Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Show based on real-life experience
WASHINGTON: The Religion episode in the latest season of Master of None starts with a sweet, funny and relatable series of scenes: Christian, Hindu and Jewish kids complaining to parents about having to go to their regular religious services.
Then we see Aziz Ansari’s character, Dev Shah, as a kid who gets his first taste of bacon at a friend’s house. When his mom calls and tells her son “we’re Muslim – we’re not allowed to eat pork”, Dev hesitates. But he can’t resist. Dev takes a giant bite as Tupac’s Only God Can Judge Me begins to play.
This is the kind of treatment we’ve come to expect from the Netflix series co-created by Ansari and Alan Yang.
Master of None presents universal stories within specific contexts that we rarely see on film or TV. The result is refreshing, precisely because it is normal and grounded in reality.
“We had this main character whose parents are Muslim, and comes from a Muslim heritage, and that’s a rare thing in television and in movies,” Yang said. “Typically, when you see Muslims depicted, they’re terrorists about to bomb somebody, and there’s scary music playing. So that was part of it, but not reason enough” to do the episode.
Yang said the show’s writers had long wanted to explore religion: “We kept coming back to this. It should be funny, a specifically funny, relatable thing.”
The result is the third episode in the second season, released earlier this month, in which Dev struggles with whether to eat pork in front of his parents, pretends to fast during Ramadaan for his super-devout relatives and introduces a younger cousin to pulled pork.
And just like the first season’s standout Parents episode, the premise for this one came from a real-life experience.
“My brother decided to eat pork in front of my parents, and my mom got really upset,” said Aniz Ansari, Aziz’s brother and Religion co-writer.
“We kind of had that initial kernel of an idea, and we thought the pork story is an interesting way to head into such a serious, heavy subject.”
The episode drops little nuggets about growing up Muslim in America, like when Dev says he once thought his parents were taking him to see Jim Carrey’s The Mask instead of to the mosque.
When Master of None debuted in Netflix in 2015, fans and critics lavished praise on the series for the way it presented diversity. The characters of different races, sexual orientations and experiences were just being themselves on screen.
The first season’s Parents episode, which showcased the gulf between immigrants and their American-born kids with humanity and humour, was especially affirming for viewers who had grown up watching TV shows that didn’t reflect their experiences. Religion strikes a similar chord. In the time between the show’s first and second season, Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, became the Republican presidential nominee and then was elected president.
And while Aziz isn’t religious and previously didn’t talk much publicly about that aspect of his identity, he’s become more vocal about such rhetoric and Islamophobia.
Master of None writers didn’t suddenly decide Dev’s character was from a Muslim family. Some viewers posted theories online dissecting Dev’s name.
Dev was always based on Aziz.
And his parents, like the characters they play on the show, are devout Muslims.
Religion was written a year ago, but one of the final scenes was filmed the day after Election Day.
“For us, the most constructive and fundamental way to approach that problem through the show is to just show Muslim people on TV being normal people,” he said.
Plus, many viewers were aware of the wider context without having to spell it out, Aniz said.
“We know (some) people hate Muslim people,” he added.
What the show is trying to address is “this is all universal. We all share these experiences. That’s so much more a powerful, important message than rehashing this hate”. – Washington Post