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Abstract
The question of belonging is central to Manish Acharya's satire Loins of Punjab Presents, which, I argue, uses a Hindi film song contest set in a New Jersey hotel and sponsored by a pork company to explore the processes of exclusion that are an essential part in the construction of national and cultural communities. This essay looks at the critical cinephilia in Loins, which positions itself in dialogue with existing films about diasporic South Asian communities – especially Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham – implicating cinematic representation in exclusionary practices and revealing the centrality of performance to ideas of belonging. Through its emphasis on representation and performance, the film celebrates the pleasures of film spectacle yet critiques and challenges cinematic constructions of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’. But while the film broadens both categories, it resists uncritical multiculturalism by incorporating a paranoid, post-9/11 US nationalism and white liberal orientalism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alok Yadav, Robert Matz, Jeanette Roan, Roger Hallas, and Matthew Fee for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Conversations with them as well as with Anila Gill, Apoorva Johri, Denise Albanese, and Joe Goodin helped me to think through key ideas about the film. Finally, this essay is dedicated to the memory of Manish Acharya, who travelled all the way to Mason just for a screening and Q&A in the fall of 2010. His talent was matched by his warmth and generosity, and my sympathies continue to go out to the many friends and loved ones he left behind.
Notes
1. In Loins of Punjab Presents, ‘desi’ and ‘Indian’ are somewhat interchangeable.
2. While the portrayal of, in particular, Arab and Asian Americans as permanent immigrant-outsiders has intensified in the last decade, it is not new, nor is the use of national security discourses to legitimate racism and restrict definitions of ‘American’. See Lowe Citation1996 and Roan Citation2010. The dangers of this opposition are more than discursive, as evidenced in the increase of attacks against Arabs and South Asians since 11 September 2001.
3. For a discussion of political communities and exclusion in a more violent context, see Derek Gregory's analysis of Giorgio Agamben's homo sacer in The Colonial Present (Gregory Citation2004).
4. For extensive, thorough discussions of the relationship between commercial Hindi film and South Asian diasporas see Desai Citation2004, Punathambekar Citation2005, Hirji Citation2010, Gopal 2011, and Mehta Citation2011.
5. On the DVD commentary for Loins, Acharya states that his idea for the film was partly inspired by similar film song contests in Indian communities in the New York tri-state area. See also Sunaina Marr Maira's Desis in the House (2002) for a discussion of the various uses of film song sequences in shows and events staged by Indian and South Asian university student associations.
6. Loins of Punjab Presents uses the term ‘Bollywood’ to refer to the entire history of commercial Hindi-Urdu cinema. Thus, CID (1956), Citation Yaadon Ki Baarat (1973), and Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham (2001) are all referred to as both ‘Bollywood’ and ‘Hindi’ films in the movie.
7. Even Citation Amreeka , the characters of which come from an occupied/disputed homeland, revolves around the struggles of a single (albeit extended) family in a single home. An important exception is Srinivas Krishna's Citation Masala (1991), which Desai gives an extensive and compelling analysis of in Beyond Bollywood.
8. Interestingly, something similar seems to be at work in Goldspot's video for their cover of ‘Ina Mina Dika’, which also references post-9/11 nationalism in the form of an excess of flags and nationalist imagery in ordinary places like high school gyms, bowling alleys, and sidewalks.
9. One notable exception is, of course, Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (Citation1991).
10. Today's Special (2010), Anita and Me (Citation2002), Citation Bend it Like Beckham (2002), and Citation Nina's Heavenly Delights (2006) all reframe the dynamics of cultural belonging as a generational conflict and may reassert constructions of South Asians as on the outside of the ‘host’ culture.
11. See for example the cross-cultural romances in Nina's Heavenly Delights, Citation A Touch of Pink , Citation My Beautiful Laundrette , Citation East is East , Citation Chutney Popcorn , and Today's Special. Even when these relationships are queered, they remain between a white Canadian/Scottish/British/American person and a person whose parents were both born in India or Pakistan. Again, Mississippi Masala remains a rare exception.
12. For example: Jay-Z's collaboration with Panjabi MC on a remix of ‘Beware the Boys (Mundian to Bach Ke)’. For a discussion of the sampling of Hindi film songs and bhangra in hip hop, see Hankins Citation2011.
13. Sadly, the shooting this summer at the Gurdwara in Wisconsin comes after more than a decade of increased violence against Sikhs that began on 11 September 2001 blocks from the still-collapsing World Trade Center, when Amrik Singh Chawla – who had managed to get out of the World Trade Center after it was hit – was chased by a group of white men yelling ‘terrorist’. For information about attacks throughout the country on American Sikhs, see Valerie Kaur and Sharat Raju's documentary Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath (2006). For information on the rise in hate crimes against and government harassment of American Muslims, Sikhs, and anyone perceived to be ‘Middle Eastern’, see Prashad 2012 as well as hate crimes reports available through the Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee (http://www.adc.org/media/adcri-publications/) and the Sikh Coalition (http://www.sikhcoalition.org/).
14. See Maira Citation2002 for an extended discussion of gender and ethnic authenticity.
15. These statistics, like all the ones Vikram cites in the movie, are made up.
16. Rini Bhattacharya Mehta writes, ‘it was Bollywood again that popularized regional parochial Indian traditions like “karva chaut” and “dandiya” among pan-Indian audiences and turned them into cultural capital’ (Mehta Citation2011, 5).
17. In fact, Sayeeda and her daughter can be part of the ‘great Indian family’ at the sufferance of the Raichands. She remains subservient, and while the family's daily puja and observance of Hindu holidays take centre fame, Sayeeda's religion – aside from a few stereotypical utterances of ‘Allah’ – remains largely absent.
18. Josh's idea is not so far afield of what already exists. Washington, DC is home to Stroga, a yoga studio that combines strength training and yoga.
19. Conversation with Manish Acharya, 17 November 2010.