South Asian representation in film and television continues to be a tricky business. But that doesn’t make it any less worth it.
One of 2023’s most zeitgeist-provoking films was the remake of Mean Girls, which created a storm at the global box office — surpassing a whopping $100 million. But what made fetch happen was the casting.
The film’s preview got tongues wagging with its (much-needed) diverse cast. The film’s plot follows Cady Heron, a new girl at North Shore High School. Her life is turned upside down when she joins ‘The Plastics’, a clique of girls unanimously voted as the most popular and attractive in school. Renée Rapp leads the clique as Regina George, with Avantika as Karen Shetty and Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners. The movie also stars Auli'i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey as Cady’s friends Janice and Damian.
The casting of Avantika Vandanapu, an American actor of South Indian descent as one of the leads in a mainstream Hollywood movie franchise with a cult following, comes at a rather interesting time in Hollywood. There are now a lot more South Asian characters in mainstream media, most recently in popular shows like Never Have I Ever, Bridgerton, and The Sex Lives of College Girls — but these strides aren’t enough. Most of these portrayals still rely heavily on cultural stereotypes that contribute greatly to making these characters fall flat.
Hollywood has seen a shift in casting South Asian women as leads in recent times, but there still seems to be a dilemma in how these women are portrayed. Never Have I Ever’s protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, was very openly depicted as awkward and nerdy. She was overly self-conscious, obsessed with her grades, and felt her mom was too strict.
Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls includes Bela, another Indian American character who perpetuates similar stereotypes — and literally calls herself an “Indian loser” on screen (in her introduction, too.) Both Devi and Bela are consistently shown to not understand social cues, with a white character (Leighton, played by Renée Rapp) having to explain to Bela that she has been taken advantage of by the men she was trying to gain approval from to join a campus magazine. (Spoiler alert: She still doesn’t get it.)
Never Have I Ever too, plays on the humour that ensues when Devi misunderstands social situations both in general and in her relentless attempts to find a boyfriend. There’s even a scene in Season 1 where she prays to God to help her find a man. Is this perhaps a universal feeling young women sometimes experience at some point? Sure. But it is specifically projected on these brown women characters on TV who are not given many opportunities to move past that narrative.
So the same old stereotypes endure: brown girls are nerdy, dorky, come from strict families, are desperate for male attention, fail to understand social cues, are obsessed with their grades and have an inherent sense of self-loathing.
Enter Karen Shetty. Avantika’s character Karen in Mean Girls shifts the narrative and shatters the age-old stereotype — because she’s a character that is not just portrayed as beautiful herself, but also as someone that society has deemed beautiful, popular and desirable.
Avantika even has a TikTok song (literally called ‘Sexy’) in the Halloween celebration sequence of the film that primarily focuses on her and adds a dash of Gen-Z core to the drama. Besides her casting itself, giving an Indian actress the role of a traditionally desirable woman in a mainstream commercial film is a sign of progress in Hollywood. Karen Shetty also embraces her sensuality and sexual needs — not in a desperate way, but from a place of self-assurance and empowerment which breaks another stereotype for South Asian women on screen. Avantika has herself spoken about the way her character changes the narrative for South Asian women in Hollywood.
But in the same vein, the two lead characters in the movie, Cady and Regina, around whom the story revolves, still happen to be white. They have the most songs in the musical, dialogues with the most bite, and the most opportunity to bring forth the layered personalities that shape the movie's plot. Arguably, Avantika didn’t have that much to work with — and she still delivered a pretty solid performance as the empty-headed, fluttering, confused yet bubbly Karen. Thus, while Avantika’s casting is a sign of some progress, it still isn’t enough progress.
While Renée Rapp was great in her role, imagine the world it would be if we afforded a South Asian woman to play a character like high school power player Regina George? Or to play a character like the naive yet diabolical Cady who the plot is centred around? If these characters were perhaps rewritten in a way that was true and honest to real brown women in the world — what kind of a statement would that make? How many young brown girls would see themselves as the leads of a mainstream Hollywood film and feel like they too, could be influential in the zeitgeist? That they too, are worth driving the plot of a cult-favorite film? Representation isn’t just about sharing an identity, it’s about inspiring hope and courage for people to own the skin they are in.
South Asian women aren’t always allowed to be multifaceted in film and television. We must fit into boxes. We must either feed the age-old narrative of being nerdy, dorky and socially awkward, or our character must be moulded to fit an aesthetic without necessarily being relevant to the story or driving the plot forward. We can be many things, and still not be fully multi-dimensional in the way that white women on screen are, because there’s often a stereotype to fall back on. Sometimes, with the depiction of attractive brown women, it’s also easy to fall into the colonial trope of showcasing them as “exotic” objects of desire.
Representation is a tricky business no doubt. Especially when it comes to representing Indian people — because India is a country with so many subcultures, smaller communities (each with their specific cultural nuances) and over 100 languages. The diversity that exists within India itself makes it hard to find one acceptable way to represent it. Sometimes, things get lost in translation and cultural connotations are misunderstood. This is why Bridgerton’s representation of its Indian female leads in season two (though lauded for its attempt) attracted some mixed reviews. But even the attempt — sends a powerful message.
If anything, the recent shift in the casting of more South Asian actors in mainstream projects proves that Hollywood is finally listening. We had a Muslim girl play the titular role in Marvel’s show ‘Ms. Marvel’, Netflix’s latest show ‘One Day’ has a British Indian woman opposite an English man. Priyanka Chopra’s portrayal as the Indian American Alex Parrish in Quantico in 2015 pushed the envelope as well. Parrish was the layered and complex main character that carried the plot and did not employ classic brown stereotypes (a feat that made Chopra pick the script as well, as she has mentioned in interviews.)
Indian Americans were the largest Asian American group living in the US according to the Census Bureau in 2023. It’s no secret that what is shown on screen can create a huge ripple effect in society, and that film and television have the power to change the dynamics of how people see themselves and each other. In a world where anyone can express themselves online through social media, visibility and exposure become a powerful currency — making representation in film and television even more crucial.
Our answers lie not in what sells or what’s trendy — but in the stories we are telling, and how we can work to identify, echo and amplify the experiences of those who don’t look like us.
