Apr 02 2008
“The Love Guru”
“The Love Guru” is a movie set to come out in June of this year. It is a comedy about a Guru from India that is hired to come to America to solve a love affair of a hockey player. The Guru is played by Mike Meyers (a.k.a. Austin Powers) and also stars Jessica Alba and Justin Timberlake.
This is becoming to be somewhat of a controversial story as there are scenes in the movie that members of the Hindu religion and people from India in general may find offensive. People have categorized it by saying this is similar to Borat and how Kazakhstan was portrayed in that movie. You can check out the trailer below to get a better idea of what the movie is about.
So the real question is this: Should we, as members of the Indian community and/or the Hindu religion, be offended by a movie of this sort? There are a few different perspectives we can take.
- We should be offended because this movie is making fun of our culture and religion. It is representing us in a negative manner and poking fun at not only our religion, but our lifestyle. There are certain things that should not be made fun of, with religion and ethnicity being at the top of the list. Why does the movie have to isolate a group of people?
- This is just a movie, so does it really matter? The purpose is to make people laugh, and if it does that, it has met its goal. We watch movies all the time that make fun of other cultures and we laugh hysterically at those, so this should not be any different. There is no need to take things so personally.
Another interesting point that came to mind: Indian people make fun of Indian people all the time. We do not find that insulting because we feel like we have the right to make fun of our own community. But, when an ‘outsider’ does the same thing, everyone’s awareness increases and folks start to get defensive. This is not only true in the Indian/Desi community but across all nationalities.
How do you feel about this movie? Should you have a chance to review it and vote whether it should be released or not? In the end, this is just a movie, right? We would like to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to leave comments.
Although I am not a Hindu, I am Indian, and I think this movie will cause a little discomfort for the community. When Indians joke about our society, we do it in a respectful but humurous manner. I feel as though when others try to fill that joking role, they don’t know or care to respect the boundaries.
I do think this movie will turn out to be a huge box office hit because it has some big named stars…which is why i’m not too happy about it. I watched Borat, and it was hilarious, but i could totally see how it could be offending. People in America can be very ignorant, so what we see is what we believe. The South Asian community will probably not be able to stop this..but definitely needs to offset the stereotypes with our own PR campaign.
There is a lot of protest against this movie. I agree it is hurtful to play with people’s religious sentiments. There is plenty of stuff to make the comedies about. Why choose people’s faith and beliefs.