It’s always cause for celebration whenever audiences see Desi women or just women of colour being placed center stage and sharing their stories on a global platform. In an alleged post-racial world, it sadly remains a rare sight. Only a handful of popular mainstream shows have a person of colour as the lead.
And if it weren’t for these five reasons, I would love Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, a show that explores the rocky adolescence of a Tamil American girl.
1. Mindy Kaling Is A Self-Loathing Indian
I always hated Mindy Kaling. And I’m definitely not the only one. Aside from the fact that she is shrill and endlessly obnoxious, she always presented herself as a self-loathing Indian who, throughout the six years The Mindy Project was on air, distanced herself completely not only from her Indian identity, but from anything even remotely Indian. The fact that I have seen more instances of representation of Indian culture (yoga and Indian food) in the first season of Sex and the City, a show about five White women, than I’ve seen in a 2010 show where an Indian is the main lead is very concerning.
Throughout the show’s duration, Kaling dates nineteen White men. Yes, nineteen. Not a single one of them was even bi-racial.
The show’s slogan might as well have been “If it’s White, it’s alright. If it’s Brown, I’m not down.”
Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she cooks dosas with Vice President Harris and creates a show where being Indian is not just extensively discussed but is the entire thrust of the show?
Make no mistake of it, Never Have I Ever is a calculated effort to bank on the ever-increasing popularity of Indian culture in America thanks in part to the recent meteoric rise of Desi American personalities like Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, Lily Singh, Tan France and Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
It’s all screams disingenuous.
When Kaling’s brother made the headlines several years ago for pretending to be a Black man to try and get into a good college, I wasn’t the least bit surprised.
It’s unclear what kind of environment Mindy Kaling and her brother, Vijay (I mean “Jojo”) grew up in but it definitely made them hate their Indian heritage.
2. Unapologetic Anti-Semitism
Empowering one minority does not justify degrading another. The show’s only Jewish character, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison), is an embodiment of all the ugly stereotypes associated with a JAP, Jewish American Prince. He’s a whiny, neurotic, non-athletic overbearing overachiever with a high-powered attorney as a father and a penchant for dating Asian girls to gain proximity to an interesting, foreign culture. Do I know Jewish American men like him? Yes. Should they be portrayed onscreen in a show that espouses liberal values of diversity, inclusion and political correctness? Absolutely not.
The show dangerously perpetuates the widely held belief that American Jews are fair game because they’re mostly Ashkenazi i.e. White and because some hold positions of power. In an alarmingly anti-Semitic climate where one in four Jewish Americans are experiencing anti-Semitism on a regular basis, where White Supremacist terrorists in North America are murdering Jewish synagogue-goers and neo-Nazis in Western Europe are going on “Jewish hunts”, Jewish characters in fictional work should be treated with as much respect and sensitivity as other vulnerable minorities.
Seriously, fuck this show.
3. The Age Chasm Between Maitreyi and Darren
Yes, it’s called acting and no, they’re not simulating any kind of sexual activity onscreen. There’s nothing here that requires a legal team (not that I’m aware of at least). That being said, it wasn’t the most appropriate course of action to pair Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, an impressionable 17 year old teenage girl from Mississauga, Ontario who’s completely new to the world of acting with a seasoned 28 year old LA actor. There is no reason why the show-runners couldn’t find an actor comparable to Maitreyi’s age to play her love interest.
Granted, Darren Barnet is the most magnetic actor of Asian origin to grace the American silver screen in 70 years (since Sessue Hayakawa) but I hope he’s never paired onscreen with an underage teenager again.
4. It Tries Way Too Hard
The show is devoid of any kind of subtlety or nuance, because the volume is constantly kept at loud. As a result, not a single character feels real, not a single word they utter rings true. The characters don’t talk, they make statements. Constantly. Everything they say sounds like a meme or a social media rant, not a human being talking.
5. The Misrepresentation of Indian Culture
To most non-Indians, Indian culture appears homogenous. But in reality, it’s anything but. Every region and state has it’s own distinct traditions, customs, languages, religions, etc. India is after all a subcontinent, not a country.
The show’s saving grace is that it introduces Tamil culture, which has always unfairly been in the shadow of the more dominant North Indian culture, to a Western audience. For the first time, a global audience is seeing idly, dosa, and sambar in an Indian household instead of butter chicken, chapatis and paneer.
But the show sometimes conflates South Indian culture with the much more dominant North Indian, which is factually inaccurate and I’m sure frustrating to South Indians who are glad to see their culture being depicted in a mainstream show for the first time.
the problem with this show is that you’re right, it doesn’t feel real, at all. But the reasons you mentioned are not why it doesn’t feel real. REAL Indian families are much more dysfunctional than this, and it is rare for a south indian american teen to even have friends over, let alone wear the clothes she wears, and have such entitlement. most south indian american children and teens help their parents, it’s a complete obligation, especially if they are female. the children are the help. the chick in this show never helps out with anything at home, but demands her mom make her food. it’s a stretch for sure. the dysfunctional relationship between south indian mother and daughter is wayyyy deeper than what is portrayed in this sort of slapstick show….as a south indian american myself, i would have certainly preferred Poorna J’s character over my actual mother, who is a sick twisted misogynist because she comes from that from her own upbringing. South Indians are grandiose about their education and their religion and also their food habits, to the point where they are visibly uncomfortable around people who don’t code in C++ and eat lentils daily. They are also obsessed with classical Indian culture, and they force their children to adhere to it, especially if they are Brahmin. I feel Mindy Kaling grew up in a very dysfunctional family, high achievers of course, her brother lied to get into medical school, she has a child with an unnamed father, and has written books like “why doesn’t anyone want to hang out with me?” I don’t think she is insecure about being Indian, I think she pretends she is insecure about Indian culture because it panders to what non-Indians might believe about Indian culture. So by pretending to be insecure about her “culture” she is able to reach a wide audience. But I think in reality Kaling grew up in a crazy home, probably secretive and hiding a lot of dysfunction and like many Indian people, the dysfunction itself is swept under the rug and explained away by cultural clashing, or the difficulties of fitting in and so “being Indian” becomes a total social fact. India probably had a great and wise ACTUAL culture before capitalism and imperialism and colonialism….I wonder…..most Indian culture now is merely acquisitin of cheap real estate and flexing gold and silk with the dark underbelly of propagating child abuse, emotional neglect, and family dysfunction. But because Indians in India don’t do “real talk”. They don’t, they bob their heads from side to side and take selfies and go to engineering school and get married. They don’t contemplate their cultural dysfunction which is why nothing changes there. It’s just the same old shit. Misogyny, gang rapes, child brides, lower educational opportunities for females, building up the boys while undermining the girls…..this dysfunction doesn’t have anything to do with a good culture….but all the movies and the religiosity and the family structure keeps the dysfunction in place and call Indian culture a “rich culture”…There is no real indian culture though, actually there are no true cultures left on earth where the culture itself lends itself to solving family pain, emotional pain, pain from being abused, there is no rigorous methodologies that Indian people follow to rectify pedophilia, child molestation, rape, misogyny. Generally, Indians prescribe prayer and studies to every problem, which doesn’t solve any actual problems, because no one changes their behavior and there are no consequences. Indian American immigrants come here and they are confused because they don’t have a robust value system to live by because they didn’t learn it in India, so they continue to pray and study here in the USA, and most of their offspring have a slough of mental health issues and abandonment anxiety, due to being abused. Mindy Kaling is just one of these people, she suffers, and she copes with light-hearted humour to dissociate from reality, and it is evident in the shows she creates. Whether a person is Indian or the whitest American human, each person must create a true value system for themselves, a way to live which addresses critical problem solving in family issues, it needs to go beyond prayer and academic studying. Unfortunately, Indians don’t have this anymore. I think maybe at one time they did have the ability to change their behavior and acknowledge their actions and call it out for what it is. But Indians typically don’t care about emotional health, they see the world as dog eat dog, first come first serve, in queues they mob the front of the line impatiently like rodents in a feeding frenzy, they are grandiose about a culture they don’t really have. India is the pedophile capital of the world, and both of my parents tell accounts of what happend to them In their “good” families…Honesty and humility are what Indians need to work on, so they can take stock of their own bullshit behaviors and enabling…. bobbing the head from side to side and going out to buy lentils at the grocery store and going to temple aren’t enough if your kids are being abused or neglected and you hate your wife because your parents arranged the marriage. That is not culture, that is playing house with someone you hate, and bringing in children into the world via sex, and making them pawns and audience members for the shitty marriage. India needs to calm down with the reproduction rates as well. Not every couple deserves or even needs a child…..
Whoa, whoa, whoa..
That’s the most-effective antithesis to this one-&-only Planet’s most-effective botnet-ops in a very very very long time[ if not ever within the maximum of say, past 11 years]..
…And like the pioneering [K]Hasbarists: What would their riposte, or to put it bluntly, “a line-of-attack” under India which “became independent” merely 8 years ago and enigmatically skyrocketed to “world master” India from “dynasty politics” and “BollyJihādīs”( a bit-of-softening, “Urdūwood”, but not ‘Punjābīwood’ or even ‘HiNglishwood’ as [of ]yet).
First of all, you would be dubbed yet-another “Hinduphobe” indoctrinated by the Communist/Colonialist/Imperialist/Maoist/Marxist/Naxalite/Socialist education expressed in the ever-evolving neologisms — in spite of not that much of a creativity[ in them].
So you got aggresive denials, denials, denials upto the midpoint where you would reach “it’s only the Ms” i.e. India’s largest minority belief-system who are, according to some of their cults, “of different genes” even as the theory of forceful-conversion of “native people”( read Āryans) amidst the invasion of “native” kingdoms in a somehow unified India stays in the dominance* — and then, towards the end, they would start blaming “rice bag[ converts]” aka “Xtians” for a bit of those, as well.
*And last but not the least, they would contend every single social-ill was a mere consequence/result/solution of the “foreign” values imposed by “Islāmic invaders” in virtually all cases — as the British establishment [is ]sounding more useful( somehow!) in their quest for “Sanātanī nation”( a starting pipe-dream of Hindū supremacists, even though now highly emulated by the incumbent-regime ever since the first phase of Lockdown spheres of culture-wars over “finding destroyed ruins of temples in India”, quite a lot of whose contemporaneous sourcing dates back to white, mostly-English scribes with nary a slightest of acknowledgement of the “divide-&-rule” statecraft which was amped-up to umpteen levels ever since the [British ]Crown took over the dominion of India from the [East India™ ]Company following the Uprising of 1857( whose nomenclature itself depends upon which side is doing the historiography).
Dear Truthteller,
Truer words have not been spoken. More of us need to come out of the shadows and tell it like it is. Patriarchy, misogyny, racism, emotional /verbal/physical abuse, control and exploitation of women, children, the poor, lower societal classes, and any other sections of society deemed to be less than. Where arrogance, ignorance, greed are common place, where deep routed narcissism and entitlement have led to multi generational trauma yet one is expected to accept, love and live with it in the name of culture. Time to call the BS.
There’s a new invention called the paragraph…
Give it a try.
If only just praying would solve everything. We don’t just pray you know? I don’t know where all of this stems from but I feel there is too much disparity in your comment. Makes it sound like we live in some weird dystopian world where “RSS goons” go around raping every person in sight which is far from the truth. Of course we have a lot of problems, every country has problems, but we are working on them, in fact more diligently now more than ever. Women empowerment is something the country has been actively working on, and things are wayy better than they were say 15 years ago. The female to male sex ratio is now 1020 for every 1000 males which is higher than ever. Infant mortality rate has be consistently decreasing for the past 20 years, sure its still nowhere I would like it to be but we should get there. Maternal mortality rate has decreased by more than half each consecutive year, which means mothers are being better taken care of. The Public Health sector is in a bad shape but its getting better, during covid we did export a fuck ton of vaccines and other help to poorer countries as well as free care and doses to all our citizens, it wasn’t perfect but it is better than playing 1000 dollars for an ambulance ride. The Private Health sector did significantly improve and is now more affordable in most cases. The male literacy rate improved from 27.2% in 1951 to 84.7% in 2017, the female literacy rate grew from 8.9% to 70.3% during the same period, so unfortunately no, most of us don’t force our women to stay uneducated. The Gender Parity Index (GPI) has also improved from 32% in 1960 to 75% in 2017, its more than 75% now, you are welcome to find the actual stat yourself. As far as jobs are concerned its just that different genders prefer different things. In higher education, around 97% prefer general courses (humanities, sciences, and commerce), while the rest prefer technical/professional courses. Among these technical courses, women dominate medicine with 13.8% preference compared to 4.9% for men. Engineering is where men dominate with 41.6% choosing it, while only 28.2% of females prefer engineering. Similarly, education is dominated by women (14.6%) compared to men (5.3%), while ITI is preferred by men (20%) over women (6.4%). The number of women in business related fields is also on a rise, again this is something that I think we do need to improve on, but going by the increasing rates every year I think we should be seeing a LOT more women in businesses in the future. Now, as far as the rape and abuse is concerned, India is much more concerned and mindful of its rape and abuse victims than it was 20 years ago. Yes there are a large number of cases, but you have to understand we are a VERY large country, the scale on which this country operates is almost Incomprehensible compared to someone in Germany or the US. Going by statistics, there are about 1.8-2 rapes per 100,000, considering only 10% of all cases have been reported, even if we adjust it to 18 per 100,000, this is still less than countries like Norway (19.2), New Zealand (25.8), UK (28.8), USA (43) Sweden (63.5), bear in mind the stats for these countries have not been adjusted (i.e they are only the “reported” cases). What I am saying is that your mindset is skewed. Maybe NRIs are living in 2002 but how is India responsible for that? The reality of being abused by parents who hate each other is your reality not everybody else’s. Arranged marriages like love marriages either work or they don’t. There is nothing more or less to it. A lot of these couples love each other and make life long bonds, while some of them don’t. Besides not everyone in an arranged marriage is forced into it, this was probably true in 2005 but not anymore. Are there such cases? sure. Are these the majority cases? Ofc not, Indians are picky as fuck. Frankly idc that much about marriage in general but generalising things and making a dystopia is something I abhor. Just because 10 out of 100 people are unhappy, doesn’t mean the other 90 are as well. Every country in the world has extremists, it seems like we have more of them only because we have more people in general. Our 10% would be some other country’s 300%. The amount of hate you are harbouring in your comment is just insane. We do call shit out, and we have been rectifying our problems for the past 20 years, and if you cannot see it you are just too blinded by hate. As for the reproduction rates, those are improving as well, all of the couples I know have one or two kids. For now the rural areas are a bit behind but with the GINORMOUS pressure on guess what? EDUCATION (studying aww) rural areas are improving as well. For a country operating on a massive scale, and after being sucked dry for 200 years by a condescending brutal colonial power I am REALLY fucking proud to be a part of one of the powerhouses of the world. If you really think there is no “change” then you probably are living in a bubble, but then again, you are American so I am not really surprised. I apologise if anything comes off as offensive but the point of me writing this huge ass comment was not to degrade anyone but to help you realise that we know our problems and are working on them. Instead of cribbing like entitled bitches and giving condescension 1000 miles away why don’t you try and do something about it? A LOT of Indians are, at least we are here, in the mud toiling and fighting for a better tomorrow for our children. Just because we’re not hysterical about it, or WOKED tf out, does not mean we don’t give a fuck. Anyways I don’t really think my comment made a difference to your thinking, but, worth a shot I guess, my “culture” does tell me to try and help those who go astray, and help them find the truth. Sach karni Sach Taki Rahat, Sacha Chauka Surat Ki Kar, Jo Kuchh Karay Sat Kar Man, Tatah Tut Milay Sach Paya, (look up the translations if you want, finding the truth about what these lines mean is up to you).
Also P.S.: Not all Indians pray. We have atheists as well. Peace.
also, Indians are worried about the age “chasm” haha, really? I’m sure most of our grandparent (in real life) had a larger age gap, and guess what? that was problematic (in real life)…. do indian millenials and genz talk about it? or do they just keep silent about it all?
I don’t know about Indians, but I’m Palestinian and I’m not ok with it and yes, many younger and older Indians find huge age gaps between men and women in films and TV shows problematic.
I hope that they aren’t only bothered if it’s in a Television show or a movie. I hope they find it egregiously more problematic when it happens in real life over in India, with the child bride rituals, which aren’t quite entirely eradicated. I highly doubt that the age differential in “never have I ever” is like anything to be too worried about. It’s not like shah rukh or amir khan are getting Botox to play high school students in it lol. The guy is 30. And he looks super young.
I just feel that the author did not explain enough why he/she is bothered by the age differential, seeing that in Bollywood, men old enough to be the father of a lead female have been cast as their love interest…. Just felt that with the title of the blog, the author is not highlighting why Bollywood is superior..:: and why is Mindy Kaling being targeted suddenly lol…. Mindy Kaling isn’t considered truly “Hollywood”. I mean she’s niche, she’s not like red carpet diva… she’s quirky and just coping with life by making strange shows… I don’t get the “hate” towards her lol. It’s tough to be Indian in the US, but we just make fun of it and Mindy was able to make serious money from
Her experiences, she’s driven and talented… everyone doesn’t have to be like Bollywood divas… lol… and just based on what I see in the Indian restaurant steaming music videos of Bollywood dances and music while we eat, I see Bollywood just becoming straight up pornographic, like those stripper moves and their clothes (or lack thereof)….. the author is saying Mindy Kaling has “self-loathing”… how dare she? I think Bollywood is self-loathing because they copy a lot of American movies, like to a tee… Mindy Kaling isn’t copying anyone…. She’s an original… she has flaws and her shows aren’t perfect but it’s not like she transcribed all of Benjamin Button into Hindi, cast Amitabh Bacchan and then renamed it “Paa” 😂 😂 😂… why do Indians do that?? And the worst part is they don’t get it right either, they miss the message in the copying 😂…
Copying others is the most evident way of showing lack of self esteem, originality, creativity, and self worth…
What is India??? No like seriously? What is it?? Who knows??
Bad Bollywood remakes of Hollywood movies haven’t really been a thing for at least a decade now. Indian film audiences’ taste palette has changed drastically in that time.
Aamir actually got permission from Forrest Gump’s screenwriter, Eric Roth, to remake Lal Singh Chaddha. But it still flopped because Indian audiences no longer want to see remakes of Hollywood movies.