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I watched RRR last night, a 2022 Telugu-language film directed by S. S. Rajamouli, starring two revolutionary Indian heroes of old, but re-imagined to make them meet and have cool adventures together.
It was a very fun movie. The dance numbers were quite impressive, I liked the "bromance", and the action scenes were pretty funny. Everything was pretty over-the-top, especially the British, which is why I'm writing this right now.
The British were not kind to India. I don't really know any specifics on what all horrible things they did, though I am familiar with the "Blowing from Guns in British India" painting that depicted the punishment they gave for some rebellion or other. However, even so, it is kind of odd how they portrayed the British in the movie. The movie opens with a British governor paying a few coins to purchase a child from a village because he liked how she painted and sang, and when the mother tearfully tries to stop the British convoy from leaving, a soldier is about to shoot her, but is stopped because the British governor considers Indians to not be worth the cost of the bullet. Other scenes of similar callous viciousness are common: an Indian man is brutally beaten by a British soldier because the soldier felt embarrassed and wanted to save face, the heroic sepoy who carried out the governor's orders is not promoted because only three white dudes were chosen to be promoted, or a man being flogged is made to be flogged much more than usual because the wife of the governor didn't consider him submissive enough.
The movie is really fun, but interspersed with this kind of atrocity porn, with Englishmen commonly saying that Indians are totally worthless subhuman trash, considering any Indian in the governor's palace a servant, or warning the nice British woman that cavorting with one is dangerous. It came across as an ethnic caricature. I don't think there are any British men favorably portrayed. The only British people favorably portrayed are the beautiful British women at the dance party, and the beautiful British woman who takes a liking to the protagonist. This sends the message to me "all you evil Brits, get out of India, except for your women, we'll definitely be taking those." Which, fair! That's definitely a natural inclination of many people throughout history, but it isn't really brave enough to come out and say it like that.
I was left wondering what other ethnic groups it would be appropriate to give this treatment to. I feel like if you swapped the British caricature with a caricature of any other (non-white) group of people, this movie would never have gotten so popular. People would be afraid to even mention it. I liked the movie, but I wish it didn't have this ugly portrayal in it. It made it less good. Also it was 3 hours long, what the hell.
I dislike white as an umbrella term, because Indian distaste is clearly towards a specific type of upper-class British oppressor. They are white. But more importantly, they are:
All 5 together, create a caricatured evil. Make a small change, and the resulting individual isn't considered evil anymore. As you observed, gender is easiest to change, and a 'white 18th century upper-class British woman' becomes a protagonist.
Hollywood does this all the time. White isn't inherently evil.
1970s white Slavic USSR communist is evil. 19th century southern low-class slaver ? Shoot away. You have to tick all the check boxes. Even the Nazis are always in uniform. Among black people, the quintessential African warlord with a child army is obviously evil. The mountain dwelling bearded Islamist in traditional garb with ak-47s ? evil. Wrinkled old cougar with small dog and leopard print jacket ? Evil. In India, old & fat god man turned politician rings all types of alarm bells.
As bad as British atrocities were (the famines aren't talked about enough), the Catholics (Portuguese inquisition) and Mughals (specifically Aurangzeb) were leaders on cruelty. However, given that India has a large catholic & muslim population, it is difficult to portray them as explicitly evil without ruffling a few feathers. Not a lot of protestant whites in India. The British are an easy consensus target.
Portraying the British as villains is normal. My issue is that they are complete caricatures. Yes, confederates were frequently caricaturized as well. However, I can't really tell you any modern media where it would be acceptable to make a caricature of even an African warlord with a child army. What would it look like, if we use RRR's portrayal as the standard? Team America: World Police got away with caricatures of mountain-dwelling bearded Islamists in traditional garbs with AK-47s, because it was a different time (just 20 years ago!) and because they caricaturized everyone.
I could say that the easy formula for who you can caricaturize and who you can't is about skin color, since it's acceptable to do it to communists, slavers, and Nazis, but perhaps there is another element here. Communists, slavers, Nazis, and the British are known worldwide quite well, discussed at length and recognized as generally quite bad. It could be that one is only allowed to caricature that which they understand very well, and due to the West's recent ascent to power, every notable example is white.
Naah, we don't realize they're caricatures because they don't get portrayed with the over-the-top characterization that's common in Indian media.
A Hollywood equivalent would be Tarantino. Hanz Landa and Calvin Candie are comically evil. The African warlord in Lord of War is straight out of a caricature. Indian movies definitely portray local (Indian) villains as having a similar level of cruelty. Rocky 4's Ivan Drogo was as much a caricature of communist evil as Rocky was a quintessentially American.
To me, RRR is best understood as a Rocky movie. And it's a damn good one at that.
Now, you may argue that the British were never as evil as the Nazis, Stalinists or African warlords. But, there is little video evidence in support or against.
What we know is that India was a rich nation turned destitute over centuries of colonialism. India suffered from preventable famines that killed millions in a few decades. Famines of magnitudes that the nation hadn't seen for centuries prior. Indians and Hindus were treated as if they were sub-human (though nowhere as bad as chattel slavery). We know that the British decision makers of that time (Churchill, Dyer) are viewed as heroes of their home nation. Add all that up, and you can see how the British could be imagined to be as evil as the Nazis or African warlords.
I don't think the British were as evil as the movies portray them. Not even close. But, I think it's a fair price to pay in exchange for 3 centuries of winning.
Would you agree with this in mind that immigration from India to the UK is probably not a good idea for the British?
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