In Hollywood, South Asian Characters Can’t Come-of-Age Without Assimilating

Where do we look for representation?

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 because it makes white people feel good about being a saviour. Films like Bend it Like Beckham have a similar story: a subordinated brown girl just wants to play soccer and hang with white people. Jess’s character perpetuates the idea of rejecting cultural values and family to fit in, which is really code for assimilation. So does her affection for her Irish coach, Joe, which really doesn’t need to exist, storywise. This need to be accepted by white communities is an effect of neocolonialism and villainizes non-white identities.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

In her essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Spivak writes about the subordinated brown women in relation to colonial studies. Subordinated women do not often have a voice in the telling of their own stories are instead of needing to be rescued. Spivak’s memorable…