In the memoirs of Priyanka Chopra Jonas Unfinished, the actor stops in several cases to try to explain habits, terms and cases typical of India. At one point, mentioning his stay in the United States with her rebellion, writes, “In India, caring for the other’s children as if they were our own is only part of who we are. It is seen as a duty and a responsibility, not as an imposition ”. This over-explanatory approach that borders on reduction is repeated until it is revealed: its story is for everyone, but intended for a global audience.
This awareness regulates the narrative diet giving rise to a painfully simplistic memory of an extraordinary life, an easy basis for the creation of Priyanka Chopra’s myths. Reading it, I kept thinking about the different genre that Netflix has created and driven with admirable consistency: documentary-reality shows. Like memoirs, these shows have a totally Indian cast and remove the complexities of a country or individuals to fit an existing mold. The latest addition to the Netflix list is The big day.
In the last year alone, the streaming giant, accessible in 190 countries, has made room for regressives Matchmaking indi and unsatisfactory Fabulous lives of Bollywood women. Both shows, apart from sharing their pure optimism about India’s GDP, are related by treating the country and its people without nuances and contradictions. And while the cache is included Fabulous lives… nullifies this criticism to some extent, the very lack of Matchmaking indi it reduces it to a failed attempt. Every beat of this is repeated in The big day where the homemade concept of arranged marriage takes the form of the fat and fat Indian wedding.
Like its predecessor, The big day it is linked to representing a practice, the perspective of which in a country like India by definition is diverse, unpleasant, affecting, unpleasant and odious. In the show (produced by Condé Nast India), preparations for an impending wedding are documented following the engaged couples days before the “big day”. Distributed in three episodes, which is believed to be the first batch of the franchise, it includes six weddings reserved for opulence and blinding myopia. These are elaborate events consisting of cameos by Bollywood choreographers and actors and offering skewed and limited portraits of Indian weddings without any mention or discussion of the main adversaries: caste and class.
But that doesn’t mean they retain tokenism. For example, there is an interfaith marriage in the third episode (Gayatri Singh, daughter of journalist Seema Mustafa with poker commentator Aditya Wadhwani), but the fact that this disparity can be matched and can be matched by financial affinity, except ambiguous line: “It fits our family.”
The central idea of The big day it is based on the rise of modern Indian couples who do not hesitate to take care of the wedding. And in many cases, the various non-resident Indians, as well as those established outside the country, try to undo the open patriarchal connotations of marriage vows and rituals by doing things their way. More than one couple ends up kanyadan, wanting to make their weddings personal and equal. But this is completely undone by the inclusion of wedding planners and, by extension, orchestrating and corporatizing their marriage. The staff is professional. Likewise, for all the talks and awareness about sustainability, couples fly to their guests from different parts of the world.
But the show’s biggest bad service is the way it despises women who choose to have things their way, making them go through a separate episode and christening them as “Type A Bride,” as slander. . Their participation is seen as control, their opinion is considered affirmation. This, unintentionally, ends up illustrating the lost battle that women live in having to participate in an institution that, by design, is inconvenient for them. The passage of time and privilege may have allowed them to stop being a silent spectator at their weddings, but it has also established disproportionate participation as the only proof of presence. All the brides on the show are constantly juggling wedding preparations as the men, dampened from undertaking any part, sit on the sidelines.
One of the bride and groom states with abject insensitivity that he is invited to his own wedding. “I haven’t contributed at all to the design and decoration.” The only time that is not emphasized in this part is the same-sex marriage of two men (Tyrone Braganza and Daniel Bauer) who also walks away from any conversation about their privilege that benefits this “celebration” in the country.
The big day seeds – very similar Matchmaking indi – uses India as a backdrop, pointing the camera at the places where they want to see and against which they can be seen. It feeds on stereotypes without worrying enough about examining discrepancies. And in doing so, it defends the idea that marriage is on a high level, when in reality it is a place of prejudice reproduction.
For more news on lifestyle, follow us: Twitter: lifestyle_ie | Facebook: IE Lifestyle | Instagram: ie_lifestyle