Escaping Flatland

The next session was the most provocative one in the whole conference. The emergence of an American Desi Identity: Hello MTV, goodbye Apu was paneled by an MTV director, an anthropology professor, an ad man and a supermodel.

The MTV director, Nusrat Durrani – a University of Lucknow MBA with a studied look - dazzled the audience with clips from MTV Desi, a new channel targeted at South Asians in the US (auspiciously, MTV’s 101st channel). The clips seemed no different than MTV Asia or Channel V. When I found out that the channel had already started airing a few weeks ago, I was quite excited at the prospect of being able to keep up with the latest music.


Saira Mohan [personal website], a supermodel who’s appeared on the cover of Newsweek and headed three sessions at the World Economic Forum on Women’s issues, read a prepared speech. Though well written in general, an emotional moment was misinterpreted by the audience - “(during this conference) you’ve pulled me aside and shared your rather personal feelings” – to a round of laughter.


The professor - Falu Bakrania - presented next. She has been described by her students as “Not easy to follow, but provocative and fun”. I concur. And she received a rating of 4 out of 5 on the ‘Hot’ (as in looks) scale. I concur again. She presented her research on the UK music scene and cautioned that despite hype around Bally Sagoo, Malkit Singh et al in the early 1990s, Indian music and culture did not become mainstream as predicted. It only replaced one stereotype with another, leading to “corporate commoditification” of henna tattoos and Indian fabrics. Later artists like Nitin Sawhney had some crossover appeal, but they were still a niche. Her speech was right on the money, but her academic tone might have confused people, as later conversation revealed (pretty consistent with her students' feedback, actually).


Krishnan Menon [Blog], the chief strategic officer for ad agency DDB, involved in launching the iMac, the X-Box and Santana’s comeback album Supernatural followed next. His one line autobiography: “I know why people buy shit”. In Krishnan’s 30-second-ad-slot mindset, stereotypes are inescapable, reality is boring. We must accept and embrace stereotyping. The cabbie greeting (“You in computers?”) should be changed. His mission: replace the current Indian IT engineer / 7-11 owner stereotype with a truly representative, believable desi character “Anil Nair”. Breaking the North Indian stereotype, Anil is South Indian Malyalee (like Menon, coincidentally). A TV show with Anil is in the offing.

The panel built on each other points so smoothly, it almost seemed scripted. Nusrat hyping a channel that potentially perpetuates stereotypes. Falu warning against hyping and stereotyping. Krishnan pointing out that stereotypes are necessary in an attention deficit world – they just need to be managed. Nusrat then explaining that he is creating a platform, and creative kids can use it to tell their “managed” stories.

The controversies, minor and major, began with the Q&A session:

It was alleged that Bollywood shows NRIs in a bad light (which is true, I think). To which a counter-allegation was made that Bollywood does to NRIs what NRIs do to FOBs.

It was bemoaned that Indians don’t dominate media mindspace like Hispanics do, for which Menon offered two insightful reasons: One, there’s less of us (we should get in between sheets more often, he prescribes). Two, the Indian minority (unlike Hispanics) thinks like the Caucasian majority, and can be targeted through similar messages. Rajan Shah, the moderator, pointed out that for premium goods (Rolex, Mercedes), companies were doing direct marketing on high-value Indian households already.

Krishnan and Nusrat took digs at the professor for being academic and idealistic (“I’m no academic”, “I’m just selling entertainment, not out to save the world”). To her credit, she just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Saira professed her love for India and all things Indian, especially the poonjabi (sic) culture that she is a part of (she’s part Punjabi, part French-Irish-Canadian), about 5 times.

At this point, an audience member announced “How can you sit up there and sell MTV to us? MTV is a crappy channel! It is the crappiest channel on TV today!” Pin-drop silence followed. The panel members looked at each other dumbfounded. The audience looked at the panel, then the dissenter, then back at the panel.

Finally, Saira spoke up “I hear you. I’d like to understand your point of view. Tell me, are you gay?”

It was the dissenter’s turn to be dumbfounded. He just stared, shocked, at Saira. Finally, “I’m not gay. I think that MTV shows Snoop Dogg and rap artists and they are crappy”.

The panel now understood where the dissenter was coming from, and each member felt obliged to offer a polite “I respect your point of view” statement. All except Menon. The ad man clearly has a penchant for showmanship; starting with “I don’t respect your point of view”, he went on to describe the importance of MTV to human society.

The moderator suggested discussing the topic later, in person with Nusrat. The poor dissenter's initial rush of adrenaline had worn off, no match for all the hostility directed at him. Shaking visibly, he accepted this compromise and sat down quietly.

When the Q&A ended, I went up to the professor to provide some moral support and talk to her about her upcoming book. In the meantime, the dissenter had another vocal confrontation with Saira, the details of which I missed.

Overall, the session was quite enlightening and amusing, and was the topic of conversation for many mixers and meals thereafter.