Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

STRATFORD, NJ, USA

My Background

Junior year of high school was a pretty big year for me.
I was learning that I really enjoyed TV production, and my history teacher thought I had a real knack for the social sciences.  In fact, she was so impressed that she had my high school nominate me for the New Jersey Governor’s School of International Studies.  I didn’t get in, but “it’s an honor just to be nominated;” each high school only gets to nominate one or two students.  I didn’t really know anything “international” at that point, and I got into another special program that summer, anyway.  So all was well.

For college, I knew that I wanted to do something with TV news.
Thinking back to those Governor’s School brochures, I thought that International Relations might be a good way to supplement journalism as a second major–you know, like international news.  Well, long story short (because you’ve probably already heard the long Newhouse story), things ended up going the other way: I landed primarily in International Relations, grew into that, and used my TV skills to supplement the IR.

As a new International Relations major, I knew embarassingly little about the world and embarassingly little about the field I was heading into.
But, as I said, I grew into it, and I grew to really like it.  I chose (or rather, my advisor steered my freshman self into) a concentration on modern Europe, and that worked out fine for me.  I got to travel, make some great friends, and see some incredible things in some incredible places.

In doing so, I came to believe that being able to work cross-culturally is only going to become more and more valuable as a skill as the world becomes increasingly interconnected (“globalized”).  I began to understand people, and the world, better.  I became more confident in my choice of a major that I picked semi-half-ass-edly.  I became more confident in myself as I learned how to handle situations that were once foreign to me.  And, believe it or not, I even began to get annoyed by some of my (often pedantic or inexperienced) IR peers who seemed to have a specific fetish for one specific country or culture*.  After all, I think the point of studying internationally is more to learn more about the whole world and its similiarities than it is just to learn about one or two countries and their differences.
But all I really knew was Europe.

So, I was somewhat surprised when, less than a year after college, I met an amazing girl (who happened to be from India) and landed a job producing a TV news program (that happened to air in Pakistan).

Much like International Relations and Europe did years before, South Asia landed in my lap.  And, honestly, I found it pretty intimidating at first.

Krores and lakhs and dosas and kurthas and cricket, theek-hai?  Chalta-hai?  Insha’Allah!
No matter how western-thinking my friends and coworkers were, little particles like that kind of made my head spin.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long at all for me to learn that I prefer my samosas without chutney.  And, when I saw The Namesake the day before yesterday, I couldn’t help but crack up when Gogol told his soon-to-be brother-in-law, “Just call everyone auntie and you’ll be fine.”
I guess I began to catch on.

The Movie

I read Maryland Macaca’s good post on The Namesake a while ago.  But, not having heard a peep about the movie beforehand, I unfortunately didn’t pay it all that much attention.  Oops!

But last week, when I paid a visit to my old office, one of my friends showed me the trailer; I re-read MD’s post, and it seemed like something I should see.
(Is it ironic or appropriate that the person who showed me the trailer was one of the only other white guys in the office–a Spanish-speaking Armenian-French Canadian who works for a Pakistani TV show in Washington?)

So, not being sure how much longer it would be out, I moved it to the top of my priority list.  Tuesday, even with my Netflix languising, I stuffed some Wendy’s cheeseburgers in my pockets (I was hungry and didn’t have time for dinner!) and made my way to the Ritz theatres in Voorhees.

ANYWAY!
In reviewing a movie about culture and self, I thought it might be appropriate for me to talk a little about myself and my intercultural experiences.  But how about the movie itself?

The Namesake was excellent.

In short, it’s about the US-born children (“ABCD”s) of Indian-born parents, and how both struggle to find themselves somewhere between East and West.  This conflict is largely shown as the main protagonist struggles in romantic relationships with both an American girl and a Bengali girl, and also as he struggles to come to terms with his two given names: “Nikhil” (an easily-Americanizable desi name) and “Gogol” (a name that come from his father’s past, but which is equally foreign to both Indians and Americans).
But it’s not just about him; it’s about his whole family.

I’d mostly agree with Maryland Macaca in that the film takes a nuanced view of things: it shows that cultural background alone is not a valid measure of compatibility.  It’s mostly free of oversimplifications and stereotypes, but I do have to say, a couple of times American characters’ actions made me cringe (calling Gogol’s parents by their first names, skimpy dress at a funeral, vandalization, etc.).  I hope us goras are mostly more sensitive than that, yo!

For me, though, the most thought-provoking theme in the film was also one of the most understated: the generational differences in the struggles faced by the parents and the children.
Note that I don’t just say “the generational differences between the parents and the children.”  This is certainly a HUGE, and interesting, theme throughout the film.  But if you look a little deeper and think about the characters and their struggles (especially the parents, because the struggles they faced in their 20s aren’t explored nearly as in-depth as those of their children) , there is a lot to think about.

While 20-somethings Gogol/Nikhil and Sonia both struggle with reconciling their own culture with that of their parents, the parents themselves spent their 20s dealing with the banal differences between life and culture in the US and life in India (I found the scene where Ashima is trying to make herself breakfast a touching, and slightly humourous, example of such).  Gogol suffers dealing with the freedom he has in chosing his partners, while we couldn’t help but feel for his mother while she was left alone in the early days of her arranged marriaged.  The children don’t always know how to communicate with their parents, while, for the parents, the logistics of communication to their homeland proved to be an isolating, and time-consuming challange.  As Americans, the kids struggle to keep in touch with their Indian heritage, while the parents struggled at acclimate themselves to the US.  Yes, the immigrant experience is multigenerational.

Both the parents and the kids struggled in their 20s, but in different ways.  And, most likely, when the children reach their parents age, they will struggle with different, but similiar, issues (aging, the loss of a spouse, how to spend retirement, etc).

I think it’s this aspect that really seals the films universality.
Yes, the characters are brown.  And yes, it’s mostly about intercultural issues.  But there’s more to it than that, existentially.  It’s also a movie about generational conflicts, family conflicts, and how we are ALWAYS still growing up.

(One of my favorite things about Gogol was that he really does mature.  He learns from his mistakes and works to fix them, something that should be so basic, but which so few of us actually do.)

If you were to spin this movie off into a sitcom series (which really wouldn’t be all that hard to do), I think it would resemble Rosanne.  So, even if you’re not brown and don’t know anyone who is, it is definitely worth seeing.  I wouldn’t exactly say it’s revolutionary, but it’s very relevant, surprisingly accessible, and very well done.

As a TV news producer, when I watch an artistic film, I can’t help but feel like the guy who paints the walls at the Louvre.
I more-of-less understand what the direction’s vision is, and in some ways I’m in awe.  This film definitely had artistic merit.

Particularly, I enjoyed the recurring train imagery.  Trains symbolize journeys, which represent life.  And each time we saw a train (the accident, Agra, Gogol’s marriage, the ending scene), we knew a big change was coming on that journey.
Combine that with the way the Howrah Bridge and George Washington Bridge are used to visually compare NYC to Kolkata, the way books are used to definine characters (Gogol, Ashoke, Ashima, and Moushumi), the holograms in the airport, a little Bollywood homage, and some other motifs that I’m sure I missed,  and WOW!  It’s really well-directed by a true auteur.

The character development was also well-done.  EVERYONE seemed so complex, and, aside from Ashima (whom I liked throughout), my opinion of each character changed at least once.
That’s a lot in two hours, but not too much.  It was great film-making.  And great acting.

The South Asian phase of my life may or may not be over with, but at the very least it’s on hiatus.  Still, I intend to visit India one day (possibly via an overland trip from Europe, possibly as soon as I finish caring for my grandmom), and I bet I’ll feel more at home there than I would in, say, Russia, where the people look more like me.  I’ve grown comfortable with the Indian culture, and how it, like others cultures, is becoming increasingly intertwined with that of the US.  Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the film so much.  But even if you haven’t grown that comfortable yet, you should see this to understand just how intertwined the world is becoming and how there are similiarities even in the different challanges we all face.

Four and a half stars out of five.

*People who say things like, “I like Asian girls,” or, “I wish I lived in Canada,” annoy me because, 9 times out of 10, they don’t really know a damn thing about what they’re talking about, and they frequently have nothing to compare it to.  They might even be basing things off a romanticised version of reality or a stereotype.  Yes, it’s ok to have specific interests, as I do, but, as I said, the world is a big place.  I hope you don’t see me as being hypocritial by being annoyed by this.  It’s hard to explain, but it makes sense to me!

Filed under: Garyana, international, Life, Movies, Posts with Pictures, Reminiscing, Website Highlights Tagged: | India, The Namesake