The last decade and a half has seen an unprecedented amount of globalisation in India. Thanks to the economic liberalisation of the early 90s, advent of cable TV, and the Internet from the mid 90s, people in India have been force-fed Western culture, and the younger generation in metro areas pretty much seemed to have taken it in its stride.
With economic liberalisation came MNCs, which spawned a new set of cultural norms. Glamorous ads featuring very Caucasian-looking models (both male and female) leading an Italian lifestyle got idealised as what everyone should strive for. Wine-sipping and platinum jewelery became the standards by which one’s standing in society would get judged. At least that’s what it was going by the ads as well as the popular media.
It so happens that some north Indians hit the sweet spot here as far as looks are concerned. Heck, I don’t know what is so great about Italian or Greek looks, but they sell all over the world. And many Indians (especially from the north and the north west) seemed to have cashed in on this phenomenon, since a few of them were lucky enough to come awfully close to this idealisation.
So you’ve got Saif Ali Khan and Arjun Rampal who could give any average looking Joe a complex. And I mean, not just in India, but anywhere in the world. They seemed to be surrounded by equally fair and sharp-featured pretty women. TV ads started featuring models who came close to this idealisation of this Italian/Greek features, and very soon the lifestyles they portrayed on screen seemed to keep up with this image. So in the ads as well as in Hindi movies, not just the younger generation, but also the parents as well as kids were shown leading Western lifestyles. Shooting in foreign locales became the norm.
In both Mumbai and Delhi, certain segments of the society could actually relate to all this cultural makeover. For Mumbai, home to Bollywood and wealthy industrialists, this doesn’t come as a surprise. And similarly, New Delhi, home to Puppies and super-spoilt kids of bureaucrats and politicians, had always indulged in excesses of every kind. And both these metros have many men and women who do come close to the looks idolised by the media.
But other metros in India weren’t that fortunate. As a Chennaiite, I could say that there was a feeling of resentment in Chennai as globalisation seemed to idolize the fair, sharp-featured north Indian look. But at the same time, they didn’t want to be left out of the globalisation bandwagon. So they started looking out for alternative role models/cultural paradigms. I will limit the rest of the discussion to Tamil Nadu, but I feel this could be applied to other states also in various degrees.
If one takes the Tamil movie industry, till the mid 70’s, it had idolized fair, sharp-featured men and women in the lead roles. Stars like MGR, Sivaji, and Gemini Ganesan (father of Rekha) fell into this category. With the advent of Dravidian politics in the 60’s, many dark-skinned Tamilians felt it unfair (no pun intended) that their skin colour had to be a handicap. Especially after MGR left DMK and started his own party, many Dravidian sympathizers started looking for alternate icons.
Enter Rajnikanth. Though a Marati who grew up in Karnataka, his dark complexion and catchy mannerisms struck a chord with the Tamil populace. For the first time, he showed that a Tamil superstar didn’t have to have the fairness of Raj Kapoor. (I am not sure whether Amitabh’s darker than average complexion worked for or against him in the Hindi film industry.) This also led Tamilians to not feel ashamed of their dark skin anymore. In his footsteps followed even darker Tamil heroes like Vijayakanth and Parthiban in the 80s, with some degree of success. Simultaneously darker women too came to be accepted even in highly glamorous lead roles. Examples abound - Gowthami, Ranjani, Nadia, Rekha (different from her more popular namesake), Jayashree, and so on. Indeed, in many movies that came out during this period, the hero was fairer than the heroine.
Rap to the rescue
Fast forward to the mid 90’s. The euphoria of the 80’s was waning away because of the changes mentioned at the very beginning of this article. The media was mostly controlled by the north at that time, and there was a definitive tilt back towards the fair skinned north Indian look. And a Rajnikanth was no longer going to cut it, in terms of carrying the burden of Tamil self esteem on his shoulders.
At around this time, the world had been observant of a trend in the US. After the disco genre had faded, Michael Jackson had emerged as a pop icon almost overnight in the early 80’s. Never mind the fact that he wanted to look white, he was seen as a black who was successful in breaking moulds. While he became popular on that account even in Japan, in Tamil Nadu, he earned a special place at the subconscious level of a number of youngsters in Chennai in the 80’s. When the style of dancing known as “breakdance” became popular in the US among urban blacks, it was seen as some kind of cultural assertion of dark-skinned people within the US. It seemed that duplicating this social experiment in far-away TN was waiting to happen one way or the other.
And yes, it did happen. The man responsible for this was a dance choreographer called Prabhudeva. In the mid 90’s, he introduced break-dance to TN in many movies. One of his greatest hits is named, not coincidentally, “Pettai Rap”. True to the rap image in the US where a black man “conquering” fair-skinned women became a much-repeated theme, Tamil movies started looking north for its heroines. It is no surprise that Aishwarya Rai’s film career debuted with a Tamil movie. Others like Sushmita Sen, Shilpa Shetty, and Lara Datta too joined the fray. Because of this, the darker skinned Tamil actresses had to find other jobs. Tamil movies have yet to see the recovery of dark skinned actresses to the levels they were in the 80’s.
When the gangsta rap of the early to mid 90’s matured to something more mainstream like hip-hop towards the new millenium, it likewise gained greater social acceptance in TN. At around this time, Tamil pop culture (including movies) found its own niche and diffentiated itself from the Italian-based north Indian version of globalisation. Tamil TV programs didn’t even attempt to keep up with the changes that happened in the north. However Tamil music video channels like SS seemed to be more sympathetic towards hip-hop on the global scene compared to other genres. Hip-hop seemed to provide a kind of safety net against the resentment brought on by the fair-skin oriented culture of north India. At least for the men.
This influence of Western hip hop on contemporary Tamil culture is a double-edged sword, in my opinion. On the positive side, it had certainly boosted the self esteem of many Tamilians, especially men. This, coupled with the fact that the state of TN has become an economic powerhouse in India has made Tamilians more assertive in all walks of life.
But, I am afraid, there is also a negative side to this. Tamil culture had historically been highly chivalristic compared to the north. The southern states had always treated its women better. And Tamilians had always tried to maintain certain standards of decency in manners of speech. Unlike Hindi and some other north Indian languages, there are no terms equivalent to motherf***** or sisterf***** in Tamil. Using such language even against your worst enemy is taboo in Tamil ethos. And while TN has had its share of caste wars, it has never seen the kind of humiliation rapes against lower caste women that are common in some northern states. To a Tamilian, this is unthinkable.
So what happens when you try to meld this with a culture which treats women as objects and uses the aforementioned swear words in its lyrics unabashedly? I don’t know the answer to this.
In Chennai, I have seen this kind of hip hop music being played in many upscale coffee shops. The kids who work in these joints seem to have come out of rural TN which had always been the forebearer of Tamil culture and values. So how would these highly impressionable kids adapt to this culture shock?
Would the Tamilian society see an increase in violence against women? Would north Indian women be targeted more? We will have to wait to see the results of this social experiment which seems to be happening in the metros of TN as of today.
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