The first time I can remember seeing an Indian woman on my television in something other than the Bollywood movies I watched with my cousin was when I was 10-years-old and my family rented Bend It Like Beckham from Blockbuster. Then, a few years later, there were the Patil twins in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. Around that same time, Mindy Kaling’s Kelly Kapoor became the first Indian woman I watched regularly on television. I’ve watched a lot of television through the years, but I can easily rattle off the names of every South Asian character on every show I’ve ever watched—especially the women—because, let’s face it, they’re few and far between. From Kelly to Greek’s Rebecca Logan to The Good Wife’s Kalinda Sharma, I hold a lot of these characters close to my heart.
“Indians On TV” opens with a telling and superbly edited montage of Indian stereotypes from film and television. Young Dev watches these, soaking them up. The few examples he has of Indian men on television don’t necessarily reflect his own experiences. The examples of Indian characters from my own childhood are comparatively better and less offensive, though not perfect in every instance. Hollywood has made someprogress, though not much, as “Indians On TV” makes clear.Master Of None wastes no time in establishing just how much power media has over the way we think about ourselves. Ravi and Anush’s whole worlds are shaken up when Dev reveals the truth about Ben Jhaveri in Short Circuit 2 (a revelation Aziz Ansari went through himself in college).]
[For more of this story, written by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, go to http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/m...e-problem-and-228142]
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