Shah Rukh Khan (center) as Rizvan Khan. Photo courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.
If you follow NASDAQ or NPR, you may have recently run across the figures of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol Devgan. Though they are relatively underground news in the mainstream US media, the screen couple are two of the most popular film stars on the planet, given that their domain is the Indian film industry.
Last month Khan was featured prominently in media outside India, including a guest spot on NPR, ringing the NASDAQ opening bell with Devgan on Feb. 1, and in the UK on the long-running talk show Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, where he made West End star John Barrowman swoon by kissing him.
The publicity was part of a promotional push for Khan and Devgan's first film together since 2001, My Name is Khan, which was released Feb 12. all over the world. Signed for distribution for what was reportedly a record amount, the film is being promoted by Fox Searchlight Pictures, the same company that was behind Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.
My Name is Khan (MNIK) continues director Karan Johar's trend, newly adopted by other young Indian filmmakers, of setting films outside India and depicting the lives of the diaspora abroad. The film follows Rizvan Khan (Khan), a Muslim with Asperger's Syndrome (a form of autism) who was raised in India and moves to the United States. While living in San Francisco, Rizvan falls in love with Mandira, a Hindu woman (Devgan). They move to a fictional city in the suburbs, where things take a decidedly negative turn after 9/11, resulting in Khan embarking on a trek to meet the president.
My Name is Khan's Bay Area connections
MNIK has been on the local Indian film community's radar for some time, as the Bay Area forms a major story location, with Sacramento standing in for the Georgia state capital in the climactic finale featuring the character of President Barack Obama.
The local shoot took about a month through June and July 2009 and used hundreds of extras and actors who live nearby, as well as several local film-related services, including location scouting and catering.
Onetime model Daniel Lee said he left that industry because he was tired of work where he was judged by how he looked. As a local film location scout he helped find many settings used in the film, in addition to working to secure location permits and on site to help troubleshoot a range of issues. One thing he likes about crewing on films, he added, is that unlike modeling, where looks alone determine who gets work, if he's declined for a job because he doesn't have skills, he can learn them and apply again.
His involvement with the film began when he read the script: "After the fifth page I was really happy that such a story was being told because whenever I fly I get the 'random' secondary search and they ask me every question. I'm not stupid, and I can tell when they're trying to find something and if they can't find it they're looking to create something false."
The emphasis on Muslims in America post 9/11 was one he welcomes: "Nobody else can tell their own story like that group of people, so to wait for Hollywood to depict your culture accurately is a waste of time. You're waiting for something that's never going to happen. So I was glad that this company was telling this story with this topic and shooting part of it here, with India's biggest star on top of that."
"We Shall Overcome"/Hum Honge Kaamyaab
Though he hadn't anticipated being in front of the camera, while working on the set he was asked to audition for the role of Roger. He almost declined the role, but his feelings changed as he learned more: "The character was a homeless person. Then weeks into the production they asked me if I would audition and the first thing in my mind was 'Why does the black person have to be homeless? Seriously. Then one of the assistant directors said in the subtext of the story this is the character that Mandira talks to after work about her life problems and he gives her advice. Later, when Rizvan finds out that's their relationship, he befriends this person to get advice. So that's an important role to play.
"I changed my mind because I thought it was better than just being the black guy who's homeless, because that really didn't turn me on. I thought, oh that's pretty important, that's a crucial role, that's respectable."
After seeing the film, Lee said he was surprised to see how some of the characters were depicted in the film, including his own: "When I saw the film it was just a montage. There were just two or three shots I was actually in and I wasn't speaking, the images were playing under music. I'm not sure what the ultimate reason for that was, it could have been a bunch of very legitimate reasons, I'm not discrediting them for that. But when I actually saw the final piece it wasn't the role that I was instructed it was. It was actually much less than that. And it doesn't come across that this is the guy she seeks advice on life from."
At the end of the film, Lee sardonically noted his role was credited as "Roger (Homeless Hobo)."
The issue was more than only one character out of place
It wasn't just his own part in the film that Lee said he felt was carried out using shorthand imagery. In the second half of the film there is significant time devoted to Rizvan's efforts to rescue the residents of Wilhemina, Georgia from a torrential flood that swept their town away.
"I didn't think that whole scene in Wilhemina helped the whole story in any way," he said. "It kind of took us away from Rizvan's whole goal of meeting the president to tell him he wasn't a terrorist. The entire Wilhemina scene entirely removed us from that goal.
And the folks that were living there it seemed like we were back in slavery days, or the 30s or the 20s; like the 1800's, quite honestly. It just felt like we were so far back in time in terms of black people and the black struggle to be depicted like that in this movie, especially in a movie with the intent to break stereotypes.
The people in Wilhemina seemed utterly utterly helpless. Their entire town is flooding and they're all cooped up in this church and here comes Rizvan to save them. And then people by the dozens start showing up with cameras and live video feed. If all of these people can that easily get into the town, why wouldn't they just evacuate the 10 people living there? That didn't make sense to me."
In the bigger picture, Lee said his perception of the way African American people were shown in the film's landscape changed the way he saw the impact of his character: "After watching the film there's a homeless black dude and then there's the whole Wilhemina Georgia scene with the mammy ['Mama Jenny'] and the picaninny ['Funny Haired Joel'].
"I think the only Black character of any status would be the president, which is based on reality, that's not something they made up, that already existed. If the president were still George Bush, then George Bush would have been the president. If McCain had won, the president would have been McCain. So we have the heroic black president because that's what reality is right now. But based on the Wilhemina scene and the homeless black dude, I don't think that there would have been any heroic black character in the film [if Obama weren't president].
"And the film isn't about black culture so I'm not gonna hold them to that, but after seeing so many American films where the black guy dies first or the black guys are the morons or retards in the film, it's a disappointing thing to see that even in this Bollywood film it's still the same case as in American films."
Representations of African-Americans in the film diluted its message of unity
Oakland-based filmmaker Desiray McFall served as a liaison for the Oakland Film Office, spending time on-set in Oakland locations to make sure everything goes smoothly. She acted in that capacity for a weekend in late June while some exterior news reportage shots for MNIK were filmed in and around in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza.
After working at the shoot, and because she'd done some research about the profile of the film internationally, McFall sought out the film last month.
Like Lee, McFall said watching the film left her a little disoriented: "What threw me the most in watching the film after seeing the part of the story that was shot in Oakland was how big the scope of the film was. And I hate to compare it to Forrest Gump but it's almost impossible to not Forrest Gump it a little bit. Rizvan's traveling all over the world, and he's meeting all these people and there's a love story and there's a kid."
While there were many facets to the plot overall, McFall said she found the scenes in Georgia hard to justify: "Then there was the contemporary flashback. I guess it can't be a flashback. The whole Georgia thing with the town and the water and the Katrina, I looked around [at other people in the theatre] and I was like 'Are they really doing this?' And I thought, 'Oh, ok.' But I don't know if they were trying to fight stereotypes because then they brought some in, and they tied it up with Obama."
The uplifting message she found in the film was also undermined somewhat by the dissonant ways that African Americans and Muslims, the two main communities under siege, were portrayed.
"I loved the arc of the story: We all can have differences, come from different places, worship different gods but we can always help each other get to a better place," McFall said. "The whole thing was really ridiculous with Mama Jenny and Funny Haired Joel. I thought that was probably not the best word choice." Though some of the characters didn't seem completely unreal to her, McFall felt they emphasized extreme examples of stock characters: "Even though we do have Mama Jennys, it was like 'Really? She's a little bit fat – she's a lot fat.'"
During promotions for the film, a lot of emphasis was placed on research the scriptwriter and star did on Asperger's Syndrome to develop the character of Rizvan. Asked whether she thought there was a similar amount of research done to develop the characters in Wilhemina, McFall said she was torn between whether the filmmakers drew from too little information or whether the information they drew from was from a suspect source – Hollywood.
"I thought that maybe it was a lack of research and maybe they wanted a down-home Aunt Jemima motherly figure," she said. "I think they probably did way too much research and then said, 'It worked for Forrest Gump, why can't it work for us?'"
Daniel Lee said "I highly doubt that they studied African-American history. African American history has been one of the most underestimated cultures in American history."
McFall said she found that, to keep in touch with the narrative, she had to let go of her instincts for analysis while watching the film: "I told myself 'Ok, you're doing too much, just watch the movie, watch the movie.' Wilhemina just felt out of place in the telling of the story. Why can't they just take it to contemporary Oakland and you meet, say, Paula? It seemed like the film went back like 50 years and then came right back. Everything else was just so contemporary and then we're in 1932 Georgia. That was weird to me. I didn't get it."
While the family life and the perceptions of Muslims felt honest to her, the film ultimately got in its own way by the contrasts in the depictions that she saw: "So many things came up for me as not reading true that I was questioning it instead of paying attention to what I'm supposed to be watching.
Where Lee found little hope in the pervasiveness and resilience of portrayals that didn't feel true to life, McFall had a different impulse: "Watching the movie made me want to read the script and then it made me want to know more about the filmmakers and their true message. It made me want to know more about the film; what the message they wanted to get across was and whether they felt they'd succeeded in delivering that message.
"I wanted to fill the gap between what I thought the film was and what the film ended up being."
Possible strategies for including a range of communities in films
For McFall, the issue could be that there needs to be a larger body of films talking honestly about diverse lives. She said, "Whether you're black, white, or a Muslim, I think that sometimes people don't understand your point of view, so I don't want to project and say 'Oh my god, you came to be mean to black people, it's wrong, it's wrong.' You need to do more research."
She saw the film as filling a gap in representations of American issues, saying, "I thought they were brave too. No one wants to talk about Katrina anymore. I think they were trying to cover too much, but I think what they did do will at least create a little bit of dialog."
From her perspective as filmmaker and screenwriter, McFall stressed the need for culturally-oriented research before filmmakers decide how to show communities in films: "It would be impossible for me to make a film about Indian life and culture if I had never been there. Like in a rickshaw in East Oakland, 'cause Indians would know [what's realistic]. I wouldn't know."
Actor JT Smash moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles, where he had been both a child actor and a police officer. His first film job was 2007's Milk. Smash worked as an extra in My Name is Khan and sees himself as a resource for future Indian films: "I was there in the Watts riots. I worked as a policeman during the Rodney King riots. I remember going to a restaurant and not being served in Redwood City. So I have all this information to share with Bollywood. We are here, we survived. And I hope we don't go back with this mentality. I would do My Name is Khan again in two seconds flat. But I would ask for more."
My Name is Khan's local run ended recently, but that was the version of the film aimed largely for the Indian diaspora. An "international" version 30 minutes shorter than the version released in February, with a higher percentage of English dialog, is due to be released in the US this summer.
Source: http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/03/my-name-is-khan-film
