When I was young, I remember sitting on my couch, riveted, staring at the television, like many other children of my age. I was watching Hannah Montana, as some unnamed Indian girl entranced Jackson, offering her a discount, which ended up being a trick for Rico to later fire Jackson.
This seems completely inconsequential: a random “hot” girl tricked one of the main characters as part of the plot, and that’s the end of that.
However, that was the first time I had seen anyone of my skin color play a “hot” girl. In the very few portrayals of any Indian on television, they always fall into the same stereotypes. The characters themselves, or their parents, either have a thick Indian accent, which often becomes the punchline of some joke. Many of the characters are controlled by strict parents, fighting to have some element of control in their lives, whether it be in their dating, personal, or professional life. If the character has a dating storyline, it’s often the character dating someone else of a different skin color in secret, afraid of their parents’ reaction. If not, they play the awkward person, in need of a makeover before they are deemed “attractive.” In terms of profession, they are usually portrayed as the “nerd,” the “genius,” a doctor, or part of the IT business.
Though this might accurately portray some elements of an immigrant’s reality, it’s frustrating to typecast any person of Indian descent into the same story line.
By simply watching television as a child, the message was clear: if you are brown, you are only confined to one story line. This is your reality, because this is how the entertainment industry views people of your color. By extent, people in my own life have thought that because they’ve only seen one type of Indian onscreen, that what they have witnessed on television is my own reality.
One time, a maintenance worker asked if a “documentary” (which was in fact, a fictional movie) about arranged marriage, described something that I would go through in the near future. While it’s nice to have certain elements of my culture portrayed onscreen, because of the little representation we get, every fictional character defines my reality.
Another Indian girl that I’ve seen on Disney Channel was in their original movie, “Lemonade Mouth.” However, I was disappointed to see that she was of mixed ethnicity. Through no fault of her own, Disney cast an Indian girl with more of a fair skin complexion, which is a beauty standard imposed on people of color. Fair skin is equivalent to beauty, and so even when they cast someone of Indian descent, they choose to represent a lighter skin color.
It’s no secret that people of color need more representation onscreen, but it’s also important to consider how minorities are represented. Because there are very few ways in which we are portrayed, each role is critical, but it shouldn’t be that way.
