The Archies, generational change, and why India will (still) be a cultural superpower

All the hype and advertising about the new Netflix show The Archies, and the rather awkward looking publicity stills we saw from it the last few months, made me fear the worst. In the back of my mind, I was remembering the words of an American social media critic for another (pre)teen movie platformed on Netflix some years ago. I thought if I saw The Archies I would end up saying,  “Oh, what a terrible time to have eyes!” But then, The Archies turned out to be “easy on the eyes,” as they say. The locations, sets, and characters were pleasant. The credibility challenge in transplanting a quintessential American suburban high school comic series to India, i.e., Bharat was handled creatively by placing the story in a hill-station Anglo-Indian community soon after Independence. The dancing was energetic and well-coordinated. The songs were a bit too many, but okay, I guess, for a musical. The message (let’s save our trees and park from greedy builders and crooked politicians), was commendable. Finally, the characters. Despite all the inevitable burdens that surrounded the actors because of the “Nepo Kids” issue, they too worked hard enough for an older generation (“X,” not “Boomer”) viewer like me to say, “nice, but these are the issues that I see in your work from where I stand, and I hope you will consider my comments too, learn, and grow in your own ways.” Generational change and youth culture I suppose I am approaching this movie and the controversies around it from a very generationally self-aware perspective. This is partly because of my academic interest in generational change and youth culture. It is also partly because it was hard not to think about so many cohorts of students in my media studies classes in the US and in India when I watched The Archies. Some things in the story could be right out of their lives, while some other students could well be on their way to making movies like this in their careers. Hence, the format of this review; an intergenerational reflection more than a strictly political or esthetic critique (though I will touch on some social issues and what different generations could take away from this moment as well). First, a little bit about generational change, my interest in it, and of course, the cultural legacy of Archie comics in India for generations before. The comics part is important because, let’s face it, without the idea that this movie was about a very familiar series, some of us probably wouldn’t have watched it. Even now, I wonder what the generational break-up of viewers for the movie has been like. Is the age group depicted in the story, the teens and pre-teens of India today, the “Gen-Z” as they are called in the West (those born between 1995-2010, according to psychologist Jean Twenge, who calls this group “iGen”), excited about this movie, or is it mostly older viewers (Gen X and some Millennials) watching The Archies out of childhood nostalgia? I am curious about what intergenerational conversations might be happening if parents and children are actually watching this together. Or, if multiple generations even watch things together on a TV together any more at all! Parents, Archies, Gen X children The first thing I remember about Archie comics though, from the point of view of understanding the sociology of generations, is the fact that my parents simply banned them from me when I was a child back in the 1970s. Now, my father loved books, and my mother generously bought me amazing books including Tin-Tin comics, but when it came to Archies comics, my parents decided it was not suitable for children. But then, just ten years later, as the 1980s and liberalisation came around, my parents were quite happy to buy Archie comics for my younger sibling! And by then, our once sleepy small town was starting to open Pop Tate type ice cream and fast-food corners where a few high school or college kids began to hang out, sometimes trying to look and sound like Archies characters. Ah. The innocently aspirational 1980s when Indian teens longed for the West not realising the West was going to come to us a few years later to sell us its stuff yet again! I share this as an example of how a generational cohort negotiates culture and cultural taboos at different times. My “Silent Generation” parents (as people born between 1925-45 are called in the US, though I prefer the phrase “Gandhi Gen” for them because they grew up in British-ruled India with Gandhi as a big icon for them), started out with a conservative idea about parenting which meant forbidding comics about American teenagers dating and kissing, but then accepted it all (in comics at least) as a normal course of change for the next generation of children. Even in the 1990s, when I was interviewing MTV and Channel V viewers for my PhD research, intergenerational issues often came up. Almost every interviewee had anecdotes about how they negotiated their space in front of the TV set when watching music videos (which often featured clothing styles and dance moves considered a bit too forward for the time). Sometimes parents were okay, but then grandparents looked uncomfortable, so youngsters would watch something else. Sometimes, parents would encourage their children to watch TV, because they believed all the new global channels would educate their kids and help them in their careers. With this background in mind about media, parenting, and intergenerational negotiations in mind, let us come back to the fun part (some spoilers ahead). The Archies experience The Archies was light and entertaining for the most part, but also incredibly cringe in others. The story, briefly, is that Veronica Lodge’s father has decided to buy out a politician so he can get permission to destroy the town’s pristine park and build a hotel there. Of course, as this conspiracy is unfolding, our friends, Betty, Archie, Veronica, Reggie, Dilton, and Big Ethel, are all busy with their fun high school lives and parties. The backbone of the whole series, Archie’s dual-love dilemma, also plays out in the movie, with suitable ups and downs for the characters, and an almost Bechdel Test appropriate Betty-Veronica friendship depicted patiently too. The parents and elders also get a decent amount of screen time, with Reggie’s newspaper editor father, and Betty’s bookshop owner father, all moving the story along nicely. The teachers, though, barely do much in the story, and the only education-scene is a classroom song delivered by his friends to “conscientise” Archie into recognizing the omnipresence of politics and fighting for social justice. In contrast,  one classroom song I remember from my childhood in the 1970s was from the movie Kitaab. The refrain went something like “Bhim paka taka doom! Bhim paka taka doom!” and then, “VIP, Underwear-Banian!” Now, in the age of globalisation, I suppose lyrics can’t be frivolous anymore because “everything is political,” and therefore rather serious and indeed the sole purpose of life for any worthy teenager alive today. Interestingly, at least two comments I found on Twitter about The Archies called it a movie by, for, and about the students of a posh Mumbai school known for placing its students in American Ivy League universities. ‘Archie, Archie, Everything is Politics’ What sticks out after watching The Archies, ultimately (and before we get into the “nepo kids” issue), is the question of what art and entertainment really ought to be for. Clearly, for a well-regarded film-maker like Zoya Akhtar, it isn’t just business. The Archies is very much about realising, as Archie does after being suemng to by his friends that “life isn’t just for kicks,” but actually “everything is politics.” Our friends, awakened into social awareness and political action, learn to organise, communicate, and dare I say it, propagandise, as well. The boy-genius Dilton Dooley has invented a radio transmitter, and our friends do some courageous pirate-radio ethical-hacking to get their message across to the community (after Reggie’s editor-father has weakly declined to publish his son’s powerful essay against the wealthy Hiram Lodge). But our friends have harnessed even more powerful communication technology now to get the word about the referendum out and stop the destruction of their beloved park. I must admit though, that at this point, I thought I was watching a Pop Tate’s Vanilla Milk Shake version of Rang De Basanti (and before I could decide I was overreacting, I also noticed phrases right out of 1950s socialist cinema like “Naya Roshni” and such). I am not saying that it is wrong to turn a mundane, and dare I say it, “apolitical” comic series into a movie which is so obsessed with politicisation as the greatest end of all art. As someone who watched parks, trees, rocks, lakes, all cruelly disappear from his hi-tech-boom-hit hometown, and see friends still fighting bravely to save a few things here and there from reckless “development” (read about the  Banyan trees of Chevella in Telangana for example, here), I like the fact that saving the trees is made such a central part of the story. There are even some tender, human insights that come in, which are commendable. A movie representing a desire for continuity with nature is wonderful, and making resistance to the destruction of that continuity is also not a problem in itself. But what is the problem? In a word, it is “Wokeflix.” “Wokeflix” and the DEIfication of storytelling Let’s face it, for years and years now, global media mega-corporations have been hammering a cold, sly, one-sided calculus about diversity and representation under the guise of creativity, entertainment, and worse, even ethics. When they say “Representation Matters” what does it actually mean? Making the studious boy-genius Dilton Dooley “come out” about his “crush” on his male friend, as the The Archies movie just did? If representation, diversity, and inclusion is about checking boxes, then why only the “Gay Dilton” box, and why not a “Vegan Jughead” too? Imagine the ecological impact against climate change and animal extinction Zoya Akhtar and Netflix could have achieved had they swapped the “Goat Trotters with Bread, Ball Curry and Rice, Chicken Liver Pie, Roast Quail, Meat and Potatoes” and finally, “Pork Vindaloo,” in the handcuffed Jughead scene with soy or tofu substitutes! Imagine how included vegans watching The Archies might have felt… I say this, once again, not to demean idealism but to caution filmmakers, and audiences, especially from among the Gen Z and the Millennials who have grown up with a skewed and overwhelming discourse about “politicisation” and social justice in their schools and colleges and media, about the cynical ways in which progressive ideals have been stolen and deployed by very un-progressive institutions like corporations, lobbies, and foundations. Many Indians (and Americans) are frankly weary about how the one fundamental reality around which “privilege” can be honestly recognised, that of economic class, has been ignored by the discourse today. Just like Veronica, we seem to have a world in which the inheritors of incredible economic privilege, have decided to go and save the world not by first learning from it, but by imposing their first-world “Woke Inc.” luxury-belief systems on it. I say this because in America, the polarisation between those who spout slogans about poverty and oppression and those who are actually facing it has grown ever wider. In India too, we see the widening of gaps between not just political leanings, but also in terms of perceptions of reality itself. On that note, I recommend the book What Millennials Want: Decoding the World’s Largest Generation, by Vivan Marwah. I am reading it now, and while some presumptions by the author are debatable, his writing shows honesty and openness to change in parts. The vast “privilege” gap in economic terms in India’s youth is indeed real. But is indoctrinating poor kick-seeking confused lover-boy Archie into an “everything is politics” trance the answer? Especially if the indoctrinating is coming not even from “the people,” but from faceless clueless diversity bureaucrats themselves indoctrinated by highly morally and intellectually compromised Western universities? ‘DEI’ and the Death of Real Representation I recently heard from a friend who works as a creative head in an Indian entertainment corporate group that unlike in the past, now their creative teams are constantly monitored by what the West might call a “DEI” bureaucracy. It is one thing dealing with legal issues as a business, and quite another for native creators and artists to be told to put in elements which don’t fly with their story, or with the culture of the people being “represented.” Sometimes, even when a show seems quite nice in itself, like a new American cartoon about a pre-school for Hindu gods, you see the “cultural consultants” listed there and they are people certified by Western academic or corporate institutions, not indigenous traditional paramparas at all. Is this how MNC’s do business in other people’s lives? And the media is about our lives, something every generation should remember. Finally, in spite of the gloomy realities of the “politics” of cultural representation in the Indian media business which is run by foreign finance and its anointed consultants, I do think there is hope. And strangely enough, it lies in the very issue which we first criticised The Archies about —  that of the “Nepo Kids.” At a broader level, yes, the question of privilege versus merit, and nepotism, are valid concerns for a rapidly modernising society. The treatment of newcomers in the film industry is also a valid concern. But there is a broader positive that can come out of the “nepo” debate if we were to start looking at the whole issue of inheritance more honestly. Generations, is All We Are, and Will Be … Inheritance, intergenerational continuity, legacy, ancestors, descendants, honour, duty, purpose. These are all words that all cultural creators and consumers should attend to diligently. These are ideas and ideals that have determined human history across cultures for thousands of years, and still do, though our media and academic mania of the moment about “everything is politics” may have distracted us. We can learn from progressive ideals, sure, to the extent that it is still honest and untainted by corporate manipulation. But when we fall for it, we are left with a society where the elite kids grow up in one silo and the rest in another. One set votes for Modi and Hindutva, the other for American definitions of progress and equity. One set thinks they have a duty to parents and to progeny, and the other thinks parents represent oppression and their only duty is to American Higher Education certified victim-identity-groups. One set lives in a flow of cultural inheritance, the other wallows with so much economic inheritance it behaves like Udhayanidhi Stalin profiting out of calling for the abolition of cultural inheritance altogether (see my article on this issue,  here). I should say it was mildly amusing to read Zoya Akhtar’s passionate and complex  defence against charges about the “Nepo Kids” business in The Archies. Her words of course, check all the boxes, and demonstrate her mastery over the progressive psychology self-assessment test. But in the end, all she can say is “get lost,” to critics; our money, our movie, our casting choices. Inheritance, it seems, prevails, even among the progressive too! But there is a happy side to this whole thing too. If only the jet set world of media, business, and government, by which I mean parties of all ideological leanings, just learn to let go of this phobia about the principle of inheritance… It was awkward, yes, but I admit, also charming and delightful in a way to see in The Archies actors who I couldn’t help thinking of simply as little Shah Rukh, little Sridevi, and little Amitabh. Don’t worry about trying to be your own self, is all I can say to them. I shrank from this star-child identity, this duty to legacy, when I was younger, and I used to see my mothers’ fans insisting on adulating me a bit too. But in the end, here we are. My mother, after 200 movies and so many achievements, passed away finally and is now a memory for her millions of fans. But of course, she lives too, not just in her movies but also in her family; in me, in my sister, in her grandchildren. That is what life is, isn’t it? At least life in this Bharat, where the traditions, rituals, sentiments of ancestral continuity haven’t been violently broken by totalitarian ideologies and cultural revolutions like in most of the world? Let us honour this intergenerational continuity. Let us learn from even the failed dreams of our woke lot, and hope they truly wake up! I think by embracing intergenerational continuity and learning to represent that in our art and media and education, we will make Bharat a cultural superpower. Even with, or even despite, movies like The Archies. (Finally, a postscript: Dear Netflix, you have so many languages listed in the soundtrack for The Archies — but why not Sanskrit too? It would offer an elegance that needs to be remembered, and get you in the good books of the powers that be too.) The writer is Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco. He has authored several books,  including ‘Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Indian Intelligence’ (Westland, 2015). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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