ISSUE II: Odyssey

PROSE
PROSE
OPEN LETTER
By ARUN PAUL KAPUR
TO DISNEY
Channel
«You are limiting us to a box with set expectations.»
Dear Disney Channel,
550 million viewers. That is how
many children watch your channel.
550 million little kids learning how
to conduct themselves, how to acclimate to society,
and how to engage with others through your screen.
550 million children idolizing your characters
and absorbing their behavior. I would expect with
such preeminence one would be more attentive or
at least conscious of the impact their characters
and plot have on the cultural, personal, and social
development of our youth, yet almost the opposite
has been happening.
I, like the majority of my generation, grew up
watching shows like Jessie and Phineas and Ferb
that attempted at displaying a diversity of cultures—
including mine. One of my first encounters with
Indian representation was with your character
Ravi Ross. There was so much excitement when I
first saw him: for the first time ever, someone who
looked like me on the screen. I watched as he was
always the outcast and was portrayed with the most
typical Asian stereotypes: extremely smart, weak,
and socially inept. In addition to his hackneyed
By RAINA KOSHAL
character, he was the laughing stock of the group,
always being mocked or used. Looking back, the
bigotry is overwhelming. At such a young age,
unknowingly, I accepted the anti-Indian sentiment
of your shows to be how all of society views my
culture and the rightful way to treat ethnic cultures.
I had unintentionally become conscious of and
embarrassed by my ethnicity. I never talked about
my good grades, played dumb, and hid when my
mom packed me Indian food because I was too
scared to fit into the deprecating stereotypes you
had accentuated.
This fear of becoming the Asian stereotype was
not all in my head. Your shows had created an
environment in which micro-aggressions towards
ethnic cultures are normalized and emphasized.
Growing up as one of the only South Asian students in
the classroom, one of my many experiences of these
micro-aggressions was having different academic
expectations than my peers. It was presumed that
I always had my homework completed early and my
classmates would coerce me into sharing answers.
Through this, I too began holding myself to higher
intellectual standards and felt disappointed and
stressed by my failure to reach them. My “small”
accomplishments never impressed my peers and
started to lose my appreciation as well.
It is intriguing to think about the similarity between
Ravi and the character Baljeet from Phineas and
Ferb. The issue with having the only two South Asian
characters in your network be portrayed as perfectly
fitting into the Asian stereotype of awkward and
smart, having thick Indian accents, and being
disrespected is that it creates connections for the
viewer that leads to unconscious stereotyping and
groupings of South Asians. You are limiting us to a
box with set expectations.
One of Ravi’s greatest characteristics was his accent.
Perhaps if you had glorified Indian accents as you do
French or British, mocking Indian accents would not
be normalized or tolerated. What particularly angers
me is that with the misrepresentation of my culture
and with the mocking of our accents, you couldn’t
even correctly pronounce your characters’ names
- conveying to an entire generation that the bare
minimum of respecting one's name is unnecessary.
Now, having a corrected perception of Indian culture,
I am able to recognize the direct impacts of your
channel to my life and equally to that of my peers.
I have talked about Ravi from Jessie but the show
contains many other stereotypes as well: Emma is
presented as the shallow, rich, dumb blond, Zuri as
the loud, sassy black girl, and Luke as the popular
but dumb and messy white boy. It doesn’t stop there:
the spinoff, Bunk’d, has Tiffany Chen who is an Asian
who plays the violin, is always worried about her
studies, and has strict parents. And this is just one
show. I simply can’t understand why it is acceptable
to have shows that perpetuate such stereotypes that
terrifyingly overpower and categorize our youth by
their looks and ethnicity, stunting their individuality
and creating unnecessary apprehensions.
So, Disney Channel, as a fifteen-year-old Indian
American I have experienced normalized microaggressions
and direct stereotyping an unacceptable
amount of times and I blame a large portion of this
normalization on you. It breaks my heart that my
journey to becoming proud and confident of my
identity was so long and full of doubt. When I told
my friends about this letter, they had their own
experiences and thoughts to add- all my friends, of
different cultures and backgrounds, had faced some
sort of mistreatment that they correlated as a result
of what your network presents.
My hope is that you can work towards more
" It breaks my heart
that my journey to
becoming proud
and confident of my
identity was so long
and full of doubt."
respectful and correct representations of all ethnic
cultures so future generations don't feel the need to
hide parts of their identity to fit in. I do recognize
these efforts in new shows like Mira, Royal Detective;
I appreciate how it displays the beauty of Indian
culture and there is a South Asian main character
who is well rounded. But in order to move past shows
that were not as cognizant, I feel it is necessary to
recognize the faults and ignorance of them- these
shows are still streamed on your network and still
do affect our youth.
Sincerely, Raina Koshal
By ARUN PAUL KAPUR
BMDDIGITAL.COM
P
A
G
E
18
P
A
G
E
19
BMDDIGITAL.COM