"Golden Men, Tigers, and Jewels" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (Goa - 2 March 2013)

In Oscar-winning Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012), based on Yann Martell’s novel of the same name, an Indian boy reverses Christopher Columbus’ fifteenth century oceanic journey by travelling to the west from the “Indies,” but finds himself in the middle of nowhere, instead. That nowhereness is signified by the strange island that Pi arrives at in the course of his perilous voyage with Richard Parker - the Bengal tiger he is saddled with and tames while lost at sea. The island, populated by meerkats, sustains by day and kills by night – its inlet waters turning toxic. Pi is to discover later that the unpeopled island features on no known map.

Columbus’ own unmapped wanderings “about the Caribbean in search of India” are referred to in Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather (1995) as having caused the explorer to “[write] home to say that the ancient mariners had erred in thinking the earth was round. Rather, he said, it was shaped like a woman’s breast...” In likening Columbus to a lost infant seeking “a cosmic breast,” McClintock identifies “the female body ... as marking ... the limits of the known world...” She adroitly analyzes the European encounter with the “New World” as one replete with a coeval anxiety of the loss of and desire for “the female body,” which is at once maternal and erotic. 

Women’s bodies were as much the metaphor of exploratory longing as the theme that caused this year’s Oscars to hit an all time low. The 85th Academy Awards opened with the song “We Saw Your Boobs” - vexing for many reasons, not least the undermining of professional women by a still largely white boys’ club. That the song was sung by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, only further proves how the pursuit for mainstream acceptance can devolve into a minstrel show of insensitivity to other minorities. Breasts, it would seem, continue to denote the confusion men have with shifting boundaries, both in the landscape of the film industry and in commerce generally. Note Oscar host Seth MacFarlane’s conflation of xenophobia and misogyny in a joke that simultaneously acknowledges and belittles gender and ethnic diversity when he said of Salma Hayek that it mattered little if she could be understood or not, because “she’s hot.”

The incestuousness inherent within Columbus’ hunt for the elusive feminized unknown was intensified by “dreams of pepper and pearls,” McClintock adds, combining the allure of rare foreign goods with domestic necessity. It is reminiscent of the quest for spices and converts by Columbus’ contemporary Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer who did find the sea route to India in 1498, leading to Goa’s later conquest by Afonso de Albuquerque. And while the Prime Minister of a certain island refused to return that famous crown jewel to the former jewel in the crown, David Cameron’s visit last month made it quite clear that the desire for the erstwhile Indies has not tarnished. No doubt, globalization has added sparkle to India’s brand as its economic fortunes experience a sea-change. The island Pi “discovers” is like this rediscovered India - it could never be unknown. Its existence is already prefigured, first by the colonial past and, then, globalization. Life of Pi is quintessentially emblematic of the latter, what with its having been written by a French Canadian, directed by a Taiwanese American, centred on a French-named Indian boy and a Bengal tiger with a British moniker, who are lost at sea upon the sinking of their ship – a Japanese vessel headed for North America. The course is set and new jewels are up for grabs.

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"Sliced Pi" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - February 2013)

Based on a novel written by a French Canadian and directed by a Taiwanese American, it is a story about the fantastical pairing of a French-named Indian boy and a Bengal tiger with a British moniker, lost at sea upon the sinking of their ship – a Japanese vessel headed for North America. This Indian child’s ability to commune with animals occurs in international terrain rather than being confined to Rudyard Kipling’s colonial wilderness. Is Life of Pi simply Jungle Book for the globalization era? Scrutinizing the Oscar nods of this and past years, in their connection to India and multiculturalism, helps pick up the crumbs on the trail to cinema’s globalization.

The filmic adaptation of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel, chosen out of a slew of books by South Asians that are unlikely to make the leap to screen, generated award buzz almost immediately upon its release, not least because of its director. In recent years, Ang Lee’s name has become a fixture with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. On February 24, 2013, Life of Pi will vie for 11 Academy Awards, including Lee’s nomination in the category of Best Director.

The Taiwan-born filmmaker has proven himself to be a cultural broker, whose offerings seem to push the boundaries of what mainstream American audiences watch. It is also not the first time that Lee has had a film that involves a tiger, symbolic or otherwise, in the Oscar contest. In 2001, Lee’s Chinese period piece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon took the prize for Best Foreign Language Film. However, it was to be an American story about a love affair between two Caucasian cowboys which would win the transnational Asian American an Oscar for Best Director in 2006. Controversially, despite Lee’s win, Brokeback Mountain lost out in the Best Picture race to Crash. That film was directed by Paul Haggis, a white Canadian who also wrote the screenplay which deals with racial fault lines and intersections in Los Angeles.

The irony that the two films, both about minorities, should contend against one another is telling. Even as Lee, an ethnic minority, won for his representation of sexual minorities, the award for direction arguably allowed the conservative Academy to allay contention while still appearing to be mindful of diversity, both by honouring Lee and Crash but not Brokeback Mountain directly. At the same time the controversy still eschews the possibility that minorities can be both queer and of colour. Such issues of diversity in film, or the lack thereof, are further compounded by the current moment of globalization wherein commerce and technology blur international boundaries as quickly as the cuts between locations in movies.

Nonetheless, though awards like the Oscars, to some extent, measure the growing diversity of what Americans watch, a more critical eye needs to be turned to how diversity is being recognized and to what end. Note that while Life of Pi has 11 nominations this year, not one of them is for the South Asian actors. Similarly, in 2009, Slumdog Millionaire which gathered eight of the ten awards it was up for saw none of those prizes go to its actors, for the simple reason that the film had no acting nominees. The pattern of exclusion extends to Lee’s other tiger: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had additionally been nominated for Best Film, which it did not win. None of its actors received nominations, either.

The previously mentioned Asian-themed pictures have had Academy recognition of the musicians who contributed to their soundtracks, it should be said. Of the South Asian-centric films, A. R. Rahman famously won two Oscars for the music of Slumdog Millionaire and this year Bombay Jayashri has been nominated for the song “Pi’s Lullaby.” Yet, it almost goes without saying that in an award show about the movies, the absence of nominations for actors is extremely conspicuous. Historically, it is true for Best Picture nominees that they tend to collect cast nominations in their sweep. It is striking, therefore, that it has been not the actors but the non-South Asian directors, who have garnered Oscar attention alongside their India-based films - Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire victory a case in point.

In the meantime, most of the South Asian creative labour associated with these high profile Oscar films has been relegated to a supporting role. Well known Indian actor Anupam Kher, who plays a doctor in Silver Linings Playbook, up for eight Oscars this year, had this to say to the Indian press upon the Academy’s announcement: “As an Indian actor, I feel rewarded for my 30 years of contribution to cinema.” It appears to be immaterial to Kher that none of the nominations were for him personally. Although Kher may be pleased that a Hollywood film he is in has been so well received, it would seem to pale in comparison to his own decades-long legacy. That legacy, belonging primarily as it does to Indian cinema which is still the largest dream factory in the world, celebrates its centenary this year.

But such “provincial” heritage pales in comparison to the juggernaut of expansive globalization. Life of Pi is not the only 2013 Oscar contender with an Indian association. Lincoln, with one more nomination than Lee’s movie, was bankrolled by Reliance-DreamWorks, an Indian-allied multinational corporation. So also, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon may have won in the Foreign Language category, but the Chinese feature was partially American funded. Like Boyle, Lee and Martel’s ability to purvey regional stories to a global audience, makes that quality an ideal one for the kind of cultural consumption that now matches a borderless marketplace with free-moving capital. Unlike Mowgli, the story of Pi and his cat is set adrift from India, if ever it came from there in the first place...

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