Now, that’s more like it
Mindy Kaling’s Rom-Com reboot doesn’t give in to tired narrative of Muslim characters,
When I learned that Mindy Kaling’s reboot of the rom-com classic, “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” (playing now on Hulu and Citytv) featured a main character who was Muslim (Kashif Khan, played by Nikesh Patel), I braced myself for disappointment.
This has become an instinctive reaction based on too many past interactions with the same tired narratives about Muslims and South Asians — the ones that rotate between these few set features and storylines:
A daughter is mistreated by her backward parents. She falls in love with someone outside her faith/culture who shows her freedom and she is violently rebuked by her family.
The Imam or spiritual leader at mosque is part of a terror cell, and tries to recruit the young protagonist to a “jihadist” cause.
If there is a character in hijab, by the end of the show she will no longer wear hijab because, character arc.
All parents and elders have Arab/South Asian accents. The children are in perpetual conflict with their parents because, plot.
Forced, abusive arranged marriages are the norm.
The problem is not that these stories are not based in reality — sadly, they too often are — but that these are the only stories told about Muslim communities. As author and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explained in her famous 2009 TED talk, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
Earlier this month, Apple released the trailer for “Hala,” an upcoming feature written and directed by Minhal Baig with Jada Pinkett-Smith as executive producer. The movie is a coming-of-age story about hijab-wearing teen Hala, who has a strained relationship with her Pakistani parents, and falls for a young white man. The movie trailer provoked immediate online criticism of the film’s perceived orientalist, white-saviour storyline.
While movie trailers can be misleading, the online outrage to “Hala” reinforces the anxiety that consumers of media so often experience, particularly if they belong to marginalized groups. Instead of simply enjoying a movie or TV show that makes an effort to be diverse, the burden of representation is unfairly placed both on the creators and the consumers of content. The former bear the weight of representing their entire community — an impossible task — and the latter feel obliged to sound the alarm when stereotypical narratives are released into the world. The only way to fix this burden of representation is to create more content, encourage creators with fresh takes and diverse points of view.
There is a worldwide interest in reaching new audiences, hearing different perspectives, and amplifying the opinions of people who have been left out of traditional storytelling venues that has manifested in various ways.
Social media campaigns, from #OscarSoWhite, to #WeNeedDiverseBooks, have led the charge, and the results are a more diverse publishing landscape, and more diversity on the screen.
I am a testament to this. Five years ago, I had no hope that my debut novel, “Ayesha At Last,” would ever attract the interests of a mainstream publisher. I was afraid my book was too Muslim, too South Asian, too niche. Yet a newly activated readership was waiting for my story and others, hungry for authentic, diverse narratives.
Which brings me back to the 2019 miniseries, “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” As I started to watch the series, my initial anxiety gave way to pleasant surprise at the nuanced portrayal of main lead, Kashif Khan.
While “Kash” is a lapsed Muslim who dates outside of his faith and drinks, he also has a close relationship with his widowed father Haroon (played by Harish Patel), and is a mentor to his younger brother .
Even an arranged marriage storyline was portrayed positively.
For me, it was the little things: Haroon, an immigrant from Pakistan, spoke in perfectly accented Urdu and his headshake was spot-on. In one episode, when Maya (Nathalie Emmanuel of “Game of Thrones”) asks Kash if drinking alcohol is haram (forbidden), Kash responds, “Yes it is haram, and yes I drink,”— a superb moment that avoided moral judgment while acknowledging the complexity of faith. In turn, Kash’s friends simply accept him as he is, in a very 2019 sort of way, that felt fresh and aspirational.
Which, in the end, is the real point behind any good romcom — aspiring to do better. Aspiring to be better.
I hope more stories take the trouble to move past well-trod storylines. A newly activated audience is waiting.