In Hollywood, South Asian Characters Can’t Come-of-Age Without Assimilating
I grew up on Mean Girls, Clueless, and 10 Things I Hate About You and I have no regrets for knowing all the words to Regina George’s vicious monologues. But I also grew up on Bollywood, and I will always be a fan of 90s superhits with coming of age themes like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. India’s fluffy and often surface-level cinematic universe is huge and powerful, extending to international reach, but its lack of originality means it’s still somewhat of a joke to many audiences. So why is it that Western media, the media our lives are shaped by, has created little to no coming of age films for South Asian growing up in the diaspora?
Watching a South Asian girl go to high school and come of age seems to be limited to their parental struggles and hidden sexuality. We are defined solely by our brownness. Movies like Disney’s Lemonade Mouth starred mixed-raced Indian actor Naomi Scott as Mohini (shortened to Mo for the sake of whitening her name) and placed in her a situation of family conflict and a need for sexual liberation. Her father was controlling and conservative, the way many brown fathers are stereotyped. Mo’s boyfriend was the classic white bad-boy type, who eventually broke her heart. After they split another white boy put her heart back together and won over the affections of her family. It’s a story that’s been done to death and sits well with Western audiences…
