Growing up in Texas as a Pakistani-American is challenging on many fronts. I am not going to bore the reader with tribulations of being Hyphenated, as that discourse is overdone. However, a missing piece within the current conversation is the expectation placed upon the Hyphenated to represent Pakistan (or Homeland). I find it quite silly because the stage is set for the Hyphenated to fail. You can never represent the experience of someone back home. You simply haven’t lived it. And you cannot be the other half of your hyphen only. The battle begins early on and most seem to stumble their way into a sort of peace. If you don’t let yourself get pulled too much in either direction, you manage your way through life pretty okay. Of course, the average person only has their loved ones to disappoint. The complication arises when you extrapolate that balance and attempt it at a global stage. Whether it’s Hasan Minhaj trying to make jokes about brown dads that evolved beyond the Russell Peters caricaturization of brown dad humor or it’s Riz Ahmed’s self-deprecating attempt at satire in Bait, there isn’t enough of an audience with that niche experience to grant them immunity from the monumental task of Homeland Representation.
In the recent years, both Minhaj and Ahmed have challenged the ideas of what it means to be Hyphenated but that critique is largely aimed at the Empire and not at the Homeland. It doesn’t help that anyone making it big in Hollywood uses being Hyphenated as their brand to get anywhere. Simply put, they have asked for the criticism from the Motherland.
It is a disadvantaged brand because in trying to appease everyone, it manages to displease all. There’s a saying in Urdu, dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka, which represents this brand quite well. It makes me wonder, however, what responsibility the viewer has towards the Art they engage with. There’s a general sense of entitlement with any diasporic Art where it must represent all facets of life in Motherland. This thinking was highlighted in criticism for a show like Never Have I Ever that dared talk about a brown girl falling for a white guy (completely neglecting the fact that most brown men consider it an accomplishment when they sleep with white women, for example, Jemima Khan is still revered in Pakistan despite Imran Khan having been married thrice). Outside of the general misogyny, I find it fascinating that a generation of millennials that grew up smitten by Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray had trouble accepting a brown girl wanting to date a white boy. The audience back home seems to want a Pakistani drama in English and aired on Netflix but following the script of Hum TV. The diaspora, who are probably closest to Art like that, find it cringe for attempting to do what great Hollywood TV has done. And anyone outside of the specific Hyphenated cannot help but stereotype, even while trying not to. A Trader Joe’s meal that combines Thai curry sauce, Chinese soup dumplings, and coconut milk finding a moment of stardom on TikTok attempting to be cultural but being hollow in every aspect.
The onus of deriving meaning from Art is as much on the viewer as it is on the creator. The nuanced filtering of what works for the viewer vs not is the path forward. Anyone creating Art for the consumer is always bound to fall into the trap of pretty aesthetics over actual substance. Art is meant to be a portrayal, not a two way conversation. Picasso didn't paint in hopes that people will feel represented. It is the artists’ job to create what is most truthful to them. It is the audience’s job to engage, not to demand.
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