Signage at the Golden Globe Awards. Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons, Peter Dutton.
By Jahnavi Pradeep ’23 & Kaveri Pillai ’23
Opinion Editors
In Tollywood’s fictionalized period film “RRR,” hero Alluri Sitarama Raju turns to a British colonizer during a party to ask, “Not salsa, not flamenco, my brother … do you know Naatu?” When the man bewilderedly fumbles, “What is Naatu?” Raju and fellow hero Komaran Bheem break into song and dance, educating their surrounding British crowd on Naatu, or Indian dance, through their coordinated grooves matched to the energetic beat of their Telugu lyrics.
The dance number, aptly titled “Naatu Naatu,” has proceeded to garner global recognition, winning a 2023 Global Globe Award in the best original song category and beating the competing songs, Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up,” Lady Gaga and BloodPop’s “Hold My Hand,” Roeben Katz and Guillermo del Toro’s “Ciao Papa” and Taylor Swift’s “Carolina.”
The Golden Globes were televised on Jan. 10, 2023, to audiences across the world to celebrate the excellence of television and films produced in 2022. After its problematic history of lacking diversity and inclusion, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s acknowledgment of the problem was evident at the ceremony.
This year’s Golden Globes saw monumental wins for people of color, with movies like “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and television shows such as “Abbott Elementary” carving spaces for non-white-centric content and recognition in media. The HFPA also strived to go beyond the United States’ contribution to film and television with countries worldwide receiving a nod of approval from the academy.
“Naatu Naatu” and its movie, “RRR,” have found a spot in this marketplace. The song’s Golden Globe Award is accompanied by a list of accompanying accolades for “RRR.” Among others, the film was also nominated in the Golden Globes’ best non-English language film category and for Critic’s Choice Awards in the categories of best picture, best director, best visual effects, best foreign language film and best song, winning in the last two of these categories. “Naatu Naatu” has also been nominated in the best achievement in music written for motion pictures (original song) category for the upcoming 2023 Academy Awards, making it the first Indian feature film to be nominated in a category other than best international film. Furthermore, “RRR” was touted by the Hollywood Reporter to be one of the highest-grossing Telugu-language films and one of the most streamed Indian films ever on Netflix.
At first glance, “Naatu Naatu” and “RRR’s” global recognition is a welcome celebration that acknowledges the scope of Indian cinema beyond the seemingly more familiar Bollywood industry. Having South Indian roots ourselves, we have noticed how South Indian culture is often perceived as embarrassing and uncivilized. South Indian films are similarly ridiculed for their cringe-worthy content, even within South Asia. Herein, the win for “Naatu Naatu” felt like a triumph for India’s diversity of language and culture.
Yet, our joy over representation is accompanied by critique. “Naatu Naatu’s” win and “RRR’s” popularity on an international platform, while exciting on the surface, raises concern as to what qualifies an Indian film for global recognition.
The song and film fault in prioritizing whiteness over creating a space for authentic Indian representation. Its reception then emboldens the obvious performative move by the West — here the HFPA — to represent for representation’s sake, a model that caters to the familiarities of Western audiences over choosing the best of Indian cinema and representation of its people.
“RRR,” short for Rise, Roar, Revolt, is a 2022 Tollywood, or Telugu-language, film directed by S.S. Rajamouli set in 1920s colonial India. The action-packed epic follows a fictionalized account of two real freedom fighters, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, the dance experts from “Naatu Naatu,” as they join hands to revolt against the colonial British rule of the time.
Riddled with Hindu nationalist and mythological themes, the film explores a narrative chronicling brotherhood and unity amongst Indians during colonial rule. “Naatu Naatu” echoes the crux of the film’s themes of standing up to colonial oppression. When Raju and Bheem attend a party primarily populated by the British, one of the men, motivated by jealousy over Bheem’s courtship of one of the white women, ridicules Bheem for his brownness.
He mockingly asks his fellow colonizers, “What do [Indians] know about art? About finesse? About dance?” He then shows off his own moves in tango, swing, flamenco and salsa, pointing out the brown man’s lack of access to this culture. However, Raju and Bheem are undeterred and join forces to show how “naatu,” the Indian dance, is not inferior. The two men are able to stand up for their culture and push back against the colonizers’ mistreatment of Indian culture. Their dances soon infect the whole crowd of Britishers, who begin dancing along with them. Raju and Bheem are successful in correcting a bias in the colonizer on Indian “finesse” as well as culture, art and dance.
The song seems to champion Indian culture and challenge its ridicule by the colonizer; there in itself is the problem. “Naatu Naatu” is still a song obsessed with the Western audience and fixing their misconceptions of what it means to be Indian. The British men are prevented by their female counterparts from stopping Raju and Bheem’s dance, and the enthusiastic women take part in the revelry.
Herein, a power dynamic is immediately established, wherein white approval forms an integral part of the two men’s celebration of their culture. While chronicling the anguish of colonial India, the film’s ability to exist globally then also establishes how there needs to be white presence on screen for it to become globally relevant. However, it is not the duty of the Indian film to coddle Western audiences, especially their former colonizer, and spoon-feed them respect and decency toward their culture.
In an article for Times of India, Bharti Dubey and Almas Mirza discuss “Naatu Naatu’s” global success, owing it to how the song was “specifically written to build the emotions and propel the story and the narrative of the film forward.” Contextualizing “Naatu Naatu” in the film strengthens how this internationally acclaimed piece of art merely scratches the surface of the topics it attempts to cover and really does forget about doing right by its characters.
“RRR” is a film that showcases Indians in reductive portrayals to favor the cinematic experience. For example, Komaram Bheem, one of its two central characters, is a Gond Adivasi. He is first introduced in a jungle setting, pouring blood over himself and fighting a tiger somewhere in the Adilabad district of Hyderabad. The Gond tribals are immediately associated with animalistic tendencies, reinforcing long-standing stereotypes about tribal populations.
What makes this even more harmful is that Bheem is a fictionalized version of an actual historical figure with living family. While the film does establish itself as a fictionalized account, Mohan Guruswamy aptly points out in an article for LiveWire how this is still dangerous: “When you appropriate the lives and personalities of two genuine heroes for a tawdry commercial excess, it doesn’t absolve the makers of distortion.”
“RRR” succeeds in caricaturing the real-life accounts of its two revolutionaries and the communities to which they belong. What becomes a priority is using the heroism of the South Indian cinematic experience to simultaneously correct and placate the West. Any real simmering colonial discontent, as demonstrated in the song alone, is shoved under the carpet, as we see the two main characters surrounded by the English upper class as they entertain them with their skillful dance steps and catchy music.
Award ceremonies must do better than capitalize on films like “RRR.” What makes “Naatu Naatu’s” Golden Globe win seem even more performative is the recent commercial success and market growth of the Tollywood industry. It then appears as if the song’s win is a dual attempt by the award ceremony to absolve their historic whiteness crisis as well as tap into a new profitable market.
“RRR” and “Naatu Naatu” are not the best that India has to offer. Their nominations echo a superficial celebration of a film that reifies regressive tropes and calls for more critical choices on what films we choose to celebrate.