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Creative Racism
Jagmohan Singh
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Jagmohan
Singh writes a scathing Open Letter to Warner Brothers
Entertainment Inc. and Warner Independent Pictures, rebuking
their insistence on not changing the name of a movie recently
released in the US, titled, Towelhead, despite protests by Sikh
and Muslim religious and advocacy groups. |
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 Gentlemen:
I write this
missive to express my thoughts on creativity, the
US
society in modern times, racial abuse of ethnic peoples in the
Americas and the stubbornness of Warner Brothers on the Towelhead
naming issue.
Uncle Sam of the
land of plenty beckons people from all over the globe. Nowadays,
Uncle Sam is a bit wary of newcomers, but still continues to welcome
them. Despite change in the security scenario, normal life continues
for normal people, with some identifiable communities-Sikhs and
Muslims at the receiving end of racist attacks and abuse. In the
recent past, however, after systematic lobbying and advocacy,
various
US
government departments have responded with understandable care and
concern.
Without
compromising their identity, Sikhs have participated in the social,
cultural and political lives of the societies and countries they
have chosen to live and prosper. Sikh groups in the
US have shown
remarkable courage, conviction and determination to engage the
police, administration and government in an ongoing dialogue and
understanding process. The results are showing. The official
apathy has gone down, the stress at airports has substantially
reduced and the recognition of the community has heightened.
Two areas of
concern however warrant attention and redress -racial abuse and
attacks in school and stereotyping in the media and movies. You are
concerned with the latter. Like this movie, there are a few
situations that continue to haunt and hamper the daily lives of Sikh
Americans -some in a subtle manner and some very flagrantly.
 While
I am not one prone to curtailing of creativity in any way, I have a
nose to smell the intentions of those out to reap benefits at the
cost of stereotyping the ethnicity of my community and those of
other marginalized sections of society. You happen to the latest
ones to join this bandwagon.
The T-movie is a
sinister attempt at box office gain through use of a racist title,
Muslim characters and spicing the movie with stereotyping Arab
bigotry under the garb of rediscovery of self or identity through
sexual relations -a complete recipe for maligning, stereotyping and
then calling it creativity. If not pecuniary, then your purpose was
perhaps even more sinister than that, isn’t it? The film was
released in
Toronto under
the title, Nothing is Private, but it clearly needed some
Bollywood-style pernicious masala and thus the new title.
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To deduce the covering of the head into a Towel and the wearer
as Towelhead is offensive. It is gross intolerance. It is an
insult to George Bush who is friendly with turban-wearing Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It is an affront to former
president Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton who have Sikh
businessman Sant Singh Chattwal as their family friend. It is an
even worse rudeness to Warris Ahluwalia who excels in every role
that he plays in one Hollywood movie after another, and attempts
to tell through Hollywood what the turban is all about.
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To deduce the
covering of the head into a Towel and the wearer as Towelhead is
offensive. It is gross intolerance. It is an insult to George Bush
who is friendly with turban-wearing Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh. It is an affront to former president Bill Clinton and Senator
Hillary Clinton who have Sikh businessman Sant Singh Chattwal as
their family friend. It is an even worse rudeness to Warris
Ahluwalia who excels in every role that he plays in one
Hollywood movie
after another, and attempts to tell through
Hollywood
what the turban is all about.
The Turban is
our crowning glory. The turban is not an ostentatious sign. To
imagine a Sikh without the turban is to visualize him naked. A
Sikh feels undressed without wearing it, just like any person from
western society would feel without clothes.
As SALDEF has
pointed out, Sikhs are the one who always wear the turban and it is
this faith community which is facing a growing menace of popular
misconception, hate crime and discrimination.
Critics who have
seen the film have said that the film hardly has any discussion
about the T-word. In fact, 13-year-old Jasira, clearly a Muslim
name, is teased by classmates and subjected to self-invited sexual
abuse as the film delves more and more into sex, unmindful of
child-sex promotion.
I have yet to
fathom the insistence by many an author from the world around to
dabble in such tactics and then hide behind the façade of an
innocuous statement like has been done in this case by the
Arab-American author, Alicia Erian, who has written the book by the
same name and who too justifies the title of her book and the movie
by saying that it would be the harbinger of debate.
The point made
by the author of the novel, Alicia Erian, who has herself suffered
slur and abuse, that she deliberately chose a provocative title as
she wanted the shock treatment sounds may be correct, but is
misplaced. Her query that her work was published in 2005 and no one
has objected since then is indeed a serious lapse by activists, but
that alone cannot justify the mistake.
On the other
hand, it should be interesting to know whether the author has
succeeded in generating the shock, in lowering the incidents of
abuse or is she a pessimist who accepts the concerns as legitimate,
but who also says that, “We live in a racist society, one in which
people continue to use ethnic slurs to delineate those who are
different than they are. Realistically speaking, though, these
people are neither the audience for my book, nor for the film. They
will continue to use whatever language they wish whether or not a
movie called "Towelhead" is released.” So then who is the
target audience of the book and the movie? Academicians, semi-porno
fans or die-hard feminists who have magazines, entitled, Bitch?
As much as I
have read, there has hardly been any significant writing by
Americans about racism against Sikhs and Muslims. Whatever is
written is invariably in the form of response to community advocacy
groups.
The acclaimed
director Alan Ball is no doubt an Academy-award winning writer with
American Beauty, Six Feet Under and True Blood under his belt, but
he too will have to come up with a plausible explanation for
changing the name of the title and the charge that more than racism,
the key areas of concern are child-sex orientation and Arabic
bigotry stereotyping in the movie which will further aggravate the
situation for the likes of Alicia Erian rather than start a debate
of any kind.
The author and
director’s stance that it is necessary to perpetuate the bigotry by
retaining the name comes only after the movie did not create a rave
in Canada.
"We apologize for any offense that is caused by this title but
support Alan Ball and Alicia Erian in this effort. The film is a
medium to create dialogue and support the expression of ideas, as
controversial or as unpopular as they may be”, your company is
reported to have said. This is a lame duck argument, a ruse and an
afterthought. It is morally repugnant.
I will not
hesitate to call the movie and its nomenclature, a case of creative
racism.
Undoing wrong
results in enhancing your face value and doing intrinsic good, it
does not mean losing face. A bold decision awaits you.
Sincerely
Jagmohan Singh
Jagmohan Singh is a commentator based in Ludhiana, Punjab. He may be
contacted at jsbigdeas@gmail.com
1 October 2008
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