Another Hymn for Tomorrow

It’s nice that social media has infused some intellectual rigour into our daily talk but it’s also worrying that most of that has metamorphosed into outrage that’s considered ‘cool’

February 06, 2016 10:20 am | Updated December 09, 2016 08:48 pm IST

The Coldplay video elicited a predictable slew of responses with accusations of exoticisation, orientalising and reducing India to its most obvious stereotypes.

The Coldplay video elicited a predictable slew of responses with accusations of exoticisation, orientalising and reducing India to its most obvious stereotypes.

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I resisted an immediate reaction to the new Coldplay video because I didn’t want to fall into the see - (barely) process - outrage trend that is coming to define social media. And, I am skeptical about anything that doesn’t take time to react.

A week in, when the Internet has moved on to the next thing, much is left to be said about the video and the dissent around it. Moving images from ‘A Hymn for the Weekend,’ conform to archetypal images of the subcontinent, ones that blend with some of the early travel narratives and images of India. In the absence of the technological tools of today, they perhaps went a step further, creating a slightly fantastical account of a place, seeing this projection as fair creative liberty. They had to make careers out of fuelling imagination, afterall. Later though, such a depiction colluded with the reality of imperialism, the rhetorical justification for which was saving a population from their own backwardness. And these traveller’s images of India fit into the imperialist notion of how low we lay on the evolutionary curve. Beyond rhetoric, however, remained the actual reasons of trade and economics.

Still, no images are really naive; they come with the burden of history and exploitation. They contribute to racism or worse, are racist.

In this sense, the dissent around the video is perfectly justified.

I am privileged to know about history, and more importantly, to have read such interpretations of what has transpired. With no intention of being condescending, an average viewer of the video will hardly ‘see’ the video with the same analytical lens as mine, or in the same way as those who’ve outraged about it. It is not an intuitive way of seeing. It comes with a certain kind of education and exposure along with having social media accounts, engaging with it frequently, and having the time, resources and the inclination to debate in these matters. There are also reasons beyond intellectual and social responsibility to participate in fuelled online conversations. We associate with a social world where such responses are highly valued and give a sense of accomplishment. We belong to a community of intellectual elite where we will find support among others like us, others that we respect and look up to. Perhaps they will retweet us, share our take on it and validate us in many other ways. We are not free from these very human motivations, although we do make a good pretense that we are.

On the one hand, it is thrilling that social media has propelled some intellectual rigour in a relatively accessible manner. This was largely absent in public discourse before. The politics of gender, of representation, and anti-normative trends are strongly evident in this space, ones that were very restricted to academia before. And this is prompting such an engagement in other spaces such as magazines and newspapers as well. But it is also resulting in an unhealthy culture where the language and tone of “informed opinion” has become synonymous with outrage. And outrage has become synonymous with cool. Critique has become scathing criticism, the most crass manner of response. It is creating a hierarchy where one way of seeing is fighting for supremacy over others with shallow weapons, and with an intention to provocate. On several online magazines, the Coldplay video elicited a predictable slew of responses with accusations of exoticisation, orientalising and reducing India to its most obvious stereotypes. One site did away with complete sentences in the article. It culled out all the images from the video and put them into phrases to make the sole point that coldplay was exoticising. In partially reflexive responses, some wrote that Bollywood is no less guilty of stereotyping, from the promiscuous white woman to the effeminate gay man, it is equally guilty of harmful reduction. Videos were then posted below the piece to support this.

A few good points that these articles raise became half-baked because they’re shrouded by their rage, by the sole intent to condemn. There was little attempt to respond in a way that didn’t in some way carry an undercurrent of attack. This is not unique to this specific situation, other instances taking far worse qualities. When Deepika Padukone’s Vogue Empower ad came out, the actor was blatantly attacked by sections of the “intelligentsia” online, for her limited understanding of feminism and ignorance of the injustices that fashion magazines perpetuate on women, and for associating herself with such a brand. There was the shaming of writers returning their awards for selectively protesting. And before that, anger over an Airtel ad for attempting feminism but not quite getting it all right. I find a similar vein of attack against these cases, undeservedly.

The images depicted in Coldplay’s video are not uncommon in India. Having lived here for 25 years, I have seen them with the accustomed eye of a resident. The sights, sounds and smells don’t fascinate me the same way they do for an outsider. But for Chris Martin, they did, and he saw a potential for a video there because it would conform to the cool, exotic image of India that some viewers may have. It would add to the intrigue, USP and therefore would be commercially viable. He was guided by a set of considerations as an artist, different from what values we are guided by when we condemn. It is important to acknowledge this.

An alternative way of looking at it could be that Martin and/or his team found them interesting, different, and nothing more. They were careless, detached from history and ignorant of their place in the paradigm of power relations that India exists in with other countries of the world. This is a possibility and it should be said out aloud.

But, as a friend pointed out to me, it can’t be forgiven that it is a bad song.

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