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[necrosis]

this is a really salient point, honestly

 

[hawk2025]

People projecting their own personal preferences for wanting to date outside of their race in this thread does not invalidate her claims, just as much as you said.



She says it right there that the film plays into this, it's not a condemnation of their actual relationship.

The film doesn't play into that at all.

In fact, the film ENDS with

Spoiler

the white woman being integrated into his culture with a real-life picture of the couple in their Pakistani wedding.

 

[Deepwater]

It's an independent movie.

This is an independent movie. This wasn't financed by some big cigar smoking Hollywood executive. I doubt it's going to rake in much money either. If the the producer was interested in maximum profit margins he would have backed something else.

Distributed by Lionsgate and Amazon

 

[Twig and Berries]

It's almost like you made this problem up. Minorities already have an issue with representation in general in American media, yet alone some supposed issue that arrives from them being on screen together in relationships. LOL

For someone who I see so frequently posting in threads about racial inequalities, you sure do like to determine what is and isn't a problem for other minorities. Maybe you should check yourself a little instead of talking down to people.

🙄

people tend to interact (also, date) people within their communities. Because of segregation (guess who's responsible for that) people tend to marry within racial/ethnic groups not only because of close proximity but shared cultural experience.

lets not make this topic into shipping colored people with white people is what's gonna kill racism, it's quite frankly depressing.

I'm not saying couples of the same race are a problem or that they're not understandably common, I'm talking about

Just like Hollywood, you seem to be under the impression that minorities can only end up with another person of the same ethnicity or with a white person.

basically that. And yes, I should have put Asian + other minority on there too. Asian + Black on screen couples are a goddamn unicorn.

 

[Foggy]

It's ok to criticize a writer for making a salient point but using a piss poor foundation to make it. If someone is insistent on focusing on the larger issue, then do your due diligence and don't carelessly drop in a derailment, particularly when it involves real peoples' lives.

Distributed by Lionsgate and Amazon

Distribution is fundamentally different than production.

 

[Kinyou]

Let's take this further:

Is Hidden Figures somehow exempt from being included in "empowering media for Black women" because it's inspired by a real life story? All media plays, no matter if it's inspired by real stories or not, is valid to be criticized just like how any other "fictionalized" stories and characters are.

It would still be empowering to black women because the real life event itself is empowering. The issue is when you make that connection with the Big Sick it means that you're also bothered by real life brown man dating white women.

Distributed by Lionsgate and Amazon

Does that mean much? Probably picked up for cheap.

 

[jon bones]

ehh i get it but as a brown dude married to a white woman i kind of love the relatability of the big sick & master of none

 

[Deepwater]

It's ok to criticize a writer for making a salient point but using a piss poor foundation to make it. If someone is insistent on focusing on the larger issue, then do your due diligence and don't carelessly drop in a derailment, particularly when it involves real peoples' lives.



Distribution is fundamentally different than production.

And the issue here ultimately isn't about movies being made, it's what hollywood decides gets mass release

 

[Sickboy007]

Wait I thought that Asian men's problem was that they were sexless? Now they're getting too many white women?

 

[Cyframe]

Maybe it isn't the best jumping point, but I can see her point here. And on another topic, stumbling into this topic are those who are missing the points that white women and being fair skinned is colorism wrapped in fetishism in a lot of cases. When I'm dating outside my race, that's one of the things I check for, is this person fetishizing me.

Nothing is wrong with interracial relationships but watching Netflix's Get Down I was disappointed that they juxtaposed Jaden Smith's character with a white guy. It was typical and most of all they didn't do anything with it and it floundered in season 2. Disappointing

I can definitely feel the author's personal experiences through the writing because she's Asian. Some of the points I don't understand admittedly.

 

[Infinite]

It would still be empowering to black women because the real life event itself is empowering. The issue is when you make that connection with the Big Sick it means that you're also bothered by real life brown man dating white women.

no it doesn't

 

[Exploratory]

That fucking title

Fuck it that's the reality we shouldn't have to sugar-coat it at all.

 

[lightskintwin]

For someone who I see so frequently posting in threads about racial inequalities, you sure do like to determine what is and isn't a problem for other minorities. Maybe you should check yourself a little instead of talking down to people.

Maybe you should make a real point, instead of some made up one. Perhaps your point was poorly explained, but can you at least agree that there is no issue of South Asians or Asians in general consistently paired up together in relationships in American media, when they are barely even represented in media, yet alone in relationships.

 

[O Canada Our Home and Native Land]

What exactly was your point?

"I rebuke this argument because there's only now a little bit of PoC representation in media?"

Let's take this further:

Is Hidden Figures somehow exempt from being included in "empowering media for Black women" because it's inspired by a real life story? All media plays, no matter if it's inspired by real stories or not, is valid to be criticized just like how any other "fictionalized" stories and characters are.

My argument is that she only has a few examples. It's hardly a trend, if it even is one. She's stomping on a tiny sprout, south asian representation in media, before it has any chance of blooming. Aziz Ansari is fairly well known, but Kumail, Kaling, and others are barely known.

Wow!

"You finally have yours, now shut up and stop complaining" is not a valid form of criticism. Speaking down to a majority female blog is also not a good look. How dare these WoC have criticisms for the media they enjoy!

Propping up Jezebel for feminism would be like defending Kotaku for gaming. Why would you do that? That doesn't make any sense to me. If your biggest voice is a clickbait quality blog then your cause is doomed.

 

[Poor GRIMES]

The movie is practically autobiographical! It's not a couple of people using their own experiences to fill in the gaps in a character's arc or personality, they wrote it about themselves! Your entire point collapses once you take this into account.

I think the writer has a valid point to make, but that she literally picked the absolute worst movie to do it. In using this movie the article opens itself up to being interpreted in this way.

You can separate interpretations of art and how it plays into the culture as a whole over the individual choices and actions of people.

It would still be empowering to black women because the real life event itself is empowering. The issue is when you make that connection with the Big Sick it means that you're also bothered by real life brown man dating white women.

The problem is that The Big Sick is another one of those movies that portray "secular Muslims" as the standard for "good Muslim representation" in Hollywood. No one is criticizing the people themselves, but you have to consider that the film is yet another example of a Brown man seeing a White woman as the ultimate prize.

My argument is that she only has a few examples. It's hardly a trend, if it even is one. She's stomping on a tiny sprout, south asian representation in media, before it has any chance of blooming. Aziz Ansari is fairly well known, but Kumail, Kaling, and others are barely known.

It's a trend in the already slim amount of representation of South Asian men in Hollywood.

Criticizing artists will not "stomp them out" when Hollywood has been doing that very well for the past... century.

 

[Foggy]

And the issue here ultimately isn't about movies being made, it's what hollywood decides gets mass release

This didn't get a mass release. Opening weekend was five theaters. It's getting the same sort of release as Amira & Sam, a movie about a white man and a brown woman(with Martin Starr no less).

 

[hawk2025]

You can separate interpretations of art and how it plays into the culture as a whole over the individual choices and actions of people.


The problem is that The Big Sick is another one of those movies that portray "secular Muslims" as the standard for "good Muslim representation" in Hollywood. No one is criticizing the people themselves, but you have to consider that the film is yet another example of a Brown man seeing a White woman as the ultimate prize.

You keep misrepresenting the movie.

Have you seen it?

She is not seen or treated as a fucking prize.

 

[God Dayumm]

Wait I thought that Asian men's problem was that were sexless? Now they're getting too many white women?

Asian men (easten, indian and even arabic) have near zero positive representation in mainstream media and suddenly the author is oh so exhausted that a couple of movies (one which is biographical) put them in nice relationships with white women.

 

[Kinyou]

The problem is that The Big Sick is another one of those movies that portray "secular Muslims" as the standard for "good Muslim representation" in Hollywood. No one is criticizing the people themselves, but you have to consider that the film is yet another example of a Brown man seeing a White woman as the ultimate prize.

Without having seen that movie I take that interpretation with a big grain of salt, but also, what are they supposed to do? Not show their real life experiences?

Asian men (easten, indian and even arabic) have near zero positive representation in mainstream media and suddenly the author is oh so exhausted that a couple of movies (one which is biographical) put them in nice relationships with white women.

That's another thing, can you really call this a trend?

 

[RastaMentality]

But women of color have always been desired in film. It's men of color -- primarily Asian men -- that are underrepresented as romantic interests.

This is simply not true. White women have always been the ultimate prize and if it's not a white woman, it's some badly caricatured foreign, "exotic" (god i hate this word) woman in a spy movie with 0 characterization.

 

[Linkura]

I read a post in a similar vein yesterday that was complaining that Film/TV only portrays secular Muslims. A fair point, but I don't know if these criticisms stick in this case since it's based off his life.

The Only Muslims Hollywood Likes Are The 'Secular' Ones

I guess they did not watch Orange is the New Black.

Seriously, fuck articles like these.

 

[D i Z]

I don't get why people are knocking her premise. One of the central themes of the film itself is this very topic and other related matters. What are you all doing?

 

[platocplx]

A key part of what I think people are failing to grasp from this is that it's not an attack on the couple this particular movie is about. It's rather about what Hollywood decides is worth pushing to the masses.

Nobody is saying their story isn't worth being told, just that it's emblematic of a larger trend of what gets widely distributed in the market. Ergo, a systemic issue. But a lot of you can't parse targeted individual critiques from systemic issues regarding a lot of topics so I'm not surprised many of you are slow on the uptake here.

Yeah i get it, its bigger than just them especially when the women of color arent placed on the same level as other love interests unless there is a white person involved and again being after thoughts and one dimensional characters.

Mainstream HAS to have someone white in the movie or it then becomes a "Black or an asian movie etc vs being just as mainstream"

 

[Poor GRIMES]

You keep misrepresenting the movie.

Have you seen it?

She is not seen or treated as a fucking prize.

Why should my seeing it or not invalidate what the author has been saying? The author herself has seen the movie--she's even enjoyed it-- and she makes it pretty clear that this happens:

The mating dance between Asian men and white women is rife with exotification and cringe-worthy othering. As bell hooks puts it, in ”the commodification of Otherness," ethnicity becomes spice to a dull, mainstream white dish. In The Big Sick, ”Kumail" picks up ”Emily" by writing her name out in Urdu in the beginning of the film. (Apparently Pete Holmes recommended Nanjiani use ”Once you go Pakistan, you never go Backistan," a line that would have made me vomit just from the pronunciation of ”Pakistan.") We later see ”Kumail" pull the write-her-name-in-Urdu move on another white chick. (He sleeps only with white women throughout The Big Sick.)

Without having seen that movie I take that interpretation with a big grain of salt, but also, what are they supposed to do? Not show their real life experiences?

No?

You are free to do as you wish, but always remember that granting your relationship a spotlight by putting it on the big screen will lend itself to criticisms of how it plays into the culture as a whole.

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

I read this earlier, and while I understand the general complaint, the use of Te Big Sick is odd because it's a true story of Nanjiani and his wife, so criticizing it in this way feels fairly close to criticizing Nanjiani's real life romantic decisions which is off putting.

Agree. The author may well be on to something with the commentary on the broader trend, but framing it around The Big Sick which is based on the truth of Nanjiani and his wife just feels mean-spirited.

 

[adamsapple]

As a brown man I am not tired of that premise, I endorse it.

also holy crap the topic title is such a loaded one before you read the article lol.

 

[Deepwater]

This didn't get a mass release. Opening weekend was five theaters. It's getting the same sort of release as Amira & Sam, a movie about a white man and a brown woman(with Martin Starr no less).

It's showing up in more than your local indie theater, there are at least 3 separate theaters within 30 minutes of me where it's showing.

Is it gonna show up in the one theater in Nowheresville, Wisconsin with a population of 5000? No, but it's getting a release

 

[Kinyou]

No?

You are free to do as you wish, but always remember that granting your relationship a spotlight by putting it on the big screen will lend itself into criticisms of how it plays into the culture as a whole.

"You're free to show off your real life relationship but I really don't like it if you do"
Are they also playing into that culture if they talk about their relationship in public?

 

[Twig and Berries]

Maybe you should make a real point, instead of some made up one. Perhaps your point was poorly explained, but can you at least agree that there is no issue of South Asians consistently paired up together in relationships in American media, when they are barely even represented in media, yet alone in relationships.

Again, you don't get to decide what is and isn't a problem for other communities. South Asians chiefly have a problem with representation in Hollywood but when they are presented in a romantic relationship, they're almost always paired with their same race and simultaneously stereotyped as a South Asian couple rather than two individual people in a relationship. The former being a larger looming issue does not preclude the latter from being problematic or from being pointed out.

 

[Cyframe]

And a limited framework of representation isn't an argument when someone is critiquing tropes, white romantic leads. Am I not allowed to critique other gay media because Moonlight came out and won awards?

I remember when Noah's Arc (notice the c) came out and while it was a breath of fresh air for Black gay men, the MC chasing someone on the DL gave me a bad taste in my mouth. And don't even talk about that film. It's a really good show but it had certain stereotypes and regressive attitudes, but it was mostly good and if someone wrote about that, maybe I'd be a little upset at first but I would understand where they're coming from.

How many people in this thread have dealt with misogyny and colorism as an Asian woman here? I would like to hear your experiences.

 

[Poor GRIMES]

"You're free to show off your real life relationship but I really don't like it if you do"

Says who?

The Big Sick has been roundly lauded in the press lately, including here at Jezebel, and not without good reason: it's a funny, heartwarming love story based on the true-life experiences of cowriters/married couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. But as much as I liked it—and I did—I also found myself exhausted, yet again, by the onscreen depiction of a brown man wanting to date a white woman, while brown women are portrayed alternately as caricatures, stereotypes, inconsequential, and/or the butts of a joke.

And I don't know, are their personal interviews playing into film representations in Hollywood?

 

[wandering]

I get where she is coming from? I remember a site called bitterasianmen.cm or some shit where the Asian guys complained about Asian men being emasculated in the media, Asian women loving white men, and Asian men's inability to get white women. Like shit was weird, they fetishised white women in ways way worst than they accused Asian women. They seemed exponentially more disloyal than the Asian women they criticised, they were just capable to jump the fence.

A random website is indicative of wider social trends? You can find plenty of shit going the other way, doesn't mean much

 

[LionPride]

Any?

Nah cuz you gotta be specific with that shit

 

[Kinyou]

Says who?

It does sound like she would have enjoyed it more if the movie was a little less like their real relationship

 

[The Albatross]

Wish my family were like yours, was scared as fuck bringing home a black or white girl to my parents, so they never knew any shit like that was going on and the women knew nothing was ever going to come out of it long term. Shit even a Indian girl ain't enough, she needs to be a Sikh and the right caste as well, that really narrows the pool. I like my family so ain't gonna go against them for a women, now worth it.

I know a few Indians that married white girls and one married a Muslim, their families either told them to get fucked or didn't give a shit about them in the first place. Shit's rough but that's life.

Have a lot of friends who have had to go through the same thing.

 

[Jest Chillin]

My argument is that she only has a few examples. It's hardly a trend, if it even is one. She's stomping on a tiny sprout, south asian representation in media, before it has any chance of blooming. Aziz Ansari is fairly well known, but Kumail, Kaling, and others are barely known.

Kumail, sure. Kaling is very well known. Stared in the wildly popular show The Office. Authored several successful books. The main character in a successful (6 seasons so far) sitcom on Fox that is literally titled after her.

It could legitimately be argued that Kaling is more well known than Ansari. But Kumail's star is definitely rising.

 

[HisImperialMajesty]

"A South Asian man rejecting a South Asian woman because of her culture is a more radical statement than if it were the other way around. In The Mindy Project, Mindy Kaling’s onscreen relationships with white guys take on a different context, because South Asia is a patriarchy—a colorist patriarchy."

So Mindy Kaling dating only white dudes is ok, because the "South Asian patriarchy"? What in the what? The mental gymnastics astound me. Is there no such thing as the white male patriarchy in America anymore?

Asian guy + Black woman typing please and thank you.

Seriously I wanna see that.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wd739w/inside-the-asian-men-black-women-online-dating-scene-456

IT'S HAPPENING!!?!?

 

[Goodstyle]

This article has it so backwards lmao. It's always white men getting with brown/Asian movies in these films/TV shows. The reverse is a recent phenomenon.

 

[lightskintwin]

This didn't get a mass release. Opening weekend was five theaters. It's getting the same sort of release as Amira & Sam, a movie about a white man and a brown woman(with Martin Starr no less).

The Big Sick goes wide release on July 14th.

 

[Poor GRIMES]

It does sound like she would have enjoyed it more if the movie was a little less like their real relationship

I don't see that criticism being levied at any point in the article nor did she even attempt to make rewrites of the script. She also said she loved a certain point of the script and how her feelings were probably validated by that one point as well:

In what might be the climax of The Big Sick, Nanjiani’s character shouts at his parents—why did you bring me to America if you did not want me to be American? He criticizes them for sticking to the old ways, striking a chord with many second-generation immigrants in the US. The American “dream” is dangled before them like a carrot rotting from the inside out. It’s a scene that portrays the apex of Othering, for the minoritized person to see their own people as Other. (Similarly, in Meet the Patels, Ravi Patel travels all the way to India to find a suitable wife despite being in love with a white girl, but he finds nobody who meets his expectations. His parents finally “agree” and he ends up his white love interest, who in the end we see sitting in the kitchen, rolling roti with her mother-in-law.)

 

[Foggy]

It's showing up in more than your local indie theater, there are at least 3 separate theaters within 30 minutes of me where it's showing.

Is it gonna show up in the one theater in Nowheresville, Wisconsin with a population of 5000? No, but it's getting a release

What kind of standard is this?

This is why it's important to at least have a cogent foundation for an argument. The exact same point can be made without this bizarre tangent. It's ultimately irrelevant.

 

[Vermillion]

Fuck it that's the reality we shouldn't have to sugar-coat it at all.

If your article title can be found at Stormfront, you should probably reconsider.

And if the issue isn't that you want *less* interracial couples, but better representation for minority women, then say that. Talk about that, not how annoying it is to see minority men with white women. That's just dumb.

 

[Deepwater]

Yeah i get it, its bigger than just them especially when the women of color arent placed on the same level as other love interests unless there is a white person involved and again being after thoughts and one dimensional characters.

Mainstream HAS to have someone white in the movie or it then becomes a "Black or an asian movie etc vs being just as mainstream"

The entire underlying premise here is that productions with homogenous ethnic casts aren't worth being made or funded/distributed by Hollywood.

It's not a marginalization of white interracial relationships, it's a marginalization of homogenous ethnic relationships and communities.

 

[hawk2025]

Why should my seeing it or not invalidate what the author has been saying? The author herself has seen the movie--she's even enjoyed it-- and she makes it pretty clear that this happens:



No?

You are free to do as you wish, but always remember that granting your relationship a spotlight by putting it on the big screen will lend itself to criticisms of how it plays into the culture as a whole.

*You* are the one arguing Emily is treated as a prize in the movie, without seeing it.

Not the Jezebel writer, you. Don't hide behind her words.

It's frankly disgusting and reductive to treat her as a "prize", given what she went through in real life.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

A key part of what I think people are failing to grasp from this is that it's not an attack on the couple this particular movie is about. It's rather about what Hollywood decides is worth pushing to the masses.

Nobody is saying their story isn't worth being told, just that it's emblematic of a larger trend of what gets widely distributed in the market. Ergo, a systemic issue. But a lot of you can't parse targeted individual critiques from systemic issues regarding a lot of topics so I'm not surprised many of you are slow on the uptake here.

Dev dates several black women and Indian women in Master of None.

Like, the sample size is so small for leading Indian men in Hollywood that this article feels about 25 years too soon. Especially since the two examples in question (as well as the movie Lion) are based on either true stories or closely based on the lead actor's real dating life.

It does have some basis in reality as well. Stats show that >40% of native-born Asian men (and >50% of women) in America enter interracial marriages, with >70% of those being to white spouses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter...u.E2.80.99s_2008_American_Community_Survey.29

As an aside, Slumdog Millionaire had a brown-brown romance and as far as I know it's the highest grossing Hollywood film with an Indian lead actor: $377 million.

 

[Foggy]

The Big Sick goes wide release on July 14th.

Because it sold well in smaller markets and they feel bolder to release wide because of its success and buzz. This is how these things work. Not because this is a "safe" interracial relationship.

 

[Poor GRIMES]

"A South Asian man rejecting a South Asian woman because of her culture is a more radical statement than if it were the other way around. In The Mindy Project, Mindy Kaling's onscreen relationships with white guys take on a different context, because South Asia is a patriarchy—a colorist patriarchy."

So Mindy Kaling dating only white dudes is ok, because the "South Asian patriarchy"? What in the what? The mental gymnastics astound me. Is there no such thing as the white male patriarchy in America anymore?



https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wd739w/inside-the-asian-men-black-women-online-dating-scene-456

IT'S HAPPENING!!?!?

If you followed these sort of think pieces, then you would know that Mindy is also very much getting dragged for only dating White men on her show too.

*You* are the one arguing Emily is treated as a prize in the movie, without seeing it.

Not the Jezebel writer, you. Don't hide behind her words.

It's frankly disgusting and reductive to treat her as a "prize", given what she went through in real life.

All of my posts in this thread directly related to what the writer has stated in her piece, and my defending her examples used.

 

[lightskintwin]

Again, you don't get to decide what is and isn't a problem for other communities. South Asians chiefly have a problem with representation in Hollywood but when they are presented in a romantic relationship, they're almost always paired with their same race and simultaneously stereotyped as a South Asian couple rather than two individual people in a relationship. The former being a larger looming issue does not preclude the latter from being problematic or from being pointed out.

So isn't the issue that they're not seen as two individual people in a relationship and not that they are a South Asian couple?

 

[Deepwater]

Again, you don't get to decide what is and isn't a problem for other communities. South Asians chiefly have a problem with representation in Hollywood but when they are presented in a romantic relationship, they're almost always paired with their same race and simultaneously stereotyped as a South Asian couple rather than two individual people in a relationship. The former being a larger looming issue does not preclude the latter from being problematic or from being pointed out.

the author is literally south asian.

 

[Cyframe]

The entire underlying premise here is that productions with homogenous ethnic casts aren't worth being made or funded/distributed by Hollywood.

It's not a marginalization of white interracial relationships, it's a marginalization of homogenous ethnic relationships and communities.

Exactly. That's the big premise that I was able to divulge from the article.