Corporate Packaging of Desi: MTV and Beyond
In 2005, when MTV launched a brand new vertical to target the emerging South Asian American market — MTV Desi — with the intended mission of not showcasing Bollywood music, but rather South Asian artists in the West, I was intrigued. The offshoot brand didn’t realize its broadcast goal exactly and MTV Desi went off-air in 2007, to be relaunched as a digital-only platform.
But MTV Desi was the kind of exercise that showed what might happen when outsiders to such a complex culture tried to capitalize off of it without fully understanding that target demographic. With the increased visibility of South Asian celebrities — even those who don’t like to discuss their South Asianness with the press — this is a demographic that advertisers are only beginning to understand.
What’s more peculiar is that it’s a demographic that Bollywood targets frequently. A notable recent example is the Magic Mike-inspired flick Desi Boyz. What we see here again is the same kind of cultural conditioning that male “desi” identity should somehow be tantamount to performative machismo that, while flirting with homoeroticism, remains firmly entrenched in the old world values of how men should behave.
The word “desi”, in fact, seems inescapable. DesiHits is a company that produces content specifically targeted at South Asian audiences — their latest project is the launch of Priyanka Chopra’s pop career. Another thing they were responsible for was the Pussycat Dolls’ take on the A.R. Rahman song “Jai Ho!” from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. It’s also a company that, while featuring South Asians at the helm, answers to a board and investors many of whom may not be South Asian at all. We’re seeing the engineering of culture and content for the “desi” demographic by non-desi people. Moreover, they’re not selling to an audience, but to the imagined marketing persona of the “desi” — it’s a specious identity at best.
As desis, are non-Indian members of the South Asian demographic are expected to buy into Priyanka Chopra’s pop career? Does this mean we can never have a Pakistan pop idol? If so, will members of that community will be expected to buy Western-produced culture that features Indian talent to feel represented? It reflects the kind of disconnect an organization like DesiHits may have in trying to peddle to the “desi” demographic — somehow overlooking the fact that India and Pakistan, for example, have been locked in what seems like an age-old rivalry.
Transcending the Limits of Desi
I get it. People of all kinds — not just marketers — love boxing in people who they might not understand. “Desi” is a very handy way of packaging up South Asians — and by creating a network of cultural symbols and short-hands (“desis” love Priyanka Chopra! “Desis” love eating aloo gobi! “Desis” tend to get arranged marriages with flowers and elephants and dancing! “Desis” speak some weird-ass language that you’ve never heard of!), people don’t even need to talk to one of us to learn about our customs.
Given the stakes of becoming so incorrectly lumped together under a single slang term, is it time for us to disavow “desi”?
Despite the platform of diversity which led Nina Davuluri to the Miss America crown this year, maybe Mindy Kaling is indeed onto something in not wanting to discuss her Indianness whenever any journalist brings it up. She doesn’t want to get lumped into an abstract identity bounded by outdated stereotypes and have that overpower her mission to entertain people.
In an ideal world, we could take the word “desi” and bend it to our will — and open it up to include every member of the South Asian community, while asking the world at large to, you know, consider us as human beings that transcend reductive classification.[pullquote]It’s also the time for all of us to release the idea of the perfect, monolithic South Asian identity.[/pullquote]
Sadly, that’s not the world in which we live! Perhaps it is indeed the time to let go of the word “desi.” With it, it’s also the time for all of us to release the idea of the perfect, monolithic South Asian identity. Trying to equate countless disparate identities to a single perception of perfection by using a four-letter word is a fool’s errand.
Rohin Guha is a contributing editor at The Aerogram. Follow him on Twitter @ohrohin. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram.
Another interesting article, and it probably deserves many more worthwhile comments than this, but here goes:
Desi Boyz was released in Nov 2011, Magic Mike came out in June, 2012 (and started filming in Sept 2011). So, I’m not sure if DB was really “inpired by” MM.
ack, you’re right! thank you for pointing that out.
This article sits wrong with me… and I think it’s important to discuss why.
At the end of the piece, Guha says in an ideal world, we would bend the word desi to OUR will and make it mean what WE want, but then goes on to lament that we haven’t the power to do so. And that, frankly my dears, is crap. He spends the entire article talking about, basically, other people taking our word, twisting it to their meanings, and how THEY hold all the power in what it’s become and in the end he’d rather just give up the word than stand tall and fight for it.
Guha complains that we don’t have a single motherland so the word is being stretched to the limit as is. He sees it as being used as some horrible wall building moniker that shoves us all on one side, neat and tidy and easy to figure out, instead of a diving board into the depths this single word and the people it covers contain. He complains that an online dictionary definition leaves out certain people and rather than think, “Oh hey, we can get that changed if we raise our voices together!”, he passes it off as just an unchangeable fact of life. Rather than rejoice in the idea that this word has gone so far to UNIFY and enrich so many, our writer is quick to label it homogenized and unworthy.
In all ways, this article sounds like a declaration of defeat and as a point of surrender, we are being asked to give the great and mysterious “them” the word Desi, because it’s not worth having, saving, cherishing… It’s so sad this article fails to address this is just one more case of appropriation yet one we should just cave for. WE DO have the power to bend the word to OUR will! It is OURS, as much as the bindi, the sari, the salwar, the burqa, the hijab! These things belong to US! We fight for these things, will we not fight for our right to be the desis WE make as well? We should not be content to throw away the things which we believe out of convenience can’t be saved because someone else is taking them and telling us their new meaning. WE CAN STOP IT, but sitting on our hands and thinking that’s just not how the world works? You’ve done more there to defeat us than any thief in the night ever has…
Two weeks ago, I happened across this post http://andwekeepongoing.tumblr.com/post/53515017700/i-love-the-word-desi-it-is-so-beautiful-i-can and I stand fast by it. We shape our world, and we surely CAN bend OUR words to OUR will…
Hi Dulari,
I totally agree. Check out the response to Rohin’s article that I wrote on The Aerogram!
Dulari – thank you so much for such a thought-provoking and wonderful post. you’re completely right.
It’s odd that you say this piece comes off as a declaration of defeat because I’ve always viewed the assimilation into a term so broad like “desi” defeat – as I have never considered myself a “desi”, but have always considered myself “Indian.”
Although I haven’t used “desi” to homogenize a group of people–that’s the tradition and trajectory of the word itself through the years. I am really glad you’re voicing your response though. It shows that there are voices on both sides of this argument.
I also encourage you to read Radhika’s response piece to this piece that she wrote for us. It’s a great flip-side to the same coin.
It seems like the author is oversimplifying desi and doesn’t understand the complexity that I personally find behind being desi. I am not ‘directly’ Indian, but from the Caribbean and Indian through my ancestors who were labor migrants. Yet I relate very much to the concept of desi, because it is multifaceted and can mean many things. Desi is such a popular concept because a large group of people, who all have complex identities and histories, can relate to it.
But we don’t have complex identities and histories. You can not relate to your Caribbean identity because you chose to do so clinging to the only root you know.
LOL I relate very well to my Caribbean identity, AND I relate to my desi identity which makes it more complex (for me) than other identities.
What makes you think desi identities are not complex?
What does the word desi mean to you. Enlighten me.
Maybe you don’t have a complex identitiy and history – that’s fine, enjoy it. I do. Many with me. I consider myself desi as well as Caribbean. And I am happy I can identify with a concept such as desi and relate to others who identify themselves as desi.
I don’t know why you and your smug attitude are out to judge me, but I’m not interested in discussing something with someone who wants to belittle me.
Niya, I’m sorry if you felt that I was belittling you. It wasn’t my intention. I don’t understand why they can’t identify themselves as Indo – carribean or Indo- American instead of the term Desi. You see India has many different races ( caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid, mediterranean,Australoid, you name it we have it) languages ( Indo Aryan, Dravidian etc.) .So the term desi maybe a totally alien word for some Indians like me. See, when you broadly brush everyone with a word like desi, it may not jive well with others. For example , a Pakistani may not like to associate with that word because that word actually signifies ‘people from India’. Pakistan is not in India. Someday your children and their children will have major identity complex. So it is better to say. I am a —— of Indian origin.
“As desis, are non-Indian members of the South Asian demographic are expected to buy into Priyanka Chopra’s pop career? Does this mean we can never have a Pakistan pop idol? If so, will members of that community will be expected to buy Western-produced culture that features Indian talent to feel represented? ” THOUGHT PROVOKING !
In a north easter state of India, thousands of migrant workers come from other parts of India, mainly Bihar, U.P., Orissa etc. They have settled there since time immemorial. They stick to their own culture, language and religion so much so that they have almost alienated themselves from the locals. They call themselves, ” Deswalle’. They probably meant people from their own state. Now, the native people in this North eastern state start treating these laborers as outsiders and call them ‘ desuwalee’. ‘ Desuwalee is not a term of endearment, mind you. It is a term used for outsiders who are uneducated, dirty and ‘ foreigners’.
Little late getting to this one, but it’s a great article. I was never able to articulate why I dislike the word desi so much but this is pretty much it. Thanks.
Also, it totally figures that the same group would be pushing Priyanka Chopra’s awful songs and that awful Jai Ho cover.