INTRODUCTION 2 Makers of Meaning 3 Introducing Orientalism 6 Summary of Analysis 9

CHAPTER 1: Detecting Orientalist Representations in The Indian Detective 12 ​ Introduction 12 Meritocracy and The Indian Detective 13 ​ Indian Despotism in Colonial Discourse 16 Locating Meritocracy and Colonial Discourse in The Indian Detective 21 ​ The Indian Detective as Orientalism 26 ​ CHAPTER 2: The Essentialization and Commodification of Spirituality in The Darjeeling Limited 31 Introduction 31 Synopsis of the Film 34 Grounding the Discussion in Colonial Discourse 35 Content Analysis 38 Narrative Analysis 40 Orientalism in The Darjeeling Limited 47 ​ CHAPTER THREE: British Orientalism and American Orientalism 50 Introduction 50 India as Site, Not Subject 52 The Subaltern in American Orientalism 53 The Subaltern, the Immigrant, and the New Brown Savior 54 American Orientalism as Transforming the Foreign to Familiar 56 Conclusion 60

CONCLUSION 61

REFERENCES 64

2

INTRODUCTION

If you have never personally traveled to India, which images come to your mind when prompted with the word “India?” Perhaps you immediately imagine a cow, a blue god, or a village. Likely you conceptualize India as a place with mud huts, poverty, pollution, red light districts, and overcrowded trains. You might know that India has billions of people, spicy food, and arranged marriages. If you have never personally traveled to India, what constructed this conceptualization of India in your mind? For many Americans who have never spent time in

India, their understanding of India and Indian identity is largely constructed and shaped by representations of India in the media, especially the mediums of film and television.

As a white identified Christian woman who was born and raised in the American South, it seems necessary to confess that my positionality on the topic of representations of India is an admittedly biased position, shaped initially by mediated representations, but recently informed by direct experience and personal relationships with people in Madhya Pradesh, India. During my most recent trip to India, an Indian friend of mine asked me, “Before you came to India for the first time, what came to mind when someone said ‘India’? What did you think India was like? What did you think we were like?” In response, I admitted that I was embarrassed to share with her my preconceived conceptualization of the country. The mentioning of India connoted essentialized, stereotypical, and ignorant ideas of religion, culture, and society. India seemed so disparate from my suburban context in America. Movies like The Jungle Book, Indiana Jones ​ ​ ​ and the Temple of Doom, and Slumdog Millionaire showed me that India was uniformly a place ​ ​ ​ of exoticism, adventure, and even danger. To me, everything that America was, India was not. I thought, “How lucky I am to have been born in America instead of there like them.” However, 3 visiting and engaging with the complexity of the country provided a much more nuanced understanding of the geopolitical space. That understanding informs this thesis.

Makers of Meaning

Although they are commonly regarded as entertainment, films and television shows offer mediated visual information to the audience about distant places and people. Following the post-war period, media and communication technologies brought faraway events and identities to the American living room (Ramasubramanian, 2005). Through images and narratives, the

American viewer was exposed to knowledge about places and people they might have never engaged with personally. Even now, as transportation and communication technologies have spawned globalization and have produced a more interconnected world, media representations have persisted as a primary lens through which American viewers observe foreign nations, cultures, and peoples. For example, in 2009, more people had viewed Slumdog Millionaire ​ (2008), a film about a boy from the Mumbai slums, than had visited India in the same year (Mitu

Sengupta, as quoted in Privitera 2015, p. 276). Members of an American audience may never travel to India, but India can travel to their living room through films and television.

While multiple social forces actively work to shape our perceptions of others, mass media representations are especially influential due to their pervasive presence in our society, their wide accessibility, and their ability to be viewed multiple times across various platforms (Mitra, 1999

& Ramasubramanian, 2005). Through the combination of audio and visual information, films and television shows have the ability “to create a realistic presentation of real-world experiences” (Ramasubramanian, 2005, p. 245). As a consequence, the lives and experiences of people in faraway places are permanently captured, schemas through which the audience 4 perceives other places and peoples are constructed, and stereotypes about other cultures are produced and maintained.

Films and television shows are not benign forms of entertainment as many may think, but are imbued with power as makers of meaning. Meaning is communicated to the audience through representations. Orgad (2012) defines representations as “images, descriptions, explanations and frames for understanding what the world is and why and how it works in particular ways” (p. 17). The act of representing, therefore, is the process of producing meaning through representations.

We give things meaning by how we represent them - the words we use about them, the ​ ​ stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the value we place on them. (Stuart Hall, as quoted in Orgad 2012, p. 21, emphasis in original)

For Americans who have never traveled to India, their conceptualization of India is largely constructed through words associated with India, through narratives situated in India, through images of various spaces in India, and through emotions elicited from viewing representations of

India. Many of these ideas have their roots in colonial ideologies that have been reproduced and circulated through various media such as literature, historical records, print journalism, and art.

According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1974), these words, narratives, images, and emotions operate as signs because they communicate meaning about an object to an audience.

Saussure’s (1974) work on semiotics and structuralism identifies meaning through signs in the way we understand the world. Signs can be words, images, or objects that do not have any intrinsic meaning, but are endowed with meaning through the concepts it is associated with. A sign contains both a signifier and a signified meaning. The signifier is a single word, image, or object. The signified is the mental image or concept that is associated with that word, image, or 5 object. The act of representing India in film and television forms mental images of India in the national consciousness of America. It is through the process of representing that images of poverty, mysticism, and tribalism (the signified) become mentally associated with India and

Indians (the signifiers). As India is represented in film and television, meaning and identity are ascribed to the geographic place, the culture, and the people.

In order for the ascribed meaning in mediated representations to be understood by the audience, it must be communicated through messages in the process of encoding and decoding.

In his 1993 work “Encoding, Decoding” Stuart Hall outlines the production and circulation process of a media text. Just as language communicates meaning, meaning is communicated visually through the deployment of signs in film and television. Hall (1993) refers to the sign as the “object” within the production process. In the production of the object, the producer ascribes meaning to the sign. The producer has an intended and desired meaning for the audience to receive. Therefore, the producer serves as the encoder, making specific decisions in the production of the object in order to communicate a certain message to the audience—the decoder. The reception and consumption of the object by the audience is a critical part of the production of a message because it leads to the circulation of that message. “Before this message can have an ‘effect’, satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as a meaningful discourse and meaningfully decoded” (Hall, 1993, p. 509). Without the decoding of meaning by the audience, the meaning cannot be enacted into social practice or public consciousness. The power of representations to influence, entertain, inform, or persuade comes from the encoding of meaning by the producer of the object and the decoding of the same intended meaning by the audience. 6

Representations gain their power from their ability to circulate particular ideologies in the form of discourse. Discourse is defined as knowledge that is regarded as true and meaningful because of history, political conditions, social relations, and institutions (Orgad, 2012). The encoded messages within the production process are comprised of, reflect, and reproduce knowledge. This knowledge is shaped by the socio-cultural and political context in which it exists (Hall, 1993). As the producer engages in the act of representing, the ideology of the producer determines the knowledge that is encoded in the message. The socio-cultural and political context, along with the ideology of the producer, functions as discourse that is then communicated and reflected in the representation. Consequently, “power relations are encoded in media representations, and media representations in turn produce and reproduce power relations by constructing knowledge, values, conceptions, and beliefs” (Orgad, 2012). Therefore, representations serve as exertions of the power of the producer. Representations of India in films and television shows produced in the West circulate a particular knowledge about India from a largely white, Western, and “Orientalist” perspective.

Introducing Orientalism ​ In his seminal 1978 publication Orientalism, Edward Said introduces his multi-faceted ​ ​ theory of Orientalism. Said (1978) introduces this theory by asserting that “the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (p. 13). The term “Orient” designates formerly colonized spaces in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa “geographically, morally, and culturally” while “Occident” designates Europe, or former colonial powers (Said, 1978, p. 39). While the titles of “the Orient” and “the Occident” are hardly used in contemporary scholarship, the conception of a global 7 binary where the “Orient” is distinguished from the “Occident” persists as a dominant framework for understanding international relations, development theory, and knowledge about distant places and people. The world is still understood in binary terms, as reflected in the contemporary labels of “East and West” or “The Global South and The Global North”. The characteristics that distinguish the “Orient” from the “Occident”, East from West, or South from

North, become the very foundation for Orientalism.

Said (1978) offers multiple definitions of Orientalism, with the first definition as “the teaching, writing, or researching of the Orient” (p. 2). The knowledge produced about colonial subjects by colonial powers resulted in the construction of the “Orient” “politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively” through discourse

(Said, 1978, p. 3). Colonial powers were able to define what the “Orient” was and who the people living in those spaces were for a Western audience. Consider the example given in

Orientalism of the construction of Egypt by Britain, its colonizing power: ​ England knows Egypt; Egypt is what England knows; England knows that Egypt cannot have self-government; England confirms that by occupying Egypt; for the Egyptians, Egypt is what England has occupied and now governs; foreign occupation therefore becomes ‘the very basis’ of contemporary Egyptian civilization; Egypt requires, indeed insists upon, British occupation. (Said, 1978, p. 42)

From this example, the relationship between power, knowledge, and identity is apparent. Britain exerted power over Egypt in producing knowledge about Egypt. Once Egyptian identity was constructed through that knowledge production, Britain was able to represent Egypt on the basis of the knowledge acquired. This method of knowing and this style of dominating was employed by European powers throughout the colonial period. Britain similarly produced a particular 8 knowledge about India that effectively otherized and demoralized India in an effort to secure authority over India.

Said (1978) offers a second definition of Orientalism as “a style of thought based on distinctions between the Orient and the Occident” (p. 2). Since colonial times, points of difference have been constructed between India and the West in an effort to situate India as a geographic and cultural “Other.” These distinctions draw on stereotypes of India as despotic,

India as savage, India as mystical, and India as impoverished. According to Said (1978), it is these distinctions that become the starting point for narratives, theories, social descriptions, and political accounts in which India is implicated. Certainly, these distinctions are not only evident, but critical to the construction of narratives set in India in both film and television. In order for a representation of India or Indians to be perceived as a reflection of reality, the utilization of these stereotypical distinctions are necessary. Viewing an image of one of Mumbai’s many shopping malls as a signifier might not reliably signal to the viewer that the narrative is situated in India because images of prosperity and modernity have not historically been associated with India. The construction of difference between the “Orient” and the “Occident” must nullify any semblance of similarity between the East and the West in order to effectively maintain Western hegemonic power over the East.

Orientalism is not only a type of knowledge production and a style of thought based on distinctions between “Orient” and “Occident” but is also a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, 1978, p. 3). By effectively contrasting the East from the West through discourse, the West is able to assert its superiority over the East and maintain its hegemony. Where the East is communalistic, the West is culturally superior as 9 an individualistic society. The “Orient” is despotic while the politically superior “Occident” is democratic. As the economically superior West progresses towards modernity, the East is trapped in its timelessness. The secularism of West allows it to be morally superior over a spiritual East. As a consequence, the East is infantilized and constructed as a space in need of

Western intervention in order to attain modernity and be saved from its own moral depravity.

Specifically, this research focuses on how U.S.-produced media employs these stereotypical distinctions in an effort to juxtapose India with the United States in a narrative where America is everything that India is not.

Summary of Analysis

There are two approaches to the study of media representations. The first is identified as the reflectionist approach. This approach operates on the idea that all representations are accurate reflections of reality, therefore truth could be discerned from representation. In opposition stands the constructionist approach. This approach regards representations as constructions of meaning

(Orgad, 2012). Therefore, truth cannot be reliably discerned from representation as representations deliver partial truths contingent on the positionality of the producer and the viewer. The following research adheres to a constructionist approach, acknowledging that representations of India in film and television capture some elements of reality, but do so in ways that are disproportionate to the actual lived experiences of people in India. Consequently, representations reproduce relationships of power in which Indians are “otherized,” demonized, and marginalized. In their efforts to capture reality, representations are inevitably constructions of reality that include some specific meanings while excluding others (Orgad, 2012). 10

This research explores how contemporary films and television shows containing a narrative situated in India serve as a manifestation of Said’s Orientalism. For this research, I focused on two media texts: The Indian Detective (2017) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007). ​ ​ ​ ​ Both of the media texts were produced in the United States, with the exception of The Indian ​ Detective which was produced in Canada but available for streaming in the United States on ​ Netflix services. The narratives in these media texts are set in India and involve Indian characters.

In the following pages, I will identify stereotypical representations of India in these contemporary films and television shows and demonstrate how these representations are

“Orientalist” in nature. First, I will focus on The Indian Detective with a discussion on ​ ​ contrasting narratives of wealth acquisition in the United States and India. In the series, the ​ ​ American Dream serves as the esteemed antithesis to socio-economic practices in India. The

American ideology of meritocracy asserts that upward mobility has a linear relationship with work ethic and ability. However, upward mobility in India is represented as a unprincipled pursuit involving the buying and selling of drugs, sex workers, and children. Consequently, criminality is essentialized as inherent to Indian identity. This then allows the American audience to mitigate the threat brown bodies pose to a White, Christian American identity through the otherization and disparaging of Indian identity.

In the second chapter, I will discuss how the representation of India as an overtly spiritual space in the film The Darjeeling Limited situates India as a site for consumption by an American ​ ​ audience. The narrative of the film follows three American brothers as they travel throughout

India in search of reconciliation and healing. Along the way, the people, locations, and events 11 that the brothers encounter become the means through which they are able to reconcile and heal.

Therefore, India exists solely as the backdrop for a narrative about Americans protagonists.

Through analyses of both content and narrative, the second chapter concludes that the film distinguishes India from the United States as an overtly spiritual space and situates India as an object for consumption by Americans in pursuit of spiritual exploration, healing, and self-discovery. Through analyses of The Indian Detective and The Darjeeling Limited, I will ​ ​ ​ ​ demonstrate how contemporary film and television reproduce colonial discourse by essentializing Indian identity and distinguishing that identity from an American identity in a way that grants America authority over India.

12

CHAPTER 1:

Detecting Orientalist Representations in The Indian Detective ​ Introduction

In the 2017 Netflix series The Indian Detective, a Toronto constable, Doug D’Mello ​ ​ (Russell Peters) finds himself involved in a transnational drug and money laundering scheme during his time in Mumbai visiting his father. As such it contains representations of Indians that ​ ​ juxtapose Indian identity with American identity, producing an essentialist Indian identity, as immoral and brutish, that is antithetical to an essentialized American identity that is morally pure. D’Mello, a Canadian of South Asian descent, travels to Mumbai to visit his father after he is suspended over a failed drug bust. The senior D’Mello moved back to Mumbai five years prior to the events in the series. Shortly after arriving in Mumbai, Doug D’Mello finds himself involved in a murder investigation with the local Mumbai police. While the investigation serves as an opportunity for D’Mello to regain his integrity as a constable, D’Mello’s involvement in the investigation exposes a transnational drug scheme involving a notorious Mumbai crime boss and a wealthy white businessman. The series follows D’Mello as he navigates the investigation in Mumbai, represented as a corrupt and alien land, and in Toronto, a place of order and familiarity. In doing so, stereotypical, “Orientalist” narratives are reproduced that situate India in contrast with the West.

Focusing on The Indian Detective, this chapter argues that contemporary representations ​ ​ of India in Western television programming construct an essentialist conceptualization of Indian identity within the American consciousness that allows America to have control over India. In order to engage with this notion of extant Orientalism, I will begin by examining the American 13 ideology of meritocracy that is prevalent in the series and then explore how this ideology allows an American audience to distinguish India from the United States. First, I will define the ideology of meritocracy and situate the chapter within colonial discourse about India. Then, I will identify the articulation of meritocracy and colonial discourse in The Indian Detective ​ through an analysis of the characters Gopal Chandekar and David Marlowe in order to demonstrate how media representations operate as contemporary manifestations of Edward

Said’s (1978) “Orientalism.”

Meritocracy and The Indian Detective ​ According to Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American ​ Mosaic, meritocracy is defined as “a system in which advancement of social position, resources, ​ and other social goods are distributed based on individual talent, ability, and ingenuity” (Lippard

& Gallagher, 2014, p. 776). Meritocracy asserts that upward mobility and individual success have a linear relationship with work ethic and ability. Closely related, the ideology of egalitarianism grants legitimacy to meritocracy (Seymour, 1996). Egalitarianism holds that all people are created equally, and therefore have equal endowments of talent, ability, and ingenuity.

Differences in social position, resources, and social goods are therefore associated with differences in skill and effort (Lippard & Gallagher, 2014). However, both this system of meritocracy and the ideology of egalitarianism neglect to acknowledge the influence that race, class, gender, and other categories of identity have on the accessibility of resources, the application of talent, and the allocation of social goods. The consequences of such neglect will be further discussed through an analysis of the narrative of meritocracy evident in The Indian ​ 14

Detective. Prior to this analysis, it is helpful to identify the origin of meritocracy in the United ​ States and its relevance to the construction of an American identity.

A dominant ideology in the United States, meritocracy dates back to the founding of the country. The origin of meritocracy lies in the initial formation of America as a settler colony and in the early formation of a national identity (Seymour, 1996). With its war of independence against Britain, the inception of the United States from a former settler colony is exceptional compared to that of most other nation-states (Seymour, 1996). The creation of a new nation by

Europeans on non-European soil allowed the nation’s newest citizens to determine which ideologies it would adhere to. Among these founding ideologies is egalitarianism. Egalitarianism was claimed as a defining ideology of the new America in the very document that declared its independence from its colonial master. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal…” (U.S. Declaration of Independence, Paragraph 2, 1776). With the issuing of this declaration and the subsequent creation of a new nation, equality became—and continues to be— a beacon to the world of what America stands for. Thus, the establishment of egalitarianism as a foundational ideology granted legitimacy to the ideology of meritocracy, asserting that all people have equal endowments of talent and ability as well as equal opportunity to translate their endowment to upward mobility.

Meritocracy and the American Dream explain one’s failure to achieve social mobility as a result of some internal quality inherent to the individual (Seymour, 1996). Again, the extent to which socioeconomic and political systems oppress individuals of various categories of identity, limit the availability of resources, and deny opportunity for social advancement is wholly neglected within these ideologies. A society founded upon meritocracy with the promise of the 15

American Dream “leads naturally to the subsidiary theme that success or failure are results wholly of personal qualities, that he who fails has only himself to blame…” (Robert Merton, as quoted in Seymour, 1996, p. 47). This theme is articulated in The Indian Detective through the ​ ​ juxtaposition of the characters Gopal Chandekar and David Marlowe—a theme further explored later in the chapter.

The American ideology of meritocracy is evident in The Indian Detective despite the ​ ​ show’s production in Canada. While The Indian Detective is a Canadian-produced television ​ ​ show, it is distributed to an American audience on the American streaming platform Netflix. The representation of this ideology in the show will resonate with the American audience it was intended for. In the production and consumption of narratives, both the author and the audience possess an ideological framework that informs how meaning is created and concluded from the narrative. Anandra Mitra (2016) identifies this framework as an “ideological position,” or “a set of material practices that determine the worldview of a person” (p. 10). Material practices are commonplace, routine practices of an individual that are shaped by one’s culture. Thus, the ideologies of a culture shape the practices of the individual and consequently determine their worldview. Through their worldview, an author encodes meaning into a narrative and an audience decodes meaning from that narrative (Hall, 1993). In viewing The Indian Detective, the ​ ​ American audience will engage with the show through their ideological position. Due to the centrality of the ideology of meritocracy in American culture and identity, the American audience is able to apprehend the ideology of meritocracy in the show. Not only is meritocracy articulated through the representation of India in The Indian Detective, colonial discourse is also ​ ​ reproduced. 16

Indian Despotism in Colonial Discourse

Contemporary representations of India and Indians in film and television reinforce and reinscribe colonial discourse that distinguished India from Europe. Lata Mani, feminist historian and author of Contentious Traditions, (1987) defines colonial discourse as “a mode of ​ ​ understanding Indian society that emerged alongside colonial rule” (p. 122). In Contentious ​ Traditions, Mani (1987) analyzes how colonial discourse shaped debates surrounding the ​ practice of sati, or widow immolation, in colonial India. During the colonial era, colonial powers ​ ​ secured their domination and authority over their colonial subjects through means of knowledge production. In the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, power resided in the one who was able to describe and define the other. In his discussion on knowledge and domination in

Orientalism, Said (1978) identifies knowledge production as a Western style of control over ​ colonized spaces. The power the West exerted over its colonies did not come from moral or economic superiority, but from creating forms of knowledge that excluded native knowledge and privileged Western ways of knowing. Consequently, the colonized subject is denied its autonomy and the power to represent itself. In the Western consciousness, the identity of the colonized subject was constructed through the knowledge produced about the colonial subjects.

Both general stereotypes about the “Orient” and specific stereotypes about Indians were influential in shaping the conceptualization of India in the Western consciousness. Despite the variety of cultures, languages, and religions that comprised the “Orient,” colonial discourse primarily regarded the “Orient” as a homogenized space with essential characteristics. Lord

Cromer, secretary in India from 1872-1876 and England’s Controller-General and

Consul-General in Egypt from 1878-1907, provides many representations of the “Orient” during 17 the colonial period. In Modern Egypt, a two-volume work detailing his experience and ​ ​ observations as an appointed General, Cromer (1908) asserts many problematic conclusions about all “Orientals.” Cromer claims that, “Orientals are inveterate liars, they are ‘lethargic and suspicious,’ and in everything oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race” (Said, 1978, p. 39). In other colonial documentation, Cromer describes Europeans as rational, virtuous, mature, and normal with the “Orient” as irrational, depraved, childlike, and different (Said, 1978). Through anthropological, medical, and religious forms of discourse,

Britain consistently represented liberty, equality, progress, change, and dynamism while India was consistently represented as ahistorical, unchanging, static, and paralyzed by tradition

(Ramasubramanian, 2005).

One of the earliest colonial stereotypes about India that presupposes the contemporary caricature of the inherently evil Indian is of India as despotic. Despotism is defined as “a country or political system where the ruler holds absolute power” (Oxford English Dictionary Online,

2019). Despotic rulers who were brutish, unreasonable, and malevolent, ruling with an iron fist, was how the British colonizers described the characterization of the political structure in India prior to the arrival of the British East India Company. This characterization became justification for a “kinder” colonial rule. To the British, India’s despotism reflected the natives’ innate disposition towards evil while India’s unchanging nature made modernism, progress, and enlightenment unattainable. Therefore, colonization by the British was propagated as a noble endeavor to save the “backwards” Indians from their own depravity. Initially, this stereotype effectively denied the reality of the dynamic, complex, and organized political structure of the

Mughal Empire, which ruled in India both before and after the establishment of the British East 18

India Company. Over time however, this stereotype became grounds for the characterization of the Indian as “the embodiment of evil” (Mitra, 1999, p. 138).

A second, seemingly less problematic yet equally vilifying, colonial stereotype about

India is the enervated Indian. By this I mean the construction of Indian identity as weak, devoid of energy, and lacking vitality. In A History of Military Transactions of the British Nation in ​ Indostan, British soldier Robert Orme (1763) provides a description of Indians that is indicative ​ of the British perspective on the natives:

An abhorrence to the shedding of blood, derived from his religion, and seconded by the great temperance of a life which is passed by most of them in a very sparing use of animal food, and a total abstinence from intoxicating liquors; the influence of the most regular of climates, in which the great heat of the sun and the great fertility of the soil lessen most of the wants to which the human species is subject in austerer regions, and supply the rest without the exertion of much labour; these causes, with various derivations and consequences from them, have all together contributed to render the Indian the most enervated inhabitant of the globe (303).

Orme not only identifies Indians as the weakest type of human, he also attributes that weakness to religious principles, eating practices, as well as the climate of the Indian subcontinent. This representation posits Indians as the absolute antithesis to European identity. Indians are bound by an Eastern religious tradition while the British subscribe to Enlightenment ideals. Everything from the consumption of animals and liquor to the climate in India differ from that in Britain and contribute to the disparity. Around 150 years later, Lord Cromer (1908) would issue a corroborating claim that the “Oriental” “generally acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European.” The characterization of Indians as weak was essential to “the idea of

European identity as a superior one in comparison with all non-European peoples and cultures”

(Said, 1978, p. 15). This distinction between Indian and European identity continues to inform 19 the representations of Indians, allowing for the juxtaposition of Gopal Chandekar and David

Marlowe.

Lastly, Indians were routinely characterized as savage and violent throughout the colonial era. Both the alleged event, “The Black Hole of Calcutta,” and the idea of “Criminal Tribes” are emblematic of how India was represented in the British imagination. “The Black Hole of

Calcutta” was a sensationalized event in 1756 in which 146 British prisoners were locked in a cramped dungeon, resulting in the death of 123 people from suffocation and heat exhaustion

(Bayon, 1944). John Holwell, employee of the British East India Company and self-proclaimed survivor of “The Black Hole,” offered an account of his experience in the dungeon following his release. While there is no account of the event having occurred from Indian, Dutch, or French soldiers and civilians, the supposed event led to Indians being viewed as vengeful, malicious, and threatening.

Similarly, the idea of “Criminal Tribes” instilled within the British imagination an

Indian’s propensity for violence. “Criminal Tribes” are groups of Indians believed by the British to have practiced crimes as a hereditary profession (Kapadia, 1952). These “Criminal Tribes” were believed to adhere to a coherent set of violent practices passed down from father to son.

Therefore, the British government considered all persons born into the caste of “Criminal Tribes” criminals upon birth (Kapadia, 1952). However, similar to “The Black Hole of Calcutta,”

“Criminal Tribes” were a sensationalized idea within the British imagination. In actuality, the

“Criminal Tribes” were much smaller in number did not constitute an entire caste, and did not practice crime as a hereditary profession. 20

Both “The Black Hole of Calcutta” and “Criminal Tribes” reveal the extent to which criminality, violence, and barbarity were associated with Indian identity. In attributing these qualities to Indians, a particular “identity narrative” was produced about Indians (Mitra, 2016).

While these attributions were not entirely accurate, they could be perceived as authentic. When there is no competing reality to the portrayed reality, the narrative within the portrayed reality is regarded as truth. This leads to the essentialization of those attributes with the corresponding

Indian identity. In the process of essentialization, a single characteristic or quality is identified as a fundamental and intrinsic trait of a culture, space, or people. Therefore, with the repeated and consistent attribution of criminality, violence, and barbarity to Indian identity throughout the colonial period, those qualities came to be understood as innate and essential to all Indians.

Even though the United States never had any direct colonial relationship with India,

Americans have been exposed to an essentialized Indian identity and participate in the circulation of that identity. Literature, history books, travel accounts, news sources, films, and television shows have preserved this “Orientalist” construction of Indian identity within the

Western consciousness since the end of the colonial period. This process of essentialization continues today, laying the foundation for the character Gopal Chandekar in The Indian ​

Detective. In the following paragraphs, I will identify the articulation of the ideology of ​ meritocracy in the show and explain how the representation of Gopal Chandekar in The Indian ​

Detective is simultaneously a product and a reproduction of colonial stereotypes about India. ​ 21

Locating Meritocracy and Colonial Discourse in The Indian Detective ​ The relationship between the characters Gopal Chandekar, the Mumbai crime boss, and

David Marlowe, the wealthy white businessman, serves as a juxtaposition between Indian identity and American identity. Gopal Chandekar is Mumbai’s young, notorious, and elusive crime boss. Born in the slums of Mumbai, Chandekar attempts to attain legitimacy as a wealthy and powerful individual by eradicating any affiliation he has with his impoverished upbringing.

To accomplish this goal, Chandekar, with the help of David Marlowe and Chandekar’s twin brother Amal, participates in a transnational drug industry to finance the demolition of the

Annapuri slums in which he was born, and erect a towering skyscraper in its place. In a conversation with David Marlowe, Chandekar speaks of the slums saying, “That skyscraper will destroy this place once and for all and give me the one thing that you have that I don’t: legitimacy.” Despite Chandekar’s best efforts, the Toronto constable Doug D’Mello disrupts

Chandekar’s plans at every point along the way, leading to the ultimate arrest of the Chandekar twins.

The ways in which Gopal Chandekar and David Marlowe contrast with each other illuminate the ideology of meritocracy and establish Indian identity in direct opposition to

American identity. As a white billionaire, David Marlowe exemplifies the American Dream.

Closely related to the ideology of meritocracy, the American Dream claims that upward mobility, power, and wealth are equally available to all and are gained through “hard work, responsibility, and individual talent” (Lippard & Gallagher, 2014, p. 777). An American audience will recognize David Marlowe as someone who “made it,” someone who attained the 22

American Dream. In a conversation from episode two, Marlowe and Chandekar briefly relate their humble beginnings.

Chandekar: I left this place 20 years ago and still can’t seem to scrub off the humiliation. Marlowe: Being poor is nothing to be ashamed of, Chandekar. Chandekar: Easy for you to say, you’re rich. Marlowe: Wasn’t always. Chandekar: Yeah, but you were never this poor. You didn’t have to do what I had to get ahead. Marlowe: You have no idea what I had to do.

In this dialogue, Marlowe suggests that he had an equal starting point as Chandekar and therefore is able to sympathize with Chandekar’s ambitions to disassociate himself from an impoverished upbringing. While it is not clearly stated what Marlowe had to endure to attain his status of wealth and power, his comments indicate that he had to strive to succeed. This reinforces both the ideology of meritocracy, where upward mobility is an opportunity made equally available to all, and the notion of the American Dream, where upward mobility is achieved through hard work and responsibility. In the system of meritocracy, anyone is capable of living the American

Dream.

Similarly to Marlowe, Chandekar emerges from poverty to acquire wealth and power.

But Chandekar, rather than working honestly for his wealth and power, steals, murders, and breaks the law. According to the ideology of meritocracy, David Marlowe and Gopal Chandekar had equal social position, equal access to resources, and equal allotments of social goods. In order for Chandekar to reach the same degree of social influence and capital that Marlowe enjoyed, he could have exhibited the same hard work and application of individual talent as

Marlowe exercised. Instead, Chandekar attempts to gain wealth and power through criminal practice. While Marlowe also achieved social mobility through criminal practice, as 23 demonstrated by his involvement in Chandekar’s transnational drug scheme, Marlowe is not vilified in the same way as Chandekar. Marlowe’s corrupt actions are easily dismissed according to the ideology of meritocracy. The audience is able to overlook his offense because his actions are justified as a means to achieving the American Dream. While he may be exhibiting criminal behavior, Marlowe does not bear the consequences of his criminal activity in the show. In direct contrast, Chandekar’s actions are seen as a reflection of his inherently corrupt state. In viewing

Chandekar’s behavior through the lens of colonial discourse, his criminal behavior is attributable to a criminality inherent to Indian identity.

The series ends with the arrest of the Chandekar twins, further reinforcing the relationship between criminality and Indian identity. When the transnational drug scheme is exposed by D’Mello, Chandekar is sent to prison while Marlowe is able to walk away unscathed.

Through his manipulation and extortion of the Toronto police, Marlowe successfully covers his tracks and denies any allegations of his implication in the crime. Marlowe’s immunity augments the ideology of meritocracy because it suggests that Chandekar’s failure in achieving the wealth and power that Marlowe enjoys is due to a depravation of his character. Marlowe not only attained wealth and power, but he is also able to protect it while participating in corrupt practices. Chandekar’s corrupt practices are not what led to his failure, since Marlowe was not punished for his corroboration, but it is an internal, innate disposition towards corruption that prevented Chandekar from achieving the success that was equally afforded to both him and

Marlowe. To an American audience, the representation of Indians as immoral and corrupt will resonate with previously-held conceptions of Indians. This association between moral depravity 24 and Indian identity is a reproduction of the colonial discourse that allowed for European domination over India (Said, 1978).

Gopal Chandekar reaffirms to an American audience the stereotypes of Indians as despotic, enervated, and savage. In his scheme to destroy the Annapuri slums and assert his power, Chandekar appears to have absolute authority over every individual involved in the plot, harkening back to the stereotype of India as despotic. Chandekar secures the complicity of the commissioner of the Mumbai police department in exchange for monetary contributions to the commissioner's family. Chandekar advances towards his goal through the use of henchmen, but is quick to cut ties when his colluders fail to serve their purpose—as evidenced when Chandekar murders his nephew for betraying him. Even Gopal’s twin brother, Amal, in Toronto seems to be subservient to Gopal. Amal Chandekar takes orders from Gopal but does not express similar ambitions as Gopal for the eradication of any trace of his impoverished roots. Throughout the series, the only people that challenge Gopal’s power and authority are David Marlowe and Doug

D’Mello, two Westerners. This reinforces the idea that India is not only immoral compared to the

Enlightened West, but stands in opposition to the West.

In The Indian Detective, the ideology of meritocracy and colonial discourse are tools ​ ​ employed in the construction and imposition of a particular identity onto an Indian character for the subordination of Indian identity to American identity. In order for Chandekar to be juxtaposed with Marlowe as the antithesis to the American Dream, Chandekar must be represented as enervated and savage. Operating on the principle of egalitarianism, meritocracy would confer equal opportunity, resources, and power to both Marlowe and Chandekar.

Therefore, according to colonial discourse, Chandekar’s alternate method of wealth acquisition 25 and his violent means to that end must be an outward displayal of his internal disposition.

Chandekar’s decision to engage in illegal and immoral acts then serves as evidence of his innate weakness. According to the ideology of meritocracy, his weakness makes him unable and unwilling to demonstrate the same hard work, responsibility, and application of individual talent as Marlowe exercised in the advancement of his social position. Therefore, Chandekar does not merely resort to violent measures as an alternative to an honest work ethic, his violent actions are both a reflection and result of his violent nature. Violence is all he knows. As the American sociologist Robert Merton points out, “the stress on success, on getting ahead, presses the unsuccessful or those without means to win out legitimately—the poor and oppressed minorities

—to violate the rules of the game” (Seymour, 1996, p. 26). In combination with meritocracy, the stereotypes of Indians as despotic, enervated, and savage take Merton’s assessment one step further by demonstrating the violation of the rules as inherent to Indian identity, and therefore the only way they know how to play the game.

Since colonial times, these stereotypes of India have been reproduced over and over, leading to the naturalization of these representations for a Western audience. In the representation of foreign cultures in film and television, the producer intentionally chooses every cultural practice, every character, and every element of the landscape. Once these components are decided upon, their inclusion in the media text can make those practices, characters, and landscapes seem natural to that culture (Mitra, 1999). The naturalization of these singular representations become essentializations - the dominant view of that culture, space, and people.

Consequently, colonial stereotypes about India have become contemporary stereotypes about

India. The dominant view of Indian men today has been produced through the lens of despotism, 26 effeminacy, and savagery. Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1974) work on signs can be applied here.

The qualities of despotism, effeminacy, and savagery have become signifiers of Indian identity over time through representations. When an audience is repeatedly exposed to these signifiers,

Indian identity becomes the mental image associated with those qualities. Therefore, an

American audience is able to recognize these signifiers in The Indian Detective because they ​ ​ have been disciplined through previous representations to expect this singular caricature of

Indian identity (Mitra, 1999).

The Indian Detective as Orientalism ​ As a result of a repeated representation of Indians over time, the construction of

Chandekar’s character follows a singular narrative for normative Indian behavior and morality.

The Indian male has become “the embodiment of evil” in contemporary Western film and television (Mitra, 1999, p. 138). In India Through the Western Lens: Creating National Images ​ in Film, Ananda Mitra (1999) explains that the “color of skin, virtue and the role of the various ​ protagonists in the narrative conflate together to produce an image that portrays the Eastern/dark person as the repository of evil” (p. 139). All bad Indian characters are really bad, lacking any redeeming characteristic, because everything they do must exemplify their inherent evilness.

Consider the Indian men in Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Lion (2016), two widely-acclaimed ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ films produced in the United States. In these films, Indian men are shown stealing children, pimping out little girls, and gouging out the eyes of little boys so they will earn more money from empathetic passerbys. Just like David Marlowe, these men are seeking wealth and power.

However, because they are Indian like Gopal Chandekar, their propensity for evil naturally results in their use of violent, immoral, and illegal means. The essentialization of Indian identity 27 in The Indian Detective distinguishes India from the United States, allowing an American ​ ​ audience to assert its dominance and superiority over India in a contemporary manifestation of

Edward Said’s (1978) Orientalism.

In addition to Orientalism as the “teaching, writing, or researching of the Orient,” Said defines Orientalism as “a style of thought based on distinctions between the Orient and the

Occident” and as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the

Orient” (Said, 1978, p. 2-3). In distinguishing itself from the “Orient,” white Europeans were able to reproduce and retain their authority over the “Orient” because they were able to demonstrate their moral, political, and economic superiority through means of comparison.

Social comparison theory claims that “there exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities” (Festinger, 1954). This evaluation is conducted through comparison.

Therefore, in the evaluation and production of European identity, an “other” was needed. By distinguishing themselves from the “Orient,” Europe was able to define who they were through contrast with who they were not—the “Orient” (Orgad, 2012). Where the “Orient” was depraved,

Europe was virtuous. Where the “Orient” was inhibited by spiritual tradition, Europe was emancipated by enlightened ideals. Where the “Orient” was primitive, Europe was industrial.

This “style of thought based on distinctions” was not only employed during the colonial period; contemporary media representations allow an American audience to distinguish themselves from the Indians on the screen in the same way (Said, 1978, p. 2).

Representations of Indians in film and television provide a visual point of reference for an American audience upon which they can distinguish themselves and construct their own self-identity. In his work on the relationship between media representations and identity 28 formation, Shani Orgad (2012) explains, “People, at least in the global north, increasingly are evaluating and constructing their selves, bodies and relationships on the basis of, and in relation to, images and stories that appear in the media” (p. 157). Operating as “symbolic resources,” the

American audience is able to use images and stories of India in the media to form their own identity (Orgad, 2012). Furthermore, the process of differentiation allows the American audience to render Indian identity an incomparable and clearly inferior identity to the superior American identity (Festinger, 1954). According to Orgad’s explanation, Said’s (1978) “style of thought based on distinctions” was not only employed by colonial powers to govern the “Orient” (p. 2).

The United States currently employs this style of thought in the protection and promotion of its perceived superiority by distinguishing itself from other nations and identities.

In the creation of American identity, perhaps the most recent and relevant “symbolic resources” have been the images and stories that emerged from 9/11. Following 9/11, an

“American way of life” was identified through the creation of a dichotomy between America and the Middle East (Silva, 2016, p. 28). As a result, the ideal American citizen was constructed as white and Christian, while brown bodies became seen as deviant, antithetical forces threatening core American beliefs. Even though India lacked any involvement in the events of 9/11, brown bodies became a catch-all category for deviance. This conflation of Middle Eastern and South

Asian identity in the United States following 9/11 was aided by centuries of “Orientalist” discourse that grouped the varied geographic and cultural spaces of North Africa, the Middle

East, and Asia into a single designation of the “Orient” (Said, 1978). In Brown Threat: ​ Identification in the Security State, Kumi Silva (2016) defines the “new brown” as “any ​ behaviors, places, spaces, and performances that challenge the hegemonic Whiteness of U.S. 29 neo-nationalism” (p. 29). With India continuing to grow in power as a political and economic player in the current global system, brown Indian bodies become a threat to American hegemony in need of containing.

Stereotypical representations of Indians, such as that of Gopal Chandekar, allow the

American audience to mitigate the threat brown bodies pose through the otherization of Indian identity and the subsequent disparaging of that identity. Silva (2016) goes on to explain that, in the containing of deviant brown bodies, “it is also important to construct that threat as containable and controllable, because such containment is imperative to reinforcing this particular nationalist discourse” (p. 30). Where representations of Indians as depraved, primitive, and mystical distinguish the United States as morally superior, representations of Indians as enervated, effeminate, and impoverished present India as an inferior, containable and controllable opponent.

In conclusion, the underlying ideology of meritocracy in The Indian Detective, along with ​ ​ the representation of Gopal Chandekar as essentially evil, allows an American audience to distinguish themselves from Indians and claim superiority over India. Chandekar’s attempts to gain wealth and power through criminal means, and his subsequent failure, are attributed to the inherent depravity of Indian identity. This proposed correlation between depravity and Indian identity reproduces colonial discourse that characterized Indians as despotic, enervated, and savage. Those qualities have become essentialized markers of Indian identity in the American consciousness. An American audience then forms their self-identity through the viewing of representations of other peoples and cultures. Consequently, Indian identity is juxtaposed with

American identity. Through these distinctions, the American audience is able to justify their 30 superiority and claim authority over India. This process of knowing, distinguishing, and dominating India by an American audience through media representations serves as a contemporary manifestation of Edward Said’s (1978) Orientalism.

31

CHAPTER 2:

The Essentialization and Commodification of Spirituality in

The Darjeeling Limited

Introduction

While the previous chapter engaged in a primarily narrative analysis of The Indian ​ Detective in order to illustrate one example of cultural stereotyping in Western television ​ programming, this chapter will utilize narrative and content analyses of the film The Darjeeling ​ Limited in order to identify another problematic variety of cultural stereotyping in Western film. ​ Both, in their own ways, work to discipline Indian bodies, subordinate India to the West, and essentialize Indian identity. In a narrative analysis of a media text, the focus of the analysis is on character development, dialogue, and plot (Mitra, 1999). On the other hand, a content analysis evaluates the technical representation of specific spaces, landscapes, and cultural practices

(Ramasubramanian, 2005). The encoded meaning in a representation is derived not only from the actions that occur within the scene, but also from the physical and technical makeup of the scene.

It is important to recognize the power that both a conversation held between two characters and the context in which that conversation occurs have on the construction of the identity of those characters. For example, if two men are having a conversation inside of a commercial bank about the access codes to a bank safe while wearing business suits, the viewer may assume that both men work for the bank and their conversation is benign and mundane. However, if the same two men were having a conversation inside of a commercial bank about the access codes to a bank safe while wearing stereotypical black ski masks, the viewer might assume these two men are planning to execute a bank robbery. While this may be a fairly tacit example, it serves to 32 demonstrate the relevance of content analysis in surveying the relationship between media representation and identity formation. This chapter will draw on both a narrative analysis and a content analysis of The Darjeeling Limited to demonstrate that this film contains “Orientalist” ​ ​ representations of India.

This chapter will rely heavily on Srividya Ramasubramanian’s (2005) work as a model of content analysis. In “A Content Analysis of the Portrayal of India in Films Produced in the

West” Ramasubramanian (2005) conducted a content analysis of 24 randomly selected films, which contained representations of India and Indians, produced in the United States or in the

United Kingdom between 1930 and 2000 in an effort to “examine the social construction of

‘Indian-ness’” (p. 243). For the analysis, Ramasubramanian (2005) created two categories of

“coding variables”—environmental and socio-cultural. Then, she documented the frequency with which those variables were present in the 1,016 scenes and 421 characters included in the study.

Environmental variables included the type of climate, pollution, scene-locales, transportation, and animals that were shown in the film. Socio-cultural variables included the depiction of religion, leisure activities, architecture, women and children, and poverty. Lastly, she performed a character analysis of the types of occupations and dwelling places that the Indian characters possessed. In conducting a content analysis of these 24 films, Ramasubramanian (2005) found a number of commonly repeated representations of India and Indians. The results are as follows:

33

Environmental Variables: Character Analysis: Socio-Cultural Variables: Climate: hot and sunny Occupation: unemployed, Pollution: dirty streets, Religion: nature worship, hunter-gatherers, farmers, overcrowded places, unclean magic, witchcraft priest, pimp, gangster, skilled water Leisure Activities: and unskilled laborers Scene-locales: jungles, sword-swallowing, Dwelling Place: streets, huts, temples, caves, train stations, snake-charming, henna temporary dwellings, jungles, huts painting, cricket, pot painting caves, temples, palaces Transportation: animal carts, Architecture: minarets, Hindu hand-rickshaws, trains temples Animals: elephants, snakes, Women and Children: sati, ​ ​ tigers, buffaloes, cows, rats, arranged marriage, child insects sacrifice, child labor, rape

Poverty: beggars, manual laborers, prostitutes, famine-stricken people, homeless people Secondly, this chapter will implement a narrative analysis of the film The Darjeeling ​ Limited with specific consideration for the motivation of the narrative. Within a narrative ​ analysis, “motivation” can be defined as “the way in which a particular place or a person provides the reason why the narrative moves on” (Mitra, 1999, p. 50). In an effort to understand the trajectory of the narrative, it is illuminatory to identify the place or person that motivates the sequence of events, the interactions between characters, and the ultimate resolution of the conflict in the film. A defining feature of the narrative in The Darjeeling Limited is that the plot ​ ​ revolves around American protagonists in India. The centrality of a white Western character to the plot carries significant implications for the motivation of the narrative. Ramasubramanian’s

2005 content analysis proves useful once again for understanding these implications. Of the 24 films she analyzed, Ramasubramanian found that, when the plot of a movie was situated in India,

India was just the backdrop for the main narrative. Additionally, white Westerners remained at 34 the center of the plot while Indians played a supporting or inconsequential role. In this chapter, I apply Ramasubramanian’s (2005) findings to the film The Darjeeling Limited. ​ Through analyses of content and narrative, this chapter asserts that the representation of

India in The Darjeeling Limited constructs an essentialized identity of India as a spiritual site ​ ​ and, therefore, commodifies India as an object for consumption by Americans in pursuit of healing, transformation, and self-actualization. Furthermore, the relationship between the essentialization of Indian identity and the commodification of India demonstrates that

U.S.-produced films are contemporary manifestations of Orientalism. By providing for an

American audience a particular knowledge about India that distinguishes India from the United

States, these representations situate India as a site for American consumption. This essentialization of Indian identity through stereotyping is evident in films like Gunga Din (1939) ​ ​ with the effeminate, deferential Indian; Lion (2016) with the impoverished child from the slums; ​ ​ or Eat Pray Love (2010) with India as a site for spiritual regeneration. Deconstructing the ​ ​ dynamism of Indian identity into an essentialized form through representation allows the United

States to then reconstruct Indian identity in a manner that accommodates the purposes of

Americans. This subordination of Indian identity to the motivations of Americans is clearly displayed in The Darjeeling Limited. ​ Synopsis of the Film

The Darjeeling Limited follows three white, American protagonists, the Whitman ​ brothers, in their journey to India in pursuit of healing and spiritual direction. Combining elements of adventure and drama, the film’s plot revolves around three estranged brothers,

Francis, Peter, and Jack, who all meet in India one year after their father’s death to reconnect 35 with one another. Each of the brothers carries some burden into the trip. Francis, the oldest of the brothers, initiated the reunion following his survival of a nearly fatal car accident. The second brother, Peter, is anxiously expecting the birth of his first child while the youngest brother, Jack, is recovering from a difficult breakup. Aboard the train “Darjeeling Limited,” the brothers travel throughout India and learn to trust one another again through the various Indian locales and people they encounter along their way. Thus, in The Darjeeling Limited, India serves as the ​ ​ backdrop for the narrative with India as a conduit for the self-exploration and healing of the white, Western male protagonists.

Grounding the Discussion in Colonial Discourse

The representation of India in the film draws on historical stereotypes of India as an overtly religious and mystical space. Religion, specifically the religions of Hinduism and Islam, is a primary lens through which India is viewed both historically and currently (Mitra, 2016). As

I documented in the previous chapter, this contemporary construction of India as religious and mystical is grounded in colonial discourse. During the colonial era, the British governed India through the creation of a religious binary where Indians were either Hindu or Muslim. In addition to this binary, the British conflated religious identity with Indian identity as a means of validating and securing colonial rule for the British.

In the recording of India’s colonial history by British scholars, many critical events were documented through the lens of religion. In the British description of the Mughal Empire, the governing power at the time of the arrival of the British East India Company, the British characterized the period of Mughal rule as a time of religious strife. In actuality, the Mughals achieved religious integration throughout the Empire during this period (Metcalf & Metcalf, 36

2012). Similarly, the British misattributed the Indian Rebellion of 1857 to religion despite the fact that several non-religious factors led to the uprising. Otherwise referred to as the First War of Indian Independence and the Great Rebellion, the events in 1875 were executed by Indian soldiers in the British army as a contestation of British rule in India. However, the British documented the rebellion as a product of religious grievances. Days before the mutiny, new rifles with cartridges covered in pig and cow grease were given to the Indian soldiers. In order to load the rifle, the soldiers would have to bite open the cartridge, thus requiring Muslims and Hindus to have contact with pigs and cows. The day before the rebellion, 85 Indian soldiers were imprisoned for their refusal to use the cartridges (Metcalf & Metcalf, 2012). From a British colonial perspective, the history of India was a religious history. Therefore, Britain began governing India through the lens of religion because they had falsely constructed religion as essential to Indian identity.

Furthermore, the British misrepresented the character of religion in India as a justification for the colonization of India by Britain. The juxtaposition of British development and Indian primitivism operated as an underlying assumption in the construction of Indian identity in colonial period. During an 1875 lecture at the University of Cambridge, British historian Henry

Maine explained that India was trapped in a state of “barbarism” despite having similar Aryan institutions, customs, laws, and beliefs as the British (Metcalf & Metcalf, 2012). Citing the despotism, feudal kingdoms, and village republics during the Mughal Empire, British scholars identified India as “Europe’s past.” As emblems of British antiquity, these institutions were associated with preserving the backwardness and primitivity of India. This framing of India demonstrated that India had elements of Britain’s past, but the religiosity of the Indian people 37 prevented them from implementing modern, industrial institutions. Specifically, Hinduism was seen as “a stage on the upward road from barbarism to science” (Hawley, 1991, p. 30). In the eyes of the British, primitivism and religion rendered Indians incompetent for self-rule.

However, the British regarded themselves as the means through which India could transcend religion and reach modernity. The 1858 Government of India Act stated, “...the foreign ruler alone peacefully contained the cultural, societal, and religious diversity of India” (Metcalf &

Metcalf, 2012). Thus, the British essentialized religious identity as inherent to Indian identity and then justified colonial rule on the grounds of religious liberation and modernization.

Contemporary representations of India as mystical, spiritual, and religious are both products and reproductions of colonial discourse surrounding Indian identity. The persistent nature of this discourse is partly due to another stereotypical representation of India as timeless

(Mitra, 1999). While religion was seen as an impediment to Indian civilization during colonial times, today religion is seen as requisite to Indian civilization. The age of India is connoted with the religions of India to the extent that discourse about one reinforces discourse about the other.

In viewing India as timeless, ancient practices are considered uninterrupted while religion is maintained as a defining aspect of Indian existence and identity. Just as Ananda Mitra (1999) argues that “the exotic needs to be produced as the ‘natural’ description of the space” of India in

India Through the Western Lens: Creating National Images in Film, it can be said that the ​ spiritualism of India is also produced as the “natural” description of India in film and television

(p. 157). In producing spiritualism as the “natural” description of India, The Darjeeling Limited ​ operates as a contemporary manifestation of Edward Said’s (1972) Orientalism because it produces a specific knowledge about India that distinguishes mystical, superstitious India from 38 the secular, rational United States, allowing for the consumption of India as a spiritual space by

Americans in their pursuit of healing and transformation.

Content Analysis

To examine the presence of stereotypical, “Orientalist” representations in The Darjeeling ​ Limited, it is helpful to begin with a content analysis of the environmental variables, ​ socio-cultural variables, and characters portrayed in the films. Many of the “coding variables” that Ramasubramanian (2005) analyzed in her study are included in this media text. The ​ ​ following is a list of the variables present in The Darjeeling Limited. ​ Environmental Variables: Animals: snakes, tigers, Poverty: manual laborers, buffaloes, cows famine-stricken people, Climate: hot and sunny homeless people Pollution: dirty streets, Socio-Cultural Variables: overcrowded places Character Analysis: Scene-locales: temples, train Religion: stations, huts Leisure Activities: cricket Occupation: farmers, priest, Transportation: animal carts, Architecture: Hindu temples skilled and unskilled laborers trains Women and Children: child Dwelling Place: huts, labor temporary dwellings The inclusion of these images is not accidental, but reflects both accepted and expected norms of the representation of India. Images of huts, Hindu temples, and manual laborers in India have been deployed several times by various filmmakers in the West to signal to the viewer that the plot is situated in India. Over time, the use of these images in establishing a particular “Indian” context in film has resulted in the association of these stereotypical images with India, producing the “social construction of Indian-ness” that Ramasubramanian (2005) examines in her study (p.

243). Huts, temples, and manual laborers have become signifiers that evoke a mental image of

India as the signified location associated with these images (Saussure, 1974). Consequently, these images become necessary components for situating a plot in India within a Western film. 39

The Western audience is able to believably identify a visual space as India only when the representations portrayed resonate with their previously held connotations associated with India

(Orgad, 2012). In order to situate the plot of The Darjeeling Limited in India and to communicate ​ ​ to the American audience that the narrative takes place in India, the opening scene employs several stereotypical signifiers.

The first two minutes of The Darjeeling Limited are comprised of a stereotypical crazy ​ ​ taxi ride through the streets of India, exposing the audience to several signifiers commonly used in the construction of a scene to situate a film’s plot in India. Dilapidated buildings are quickly passed, pictures of Sikh gurus are seen on the dashboard of the car, a cow is shown standing in the road, and a crowded train station are all images presented to the audience. The taxi driver is wearing a black turban indicative of the Sikh faith, while the passenger is a white man in a business suit. Throughout the drive, the white passenger appears uneasy, cautious, and anxious about the maneuvers of the driver. While the scene lacks any explicit information that specifically identifies the location as India, the audience is able to quickly deduce from the signifiers that the scene occurs in India. With the presence of these signifiers, explicit cues are rendered unnecessary. Therefore, the inclusion of these images in the first scene of The ​ Darjeeling Limited effectively communicates to the audience that the plot is situated in India and ​ ascribes a particular meaning to the geographic place of India.

A content analysis of The Darjeeling Limited reveals the recurring practice of American ​ ​ filmmakers in implementing stereotypical signifiers of India as a means of establishing a film’s plot in India. Poverty and religion are prevalent images in Hollywood films about India because these signifiers constitute Indian identity in the West. Everything from history textbooks to 40 artwork to literature have socially constructed “Indian-ness” in the Western imagination.

Therefore, the way that Indian spaces, landscapes, and cultural practices are routinely depicted in film confirms the audience’s pre-existing understanding of “Indian-ness.” Meaning can only be decoded from a media text if it resonates with previously held conceptualizations of identity

(Orgad, 2012). Hence, stereotypical signifiers are rendered necessary for the establishment of a narrative in India. While content analysis identifies the presence of “Orientalist” signifiers in film, narrative analysis examines how the motivation of the plot informs the relationship between

India and the United States.

Narrative Analysis

The underlying motivation that propels the plot forward in The Darjeeling Limited ​ constructs India as a space of healing and self-transformation for Americans. As previously mentioned, “motivation” in this analysis refers to “the way in which a particular place or a person provides the reason why the narrative moves on” (Mitra, 1999, p. 50). In The Darjeeling ​ Limited, the motivation lies within the white, American protagonists. As previously mentioned, ​ Ramasubramanian’s (2005) study found that, within the 24 random films she analyzed, India served as the backdrop for a Western narrative with Indian characters as passive, static characters whose existence serves the purposes of the Western protagonist. The film analyzed in this chapter is no different. The three brothers in The Darjeeling Limited consume India as they use ​ ​ essentialized elements of Indian culture to gain their own healing and self-transformation.

In The Darjeeling Limited, Indian spirituality is a commodity that the three brothers ​ ​ consume for their own healing and reconciliation. At the beginning of the film, Francis, Peter, and Jack are estranged brothers who have not talked with each other in the year following the 41 death of their father. The oldest brother, Francis, arranges a trip across India for the three of them in an effort to reconnect both relationally and spiritually. One minute into the film, Francis shares his three aspirations for the trip:

“A) I want us to become brothers again like we used to be and find ourselves and bond with each other. Can we agree to that? B) I want to make this trip a spiritual journey where each of us seek the unknown and we learn about it. Can we agree to that? C) I want us to be completely open and say yes to everything, even if it’s shocking and painful. Can we agree to that?”

This quote captures the motivation of the film. The three brothers propel the entire narrative as they grapple with the death of their father, the bitterness that divides them, and the personal problems they bring with them into the trip.

The Darjeeling Limited contains both primary and secondary motivations. The primary ​ motivation of the film is the brothers’ reconciliation. When the brothers’ father passed away, the issues that divided the brothers throughout their childhood came to light. Francis, Peter, and Jack had always competed for their dad’s attention and approval. Due to the absence of their mother growing up, Francis, the eldest, operated as a parent to his younger brothers. As grown adults,

Francis still relates to Peter and Jack as a parental figure, making decisions for the group and controlling all aspects of the trip. Throughout their lives, this dynamic caused division between the brothers, resulting in a lack of trust and intimacy. At the same time, a secondary motivation of the film revolves around the three brothers and their own individual struggles. The movie is not only about the relational healing between Francis, Peter, and Jack, but is also about the personal healing each brother experiences within him. At the beginning of the movie, Francis’s entire face is bandaged from his survival of a near-fatal car accident, Peter is unprepared for the impending birth of his first child, and Jack is recovering from heartbreak. Both these primary and 42 secondary motivations drive the narrative of The Darjeeling Limited while commodifying India ​ ​ as a space suited for the brothers’ needs.

Both the train itself and the brothers’ experiences off the train are plot points intended to facilitate the motivation of the film. In the film, the train serves as an extension of the privileged mobility Westerners have historically enjoyed in India. In a responsive essay addressing Rudyard

Kipling’s 1901 novel entitled Kim, Edward Said (2002) critiques the unfettered access to India ​ ​ that Europeans enjoyed, with Kim as a microcosm reflecting that privilege. Kim, the young ​ ​ protagonist in the novel of the same name is an Irish orphan raised in the streets of India. Having grown up within Indian culture, he is able to easily “pass” as an Indian with his mastery of the language of Urdu and with his knowledge of cultural nuances. At the same time, he is able to exercise his privilege as a young, white European when it proves beneficial, or even necessary, for him. In his essay “Kim as Imperialist Novel,” Said (2002) comments that Kim is designed to ​ ​ communicate to a Western audience, “Isn’t it possible in India to do everything, be anything, go anywhere with impunity?” (p. 347). In the novel, Kim is able to travel throughout India without any restrictions on his mobility. The Darjeeling Limited offers the same possibility to an ​ ​ American audience as Francis, Peter, and Jack journey through India with unlimited access to

India and mobility within India. The unhindered mobility of the three brothers reinforces the authority Americans can expect to exercise over India. India is the backdrop in the narrative, the prop for the brothers’ purposes, and the commodity for American consumption.

Similarly, the people, locations, and events the brothers encounter off the train become the basis upon which the brothers are able to reconcile, heal, and redefine themselves. In the film, Francis’s personal assistant, Brendan, is tagging along with the brothers to plan their 43 excursions. Brendan compiled a list of every temple and “spiritual site” that the brothers needed to see during their trip. In their first stop, the brothers go to the Temple of a Thousand Bulls, described by Francis as, “Probably one of the most spiritual places in the entire world.” It is worth briefly noting that even the name of the temple evokes another essentialized identity: one that claims Indians worship cows and other animals. Furthermore, the Temple of a Thousand

Bulls was constructed entirely for the film; it is not a real temple. The brothers enter the temple and begin to pray, but their piety quickly devolves into arguing with one another as they begin to reveal secrets that they have been keeping from one another. This scene in the temple establishes the motivations of the film within the narrative and indicates the condition of the brothers’ relationships with one another while the film is still in its early stages. Francis’s exclamation reflects the two achievements of this scene within the motivation of the narrative:

“We’re in an emergency here! I got my face smashed in, Jack’s heart has been ripped to shreds, and ‘rubby’ [Peter] is having a child...That’s what we’re here for—to start ​ ​ trusting each other.”

In this scene, spirituality in India is concurrently neglected and commodified by the use of the

Temple of a Thousand Bulls as merely the backdrop for the narrative. The brothers’ revelations could have occurred in any context or environment; there was nothing explicitly spiritual about neither their conversation nor their actions. At the same time, having the brothers make this assessment about their relationship in a temple commodifies India as a spiritual subject by connoting religious practice in India with the possibility of healing and transformation. The

Temple of a Thousand Bulls was chosen as the backdrop of the scene to facilitate the idea of healing to the audience, but there was nothing about the temple that actually provided any of the healing. 44

The climax of the film functions as the most defining scene because it initiates the brothers’ reconciliation while simultaneously situating India as a commodified object for the purposes of the Western narrative. At this point in the film, the brothers have been kicked off the train for bringing a poisonous snake onto the train and for getting into a physical fight while onboard. More divided than ever, the brothers, along with all of their luggage, are thrown off the train in the middle-of-nowhere. Declaring the journey to be a failure, they decide to leave India and go their respective ways. While they are walking to the nearest town, the brothers see three little Indian boys on a raft in the middle of a river attempting to catch fish. As Francis, Peter, and

Jack pass by, the rope holding the raft in place snaps and the children fall into the rapids. The three brothers immediately jump in to save the boys, but Peter is unable to save one of them.

Distraught and bloody, the brothers carry the child who was killed back to his village. There, the three brothers are welcomed into the fabric of the community as they prepare the burial rituals for the little boy.

During the funeral, there is a flashback that takes the audience back to the funeral of

Francis, Peter, and Jack’s father. The flashback shows the three brothers picking up their dad’s

Porsche that was in the mechanic shop for service at the time of his death. Intent on driving the car to the service, the brothers work together to redeem the car despite its faulty parts. In this scene, we see the brothers unified and agreeable despite the circumstances of their father’s passing and despite their challenging childhood. From the flashback, the brothers realize that, similar to the car, the brothers must work together to redeem themselves and repair their faults.

Therefore, the flashback functions as a cathartic and emotive parallel symbolizing the closure 45 and resignation of the brothers in grappling with their father’s passing, in reconciling with one another, and in accepting their adverse personal circumstances.

In this scene, India becomes the means through which the brothers find healing and the exotic backdrop for their transformation. From a perspective of content analysis, the “coding variables” that are present in this scene distinguish the Indian village from the United States for an American audience (Ramasubramanian, 2005). First, the Indian children in the village are shown gathering food, tending to animals, or making jewelry as opposed to attending school, playing sports, or watching television. The dwelling places in the village are all huts or open-air structures. Tractors and hand-carts are shown, suggesting that the village is largely dependent on subsistence farming. To an American audience, the practices within the village are posited as the common, day-to-day lived experiences of people in India. These lived experiences are then subjugated to the motivation of the film as a commodified plot point that enables the brothers’ healing and reconciliation.

India is commodified in the sense that Indian practices and people are reduced to naturalized representations that strip away the dynamism of Indian identity and therefore allow an American audience to redefine India according to its purposes. As Ramasubramanian (2005) demonstrated in her study, the “coding variables” in this scene are common representations of

India in film. In representing other cultures in film and television, decisions have to be made about which cultural practices will be included and how they will be depicted (Mitra, 1999).

Once a practice is decided upon, its inclusion in the film naturalizes the practice as an essential characteristic of that culture. The naturalization and essentialization of these practices both homogenizes the culture and becomes the primary lens through which that culture is viewed. 46

These naturalized representations then become expectations for the audience to the extent that their presence in the media text goes unquestioned. This scene in The Darjeeling Limited ​ operates as a naturalized representation of India, satisfying the assumptions and expectations an

American audience would have for a film in India. An American audience easily overlooks the death of an Indian boy because it meets the assumptions and expectations the audience holds regarding the lived experiences of children in India. As a consequence of the naturalization of these practices and the acceptance of these representations as reality, the death of an Indian child can be commodified as a plot point that develops a narrative about American protagonists.

While the train in The Darjeeling Limited symbolizes the privileged mobility of ​ ​ Americans throughout India, each departure from the train in the narrative operates as a plot point that transforms the brothers from bitterness to trust, from division to reconciliation, and from pain to healing. At the beginning of the film, Francis identified the motivation of the narrative by saying, “I want us to become brothers again and find ourselves and bond with each other.” Throughout the “spiritual journey” aboard the Darjeeling Limited, the brothers achieve that goal. Not only are their relationships with one another repaired, they have all found healing within themselves. Francis confessed that his car accident was intentional—an attempt to take his life. At the end of the film, Francis removes his bandages to reveal a scarred, yet healed face.

Peter lays aside his anxieties and insecurities about being a father to welcome a new son into the world. Jack chooses to move on from his ex-girlfriend and decides not to return to France where he was initially planning to meet her. Thus, the conflation of spirituality with Indian identity serves two functions in this film: first, spirituality is essentialized in the “construction of

Indianness,” supplying relevant plot points for the development of a Western narrative; second, 47

India is constructed as a spiritual site where Americans can expect to find healing, reconciliation, and spiritual rebirth of their own.

Orientalism in The Darjeeling Limited ​ The Darjeeling Limited exemplifies Edward Said’s (1972) theory of Orientalism as the ​ film produces certain knowledge about India that distinguishes India from the United States, and therefore allows America to exert authority over India. For an American audience, the images and narratives in the film provide a specified way of knowing about India. As a “Western technique of representation” the film makes the “Orient” visible and clear to a Western spectator

(Said, 1972, p. 30). The centrality of Americans to the narrative locates America within the

“Orient,” thus giving America privilege of access and the consequent power to represent. With this power to represent comes the power to produce knowledge, and “to have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it” (Said, 1972, 40). The United States demonstrates its authority over India through the knowledge it posits about India on the screen in movie theaters and living rooms.

Secondly, the representation of India in The Darjeeling Limited is “Orientalist” in nature ​ ​ because it juxtaposes Indian identity with the audience’s experience in the United States. While watching the film, the audience is expected to identify with the experience of the American protagonists and not the experiences of the Indians in the film. From the village scene to the images of temples, the film is constructing a space that is entirely different from the lived experiences of the American audience for which the film is intended. In doing so, The Darjeeling ​ Limited functions as an “identity narrative” that not only tells an American audience what India ​ is, but also what America is (Mitra, 2016, p. 3). In associating an American audience with India 48 through the telling of a story, The Darjeeling Limited is instructing the audience in how they are ​ ​ disparate from Indians. Because the audience is able to identify ways that they contrast from

Indians, they are then able to maintain their hegemony as a superior identity that excels in all of the ways Indians are shown to be lesser.

Lastly, The Darjeeling Limited is “Orientalist” in nature because it grants power to an ​ ​ American audience while situating India as the object of the power. In Orientalism, Said (1972) ​ ​ identifies the relationship between “Orient” and “Occident” as a relationship of power and hegemony. He goes on to define hegemony as the predominance of certain cultural forms over others (Said, 1972). Through the narrative and images presented in The Darjeeling Limited, the ​ ​ American audience is exposed to a set of cultural forms in India. While these cultural forms may not be accurate reflections of the lived experiences of Indians, they are accepted as reality because the singular representation of Indians in film and television denies the representation of alternative and competing cultural forms that capture a more nuanced and accurate depiction of

India (Mitra, 2016). The cultural forms that are represented in The Darjeeling Limited grants to ​ ​ America “power moral”—a form of power predicated on distinctions (Said, 1972, p. 20).

Discourse that is “power moral” is rooted in conceptualizations of what “they” do versus what

“we” do. In distinguishing the cultural forms of India from the cultural forms of the United

States, The Darjeeling Limited grants cultural hegemony to American ideas and values. Through ​ ​ cultural hegemony, America is able to commodify India as an object suited to its purposes.

The United States is able to exercise its hegemony and exert control over India through the constructions of Indian identity it produces in film representations. The motivation of the narrative in The Darjeeling Limited controls India in the way that it relegates India as the site of ​ ​ 49 the narrative rather than the subject. The film is about three American protagonists in India; it is not about India. Yet, India is needed as the site for the narrative in order to justify the motivation of the narrative. In order for the brothers to find spiritual healing, the narrative must be in India.

The audience is able to accept India as a spiritual site because centuries of discourse have conflated spirituality with Indian identity. Thus, this “construction of Indian-ness” resonates with an American audience and validates the reproduction of these representations

(Ramasubramanian, 2005). 50

CHAPTER THREE:

British Orientalism and American Orientalism

Introduction

The act of representing India in film and television operates as a contemporary manifestation of Orientalism because it allows America to produce knowledge about India that distinguishes the two societies from one another in a way that legitimizes America’s sense of moral superiority. However, the manifestation of Orientalism witnessed in the production of The ​ ​ Indian Detective and The Darjeeling Limited constitutes an American Orientalism that differs ​ ​ ​ from Said’s original articulation of Orientalism. Where British Orientalism was a tool employed by the British to systematically and institutionally subordinate India to foreign occupation,

American Orientalism is used to establish authority over India through more covert means.

Another difference is evidenced in how the British used Orientalism to secure their presence in

India while American Orientalism commodifies and appropriates Indian identity within the

United States.

Orientalism, as Said first discussed in 1978, refers to a codified relationship enacted by the colonial power to justify its presence and exert its authority in colonized spaces. Colonial powers employed formal and institutional forms of knowledge production in order to subordinate the colonial subjects to their invading governance. The following quote from Orientalism ​ describes the breadth of knowledge produced about the “Orient” during the colonial period:

There emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of 51

development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character. (Said, 1978, p. 15-16)

Orientalism during the colonial period was enacted on an institutional level, informing academic, artistic, legislative, scientific, economic, and religious social structures. All of this was accomplished so that the colonial power could assert its hegemonic authority over the “Orient.”

During the colonial period, Orientalism operated as a form of knowledge production based on distinctions that allowed the British to easily and explicitly construct an identity of the

“Other” that necessitated intervention by a foreign power for the sake of civilizational development. In India, the British conducted censuses and ethnographic surveys to classify the people living in India according to distinctions in religion, caste, and culture. The British used everything from the size of an individual’s nose to the type of clothing worn to not only distinguish groups of people in India from one another, but to also demonstrate the inferiority of people in India to people in Britain. Orientalism as a discourse was a formal and institutional way of knowing that allowed colonial powers “to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world” (Said, 1978, p. 20). Orientalism, as

Said describes it, was an explicit tool used by European powers to justify and maintain direct occupation and control in colonized spaces through the codification of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.

In contemporary American Orientalism, the discourses are the same, but its implementation in the subordination of the “Other” to American interests is more covert and less formally institutionalized. The representation of India as despotic and mystical in The Indian ​ Detective and The Darjeeling Limited will not result in the creation of legal, economic, or social ​ ​ ​ systems that directly subject India to American control. However, the colonial discourse that 52

American-produced films and television shows reinscribe are just as problematic, even though the discourse may not be as explicit. These representations were not created so that the United

States could directly occupy India in the same way that Britain created colonial censuses to establish their control over India. However, American Orientalism similarly allows the United

States to declare ownership of India and then use an essentialized Indian identity to satisfy U.S. interests.

India as Site, Not Subject

In her 1988 essay Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak establishes ​ ​ Subaltern Studies as a questioning of colonial and nationalist historiographies that were produced by Western scholars about colonized spaces. The identity of the “subaltern” refers to those on the fringes of society who lack agency and/or are denied agency. As a postcolonial scholar and feminist critic, much of her work on subalternity focuses on women in colonized spaces. In Can ​ the Subaltern Speak? Spivak (1988) demonstrates how the subaltern has been silenced through ​ an examination of the British representation of the practice of sati in colonial documentation, ​ ​ literature, and art.

In sati, or widow immolation, widows would join their recently deceased husband on the ​ ​ funeral pyre and voluntarily burn themselves to death. As a ritual, sati was seen as an honorable ​ ​ demonstration of a wife’s devotion for her husband. The practice was not widespread and it was not caste- nor class-fixed. However, the British used the obscure practice of sati and made it the ​ ​ defining representation of India’s primitivism and used it to justify their colonization of India.

Essentially, As Spivak (1988) notes, it justified “white men saving brown women from brown men” (p. 93). With this, the British were able to esteem themselves as the savior of Indian 53 women and the deliverer of civilization. Spivak (1988) explains, “Imperialism’s image as the establisher of the good society is marked by the espousal of the woman as the object of protection from her own kind” (p. 94). The sati debates over the legality of the practice ended ​ ​ with the British outlawing the practice through colonial legislation. However, the enduring significance of the debates came from the way that the female voice was silenced. Women were the site of the debate, not the subject. Spivak (1988) uses the sati debates as an example of how ​ ​ all colonial and nationalist historiographies are written entirely from the perspective of the colonial power, objectifying the colonial subjects as the site of history rather than as the subject or the source of their own history.

The Subaltern in American Orientalism

In the same way, representations of India in Hollywood and on Netflix deny agency to the Indian subject and objectify India as an identity for North American rearticulation and consumption. Film and television produce knowledge about India and construct Indian identity from an American perspective. Hollywood directors, producers, screenwriters, and cinematographers (most of which are white men) have power to produce a narrative about the

“Other.” Consequently, people in India, as well as first and second-generation immigrants of

Indian descent in the United States, become the site of a narrative about them, rather than the subject of their own narrative. Indians are denied the autonomy and agency to produce their own subjectivity, to determine how they want to be represented, and to even affirm the accuracy of how their lives are portrayed. Thus, film and television operate as a visual historiography of

India that produces knowledge about India for an American audience through the silencing of

Indian voices. Having silenced the voice of the subaltern, America is able to deconstruct and 54 change the meaning of Indian identity into something that it can use to substantiate and legitimize its own power.

With India an object rather than a subject, Indian identity can be rearticulated and appropriated as an object within discourse that serves to reinforce the rhetoric of the West as the moralizing and civilizing force in the world today. Just as the British rearticulated Indian identity through the sati debates to justify their governance, America rearticulates Indian identity as ​ ​ primitive and threateningly different through film and television to affirm its superiority. In redefining the sati debates as “white men saving brown women from brown men,” the British ​ ​ were able to rationalize and legitimize their governance (Spivak, 1988, p. 93). Similarly, films and television shows redefine Indian identity as essentially depraved to assert themselves as the establisher of morality. This is clearly demonstrated through the character of Doug D’Mello in

The Indian Detective, whose Canadian identity stands in for a generic North American ​ immigrant subject, who has become “civilized” by living in Canada.

The Subaltern, the Immigrant, and the New Brown Savior

In Western television, Indians are portrayed as having assimilated to Western culture while still embodying cultural difference. The construction of this particular Indian identity relies heavily on stereotypes of India. For example, the character Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali in The ​ Big Bang Theory embodies the colonial stereotype of the effeminate Indian man and Apu ​ Nahasapeemapetilon embodies the cultural stereotype of the Indian immigrant who has a degree in computer science, owns a gas station, and has an arranged marriage. These programs situate

Indians within the cultural space of the West while maintaining their foreignness as a cultural 55

“Other” (Mitra, 2016). This particular construction of Indian identity is employed in the Indian ​ Detective through the representation of Doug D’Mello. ​ As a Canadian of Indian descent, Toronto constable Doug D’Mello serves as a mediator between the depravity of India and the morality of the West. D’Mello was born and raised in

Canada by his mother and father, who immigrated to Canada from Mumbai. Having grown up outside of India, D’Mello is unable to identify with various aspects of Indian culture in the show, whether that is the food, the religious practices, or the love interest he encounters. Much of the comedy in the show comes from D’Mello’s apparent inability to connect to his identity as an

Indian during his visit to Mumbai. The character of Doug D’Mello personifies the “perfect” immigrant who abandons his foreign heritage and fully assimilates into Western culture. Having purged himself of his depravity and adopted that which makes him morally and ethically superior, D’Mello is then able to act as an appealing protagonist.

The Indian Detective introduces D’Mello as the hero of the show, transforming the ​ conventional narrative of the “White Savior,” but in a way that still maintains the image of the

West as the “establisher of the good society” (Spivak, 1988, p. 94). In India Through the Western ​ Lens: Creating National Images in Film, Mitra (1999) identifies the dichotomy of evil versus ​ good and saved versus savior as common tropes within narratives of India in film. The notion of

“saving” as “a process of deliverance from evil” relies on the presence of evil and the power of good (Mitra, 1999, p. 133). The colonial relationship was predicated on this duality, and this discourse persists today. In film and television, the hero is often the Western, white protagonist.

However, in order for there to be a hero, there needs to be someone in need of saving. People in

India are routinely constructed as primitive, backward, pagan, ignorant, and evil to demonstrate 56 their need for saving. Mitra (1999) goes on to explain that there are generally two ways of saving as depicted in film. Either those in need of saving are unaware of their need for being saved, or their evil practices are punished in order to save them from their own depravity. With D’Mello as the protagonist that stops the bad guy and gets the girl, The Indian Detective both dismantles and ​ ​ maintains this convention.

D’Mello’s ability to serve as the hero in the series is only possible because he rejects his heritage and finds it to be alien. While almost every other male Indian character in the show is portrayed as corrupted and deceitful, D’Mello stands out as the embodiment of goodness.

Because Western morality saved D’Mello from himself, in turn, he is able to punish the evil practices of Chandekar in order to save Chandekar from himself. Thus, with D’Mello as the protagonist, The Indian Detective defines what it means to be the “perfect immigrant” while ​ ​ maintaining the image of the West as the source of moral and ethical behavior. D’Mello appears to have agency in the show, but that agency is only granted by and employed through the West.

Thus, the rearticulation of Indian identity as despotic in The Indian Detective becomes the means ​ ​ through which the West asserts itself as the source of deliverance from an innate depravity.

American Orientalism as Transforming the Foreign to Familiar

This practice of “updating” Orientalism to respond to more contemporary politics is in many of the media representations of India in film and television today. For example, in

“Another Look at Orientalism: (An)Othering in Slumdog Millionaire,” Anjana Mudambi (2013) ​ ​ also argues that Orientalism has undergone a transformation in the contemporary era. In an analysis of Slumdog Millionaire, Mudambi (2013) explains how the film simultaneously ​ ​ absolves Western complicity in producing the colonial “other” and constructs a new identity of 57

“(an)other” where the foreign is made familiar to the Western audience. According to Mudambi

(2013), Slumdog Millionaire enacts the process of “(an)othering” through the paradoxical ​ ​ portrayal of the the bleak Mumbai slums within a narrative of love and success. This process:

...makes the experience of watching the ‘other’ more comfortable by commodifying the ​ Oriental subject, reconciling the temporary experience of the film’s foreignness with audience expectations and perceptive frameworks, and maintaining the “Oriental” subject as intelligible to Western subjectivity (p. 1).

As a consequence, Mudambi (2013) explains, there is an absolute erasure of Western complicity in colonialism and an absolving of Western culpability in contributing to the social, economic, and political context underpinning the contemporary realities of people living in the Mumbai slums. This “(an)othering” is a dangerous possibility with any representation of India in film and television, not just Slumdog Millionaire. ​ While Mudambi (2013) discusses her concept of “(an)othering within the single context of Slumdog Millionaire, I find the process of making the foreign familiar that she describes as a ​ ​ fundamental distinction between British and American Orientalism. Orientalism during the ​ colonial period allowed Britain to go into the geographical space of India while American

Orientalism brings India into the United States. In British Orientalism, there was an exotification of that which was foreign and a subsequent subordination of the manifestly different to the authority of the colonial power through institutional means. American Orientalism, on the other hand, takes that which is foreign and makes it familiar. That which is manifestly different is commodified and appropriated as a marketable product within the United States, maintaining

India as an intelligible subject to an American public. Mudambi (2013) makes a similar argument with her concept of “(an)othering” in Slumdog Millionaire, and I wish to expand upon ​ ​ her work by identifying American Orientalism within the representation of poverty in India and 58 within the yoga industry.

In order to make India familiar to an American audience, films and television routinely employ specific representations that match audience expectations of what that geography is supposed to be. Poverty is presented as natural to the Indian experience, yet foreign to the experience of the American audience. To make the foreign comfortable, films and television successfully transform abject poverty into entertainment. When a film or television show contains a narrative set in India, the slum is routinely depicted. Much like the aforementioned

Slumdog Millionaire, both The Indian Detective and The Darjeeling Limited contain scenes set in ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ slums. Under other circumstances, it might be a jarring experience for an American audience to witness the harsh realities that millions of people face while living in poverty. Even more, it would be difficult to reconcile those realities with the complicity of the West in producing those realities. However, because the slum has been naturalized as an iconic part of Indian culture in media, the slum is consumed as an “authentic” representation of India.

When an American audience sees the same representation of India in a movie theater as they do in a history classroom or in an art gallery, these representations are seen as naturally given rather than socially and historically constructed (Hall, 1993). An audience can then comfortably watch movies and shows like The Indian Detective or The Darjeeling Limited about ​ ​ ​ ​ the depraved conditions of life in India without having to examine, or even acknowledge, their participation in discourse and practices that have contributed to those contexts. Not only can the audience comfortably watch movies about India depicting prostitution, child labor, or mutilation of the body without any feelings of remorse for their complicity, but the American audience is also able to esteem themselves as moral, economic, and cultural superiors. The audience can 59 witness the depravity of India and remark, “This is how India always has been and how it always will be. Thank goodness I don’t have to live like that.” Therefore, the slum goes from being something disturbingly foreign to something that is comfortably familiar, allowing the American audience to then use these representations to understand themselves in relation to India.

Alongside this representation of the slum is its ironic counterpart: India as the space of spirituality, clean living, and inner peace. In The Darjeeling Limited, for example, three brothers ​ ​ are on a spiritual journey through India to reconnect with one another following the death of their father and the abandonment of their mother. Spirituality in India constitutes the substance of the plot. Because India has been identified stereotypically as a site of spiritual and religious activity,

India becomes the natural backdrop for a film about renewal, reconciliation, and resolution.

Instead of rendering the spiritual and religious practices within India as an exotic “Otherness” that is unrelated to Western culture and values, spirituality in India is made familiar to Western audiences by rearticulating that spirituality as the solution and antidote to the emotional and spiritual needs of people in the West. As demonstrated by the experience of the Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, spirituality in India becomes a familiarized tool—and even ​ ​ the singular hope—for healing, purpose, and salvation.

A similar process of transforming that which is foreign into that which is familiar occurs with the transformation of spirituality into an industry. Because spirituality is associated with

India in contrast to the secularism of the United States, spirituality can be rearticulated and appropriated in an effort to bring India into America through neoliberal channels. Consider the practice of yoga as an example. Yoga has its origins in ancient Hindu tradition and has been practiced in South Asia for thousands of years. In advertising and in practice, yoga in the United 60

States is heavily connoted with elements of spirituality, but it is a rearticulation and an appropriation of that spirituality. The yoga industry in the United States hardly resembles the tradition of yoga in South Asia. Instead, through the process of “(an)othering,” or making the foreign familiar, America exercises ownership over India with its ability to redefine spirituality in India according to its own definitions. By essentializing Indian identity in terms of spirituality,

America can extract certain practices from India and subordinate them to the logic of capitalism in America.

Conclusion

Films and television shows, like The Indian Detective and The Darjeeling Limited, work ​ ​ ​ ​ to accompany the process of transforming the foreign into familiar. By reproducing colonial discourse, contemporary representations of India make watching the “other” more comfortable by commodifying the “other” and matching audience expectations in the portrayal of the “other.”

This is the essence of American Orientalism. American Orientalism remains a way “to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world” just as British Orientalism accomplished (Said, 1978, p. 20). However, American Orientalism achieves this by bringing India into a generic America—where Canada and the United States become produced as similar—and making the foreign familiar through representations that reinforce American superiority.

61

CONCLUSION

“I just feel like, if you were able to see India from our eyes, you would love it. You would be able to see it in a better way than what you see. That’s why I love when I meet Americans and I can tell them facts and show them things that they don’t see. That’s India from our eyes, that’s the India we love. That’s the side you never see; it’s something you have to come here and experience.” Personal conversation with R, July 12, 2018

While I was doing research for this project, I had the opportunity to travel to Bhopal, Madhya

Pradesh, India to see some of my friends and talk with them about my research. My friends are between the ages of 20 and 25, were born and raised in India, and have been exposed to many

American-produced films and television shows. During my time with them, I asked them to watch the first episode of The Indian Detective and respond to a few questions in a group ​ ​ discussion format. Because many of them had spent time in Mumbai, it was helpful to hear their reactions to the representation of the city in the series.

After watching the episode, the first collective remark was about the focus on the

Mumbai slums. They commented on how the narrative was largely situated in the slums, neglecting “all of the Mumbai outside of the slums.”1 A common theme in their responses was that, while the representation of Mumbai and the inclusion of the slums in the episode was not necessarily an inaccurate portrayal, it was an impartial representation of all that India is. One of my friends cleverly pointed out that, if someone was from Canada and was hesitant to eat street food in Mumbai, they would most likely go to a mall and eat at McDonalds. But when was the last time you saw someone in a mall or eating at McDonalds in an American-produced film or

TV show set in India?

1 Personal interview, July 12, 2018 62

When I asked them what emotions the representation of their country in The Indian ​ Detective invoked in them, some expressed sadness over an absence of diversity in the depiction ​ of India while others expressed offense at the one-sided projection of what it means to be Indian.

Overall, they were unable to personally relate to the depiction of life in India presented in the episode. At the same time, they acknowledged that India holds many stereotypes of life in

America that are also partial-truths. “Unless a person is willing to actually look into a country and study what a country is about, people tend to believe what they see.”

Their responses validate my own work documented here, and speak to the ways that media representations inform our realities, especially about places and spaces that we do not have as much contact or familiarity with. Indeed, film and television are not benign forms of entertainment passively consumed by an audience. Instead, they produce “representations of the social world, images, descriptions, explanations and frames for understanding how the world is and why it works as it is said and shown to work” (Hall, 1981). Thus, the movies and shows we watch have the power to construct our ideas about the world, about others, and about ourselves.

The power of representations to define, construct, and establish have serious implications for both Indians and Americans.

As this paper has demonstrated, colonial discourse is not a thing in the past. Former

British colonies like India continue to be represented as subordinate to the West. Mediated representations reproduce colonial discourse, create knowledge about the “Other,” and, in the case of India, distinguish an essentialized Indian identity from the West in a way that grants authority to America and American values as morally superior. The Indian Detective reproduces ​ ​ the colonial stereotype of India as despotic and inherently corrupt. The character Gopal 63

Chandekar is the projected manifestation of this stereotype and is juxtaposed with the wealthy, white businessman David Marlowe who symbolizes the possibilities of meritocracy and the

American Dream. The essentialization of Indian identity as innately evil not only harkens back to colonial discourse that subordinated Indian subjects to the British Empire, but actively grants authority to the United States as morally superior through the distinguishing of Indian identity from American identity.

Similarly, The Darjeeling Limited essentializes Indian identity through by reproducing ​ ​ the colonial stereotype of India as mystical. Throughout the film, India remains the backdrop of a narrative about white American protagonists and the means through which the protagonists find ultimate healing and reconciliation. All of the people, locales, and cultural practices that the brothers encounter along their train ride throughout India help the brothers to restore their relationships with one another and to find healing within themselves following the death of their father. By essentializing Indian identity as spiritual, India becomes an object for consumption by

Americans in pursuit of healing, transformation, and self-actualization. Because India is distinguished from America as a mystical and spiritual space, America is able to subordinate

India to American interests.

Thus, The Indian Detective and The Darjeeling Limited exemplify Edward Said’s (1978) ​ ​ ​ ​ theory of Orientalism in contemporary times. While British Orientalism authorized the colonization of India and the subjugation of India from within India, American Orientalism responds to India’s rise to global power in recent decades. As such, American Orientalism manifests through more covert and less institutionalized ways. 64

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