IndiaStar--A Literary-Art Magazine

 

 

Why MTV Digs India?

by Vamsee Krishna Juluri

[Editor's intro: Vamsee Juluri is a Ph.D.
candidate in Communication at the Univ
of Massachussetts, Amherst. His dissertation
is on the reception of music countdown
shows in India. -- C. J. S. Wallia]

The Indian subcontinent and its diasporas seem to be having a ball as
far as pop music is concerned. We're on TV-- at last! And it's not just
our talent, like Apache or Cornershop, but the fact that every other
music video now finds it cool to throw a bit of India in. The list is
quite extensive, music videos by Joan Osborne, Tom Petty, Will Smith,
Meredith Brooks, and Michael Jackson, as well as promos (including a
recent one about Karaoke singers set in India which spoofs an older
video, Duran Duran's 'Hungry like the wolf' which was shot in Sri
Lanka). But the reasons for this boom (and the terms in which we are
represented) are little cause for celebration, and have much to do with
the historic relations India has had with Western/global popular
culture, not least since liberalization and the satellite television
boom across Asia.

The redemption story of Western pop stars journeying to India to
return with strange instruments and stranger mystical insights is certainly
an old one, but what is increasingly relevant is the fact that India is no
longer only a source of inspiration but a rapidly growing market for
their music as well (for a very interesting discussion of the early
history of music marketing in India see Gerry Farrel's Indian Music and
the West, 1997, Oxford University Press). India is now a small but
growing part on the world-map of music marketing, and MTV India and
Channel V (which is partially owned by global music giants BMG, EMI,
Sony, and Warner Music) are the center of the lived experience of this
process for millions of young Indian viewers.

As an Indian viewer, it is difficult not to be pleased. The shining
armour of global capital strengthens national representations with
slick, high-budget music videos, such as A. R. Rahman's "Maa Tujhe
Salaam" from the Vande Mataram album produced by Sony for the
Independence celebrations. While the Vande Mataram project perhaps
represents some of our very best in terms of cultural production and
allows us to claim our own, the recognition of India by Western pop
artists provides further self-affirmation. It surely means that we are
great if Michael Jackson, Yanni, the Spice Girls, and many other
international stars come to perform for us. When they release songs and
music videos with Indian images and themes (such as Kula Shaker's
"Govinda" which was a regular feature on the Indian music countdowns
last year), or, better yet, when they Indianize, as the Spice Girls did,
wearing Indian costumes and entering the stage in autorickshaws during
the Channel V awards show in New Delhi last year, the celebration of
national pride knows no bounds. Globalization is no longer about the
threat of "foreign invasion," but is perceived instead as the exciting
elevation of India to the standards of international pop, and
strengthened by the belief that foreigners are perhaps finally beginning
to appreciate our suitably contemporarized civilizational glory.

The West is of course, doing no such thing, even if the the historical
process of marketing pop music in Asia clearly changes what we see here
in the United States. A music video with exotic imagery is therefore no
longer only exotic, but straddles the world with two effects. To Western
audiences eager to consume difference, the Indian imagery in music
videos suits the purpose quite well (and also serves the purpose of
brand-differentiation amidst advertising clutter, as No Doubt's Gwen
Stephani has perhaps found out with her bindi which sets her apart from
the crowd). To Indian audiences, in the diaspora and the homeland,
watching Indian images in music videos delivers the pleasure of
recognition, the idea that our presence is being noted.

These images include the standard figures such as Krishna (or a man
painted blue) in Joan Osborne's 'Right Hand Man,' and Indian dancers in
Meredith Brook's 'Bitch' and Kula Shaker's 'Tattva,' as well as field
excursions such as No Doubt's 'Oi to the World,' filmed on-location in
India with some friendly participation by the locals.

These images, as No Doubt's video shows, are by no means restricted to
representations of religion or culture, in the consumable "ethnic"
sense. It is the everyday, the poverty, the "smell of death" (to
paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld's wide-mouthed exclamation in the infamous
India episode) of the Indian cityscape that becomes exotic as well.

MTV's new network, M2, features a series of lengthy sepia-tinted (the
color of heat-and-dust, perhaps) promos filmed in India. These promos
depict street scenes; shopkeepers, pedestrians, cyclists, street kids
serving tea for a living, with snatches of street sounds and Indian film
songs.

The exoticisation of poverty in Indian everyday life builds
brand-identity for M2 with American audiences, and is a strategy that is
also used, strangely enough, on Indian television as well. Channel V,
MTV India, as well as numerous national and regional channels have
promos and programs that feature street scenes replete with the
marginals of Indian society, the tea-stall operators, rickshaw pullers,
bootpolish boys, and all those who survive on the informal economy of
the street. MTV has also taken to showing one of its Indian promos here
in the United States: an Indian fakir gets off his bed of nails to
reveal "MTV" on his back. With whose eyes are we looking at ourselves?

It is difficult to map the flow of ideas and images in terms of the
creative process, but some issues are quite clear in this context.
India, with its Gods, its quaint people, and its poverty, is the raw
material, product, and now also a market in the global cultural economy.
Its empowerment as a market, of course, means that it does get some sort
of a voice in addressing cultural production. Last summer, Sony Music
plundered some calendar-art Indian imagery for the cover of Aerosmith's
"Nine Lives." It made a bad joke of a very well known icon from Indian
mythology, the "Kaliya Mardhanam," or the defeat of a giant serpent by
Krishna. The cover of "Nine Lives" featured the familiar image of the
boy-Krishna dancing atop the snake, but Krishna's head was replaced with
that of a cat's. This was at the same time that Aerosmith was actually
being promoted in a big way by the music channels in Asia, as "artists
of the month" and so on.

A protest led by an Indian group based in California resulted in an
apology from Sony Music, after the usual grumblings about freedom of
speech. This issue raises strong questions about creativity, ownership,
and meaning in the global cultural economy. It is ironic that symbols
that mean a great deal to people are pillaged under the guise of
creative freedom by multinational media companies, when these companies,
and their governments, are the first ones to cry moral outrage and take
swift political action at "copyright violation."

The issue here is not only about who speaks for India, but the fact
that we are getting spoken about a lot. The long awaited recognition by
the West does not seem to be helping anyone. Being represented under
these terms, as death, for instance (in the case of Mother Theresa's
funeral), is perhaps indeed a kind of death. Whatever room for ambiguity
there may have been is now closed. The historic silence of American
media about the rest of the world made for a general state of ignorance,
but the familiarity with the other that comes with globalization will
only replace that vagueness with presumptousness; the arrogant notion
that the other is now either completely known, or worse, that the other
does not even have to be known; it can simply be consumed. Mehndi can
become "Removable Tattoo." The Bindi can become a "dot" to signify some
passing youth-subcultural fad. Gods can appear on T-shirts and
coffee-mugs. Words, names, pictures, everything can be picked up.

The cruellest irony is that it is precisely this ease in appropriating
the other that is bandied about to signify the wonders of globalization.
The West's pouncing on the colonies to fill its cameras, coffers, and
spiritual vaccuums has not been very salutory for the main attractions
of the day, Indian Gods and Indian poverty. The former have been
divested of their role in ethical pedagogy in our communities to star in
music videos, titillate audiences, and also get their good names tainted
by their forcible association with the rise of fascism in India. The
latter has stayed exactly where it is has been put by global corporate
interests, which in turn have found one more way to make use of it.