la_vie_noire | (no subject)

colorblue has an amazing post: linkspam, & commentary on India being a "magical negro."

The critique to the SocImages's post is spectacularly poignant:

And this exotification of India in the West has been happening since before the time of Columbus, ffs, and what is with reducing said things to a "phenomenon in which a white character in a tv show or movie finds enlightenment..."? (Just because it appears in tvtropes does not mean TV created it!) And that's not even getting into how most isms seem to inevitably become just like the racism that blacks (had) face(d) in the US.

I also thought it was telling how none of the links elaborating on the "magical negro" trope went to one of the many black writers who've done the major work of deconstructing and dissecting it, much less linking to desi writers talking about colonialism and othering.

So what my disagreement boils down to, I think, is this: that this is a discussion about the Othering/exotification of India in mainstream Western culture that succeeds in further marginalizing/disenfranchising desis and other minorities. It doesn't consider that we might be among the audience for this post (much less making room in the conversation for us, much less acknowledging all the times we've already discussed this), and in the way it takes something that rose out of certain contexts, misidentifies said contexts while applying it to different ones with no mention of the consequences of the differences, makes it, again, similar to what it's aiming to critique.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now I know why I haven't been able to make myself go look things up on that blog in months and also why I seem to have permanently disabled the comment section (had to open a whole new browser profile, couldn't figure out what I'd done to block it, to unblock it, just to read for this).

Yeah, SocI has some good things... and some extremely clueless shit.