Sanjaya Malakar
I am not a fan of American Idol and I have never watched the show. yet this has reached me tells you how far-reaching this thing is. I am sure you have heard of this as well.
Synopsis: He is a singer on American Idol. He is a young man/teenager who is half-Indian-American half-Italian-American from Hawaii. He is by all accounts a very weak singer with funny hair-dos. He has outlasted other more talented contests with support from Howard Stern and a website called votefortheworst.com.
Comment: Nobody ever mentions he is half Italian-American. His half Indian status is big in India as they foolishly try to prop up the guy. And it is a big deal in the US where they attribute his "success" to call-center stealth to all sorts of other things.
White Guy Sings Bollywood
Synopsis: He lip-syncs, he dances, he makes Shammi Kapoor-esque expressions and his heroine is a finger puppet. This is hilarious.
Comment: If parody is the best form of recognition, then Hindi cinema has come a long way. It has become a genre in itself, much like opera or ballet is. You judge it within its constraints and standards and not by the general standards with which you judge "cinema" or Hollywood. The singing-dancing-weeping-crying-fighting-loving all-purpose hero swooning over the appropriately affected heroine is something Indian movie watchers have long loved. I don't think it is because they are stupid or unsophisticated that they like the predictability of these overly-affected executions of oversimplified story lines. They like it because it is a genre they are familiar with much like every third Italian sweeper in Rome humming Verdi while going about his job. Take it for what it is and don't get too touchy. It is OK to laugh at ourselves and our quirky nostalgia once in a while.
