Lucid Dreams
In Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai examines “the complex nesting of imaginative appropriations that are involved in the construction of agency in a deterritorialized world” (1996:61). Following Appadurai, I argue that in analyzing The Pussycat Dolls’ reworking of “Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” it is too simplistic to write it off as a bastardization of authentic Indian culture (or as reeking of decayed aura, as Walter Benjamin might suggest, if he were given to such parlance), as we cannot trace what it is represented back toward some “local, cultural bedrock, made up of a closed set of reproductive practices and untouched by rumors of the world at large” (Appadurai 1996:63). I instead view the video as a cultural pastiche in a deterritorialized space made possible by transnational flows. But as Appadurai cautions, that “fantasy is now a social practice” (1996:54) is not necessarily cause for celebration, for there still exists for many a gap between what is imagined and what is lived.
In the video, the group’s lead (and only) singer, Nicole Scherzinger, is being pursued, first through a streetcar, and then through a global marketplace of sorts, by a man whose face the viewer never sees (though The Pussycat Dolls attempt to photograph him using a product-placed Nokia cellphone). Interspersed with shots of the marketplace pursuit and The Pussycat Dolls dancing in the empty streetcar station (actually the Tramway Museum in Vienna, Austria, according to Wikipedia) are shots of A. R. Rahman, the composer of the original “Jai Ho” song. He sings the chorus’s refrain, but does not interact with the Pussycat Dolls or the rest of the cast throughout the course of the video. Rahman appears to exist in a liminal space where he can be transported to various locations as required, through the use of digital effects. Taiko drums, not audible in the original song, are also given prominent placement. The video culminates with a large group of dancers of different ethnicities doing the “Jai Ho” dance as they raise their fists and red scarves in unison.
I would suggest that the video presents a world in a state of “postblurring,” as Appadurai calls it (1996:51). Perhaps as Scherzinger implores the object of her song (ostensibly the mystery man) to “catch” her and “save” her, she imagines herself as “Slumdog Millionaire”’s Latika? Operating under this assumption, it is interesting to parse out the different layers of transnational flows and imaginaries: a wealthy American singer imagines herself in the role of an impoverished Indian woman, as portrayed in a film set in India that revolves around an American game show, was directed by an English director, and released by American distributors, while she does Bollywood-inspired dance moves and wears Indian-style clothing in an Austrian museum, starring in a video remake of a song that originally featured Spanish lyrics, written by an Indian composer who teleports into this video’s world via green screen. And don’t forget the Japanese drums.
Analyzing characters in Mira Nair’s film Indian Cabaret, Appadurai says, “What we have is a sense that they are putting lives together, fabricating their own characters, using the cinematic and social materials at their disposal” (1996:63). The Pussycat Dolls’ video does appear to be a carnivalesque free-for-all—an example of the kind of improvisation that Appadurai observes occurring outside the lines of habitus. But what implications does this representation of global flows have for the “specific life trajectories” (1996:55) of its viewers? Are so-called “slumdogs” just as free to pick and choose from the cosmopolitan marketplace as The Pussycat Dolls? These questions are not easily answered, but what Appadurai stresses, and what the cultural flows present in The Pussycat Dolls’ video problematize, is the notion that all cultural reproduction emanates from an inalienable source, and that we can easily isolate a Bollywood-tinged dance move or donning of a jeweled bindi as examples of Orientalism without also considering other global imaginings in play: “there is no easy way to begin at the beginning” (Appadurai 1996:64).
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Pp. 48–65. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Pussycat Dolls: Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5OyXmHD0w
Wikipedia
Jai Ho. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_Ho. Accessed Jan. 26, 2011.