Good read. It goes both ways because West cannot have enough of dated Bollywood songs and the same old cliched classical background tracks whenever a reference to India needs to be made in whatever they’re making. While the world is more connected than ever, it seems that culture takes its own time to travel across borders.
I really felt this! While I grew up listening to Eminem and Linkin Park, most of my friends here in the US were on Kanye, Tyler, Future, Kendrick and Asap. My cousin, 5 years younger than me loves Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, while people his age are on country music now(?).
But there’s a new phenomenon in India where Indian shows are taking over the western ones. Farzi, Scam 1992, Sacred Games all seem to have taken over the role of erstwhile Sherlock, Sopranos, Castle etc. Ive noticed it with music as well, Indians are vibing to Indian music more, esp as the quality gap and money invested in these projects have closed over time.
Im surprised people on X have the time to clown on us for even something as simple as this…it’s such a cesspit.
I have a different kind of problem with (some) Indian shows these days - they are so influenced by American TV that they don't reach deep into authentic conflicts and instead manufacture projections from American conflicts. They try to give these things desi rootedness - like the entire filmography of Ayushmann Khurana. I wonder sometimes if it's too late to change this.
The urban life of mumbai is going to be super different from the urban life in NYC, correct? So a story set in mumbai, even among the most westernized people, isn't going to be people with New York attitudes who happen to be in mumbai. It's going to be its own thing. That's what I'm asking for.
Lot of stuff is relatable, not denying it is. It's a matter of hitting you in the feels. I feel this a lot, like I think some books or movies are relatable, and then I come across something by someone from the exact same milieu as me and read or watch something they made, and it hits me oh shit, this is what I need more of.
Or I was watching the movie Red Rocket and I thought it was weird, but I read a review of someone who was from a place very close to where the movie is set, and he said he couldn't watch the movie because it brought back all kinds of memories that had grown dim with time so much that he was uncomfortable.
Have you watched the movie Brahman Naman? I'm from the exact demographic that would find it relatable, and I did. But while the aesthetic was perfect, it was lauded by others in the demographic, and it was written by someone extremely grounded in the feels, something felt off. It is that we understand our experience at only one level, but we can reach hard into it with more context, and we can make a stronger gutpunching movie.
I think it's overstated how much small Indian movies are liked abroad vs movies like bahubali and rrr. I had completely random people asking me about bahubali. I've seen a lot of appeal for drishyam as well. It sort of feels like what gets pan-indian appeal also gets global appeal.
On a related note, it does feel that the tastes India has in its social and political discourse also borrow related American concepts and are always about 5-10 years behind!
I wonder if there's some deeper connection behind this. Could be the same as you said, the stuff that made it to India has global appeal, but at the same time, could be an instance of wannabe SJW.
I'm not sure anyone in the rest of the world has also come up with different concepts. I don't see there being any deficit in Indian thinking, the issue seems to be marketing and large-scale adaptation of ideas that emerge from Indians.
I think these ideas are usually used by lazy anglophone journalists and it percolates into everyone else from there. As we keep using these ideas, we'll realize they don't quite fit our needs and come up with other ideas.
Thing is also, there have been a lot of ideas that have emerged from the Indian internet. They might have super casual names because they didn't come from a lab, but 'raita' vs 'trad', or 'indic wing' are very essential distinctions, about as much as 'left wing' or 'right wing'. We might take them casually, but if some American professor came across these, they'd publish the hell out of this and make it a peer-reviewed concept. RSS also has come up with a lot of concepts that undergird our governance - Antyoday, for instance, which is to serve the last most poorest man, essentially meaning getting rid of absolute poverty. This is a very revolutionary concept when the west is trying to figure out how to address inequality while still making room for excellence and getting stuck in motte-and-bailey type arguments. There's also the 'third way' by Dattopant Thengadi, who started several blue-collar unions and he envisioned a way between Capitalism and Communism.
The problem is 1) we don't present our arguments well 2) we don't value ideas that come from our countrymen because they seem too 'pedestrian'. I think one of the problems is we're addicted to ideas presented as innovative that feel foreign and esoteric, we've come to associate those feelings with an idea actually being worth attention. It'll go away with time, but we really need to focus on writing convincingly.
>We might take them casually, but if some American professor came across these, they'd publish the hell out of this and make it a peer-reviewed concept
This makes sense, and also it hurts, haha.
>It'll go away with time, but we really need to focus on writing convincingly.
How do you actually market these ideas and make them popular though? Some of us do have Substacks, but none of us have this as a full time job.
There is space for a Noahpinion or Richard Hanania in the US because they can make a living that way. I don't really see a way for anyone wanting to make this happen to afford it full time.
So we had/have people like this in India, the problem is they aren't Indic/RW. There are plenty of public intellectuals who make a living this way. I know a lot of talented people and they won't even try putting in more effort than they currently are. We can complain about people not paying (which is a big deal, it's really hard to get people to get paid subs or donate for consuming content, and it's actually much much harder to get big donors to just give money with no intent of it paying off financially). But the reason they won't even try is because they are very comfortable in their lives and don't want to be downwardly mobile. I know someone who is taking up some indic projects, and they are subsidized by a spouse who has a job. That's at least what you'd need.
I think we really have to praise Rahul Roushan in this aspect because he started something right out of college, has been self-sustaining, and has a stable from which many other content creators have emerged. He is also very supportive to small creators. He gave me an interview when his book came out and it was such a generous move. We need to have more of that.
Good read. It goes both ways because West cannot have enough of dated Bollywood songs and the same old cliched classical background tracks whenever a reference to India needs to be made in whatever they’re making. While the world is more connected than ever, it seems that culture takes its own time to travel across borders.
Correct!
I really felt this! While I grew up listening to Eminem and Linkin Park, most of my friends here in the US were on Kanye, Tyler, Future, Kendrick and Asap. My cousin, 5 years younger than me loves Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, while people his age are on country music now(?).
But there’s a new phenomenon in India where Indian shows are taking over the western ones. Farzi, Scam 1992, Sacred Games all seem to have taken over the role of erstwhile Sherlock, Sopranos, Castle etc. Ive noticed it with music as well, Indians are vibing to Indian music more, esp as the quality gap and money invested in these projects have closed over time.
Im surprised people on X have the time to clown on us for even something as simple as this…it’s such a cesspit.
I have a different kind of problem with (some) Indian shows these days - they are so influenced by American TV that they don't reach deep into authentic conflicts and instead manufacture projections from American conflicts. They try to give these things desi rootedness - like the entire filmography of Ayushmann Khurana. I wonder sometimes if it's too late to change this.
I don’t know, growing up in Mumbai and Bangalore everything felt very western in itself. India is too diverse to have a single point of rootedness!
The urban life of mumbai is going to be super different from the urban life in NYC, correct? So a story set in mumbai, even among the most westernized people, isn't going to be people with New York attitudes who happen to be in mumbai. It's going to be its own thing. That's what I'm asking for.
Hmm. I found the shows to be relatable, so do my cousins, but I suppose you have a point.
Lot of stuff is relatable, not denying it is. It's a matter of hitting you in the feels. I feel this a lot, like I think some books or movies are relatable, and then I come across something by someone from the exact same milieu as me and read or watch something they made, and it hits me oh shit, this is what I need more of.
Or I was watching the movie Red Rocket and I thought it was weird, but I read a review of someone who was from a place very close to where the movie is set, and he said he couldn't watch the movie because it brought back all kinds of memories that had grown dim with time so much that he was uncomfortable.
Have you watched the movie Brahman Naman? I'm from the exact demographic that would find it relatable, and I did. But while the aesthetic was perfect, it was lauded by others in the demographic, and it was written by someone extremely grounded in the feels, something felt off. It is that we understand our experience at only one level, but we can reach hard into it with more context, and we can make a stronger gutpunching movie.
I think the synchronicity gap is closing, with movies like Laapata Ladies becoming critical and commercial hits at home and abroad.
I think it's overstated how much small Indian movies are liked abroad vs movies like bahubali and rrr. I had completely random people asking me about bahubali. I've seen a lot of appeal for drishyam as well. It sort of feels like what gets pan-indian appeal also gets global appeal.
On a related note, it does feel that the tastes India has in its social and political discourse also borrow related American concepts and are always about 5-10 years behind!
I wonder if there's some deeper connection behind this. Could be the same as you said, the stuff that made it to India has global appeal, but at the same time, could be an instance of wannabe SJW.
I'm not sure anyone in the rest of the world has also come up with different concepts. I don't see there being any deficit in Indian thinking, the issue seems to be marketing and large-scale adaptation of ideas that emerge from Indians.
I think these ideas are usually used by lazy anglophone journalists and it percolates into everyone else from there. As we keep using these ideas, we'll realize they don't quite fit our needs and come up with other ideas.
Thing is also, there have been a lot of ideas that have emerged from the Indian internet. They might have super casual names because they didn't come from a lab, but 'raita' vs 'trad', or 'indic wing' are very essential distinctions, about as much as 'left wing' or 'right wing'. We might take them casually, but if some American professor came across these, they'd publish the hell out of this and make it a peer-reviewed concept. RSS also has come up with a lot of concepts that undergird our governance - Antyoday, for instance, which is to serve the last most poorest man, essentially meaning getting rid of absolute poverty. This is a very revolutionary concept when the west is trying to figure out how to address inequality while still making room for excellence and getting stuck in motte-and-bailey type arguments. There's also the 'third way' by Dattopant Thengadi, who started several blue-collar unions and he envisioned a way between Capitalism and Communism.
The problem is 1) we don't present our arguments well 2) we don't value ideas that come from our countrymen because they seem too 'pedestrian'. I think one of the problems is we're addicted to ideas presented as innovative that feel foreign and esoteric, we've come to associate those feelings with an idea actually being worth attention. It'll go away with time, but we really need to focus on writing convincingly.
>We might take them casually, but if some American professor came across these, they'd publish the hell out of this and make it a peer-reviewed concept
This makes sense, and also it hurts, haha.
>It'll go away with time, but we really need to focus on writing convincingly.
How do you actually market these ideas and make them popular though? Some of us do have Substacks, but none of us have this as a full time job.
There is space for a Noahpinion or Richard Hanania in the US because they can make a living that way. I don't really see a way for anyone wanting to make this happen to afford it full time.
So we had/have people like this in India, the problem is they aren't Indic/RW. There are plenty of public intellectuals who make a living this way. I know a lot of talented people and they won't even try putting in more effort than they currently are. We can complain about people not paying (which is a big deal, it's really hard to get people to get paid subs or donate for consuming content, and it's actually much much harder to get big donors to just give money with no intent of it paying off financially). But the reason they won't even try is because they are very comfortable in their lives and don't want to be downwardly mobile. I know someone who is taking up some indic projects, and they are subsidized by a spouse who has a job. That's at least what you'd need.
I think we really have to praise Rahul Roushan in this aspect because he started something right out of college, has been self-sustaining, and has a stable from which many other content creators have emerged. He is also very supportive to small creators. He gave me an interview when his book came out and it was such a generous move. We need to have more of that.