‘the Crown’ Reflects Larger Issue of Conservative Misrepresentation

By Kaveri Pillai ’23

Staff Writer

Binge-watching media content has become a household norm during the lockdown, and with the much-needed time off for Thanksgiving break, many people got the opportunity to watch the latest season of the Netflix series “The Crown.” Season Four, the last season for the Olivia Coleman-headed cast, welcomes two iconic women of the ’70s: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Lady Diana Spencer. Needless to say, I had prepared myself for a week of endless drama and shocking revelations about the British royal family. However, after days of watching “The Crown,” one thing stood out. While the mistreatment of Lady Diana as a member of the royal family has been widely publicized for decades now, the negative representation of Thatcher and the failure of her tenure is stressed in the course of the 10-episode season. This rather skewed representation of the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom reveals a dark truth about the media: Conservative politics are hardly ever tolerated in TV shows and movies. Even if right-wing politics are showcased in this form of media, it is done poorly and in a way that undermines the entire conservative ideology. 

 The lack of representation of conservative politics is harmful to the public. Because people rely on works of fiction for the truth about our reality, shows like “The Crown” have a moral responsibility to represent the truth. The creator of the show, Peter Morgan, has never denied taking artistic license when it comes to portraying the world’s most famous royal family while simultaneously emphasizing his devotion toward getting some of the facts right. Nevertheless, getting Lady Diana’s iconic wedding dress and Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis right cannot compensate for bending the historical and political truth Morgan is responsible for portraying.

For many of the viewers, my grandparents included, the 1970s and 80s are decades that they vividly remember. The Falkland War in 1982 and the Right to Buy Housing Act of 1980 are etched into the minds of the people who lived in the U.K. at that time. The fifth episode of season four is completely devoted to the impact of Thatcher’s policies and the massive increase in unemployment, something that seems unusual for a drama like “The Crown.” 

After years of showcasing the intricacies of the royal family structure, “The Crown” detoured while sensationalizing Thatcher’s reign. The episode narrates the true story of a Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan who wishes to speak to the queen in order to voice his concerns about the deteriorating country under Thatcher’s rule. While this incident did occur, the representation of the bureaucracy and the government’s inefficiency was selectively portrayed to undermine the work Thatcher did for the U.K. The Right to Buy Act successfully allowed tenants to buy the council houses at a large discount, increasing the national homeownership rate by 15 percent, yet the scenes in the show focused solely on citizens of lower incomes living in dilapidated council houses. A noble endeavor is undermined when Thatcher’s name is dragged through the mud. 

In November, Vulture noted that Gillian Anderson’s portrayal of Thatcher in the show reflected the animosity toward the prime minister’s conservatism as well. The over-the-top accent work went beyond mimicry or character impersonation — it presented a caricature of Thatcher to a 21st-century audience that showed the Iron Lady as rude, uptight and hated by many. 

 Political analysts have countlessly voiced criticism regarding Thatcher’s administration, which is understandable when one analyzes the populism that surrounded her campaign. However, movies like “Vice,” which portrayed Christian Bale and Sam Rockwell as Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, respectively, echo the same liberal bias the film industry consciously perpetuates. By glamorizing Cheney and Bush’s row with alcoholism and their post-9/11 conflict with the Middle East out of proportion, the film’s creators dangerously create an image for the public that conservative politics is a nasty business. 

 The biased reporting of politics threatens the integrity of fictional representation and media commitment to showing the truth. This liberal-minded interpretation of politics has unfortunately seeped into news outlets as well, with a Gallup poll finding that 66 percent of Americans think the news does a bad job of separating factual reporting from opinion. Various news outlets, like The Washington Post, discuss Obama’s presidency as if his worst controversy was a tan suit, rather than the impact of some of his detrimental programs like Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed for a dangerous amount of firearms sales. Headlines like these highlight the media’s favoritism when it comes to liberals. 

 Thatcher is just one political leader who has been reduced to an ineffective and ruthless woman by the film industry, showcasing that the improper portrayal of conservative political leaders across many media forms is a larger issue. With this misguided motive to homogenize politics and to make every issue a partisan issue, we are being anything but democratic and undermining the achievements of leaders like President Abraham Lincoln and President Ronald Reagan who helped the country as conservative leaders. 

The last two seasons of “The Crown” can only depict the fresher political wounds the U.K. has had to bear, and the public anticipates the portrayal of national issues like the London bombing attacks and Brexit. One can only hope that truth prevails and conservatism is given a second chance. 

‘Never Have I Ever’’s Representation of Indian Culture Misses the Mark

By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23

Staff Writer

This summer, as my Netflix subscription was renewed, I excitedly scurried to my laptop to watch Mindy Kaling’s new and much-hyped show, “Never Have I Ever,” pakoras and coffee in hand. But, as the show progressed and my coffee cup was downed, a sense of disappointment set in. “Never Have I Ever,” while striving to fill in the space of representation, falls short of the goal it sets out to achieve, instead caricaturing Indian identity and recycling regressive stereotypes. It doesn’t attempt to explain the origins of these practices, nor does it try to challenge them. The show works to reimagine what it means to be Indian in a way that caters to non-Indians and reinforces casteism, racism and other stereotypes.  

The show begins with our protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, arms folded and praying to a set of Hindu gods — and her geometry textbook. She prays for a high school survival kit: parties, alcohol, drugs, thinner arm hair and a boyfriend (“a stone-cold hottie who could rock me all night long”). As she prays, a different voice takes over, introducing us to Devi and himself — legendary tennis player John McEnroe — the narrator throughout the whole season. The problems start here. “Never Have I Ever” could have been an opportunity for an Indian voice to talk about the Indian experience, but instead, this voice is handed over to an American man, one who cannot tell the story from the inside and one who cannot even correctly pronounce Ganesh Puja or Devi Vishwakumar. The very idea of representation is defeated by delegating the voice of the Indian diaspora to the white man once again. 

John McEnroe’s clumsy placement is coupled with cringey characters, mainly Devi’s mom Nalini and cousin Kamala. Both characters talk with an eccentric accent, desperately trying to establish their “Indianness.” On a talk show with the Los Angeles Times, Richa Moorjani, who plays Kamala, describes how she watched YouTube videos and underwent coaching to establish her “Indian accent,” as she herself had more of an “American accent.” While Moorjani claims this as a move to establish authenticity, it does quite the opposite. It others the Indian from the Indian American, making the former seem backward. Worse, it sounds nothing like an actual Indian accent. 

I have personally viewed the Indian accent as a source of embarrassment. I remember arriving in the United States before my first year of college to stay with family. I was asked how I would manage my accent in the United States and was advised to take accent classes to fit in like they had decades ago. Did I want all the contact numbers? I politely declined. Devi feels similar embarrassment when Kamala speaks, and the Never Have I Ever team does nothing to battle this, instead normalizing this feeling.

The caricaturing continues throughout the show. As writer Paroma Soni discusses in The Swaddle, a gender and culture magazine in India, “inspired in part by Kaling’s own life, this show does touch on many experiences familiar to Indians everywhere,” but “points them squarely at a Western, non-Indian audience in an exotified treatment of everyday Indian life.” From Nalini and Kamala to the group of gossiping aunties, an endless volley of tiresome tropes permeates the series. Nalini bears the brunt of several of these, from commenting on dropped textbooks to chiding Devi for wearing sleeveless clothes during a TikTok dance to telling her that the itchiness of her saree is a “rite of passage for women.” These dialogues scratch the surface of the ideas they want to explore. Introducing the superstition of books falling on the floor, for example, provides no context for why the religion holds that practice. Additionally, is it an oversight that the mangalsutra, an auspicious thread that is worn during marriage by a woman, still hangs around Nalini’s neck? Or is it a tokenistic attempt to make her look more culturally Indian? 

The cliches continue; Devi's crush, Paxton Hall Yoshida, likens Devi's beauty to Priyanka Chopra in a dream sequence. This generalizes all Indians to look like the token Indian actress in Hollywood, again catering more to Western audiences. Mindy Kaling’s position as an Indian American assumes the audience will accept the show as gospel. Simply having a diverse cast does not absolve her of her responsibilities to the South Asian diaspora. 

The show also asserts its main characters as complacent upper-caste Hindus, as seen in their trysts with marriage. Aarti Mann makes a cameo as Jaya Kuyavar, a woman ostracized from the community (and her family) for the cardinal sin of marrying a Muslim man. When she later dialogues with Kamala on her marriage and divorce, she regrets not listening to her parents, warning Kamala not to screw up her own impending arranged marriage. This quietly encourages the formula: Adhere to existing upper-caste Hindu norms and marry within your community, and you will be happy. When Kamala finally finds herself preferring her arranged marriage to being with her boyfriend, Steve. While trying to foster the idea that all arranged marriages are not bad, “Never Have I Ever” does so while once again promoting caste endogamy and pushing out characters like Steve and Jaya’s ex-husband as examples of what not to do. 

As discussed in Wear Your Voice magazine by Monica M, “Kaling is more interested in packaging Indian upper-caste Hindu American identity for the white gaze than she is in authentic storytelling. Shows like these continually erase the complex dynamics of South Asian experience and place their heads in the sand when it comes to critical socio-political realities that ground their shows.”

Coming from a Tamilian family like Devi’s, I felt a twinge of discomfort when I saw my cultural practices tossed about carelessly. I hope “Never Have I Ever” does not stop at making the show relatable, but in season two, takes the opportunity to question and challenge stereotypes. Only a show that commits itself to these goals will give the South Asian diaspora more of what it deserves in terms of representation.