Battle: Outsourced the Movie versus Outsourced the TV Show

I love Thursday nights. Sadly, it is because almost every show that I regularly follow is on on Thursday nights - Bones, 30 Rock, The Office, Community, and Project Runway. I watch enough TV on Thursday nights to almost last me a week (Aside from How I Met Your Mother on Mondays. I love that too). So I was interested to see a new television show this season in my NBC Thursday night line-up that, on the surface, seemed very out of the ordinary for American television - Outsourced.

In Outsourced Todd, a mid-level manager for an American novelty outfitter, finds out that his job has been outsourced to India and he must go and train the new workers and his future replacement if he ever wants to move up high enough in the company that he can return to America and the safety of corporate headquarters. The premise for the show wasn't new to me. I had seen Outsourced the movie several years prior. However, the more I watch Outsourced the television show, the more I can see the subtle differences between its depiction of the friction between Indian culture and American culture and the culture clash in the movie version.

Anita, from Feminist Frequency, once told me that she liked the television show Farscape because the main character, John Crichton, an American astronaut, magically tumbles through the galaxy into an unknown world and instead of going by the tried and true formula of white-men-are-the-best-at-everything and letting John show the aliens how to run their section of the universe, John Crichton quickly realizes that he knows nothing. Everyday is a learning experience and every episode let the different characters rotate who would "know best" - not just letting Daddy John take the credit all the time for continuously saving the day.

The same idea is true of Outsourced the movie. Movie Todd finds himself in the middle of nowhere India (specifically, Gharapuri) trying to navigate local customs. He unknowingly offends most of the Indians he meets - including a particularly memorable sequence where he discovers why Indians think it is dirty to eat with you left hand. However, like many journeys, Movie Todd comes to learn more about himself as he learns more about the customs and traditions of India. Over the course of the movie he finds himself more estranged from the person he was and, vicariously, America; since the person that he was also sold gaudy American trinkets.

Instead of the sticks, TV Todd is stuck in the middle of Mumbai, a bustling metropolis. He too is middle management for an American novelties corporation. However, unlike Movie Todd who learns about himself through experiencing India, TV Todd is constantly correcting and instructing the people that work for him about American culture. Changing the journey that Movie Todd went through into more of a story of how white-men-are-the-best-at-everything and American culture is the best culture.

The shift from focusing on Indian culture in the movie to American culture and customs in the television show sounds small, but is actually quite profound. For instance, in Outsourced the movie Todd accidentally walks into the middle of the annual Holi celebration without knowing what it is.

At the end of this scene Purohit, Movie Todd's replacement manager, discusses how much he loved Holi as a child. While Movie Todd reminisces about how much he loved Halloween as a child. However, the emphasis in this scene is on the celebration of Holi, not an insistence that Movie Todd expose Purohit and his other workers to American customs like Halloween.

TV Todd has no problem prioritizing American customs over Indian ones. In the "Balloween" episode TV Todd throws a traditional American Halloween party. In it all the Indian characters are ridiculed in one way or another - Manmeet, the wannabe ladies man, dresses as a chick magnet, but is too afraid to talk to the hot Australian girl who finds his costume appealing. Gupta dresses as a "respectable US businessman" not realizing that he's dressed as a pimp. Asha comes dressed as Cleopatra only to be scolded for revealing too much skin when she's in the process of arraigning her marriage. Holi is never mentioned. And all the characters on the show embrace Halloween as if it was the latest and greatest thing. They even choose to dress up as American icons like Michael Jackson and Native Americans.

Not to say that Outsourced the television show is completely without its moments of hope. For instance, at the Halloween party Rajiv, the TV manager-in-training, dresses up as TV Todd and momentarily gets to mock him and, vicariously, Americans: "Is this safe to eat? Where's football? Where can I get that toilet paper with the lotion in it?" Thus, for a split second, we, the audience, are able to see what Indians find strange about our culture.

In the episode "Truly, Madly, Pradeeply" several of the characters, including fellow American, Charlie, become momentarily addicted to paan - an Indian version of chewing tobacco. This exchange also seemed less about the domination of American culture over Indian culture. I was happy to see a little but of screen time devoted to a non-American custom even if the storyline involved one of the other white American characters on the show. But these moments are fleeting. The paan aspect of the episode was a subplot and the Rajiv mockery of TV Todd was even shorter.

This is not to say that Outsourced the movie isn't without its problems as well. In both the film and the television show there is an attraction between Todd and the character of Asha. In both cases Asha is in the process of an arraigned marriage. Both versions of Todd still fall for Asha and pursue her to different degrees. It is as if because Asha's marriage is going to be arraigned by her parents that it does not carry the same weight as a "love match" marriage (the term used in the movie for a non-arraigned marriage). Therefore making her still single in the eyes of her lovelorn American boss Todd.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months if Outsourced the television show is able to gain speed and expand its moments of cultural sensitivity. As a viewer, the most interesting interactions to me are the ones that are completely foreign - the paan subplot for instance - and the ones that are the least interesting are the the cliched moments that I've seen over and over again in media. For instance, when the truly pathetic character of Tonya, a white Australian call center manager, throws herself at TV Todd in lewd and uninteresting ways. I can only hope that the television show continues to develop away from tried and true formulas and shows us something interesting. After all, it is a television show starring mostly an Indian/Indian-American cast on prime time network television. It is already revolutionary on paper. Now let's see it become revolutionary in content.

Outsourced the television show airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9:30pm.
Outsourced the movie is available to stream on Netflix.

Multi-Facial

I have always been interested in Vin Diesel. This is despite hating (with a passion) The Fast and the Furious... all of them. And wondering why anyone would ever think that the script to xXx was anything more than a waste of paper. I think underneath the bad one-liners I could see that he could act and after watching his debut film, Multi-Facial, I am now certain that Boiler Room wasn't just a fluke.

Multi-Facial is about a multi-racial actor auditioning for parts in New York City. The film was based upon Vin Diesel's own experiences as a multi-racial actor going to casting calls. In it casting director after casting director tells Vin he's talented, but he isn't right for the part. However, you can see that he has a deep dedication to his craft through the variety of parts he can play convincingly... everything from a chauvinistic Italian Guido to a rapper. And yes, he raps in it.

The film accepted into the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. Eventually, it caught the eye of Steven Spielberg who cast Vin in Saving Private Ryan. There is some blissful irony that a short film about how multi-racial actors can't seem to get parts since they don't fit into anyone's racial preconceptions was the film that got Vin Diesel his big break.

"Avatar" and How White Men Are the Best at Everything

Re: Some See Racist Theme in 'Avatar' - Movies.msn.com

The director of Avatar, James Cameron, has made a living out of making films with paper-thin narratives, cliched characters, but with lots of pretty things to look at. Avatar is no different. I must admit that I enjoyed the thrill-ride while I was on it, but looking back on the film now just makes me ever so sad.

The story goes that the Na'vi, the indigenous population (read: Native Americans) in the way of the progress of a greedy corporation (read: white Europeans), live on a remote world called Pandora (read: pre-colonial America). To try and convince them that they should move so that we can take over their land and cultivate the precious metal that lies beneath their sacred tree-home, we send Avatar Na'vi to integrate with the locals. The "dreamwalkers," as the Na'vi call them, are humans who, through the power of technology, can put themselves into the bodies of laboratory-grown half-Na'vi half-human beings. And thus, the futuristic reenactment of Manifest Destiny begins. However, this time the Avatars side with the Na'vi as the greedy corporation tries to plow down their sacred tree in order to mine the precious metal below and win in the face of interstellar corporate greed.

Now, there have been a lot of comments about how Sully, the protagonist/dreamwalker/Avatar, is highly reminiscent of the character that Tom Cruise played in The Last Samurai and Kevin Costner played in Dances with Wolves. Sully is, in effect, the white man who abandons "his" people to become the best damn minority ever. This is, because, white men are the best at everything. He gets to ride the toughest beast in the sky, he gets the village "prize" in the form of the highest ranking spiritual lady in waiting, and he hatches the plan that defeats the evil corporation that is trying to destroy Pandora's beauty. He proves that white men are really awesome at everything; including being an alien racial minority.

Truth be told, this plot device is not really new, but neither is the one that really bothered me about the film. Admittedly, being female I tend to judge films on the basis of what they let or don't let the women in the film do. The human women in the film, played by Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodruigez, represent two generations of actresses that have been allowed to kick butt and take names on celluloid. Sigourney Weaver totally blew them away in the Alien series (even with James Cameron at the helm!) and Michelle Rodruigez's break-through performance was in a film aptly titled Girlfight.

Spoiler alert in the paragraphs ahead. You may want to stop here if you have not seen and wish to view Avatar.

Michelle Rodruigez, once again, plays the hot-tempered Latina who is a military pilot with a soft spot for the blue Na'vi. Sigourney is relegated to the head maternal scientist role. She really wants to be a Na'vi and enjoys her forays into their world in her Avatar body. This bit of typecasting is not what bothers me (older woman as mother, Latina as "spicy"). It is the fact that for all their agency in the film that they are eventually killed off. Frequently, maybe more so than the white men as the best damn racial minority trope, female characters that embody some sort of power physically or mentally, are killed off because they are threatening to typical notions of white, male patriarchy.

Meeting their untimely doom, does not generally affect male characters who challenge authority in film. Avatar proves no different. Norm (Joel Moore), the other lovable scientist/Avatar survives the battle at the end. Not even the baddie head of corporate (Giovanni Ribisi) croaks. Nope. Once the human ladies decide to fight and challenge authority it is curtains for them and their sense of empowerment.

The only other main female character is also the only one who survives the climactic battle: the Na'vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). And this is because Neytiri conforms to stereotypical notions of femininity. For instance, although she is a Na'vi warrior/spiritual leader, she bows down to the power and influence of the white male outsider, Sully. She is, in effect, tamed by him when she chooses him as her partner and, in a really strange scene, copulates with him in the glowing woods. She literally defends him and his authority during the climactic battle and delivers him to the glowing tree at the end so he can be permanently fused with his Na'vi body and take his place as chief of the tribe. She exhibits a lot of physical, mental, and spiritual authority, but once she meets Sully it is all in service of him and his mission. Lame.

Undoubtedly, Avatar broke new ground technologically with its combination of human actors and computer generated effects. However, I wish that more time had been taken to think about how the story perpetuates very old notions of gender and race that are deeply troubling to those of us who do not identify with the white, male majority. I want to see a movie where women get to kick butt (mentally or physically), take names, don't lament over their relationships with men and survive to tell their tale.

To see Sigourney Weaver talk about her character in Avatar click here.
To see Zoe Saldana talk about her character in Avatar click here.

If I am going to make my students do it...

I am experimenting. I have decided that in lieu of carrying around stacks of papers that kill my shoulders that I am going to get my students to create individual blogs of their media consumption for one quarter. They are going to start an archive of their perceptions of issues of gender, race, and class in cinema history. This experiment is partially due to the fact that I am having issues finding a textbook that specifically addresses issues of gender, race, and class in cinema history. There are books out there that address these issues contemporarily, but not in a historical context and not with the same breadth that general intro to cinema history books do. I also need one that covers American as well as international works, throws in a little documentary, and experimental film and doesn't cost over $50. While typing all that out I realize that my requests are probably an impossibility. However, I would love it if others had ideas and would like to chime in with suggestions. In the meantime, I figure, I will just make my own "text" and then, next quarter, allow my students to chime in with their thoughts as well.