Offended by Taylor Swift's Wildest Dreams? Then Bollywood's racism will give you nightmares

If you google ‘Taylor Swift and racism’, you’ll immediately be linked to the singer’s new single ‘ Wildest Dreams ’. 

The song debuted during the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night and its portrayal of Africa has left a lot of people frowning. Directed by Joseph Kahn, the ‘story’ of “Wildest Dreams” is about two star-crossed lovers who have an affair while filming in Africa. There’s a distinctly vintage feel to the video, with Swift wearing 1940s’-inspired make-up. Released on August 30, Swift’s video has already had 19 million views on YouTube.

So what’s the problem with this video? There are no black people in her video, barring two extras (playing soldiers). Kahn has said that the Out of Africa-inspired video is a love story with no political agenda. “This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950,” said Kahn to  Daily Mail.  

Many are not convinced by Kahn’s point of view and argue that in its effort to channel an old Hollywood romance, the video has replicated old Hollywood racism too.

In this NPR op-ed , Viviane Rutabingwa explains the problem with Swift’s video: “We are shocked to think that in 2015, Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was okay to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.”

Rutabingwa goes on to let Swift off the hook, but does say that Kahn and those who decided on the video’s story line should have paid more attention to how they were showing Africa as a place where wild animals roam and white people enact their fantasies. Had Kahn and gang simply used a black hero, “Wildest Dreams” wouldn’t have been the white colonial fantasy that it is at the moment. This criticism is pertinent and valid, but there’s also something to be said for all those who point out that few will turn to Taylor Swift videos in order to be informed about colonialism.

This debate about race, political correctness and the responsibilities of pop entertainment makes us feel mightily relieved that none of Swift and Kahn’s critics have seen how Bollywood has depicted black people over the decades.

Back to black

How many famous Hindi film songs have we seen with “African” background dancers? Answer: Too many. You know the songs we’re talking about. They have dancers who have usually been painted black and are made to wear Afro-inspired wigs, feathers, strange grass-skirt-esque clothes. There’s usually a tribal-inspired, rhythm track to justify their existence. Because you know how all of Africa is just one vast, collection of primitive, dancing tribes. It’s all sorts of appalling.

About four minutes into Sridevi’s trump song from Mr India, “Hawa Hawai”, a group of dancers with pink harem pants, painted black skin and Afro wigs enter the scene. There’s a lot that’s outlandish in Mr India in general and “Hawa Hawai” in particular – Sridevi’s own make-up for starters – but the black dancers are truly perplexing. If you can resist the urge to facepalm (it’s a catchy song, you may get distracted), you might start thinking about why we’re so intent upon blackface and how casually we use this seriously prejudiced practice. What were our filmmakers and choreographers trying to say?

In Vishwatma, which starred Chunkey Pandey and Sunny Deol in a truly monstrous hat, Divya Bharti appears as a performer and sings “Saat Samundar Paar”. Once again, she’s got a clutch of blackfaced gyrating wildly behind her. Why are they all wearing neckpieces and arm bands that seem to be made from feather dusters? Why were the men given red satin skirts? The women have paint on their faces, to emphasise their tribal identity no doubt. And at one point, for no comprehensible reason, a black man clutches sticks his head into a railing and emits a mix of a snarl and a deep exhale. Why? Because he’s African and they do weird things – or so Bollywood believes.

Black = bad guy

If you thought the blackface dancers were bad but belong to an era when political correctness had not filtered in, we must dash your optimistic worldview. Ignorance and racism remain rampant in Bollywood films and the proof of this lies in the fact that most of the time, black people are the villains of the piece. Fashion, Phir Hera Pheri, Shaitan, Hadh Kardi Aapne are all (very upsetting) examples of this mindset.

Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion  may have won Priyanka Chopra a national award, but no one found it objectionable that Chopra’s character’s lowest moment is when she wakes up after having had sex with a black man. That, for an Indian supermodel and Bhandarkar, is rock bottom. For those who haven’t seen the film, the supermodel has been through a medley of serious issues, like drug abuse, alcoholism and behaving like a depraved maniac. And in case you thought we were reading racism into this screenplay, this is the title that the film’s producers have given to the scene when they uploaded a video of it on YouTube: ‘Priyanka Chopra sleeps with a Black Man.’

Phir Hera Pheri is a comedy of errors. But things start to get a bit serious when Paresh Rawal, Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty are threatened by who else but two African men. Because nothing is as scary as African men with weapons, right? (Wait, what about any colored men with weapons?)

Perhaps the most offensive of the lot is this scene from Hadh Kardi Apne (as if Govinda’s optimal overacting isn’t bad enough). Govinda asks Rani Mukherjee to wear some clothes he has gifted her. She asks him to come to her hotel room, to see her wearing the clothes. When he shows up, he finds a black woman wearing the same clothes and ends up with fighting with the black woman’s husband (who looks like an Indian man with brown paint on his face and a bad wig on his head).

So the point is that a black woman being given the clothes is somehow insulting Govinda – because there’s nothing more unattractive? And why on earth is the black woman – who again looks vaguely like she’s been painted to a darker shade – shimmying around for no reason while Mukherjee is on the phone? It’s enough to make us squirm uncomfortably.

Rap on our knuckles? 

Things have changed a little bit since the growing popularity of hip hop music in India, but we’re not sure what to make of this new direction. With artists like Snoop Dogg and Akon making special appearances in songs, Bollywood has suddenly woken up to the fact that they can’t have blackfaced, Afro-wigged, feather-clad people leap around in the background. So now, these hip hop artists become something like glorified item numbers. Is this an improvement?

In a weird way, these special appearances are a throwback to the era of Disco Dancer, in which the ultimate, international disco competition included two competitors who were described as the “Disco King and Queen of Africa”. Considering how terribly black characters were depicted, Disco Dancer was actually way ahead of its time in the way it chose to include black characters and show them as dancers, rather than villains. Never mind that they thought Africa is a country (they also thought Paris is a country, so perhaps geography wasn’t Disco Dancer’s strongest suit).

Considering how quick we are to take offence at desi people being stereotyped, you’d think we’d notice how we’ve typecasted other races in our popular entertainment. But level that charge against Bollywood, and everyone brushes it off saying that masala entertainment shouldn’t be taken so seriously. Except it should – because the fact that black people face tremendous racism in real life India has a lot to do with how they’re stereotyped and ridiculed in reel life.