Did The Oscars Think Using Fake Brown People During Its Performance of “Naatu Naatu” Would Go Unnoticed?!
By Stacy Lee Kong
Image: DVV Entertainment
A thought exercise: say you are producing a live performance of “Naatu Naatu,” the Oscar-nominated song from Telugu blockbuster RRR, which was history-making and ground-breaking in a variety of ways, at the Oscars, during a year where representation wins and glaring snubs dominated the pre-show discourse. Would you approach that production with extra care, or would you do the same shit you always do? I feel like—and correct me if I’m wrong here—most reasonable people would go with option A. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and executive producers Glenn Weiss (who also directed the show) and Ricky Kirshner, went with option B instead.
I didn’t realize this on Oscar night, but the high-energy performance—which was genuinely super fun to watch—didn’t feature the movie’s cast. In fact, over the course of this week, we learned that it didn’t even feature South Asian dancers. I know the Oscars happened a whole week ago, but the details that have come out since then have been so egregious that I think it’s worth delving into how this happened, because this entire situation exposes the fault lines that still exist within these huge organizations. What’s more, it really emphasizes what I’ve been saying this entire awards season, which is that we haven’t actually seen meaningful change and frankly, we’re not going to until success in creative fields is decoupled from white acceptance.
There are lots of reasons the song’s nomination (and win) was such a big deal
“Naatu Naatu,” can claim several firsts: it was the first Indian film song to be nominated for an Oscar. (Yes, AR Rahman did win Best Original Song and Best Original Score for “Jai Ho” from Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, but that was a British production.) It was the first time a Telugu film had been nominated, because while India did submit the 1986 drama Swathi Muthyam for Best Foreign Language Film that year, the Academy didn’t actually choose to nominate it for the award. And it was one of the first times an Indian feature had been nominated, period. The last was 2002’s Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
I think there are also a couple of other things that feed into its ground-breakingness. First, this nomination, and the movie’s sheer popularity, helps expand the non-Indian world’s idea of what Indian movies even are. Many Western audiences conflate Bollywood, the super popular Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry, with all of Indian cinema. Pre-RRR, I’m betting that lots of us didn’t even know that Tollywood (the Telugu-language film industry of South India), Kollywood (its Tamil-language counterpart), Sandalwood (the country’s Kannada-language film industry, based in Karnataka) and Malayalam cinema (the Malayalam industry, based in Kerala) even existed. But now, anyone who decides to learn more about RRR is also going to realize that India is far more diverse than it is in the Western imagination, and its cinema industries are equally distinct. And that’s fitting, because those four South Indian industries now generate more revenue than Bollywood. In fact, they are huge power players that have often provided source material for the Bollywood movies that gain international attention.
Its themes are also super relevant right now. Please note I am leaving so much out when I say this, including pyrotechnics and characters that outrun tigers, but basically: this movie is a (very) fictionalized tale about two real-life Indian revolutionaries: Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.). Raju and Bheem never met in real-life, but RRR explores what would happen if they joined forces in their collective fight against British colonial rule… and also did not have to abide by the laws of physics. Considering the U.K. is just about to throw an extremely expensive party to celebrate its new monarch despite a horrifying cost-of-living crisis, I think this is a great time to be thinking about the monarchy’s legacy, which yes, very much includes its colonial past and present.
An aside: I’d be remiss if I ignored the other ways RRR offers opportunity for education and critique—as Vox writer Ritesh Babu argued last summer, the film is “admirably anti-colonialist with its searing hatred for the British Empire and the white man’s burden. Its contempt for the colonizers, with action scenes showcasing tigers and leopards devouring them, is delightful and resonant… But it is also emblematic of a larger current trend in Indian film—movies that stoke the flames of nationalism in the current India and its troubling political climate.” This is something I’m also learning about, and it definitely complicates the feel-good story of the movie’s success, but I think it’s valuable to learn about the political context behind popular art, especially if it’s from a culture we don’t belong to or aren’t familiar with. And ultimately, I do think the film offering international audiences an opportunity to learn more about another country’s politics is a good thing, even if the way that’s showcased in the movie is flawed.
How did this performance even go down like this?
But, back to “Naatu Naatu.” Considering how rarely Indian movies, and especially South Indian movies, receive this sort of international attention and Western recognition, it makes sense that people would be excited and interested in celebrating the song, the movie and the nomination. The Academy itself was certainly proud it had recognized RRR. On Monday, the organization posted an article on its website proclaiming that the movie had made history, quoting composer M.M. Keeravaani (who took home the award alongside lyricist Chandrabose) on the deeper meaning of the duo’s win: “I feel this is about just the beginning of everything, so that the world—particularly the Western World—focuses more on Indian music and Asian music, which is long due,” he said. “I feel very happy. It's like opening doors for the world to embrace our culture and music.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t extend that same care when it came to producing the performance. IndieWire’s Proma Khosla was the first to report on the flaws in the performance with a Sunday-night feature that explained exactly what went down: “the Oscars opted to work with non-Indian choreographers Napoleon and Tabitha D’umo, who have an existing relationship with the show, and dancers they had prior experience with—none of whom are believed to be of South Asian descent,” she wrote. Apparently, Charan and Rao were originally slated to be part of the segment, but they declined in late February and producers opted to bring in lead dancers who looked like the actors, instead. Only, neither of their choices, Billy Mustapha and Jason Glover, are South Asian, which means the final production featuring Indian-passing people instead of actual Indian people, so that’s cool.
Let’s also think a bit more about what it means that the ensemble cast assembled by the D’umos (who go by NappyTabs, which is not, like, a great name for two white people) was made up of dancers the choreographers knew and had previously worked with, and that none of them were South Asian. Either they know South Asian dancers and chose not to cast them, or they don’t know any South Asian dancers. Both scenarios speak to the challenges non-white people face when trying to break into creative fields, the power gatekeepers hold and institutions’ lacklustre approach to representation. Like… why would producers reach out to white choreographers instead of Indian ones? How could anyone miss the optics of a performance with no South Asian representation aside from singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava? And why in the world would two white choreographers accept a job that involves a culture they don’t belong to, and a style they aren’t experts in?
I mean, we know the reason why all those things happened, but considering how many conversations we’ve had about representation over the past three, five, 10, 15 years, it’s just very frustrating to see that no one in a position of power has learned even one lesson.
And this wasn’t even the only example of South Asians being snubbed at the Oscars
Clearly, being progressive or culturally respectful is not considered the right thing to do to the Academy. Instead, it’s a ‘nice’ thing to do, because as soon as there’s a routine show-business difficulty, it's completely acceptable to regress to the tried-and-true (that is, white) approach. But decisions like this aren’t made in a vacuum. They are informed by real-life prejudices and systemic inequities, they harm real people and they contribute to a wider perception of who’s ‘good enough’ for the more prestigious (and, I imagine, lucrative) opportunities. That’s why so many people spoke out about this blunder, including dancer Vikas Arun, who took to Instagram to explain how hurtful it was to see people in his professional circle take this job without ever questioning why he wasn’t there, even though they knew about the racism he’s faced while trying to build his career. Joya Kazi, an L.A.-based dancer, choreographer, consultant and producer, also took to Instagram to comment on the performance. It “was supposed to be a huge celebration of pride [and] yet we were left feeling empty & snubbed. A song about colonialism & lyrics saying that no dance is as good as the villager’s dance was performed by two brown passing men,” she wrote. “The colonists are the butt of the joke of this song & wanting to recreate the movie scene even with the group of men who should be the locals as anything but South Asian has got me teetering between being flabbergasted & laughing at the irony. We have to do better.” She later told CBS that her agent had submitted her as a potential dancer or member of the production team, but NappyTabs did not consider her.
As Khosla pointed out, this was “an opportunity that should have been nothing short of gift-wrapped for South Asian choreographers and performers… [But] when producers and directors repeatedly tell South Asian artists that they need more experience and stronger relationships but still pass them over for chances like this one, the takeaway from the talent perspective is that they don’t have what it takes.”
Ironically, though, this situation helpfully demonstrates that maintaining the status quo and shutting racialized people out of these spaces doesn’t actually lead to the best work. The D’umos adapted the film’s dance sequence, which was choreographed by Prem Rakshith, instead of imagining a production that was actually designed for the Oscars stage, and while I’m sure the time crunch was part of that, I also guarantee that a real expert in Indian dance could (and would have loved to) do something much more venue-specific.
It's also just so disrespectful, much like host Jimmy Kimmel referring to RRR as a “Bollywood movie” during his opening monologue, and producers cutting off filmmaker Guneet Monga, one of the filmmakers behind Best Documentary Short Film winner The Elephant Whisperer, mid-speech. IndieWire posted the full speech she had prepared on Twitter and spoiler alert: it would not have taken too long for her to say… especially since everyone who won for All Quiet on the Western Front got to speak for as long as their (white, male) hearts desired.
So… not to harp on my perpetual thesis or anything, but this is just more evidence that the Oscars remains a white supremacist institution that is not learning the lessons it needs to learn quickly enough, if at all. Unfortunately, that does not mean we should stop paying attention, even though it is so, so boring to keep having this conversation. Instead, I say we keep talking about it as loudly as possible, because embarrassment and damage to the brand (and by extension lost revenue) seems to be the only way things change.
And Did You Hear About…
Russell Brand’s descent into conspiracy theories and pseudointellectualism.
This great/depressing read on London’s rental market and the particular devastation of trying to build a life in a city that becomes somehow more impossible to afford with every passing year. Trigger warning for all my Toronto friends, sigh.
This fun game pegged to this year’s Coachella lineup. (I’m 66.)
Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest Almond Mom moment.
The startling decline of feminist media.
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