemic, death rates among African Americans have been disproportionately higher than other racial groups and this had led to considerable public outcry. Again, their position within American society demonstrates their obvious vulnerability. They are especially vulnerable not only to disease but also have relatively few means of redress. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has received mixed reactions within the community as many argue that it lacks grassroots support and is being sponsored by white liberal donors and sympathisers. Since the era of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Kwame Toure (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and Huey Newton, amongst others, there has not emerged a cohort of black leaders with the vision, commitment, sincerity and energy to match those illustrious forebearers. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the assassinations of Malcolm and Martin, the penetration of radical activist groups by the FBI, and the heroin epidemic that blighted black neighbourhoods, the political momentum has arguably not been sustained. Following the gains of the civil rights movement, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton further inflicted harm on the black community through a series of repressive legislation that birthed the age of mass incarceration, chillingly covered by the author and academic Michelle Alexander in her bestselling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The scourge of crack cocaine must also be added to this already malevolent social equation. Families and neighbourhoods were denuded of health, social services, stability and financial viability. Knowledge, wisdom, and wholesome experience were substituted with fear, paranoia and degeneracy. Hip hop as a cultural form was in its ascendency, having managed to crawl out of the neglected borough of the Bronx. Just like funk, R&B and other black music forms, this particular genre also aspired to be therapeutic, or at least soul-lifting. For a while, it represented the angst and perplexities of the "hood", and subsequently, the righteous rage of the bona fide political rebel. But after experiencing phenomenal success, it fizzled out in an anti-climactic tsunami of bling, bombast, shallow consumerism and toxic misogyny. For the first time in recent memory, blacks were able to produce a music utterly devoid of soul meant to soundtrack the last days of an era indelibly marked by Babylonian excess and decadence. In South Africa, droves of no-talent copycats, seduced by the grand spectacle flashed by mainstream American hip hop, discarded their indigenous traditions and sheepishly adopted American mannerisms.
A source of tension between Africans and African Americans is the type of black people who are admitted to the United States to live and work. Radical black Americans claim that since the supposedly unfavourable experiences of white supremacists with radicals, such as the redoubtable black pioneer Marcus Garvey, who was originally from Jamaica, and activist Kwame Toure, who came from Trinidad and Tobago, white supremacists in the US have been careful with the type of people they admit from the Caribbean and Africa. An argument is made by black American radicals that only those who readily support and uphold the tenets and institutions of white supremacy are now being admitted. Those same black American radicals point to the fact that the first black president of the United States, Barack Obama – who is not considered a foundational black American (FBA) by any stretch of imagination – whose father was of Kenyan origin, did nothing for black folk but went out of his way to benefit the LGBTGI community and immigrants, particularly from Mexico and other countries in the region. Obama, they claim, was not accountable to black America, and did not want to be accountable because he had not been made by black America. Kamala Harris, the current vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, has a father originally from Jamaica and an Indian mother. According to radical black Americans, Harris is bound to create the sort of problems they encountered with Obama. They argue that the ever-calculating white media attempts to present her as a credible political representative of black America because she apparently looks like them. But all similarities end there. The white media is trying to foist Harris upon the black electorate with claims that she attended Howard University, a historically black college. But black radicals are not having any of it. Instead, they (black radicals) dug into Harris's past professional conduct and discovered that as an attorney working for the state of California, she notched an alarmingly high rate of prosecutions, convictions and incarceration of black people. Indeed these frightening rates could only please white supremacists and not black folk. So black radicals claim that if she is voted into power under a Joe Biden ticket as vice president, black folk are not to expect anything better from her. Before they give her their vote and support, they are asking her for tangible deliverables. As of this point, Harris isn't talking. Black radicals claim the days of black political representatives receiving their vote merely because of the colour of their skin are long gone. They now preach the mantra of "tangibles" to any prospective black political representative. On the question of political and cultural representation in the present culture of hoods created by blacks, there does not appear to be a music genre that can inspire and transform lives as in the days of yore. Policies and strategies of integration pursued by US governments (which were meant to fool everyone) in the wake of the civil rights movement deceive no one. The partiality, inequality, division and bigotry are there for everyone to see. However, the lives and accomplishments of Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Marcus Garvey and a host of other pioneers are not always accorded their rightful place in the American public mind. And only "woke" folk know the true meaning of Pan-Africanism.
On the African continent, befuddled by disemboweled US hip hop culture and the hype of #BlackLivesMatter, we attempt to take hesitant steps towards the blinding glare, unsure of how to act or how we would be received. The derelict hoods of the US seem to mirror our own mismanaged and misgoverned countries, which have variously been described as failed states. African Americans, on the other hand, are filing into Africa at encouraging rates, tracing their genetic ancestry back to the motherland, often settling permanently along the coast of West Africa, longing to ingest melanin-rich air indefinitely. Away from relatively melanin-deprived political and cultural environments, they genuflect before myriad departed ancestors in rituals of ineffable spiritual communion: "We have come home, receive us steadily into the ceaseless warmth of your unfathomable bosom." Lost African youth, on the other hand, see these rejuvenated American returnees and hear the conflicted sounds of Lil Wayne, Kid Cudi, Fetty Wap, ASAP Rocky and Lil Nas X and sense Eldorado, a tortuous and deadly path of escape from the Western media-created images of their insufferable hell holes. On both sides, namely black America and Africa, mass confusion often abounds, creating expectations that remain largely unfulfilled and hungers that are unlikely to be satiated. First, in the recent past, the Western media manufactured false narratives about the Dark Continent. Now, children of both black America and Africa often neglect to discover the real truth about their heritage, leaving them both to re-live the unimaginable horrors of their past anew, only that this time around, they are locked in mental prisons entirely of their own making. Undoubtedly, continental Africans have a lot to learn from their African American cousins in relation to race politics and white supremacy. In this regard, a great deal of humility and restraint is required. As things stand, African Americans have too much on their plate already. The chameleonic properties of racism are remarkably protean. American society was built on the prolonged enslavement of blacks, hence the rise of American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS) activism. Then there was Jim Crow oppression and the destructive infiltration of the civil rights movement and other strategies of containment and suppression specifically targeting blacks. Under the auspices of ADOS and its growing drive for social transformation and reparations for black Americans due to the multiple forms of suffering caused by slavery, the term African American is becoming obsolete. Black American, once fashionable and then passé, is returning as the appropriate term to call peoples of African descent in the United States. This group makes it abundantly clear that they are quite distinct from Africans and people from the Caribbean based in the US – a distinction that justifies their quest to secure the fruits of reparations. While initially it might prove to be a compact strategy for obtaining reparations, it blurs the Pan-Africanist vision and makes it arguably less potent. In this regard, ADOS, or foundational black Americans (FBA), as they now prefer to call themselves, may be viewed as somewhat shortsighted and unduly materialistic, which throws out of the window the accomplishments of the likes of W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey and John Henrik Clarke.
The phases of oppression developed by white supremacists simply keep mutating, refining tactile mechanisms of suppression even before their intended victims are able to anticipate them. These strategies have had centuries of experimentation to improve themselves. And then they possess false ideologies to camouflage themselves. Black resistance, on the other hand, is often reactive, kept on its hind legs, forever on the defensive due to the fact that oppressive mechanisms are constantly shifting. This is black America's greatest challenge – to move successfully from a defensive posture to a proactive one while at the same time keeping in mind the many lessons learnt from centuries of struggle. The Haitian Revolution, which birthed the first independent black country in the Western hemisphere, continues to be a shining example. In order to accomplish its success, it had to purge itself of its internal doubters and dissenters. Currently, as mentioned earlier, black America has very few, if any, leaders within its ranks that possess undeniable mass appeal and grassroots support. It is also fractured by numerous ideological factions and tendencies that make it difficult to identify and pursue a cohesive agenda. Furthermore, the various institutions of racism have become more diverse and entrenched. Nonetheless, all is not lost; true revolution has always been the art of the impossible and black America generally has proven itself, time and again, to be uncommonly resourceful and courageous. |
| The Cuties Backlash and Policing of Girlhood Are All Too Familiar - The Mary Sue Posted: 24 Sep 2020 07:08 AM PDT
Maïmouna Doucouré's Cuties is a genuinely difficult movie to watch, and if your wifi hasn't buckled under Zoom overload, you probably already know about the controversy—the uproar sparked in part by Netflix's marketing, centering around claims that the movie's story about children's dance groups sexualizes young girls (often not even based on actually watching the film). But Cuties does more than critique the hyper-sexualization of girls; it unflinchingly depicts girls' first encounters with sexuality. Cuties tells the story of Amy, a French-Senegalese girl, as she works to join the titular dance group. Amy becomes enamored of the clique's clothes, confidence, and moves, but the Cuties world teeters on the brink of sexuality and quickly pulls Amy under. For those of us who recognize ourselves in the Cuties, the backlash to the film isn't a new rallying cry to #saveourchildren or a shocking example of Trump-era internet wars. It's the same tired, familiar policing of girlhood that we experienced when we were girls. Despite the controversy, when I watched Cuties, the image I saw reflected onscreen wasn't a hypothetical daughter to save; it was my childhood self learning to dance in the mirror. We all have that one music video, the one that opened new doors of possibility and made us wonder, "Can I move like that?" For some, it was Britney's "Slave for You," or maybe Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie." Mine was Beyoncé's "Check On It." I'll never forget the day I opened the "Special Features" menu of my Pink Panther DVD (welcome to the reminiscing of a zillennial). Beyoncé was dripping with pink—the bubblegum leather boots, the mauve cashmere sweater, the cotton candy mini-skirt—rolling her hips as she strutted to the beat. I was ten years old, and I wanted to be exactly like her. When my mom walked in on me, I was practicing one of the same moves that shocked the internet after appearing in Cuties. Much of the pearl clutching surrounding Cuties completely ignores the fact that it depicts a common phase of girlhood. Girls twerk. Girls sneak makeup and high heels into their backpacks to put on at school. The prospect of womanhood is shiny and exciting, especially when you're too young to understand the responsibilities it carries. Regardless of how common this phase is, so few girls navigating it are met with understanding or empathy. I was lucky; my mom channeled my Beyoncé-curiosity into "street funk" dance classes (the best approximation of hip-hop that Portland, Maine had to offer). But many girls, especially Black girls, caught acting outside their age are punished. When Amy's exploration of womanhood spirals from twerking with her friends to posting a nude picture online, her family performs a kind of exorcism, stripping her down to her underwear and dousing her with water while praying. While exorcism isn't the most common method, the strict policing of girls happens all the time. As a child, I was constantly reprimanded for not sitting with my legs together, and my wardrobe walked the tightrope of hiding my maturing body without making me look like a sack of potatoes (neither succeeded). Girls are forced to trade shorts for pants when company visits, and school dress codes send them home for visible bra straps or tank tops. Girls who don't conform—or, like me, mature earlier than the surrounding skinny white girls—are labeled "fast," a thinly veiled precursor to "slutty," setting an early foundation for victim-blaming. Through parenting, church, and school, we outline the borders of girls' bodies and police them more and more as they approach adolescence. Of course, there's a difference between policing girls and protecting them. Girls deserve a safe space to enter adolescence and figure out what it means to feel beautiful and empowered. No, it's not a particularly graceful stage of childhood development—I don't know a single girl who was mature enough to be sexy the first time she wanted to feel sexy. I certainly wasn't. But by shaming and punishing girls for making missteps on the path to womanhood, we only distort their idea of what it means to be a woman. In Cuties, her family's crackdown only pushes Amy further away. Even when policing girls' bodies "works," it sows seeds of insecurity that crop up throughout young adulthood. Cuties isn't a movie for girls; it's a movie for people who once were girls or might help raise them. It reminds us how hard it was to be 11 and growing into a body that is both sexualized and strictly monitored. Hopefully, those of us who actually watch the movie can use that reminder to be better for this generation of girls. (image: BAC Films) Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site! —The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.— Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com |
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