Raising the bar in Indian South African entertainment

I watched 'Material' last night and was well impressed. Not just because it’s proudly South African or anything, but because it gave a new face to Indian South African entertainment.

I have had it up to my ears with Indian theatre and film perpetuating Indian stereotypes of the Lenasia or Chatsworth accent.

The humour is generally tasteless, mindless and embarrassing.

Our Indian heritage is so rich – full of life, colour, history and wisdom. Our culture is beautiful and achievements plentiful. But Indian theatre – the likes of Too Muckin’ Futch and Chilli Boy (not to mention Lotus FM’s Bala and Peru) – degrade Indians to the lowest common denominator.

Then you have Bollywood theatre which portrays us as nothing more than a bunch of dancing models.

Granted, soapies include Indian South Africans seamlessly, and there are some excellent plays coming out of the Indian South African community like We Three Kings. There are also some excellent films like Lucky.

But enough of the Indian struggles during apartheid.

We want our current stories to be told, and not through slapstick humour, but clever, true dialogue.

Indian South Africans are so diverse – like any culture – it’s difficult to represent it generally and expect it to symbolise the entire community or race.

The consolidation of an Indian identity and culture is fraught with problems because of the diversity within the community itself.

Each diverse group seeks to preserve its customs and traditions, perceived to be unique and is further split by factors such as language, caste, class and political affiliations.

Through apartheid, Indians began to discard what was seen as inferior by the white man and adopted the lowest common denominator, and has preserved ‘acceptable’ and superficial elements.

Hence, sari and samoosa comedy takes the reigns.

Films like Run for your Life, its sequel, The Revenge of Bush Knife Bobby and Broken Promises are downright embarrassing, portraying Indian South Africans as one homogenous type of people with no substance.

Material on the other hand, hit the right balance. The balance comes out in portraying the stereotypes we can laugh at, not through awkward clowning, but through the character Cassim’s clever comedy, as well as bringing up our apartheid-entrenched heritage and the culture/ identity crises young Indian South Africans face today.

I want to see more of this, please. Telling our stories as normal films would. Not berating our stunning culture with curry-flavoured fart jokes.

It will be a while until we see an Indian South African playing Evita or the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, and I am looking forward to seeing an Indian walk the streets outside of Fordsburg as an extra. But that will come in time.

We just need to shed the groundless representation of our brown skin being something to laugh at, and embrace it as being normal.

Because Indian South Africans are part of South Africa.

We need not be defined entirely by our race. We need to be defined as human.