I was able to watch all of 7 minutes before my brain flipped a breaker and when I woke up on the floor it was over. I believe if I had continued beyond that point I would have become irreversibly stupider.
The Indian characters are weird stereotypes, and most of the jokes revolve around the characters not understanding some piece of culture or slang. It just seemed really racist to me, and not in a funny “South Park” “equal opportunity offensive” kind of way. Maybe if the writers were cleverer they could pull it off but when the jokes don’t land it just seems BAD.
That’s pretty much the impression I got from the previews, so I skipped it.
Do the characters also have hilarious accents? If they’re really scraping the bottom of the tropes barrel they’ll have one character who has perfect unaccented English…up until something makes him mad and which point he’ll flip out and start screaming in a nearly-incomprehensible accent…
I really enjoyed the movie, and I thought it had a reasonable representation of Indian culture. Nothing felt stereotyped for humor effect. I’ve heard this is not the case with the show. I would be interested to hear what our Indian members had to say about it.
I haven’t seen the show, but “weird stereotype” seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. If they are stereotypes, then they must be typical in some way.
Half brownie checking in - parents were immigrants. I like it, but I’m starting to wonder if I want to like it more than I actually like it. I said this in another thread (the chopping block one) but I feel more like the characters reflect the attitudes and mindsets of the first generation born in America than actual 20 something Indians in India. My first generation friends are by and large expected to have arranged marriages - now, whether they will actuallyhave them remains to be seen, but they are very much so expected to have them. Some of them don’t date as a result. Oh, and to anyone who thinks the caste system is dead (in terms of marrying), I can very much assure you that many cling to it in the US & Canada, as disturbing and dismaying as it is.
My cousins (the aforementioned 20 something Indians in India) have told me that their generation is actively pushing against the customs and traditions of older generations, especially with relationships, dating, and marrying. They constantly lie about dating and career aspirations and so on. I get the feeling that the characters in Outsourced aren’t pushing the envelope, but rather are trying to please their parents (like the most recent episode with the ass’t manager) despite the West banging down the door with liberalization. I get the feeling that every writer on the show is tapping their one or two brown friends for their experiences. I hope they get over the arranged marriage obsession the show seems to have.
Either way, I’m glad Indians get some real screen time.
While I’m not Indian, I’ve seen both the movie and TV show and I honestly can’t understand how one was called a respectful look at indian culture (the movie) while the other is being called racist (the show). This is doubly confusing as the show has recycled a lot of gags from the movie in the first few episodes.
I’ve been watching the show mostly just because I like seeing fellow Indian-Americans on screen.
The jokes are not particularly original, but they haven’t yet devolved to unwatchable.
I wouldn’t call the show racist. In fact, they have considerably whitewashed a lot of the realities of Indian culture and life.
The actors are all Indian-Americans putting on fake accents in a California studio, so that considerably cuts authenticity.
All-in-all, it’s mostly a Disneyfied version of India. But then again a lot of Indian movies and television shows also depict a cleaned up version of India.
Only in that the basic idea is kind of the same, and some of the characters have the same names.
The movie is more dramedy and doesn’t go for the cheap laugh. Also the characters are much less one dimensional; the movie actually has some soul to it.
Indians (as in, from the Sub-Continent) have been in UK TV comedy programming for ages, FWIW… Goodness, Gracious Me and The Kumars At No. 42 being two of the better known examples, but I’m very fond of Mumbai Calling, which is about a (white) Englishwoman who gets banished to the company’s call centre in (as the name suggests) [del]Mumbai[/del] Bombay for some never-adequately-explained reason. The people she works with (including an Indian from England) are, of course, very quirky. As far as I know there’s only been one series, but it’s definitely worth seeing.
Actually, of the non-Anglo main cast, only Parvesh Cheena (Gupta) and Anisha Nagarajan (Madhuri) are Americans; Sacha Dhawan (Manmeet) and Rebecca Hazelwood (Aisha) are Brits, and Rizwan Manji (Rajiv) is Canadian. Anisha in fact starred in a big Broadway musical (Bombay Dreams) a few years back and it’s funny to hear her booming Pittsburgh accent in her interviews.
It’s a cute show and I think India is a big and powerful enough country to take a few jibes at its customs and business practices. Still remember helping my boss in New York find staff for the tech center in Bangalore–most of the online resumes had the person’s religion on them, and often their father’s name. Aside from the Silent Sikh guy, they’ve stayed away from the whole religion thing, which I guess is wise.
As for this week’s plot with the fake holiday, I think one of the writers must be like me in his/her 40s and a Doonesbury fan, because I remember the exact same joke in a strip in the late 70s. A black college student was cutting class and playing ball with a friend and a professor ran across him and asked the reason; the kid made up a National Black Solidarity Day or something on the spot as an excuse and the professor walked away, embarrassed but mystified.
Todd is being written as sorta terminally dumb, though. I know for a fact they have the internets and Wikipedia in India.
I’ll be sure to check those out on Netflix, thanks! In the US they really don’t, aside from the occasional single character (like Abed in Community). I had no idea they had a much stronger foothold in UK programming, though it does make sense.
I mean, potato potahtoe. I’ve experienced little difference. Their characters are “westernized”. My old roommate’s Indian-born-in-Canada fiancee just had a different accent.
Heh. Indian-Canadian accents. Makes me giggle every time.
I’m Indian, born in the states, and my parents are Indian, born in India. I don’t really watch the show cause, well, it’s not funny, but my parents think it’s hee-lar-ious. I think they also love the fact that a show is portraying a group of Indians not as stereotypes, but as real, quirky people.
This is a question I’ve had for a while now, but is anyone else surprised that the first American sitcom dealing with American-Eastern country relations takes place in India, rather than China? China is just such behemoth that I assumed any show would be about a group of Chinese office workers.
Although I guess because of call centers, Americans tend to interact with Indians more than Chinese people . . . are there call centers to America in China? If not, why not? More expensive?
Gestalt, that’s an interesting question. I would assume it’s because English is so stressed in India, what with it having been a Brit colony and all. Indian born friends of mine (mid 20’s) born into middle class families (so presumably less tutoring/levels of pressure to learn English) speak near-impeccable English. I don’t think English is pushed so hard as second language in China, but that may be changing in the future.
If any stereotypes are likely to get tiresome, it’s the endless parade of white-trash NASCAR-watching diabetes-sporting Palin-voters that make up the fictional company’s customer base.
lindsaybluth, that’s along the lines of what I was thinking.
Also, I’m wondering if because most North Indian languages are Indo-European, the accent differences between Indians and Americans are inherently less than the Chinese, which speak languages belonging to a completely different language family all together?
I know that when the number of incomprehensible Indian professors I’ve had is way smaller than the number of incomprehensible Chinese professors, but that may be just because I grew up listening to accented Indian people all the time.
Speaking of Indian-Americans on television, it’s interesting that NBC has one Indian-American on each of its Thursday comedies: Mindy Kaling on the Office, Danny Pudi on Community, Aziz Ansari on Parks and Recreation, and Maulik Pancholy on 30 Rock. Add to that Outsourced and you have a veritable Americans of Indian descent comedy paradise.
