ARCHIVE - A-POP, Don't Stop » Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/popculture Winter 2014 Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:26:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 ARCHIVE - Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/purplefairy/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/purplefairy/mississippi-masala/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2014 08:13:41 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/purplefairy/?p=171 I really liked the film, I thought that it was a great story that transcends boundaries that so many other films don’t even consider crossing. I think that the ending with Mina choosing to runaway from her family to be with her love is one of the things that is so American about her. A proper Indian daughter would have never run away with a man. Since her mother seemed to be so alright with it shows that she also has a more Western mind than a traditional Indian mother.

As for Mina being a “darkie” daughter, since she doesn’t fit the Indian ideal of beauty, she wouldn’t have been able to find a good match of an Indian or Indian American husband anyways. Mina and Demetrius, whether they worked out in the long run or fizzed out as a youthful romance, I don’t know. I really enjoyed the very ending clips with them in cultural costumes. I thought that was sweet.

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ARCHIVE - we made our own computer out of macaroni pieces http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/mississippi-masala/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2014 07:17:01 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/?p=149 Mississippi Masala

While I loved Meena and Demetrius’s story in this movie, I felt a sadder story in the existence of Meena’s father, Jay. While Meena’s story was one of struggle with race and family, she was able to overcome it and stay with the person she loved, even if it meant going against the wishes of her family. Even if it was a temporary moment for them, Meena and Demetrius were able to have a happy ending.

Meanwhile, Jay was forced from his home country by his own brother. That isn’t to say that Jay was anywhere near being the right – he had many flaws, and he was guilty of a number of things, including being apparently more well-off in his home country than many of the other people that were there. The sad part is how bitter it eventually made him. He spends years after this trying to be allowed to return, only to be ignored or turned down at every attempt, and because of this he is unable to accept the love his daughter has for a black man, because even though Jay himself was African (and black), he was never really able to reconcile that part of himself. I feel like he was the opposite of a few of the movies that we’ve seen so far. His ending in the film was a happy one as well to some extent, but it was also disheartening because I felt there wasn’t a great deal of growth for Jay’s character. I think in the future he might prove a big obstacle in the happiness of his own daughter.

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ARCHIVE - we made our own computer out of macaroni pieces http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/mississippi-masala/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2014 07:17:01 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/seeking/?p=149 Mississippi Masala

While I loved Meena and Demetrius’s story in this movie, I felt a sadder story in the existence of Meena’s father, Jay. While Meena’s story was one of struggle with race and family, she was able to overcome it and stay with the person she loved, even if it meant going against the wishes of her family. Even if it was a temporary moment for them, Meena and Demetrius were able to have a happy ending.

Meanwhile, Jay was forced from his home country by his own brother. That isn’t to say that Jay was anywhere near being the right – he had many flaws, and he was guilty of a number of things, including being apparently more well-off in his home country than many of the other people that were there. The sad part is how bitter it eventually made him. He spends years after this trying to be allowed to return, only to be ignored or turned down at every attempt, and because of this he is unable to accept the love his daughter has for a black man, because even though Jay himself was African (and black), he was never really able to reconcile that part of himself. I feel like he was the opposite of a few of the movies that we’ve seen so far. His ending in the film was a happy one as well to some extent, but it was also disheartening because I felt there wasn’t a great deal of growth for Jay’s character. I think in the future he might prove a big obstacle in the happiness of his own daughter.

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ARCHIVE - Hybridity and Home in Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/jude2/hybridity-and-home-in-mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/jude2/hybridity-and-home-in-mississippi-masala/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:10:27 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/jude2/?p=299 Mississippi Masala is unique for centering non-white hybridity. Usually media portrays hybridity as mixed raced people with white ancestry. While a hybrid Indian-African identity may at one point have been possible, Idi Amin’s verdict that all Asians must leave Uganda shuts down the potential for hybrid African identity. Okelo’s remark that “Africa is for Africans. Black Africans” seems to only cement this sentiment. Jay and his family must flee Uganda, eventually ending up in America. Indian Ugandan diaspora in some ways reflects African American disapora, and Mira Nair draws on this analogy in the scene where Mina is eating with Demetrius’s family. Someone asks how Indians ended up in Uganda and Mina replies, “The British brought them there to build the railway”, a family member chimes in “like slaves!”. A transhistorical connection is made between slavery and indentured servitude, between American slavery, and British colonialism.

The film interrogates notions of home and homeland. “You just like us. We from Africa, but we never been there before either”. Where is home for people experiencing diaspora and displacement? Mississippi Masala doesn’t offer any easy answers, rather it presents the viewer with even more questions. Jay insists that Africa is his home, yet when he returns to Uganda it becomes clear that this is no longer true. His old house is in ruins, his best friend is dead. I think Okelo was much of what represented “home” to Jay and with that connection gone he realizes that his family are all that he has left.

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ARCHIVE - Week 8: Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/winterfourteen/week-9-mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/winterfourteen/week-9-mississippi-masala/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2014 22:04:22 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/winterfourteen/?p=173 After watching Mississippi Masala and reading Lee’s analysis of the film I wanted to go look into interviews done by those in the film, I thought this would be a successful way to achieve a wider spectrum on the movie, since it would add the view of those involved to my own opinions and the opinions of Lee’s theory. But when I looked for interviews by either of the film’s stars, Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington, I found nothing for Mississippi Masala. The most relevant result I got was an interview with director Mira Nair. Below is an excerpt from the interview and the full transcript can be found here.

BG: In Masala there is an issue that I’ve never seen dealt with before, the issue of black and brown – the conflicts and situation. That is very fresh, and goes with you saying you wanted to make cinema that puts black and brown people at the centre.

MN: Well, Mississippi Masala grew out of being an Indian student at Harvard. When I arrived I was accessible to both white and black communities – a third-world sister to the black community and Kosher to the others – yet there were always these invisible lines. I felt that there was an interesting hierarchy where brown was between black and white. Even before Salaam Bombay!, I had wanted to tell this tale. That, along with the irony of Indian racism and the separatist nature of the Indian community in America … I began to read about the weird phenomenon of every southern motel being owned by an Indian, and many of them were exiles from East Africa after Amin had thrown them out.

There is this very cerebral concept: what was it like to be an African, but of Indian skin who believed India to be a spiritual home without ever having been there and to be living in Mississippi? An what if this world collided with that of black American who believed Africa to be their spiritual home, but had also never been there? It must collide through love, because we must sell tickets!

But where are the other interviews? How does a movie that deals with identity, racial and shade issues, and an interracial relationship with both people being people of color not have more press? I can find YouTube appreciation posts of the music, interviews by both Choudhury and Washington for other movies, and even the full movie but no review videos. I want to be surprised, but I’m not. Even though this film pushes the boundary of how racial identities are perceived by oneself and others while redefining the the portrayal of interracial/ cross-cultural couples it remains hidden under a multitude of other results. After this realization my spectrum did grow; the lack of exposure for alternative representation of this film makes the film itself even more important and necessary.

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ARCHIVE - Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/kevo/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/kevo/mississippi-masala/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2014 20:23:19 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/kevo/?p=188 I’m surprised I never saw this movie, but I found it to be very enjoyable especially after My Name is Khan which I didn’t really like at all. Mississippi Masala just felt more endearing and I enjoyed the message of the film. I like the pairing of African American and Indian American at the center of the film as it’s a romance hardly seen on the silver screen. Setting it in Mississippi as well, considering the history of racial tension, was a good choice for setting because it contrasts greatly with story of the film, creating conflict. Mississippi Masala shares a ton of similarities with other films we’ve watched and the themes it conveys are what we talk about often – identity crisis, generational conflict, etc. It seems to me that the conflict between parent and child is perhaps the strongest theme throughout all the films we watched. Both Demetrius and Mina are held back by their rigid family values, but ultimately decide to say “screw it” and make a life for themselves.

I also thought it was interesting how the film portrays racism but in a way you never see very often, in terms of it not being white/black or American/Japanese. The division between Mina’s father and Demetrius only emphasizes this aspect, which is why I like when Demetrius confronts Mina’s father about the color of his skin, basically saying that there’s really little difference between us, and that this categorization of skin color is superficial at best. His past history in Uganda and getting expelled from his home country gives him reason to feel as he does, but I’m glad that Demetrius and Mina decide to stay together despite the pasts of their families. Someone in our class said that they kept expecting something crazy to happen, and I have to agree considering some of the other films we’ve watched (Better Luck Tomorrow for example) have dipped into the darkness, so the fact that this did not happen in this film makes it more unique in my opinion – this is about other things.

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ARCHIVE - Mississippi Massala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sailorcollegemoon/mississippi-massala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sailorcollegemoon/mississippi-massala/#comments Sat, 01 Mar 2014 23:37:24 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sailorcollegemoon/?p=150 Continue reading »]]> “Africa is for Africans. Black Africans.”

This quote really resonated with me and I say this because I feel as though this is the struggle that people like me have had to deal with throughout my life. How, no matter how much we may love our current country that we have called home, at the end of the day, if we look any different from the major race of that country then we truly cannot call that place our home.

Home is where the heart is though right? Well, yes and I agree with this to a certain point but for me, home is where I can lay in my bed, home is where I can walk down 4th ave and recognize members of the community. I can only how devastating of an experience it would to be kicked out of a place you call home because of the way you look. For me, what happened to the Indians in Uganda was very similar to the treatment of Japanese Americans in the United States during WWII.

I can understand how it’s understandable how Mina’s parents were opposed to her dating an African American possibly because of the history that they had with Africans in the past because my Japanese family reacted very similarly to my father when my mother first introduced him to the family. My mother said that if her father had been alive, he would never allow for her to marry my dad because of my grandfathers experience during WWII.

 

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ARCHIVE - Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/mallowpuffs/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/mallowpuffs/mississippi-masala/#comments Sat, 01 Mar 2014 17:16:07 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/mallowpuffs/?p=231 According to Dictionary.com “masala” means a mixture of spices. Mina is Indian who lives mostly by American culture since she spent most of her time in America. Jay, her father, is Indian as well, but identifies himself as Ugandan; and lastly, Demetrius, her lover, is a Black man who has obviously adopted the American culture. So here are these 3 people intertwined with each others identities creating the title Mississippi Masala.

Other than the title, I realized that the movie had also portrayed a different kind of racism. There was a scene where Jammubhai tells Demetrius, “If you are not white, then you are colored.” This quote, I think, makes their relationship somewhat stronger in a way that they are both minorities. They both understand the struggles of being colored, or not white. However, though Jammubhai comforts Demetrius with that line Jay, Mina’s father, cannot stand Demetrius with his daughter. After Jay and Demetrius’s little altercation, Demetrius tells Jay something along the lines of his [Jay] skin only being a few shades away from Demetrius [point at his face].

Sadly, before this scene Jay sort of turns his back on Black people because of Okelu telling him that he had to leave Uganda. So I can understand why Jay had this bitter feeling towards Demetrius. Anyways, after this scene where Demetrius points out their skin color, it showed the audience that racism can still be present without a white person. There is still this heirarchy of races and who has the more “whiteness.” I thought that that scene was very important.

Another thing I thought was important for this movie was to move on. Throughout the movie there are scenes beween Jay and Okelu and when Jay had to leave. Okelu was in tears as well as Mina and this obviously bothered Mina because she was too young to understand why Jay and Okelu had never talked again. I understand that they still had their Indian traditions because that will hardly ever change; however, Jay cannot seem to let go of Uganda and the way he remembers it. For years, he had wrote letters for his property in Uganda. He eventually gets to go back to Uganda and it looks like nothing he remembered. He also learns to forgive Okelu, but finds out that he is dead and has been. Overall, Jay’s visit back to Uganda was nothing as he expected it: things changed, it did not feel like home for him, and his best friend had passed away with Jay’s grudge against him. I think that letting things go, or moving on plays a very important theme in this movie.

It relates to A Tale For the Time Being. Time has kept moving and it has been lost. While Jay was in America, I do not think that he understood that even though Amin is not the ruler, does not mean that things have gone back to the way it was. Also, Jay never really got to say good-bye to Okelu or leave on a good vibe. After that, time was lost in-between Okelu and Jay that Jay was completely unaware that Okelu had passed away. Time was also lost between Jay’s constant mind battle between saying his home was in Uganda, rather than spending every moment with his wife, Kinnu, where as he said, “home is where the heart is and my heart is with you.” At least now, Jay can spend his time not worrying about Uganda, but with the time he has in that current moment.

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ARCHIVE - Mississippi Masala http://blogs.evergreen.edu/carculture/mississippi-masala/ http://blogs.evergreen.edu/carculture/mississippi-masala/#comments Fri, 28 Feb 2014 03:39:02 +0000 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/carculture/?p=113 http://blogs.evergreen.edu/carculture/mississippi-masala/feed/ 0