Jai Ho: Cross Cultural Interpretations of a Love Story

The original Jai Ho dance from Slumdog
Millionaire - www.danceinforma.com/magazine
/?p=4672

The movie Slumdog Millionaire was a pop culture phenomenon in the year of 2008 – it had huge box office success in America, won 8 Academy Awards as well as a hundred other awards (IMDB).  The focus of the film being the love story that triumphs against all odds, many people connected to the movie’s theme and relatable plot, as well as sympathized with the tough life of the young characters in the slums of Mumbai.  The climax of the movie involves a Bollywood-inspired dance sequence to the song “Jai Ho” after the moment protagonist Jamal finally meets his long lost love in the train station, and the dance focuses on the happiness of the reunited couple.  It makes sense that this moment in the movie was the one that many people latched onto, and several interpretations of the Jai Ho dance number have surfaced in the media, both by professional artists and amateurs.  Although some focus on the love story aspect, others more on the energetic dance sequence itself.  What they all have in common is that they are taking on a slightly different interpretation of the original each time, interpreting how Slumdog Millionaire showcases a traditional love story and India at the same time, and are purposefully showing it in an international media outlet.

The Pussycat Dolls rendition of Jai Ho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5OyXmHD0w

            The official video from Slumdog Millionaire has the dance sequence with clips from the feature film cut into it.  The focus of the dance is on the couple, but the large Bollywood dance crew in the background is also a large part of the number (Youtube 2009f).  The Pussycat Dolls have picked up on the love story aspect – the English version of the song contains the lyrics that focus this, the main phrase being “You are my destiny” (Youtube 2009a)  However, the overall feel of the video is a little different from the original.  The Pussycat Dolls version is more of a music video, and the focus is mostly on the belly-top sporting Nicole Scherzinger strutting through a dark train station and what seems to be an Indian marketplace where a surprising amount of Americans are shopping and two teenagers shopping for CDs ogle her as she walks by.  The setting and clothing are “Indian inspired”, as opposed to the original Slumdog Millionaire video that I would say feels a little more realistically modern Indian, and more for fun and to showcase the movie than a slick American production.  This particular version makes me think of Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the reproduction of art in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.  The video is inspired by many of the original elements, but the reproduction has altered the original so that it isn’t really the same cultural expression anymore, but something new, although the attempt seems to be to reproduce the original a little.

            However, the Pussycat Dolls are not the only international media to take on the Jai Ho dance – I was astounded at the amount of amateur videos appear online of dance companies, people in their living rooms, and flash mobs, doing the Jai Ho dance.  The videos that are usually two or three people in their living room dancing focus more on the steps and the fact that they are doing the dance.  Almost all of them seem to be Americans, and seem to be just some people having fun doing the dance.  The focus is more on reproducing the moves, although there still does seem to be some sort of fascination with the exotic Indian aspect of the origins of the dance, as many of the females often throw in a few of their own belly dancing moves (see Youtube 2009b, 2009c, 2009d as examples).  On Youtube there are also a plethora of semi-professional interpretations.  Two I looked at in particular were one of a recital performance in what seems to be a Tamil show in Tampa, Florida, and a flash mob group in Chicago doing the dance in an empty parking lot, nearly getting kicked out, but then continuing the dance.  Both almost take on the dance for their own purposes, the Tamil group actually making their own dance for the recital, and the Chicago group taking the original moves, but for the purpose of being a little rebellious and doing a fun dance in defiance of authority in the form of security guards.

            What is fascinating about the Jai Ho dance is how far it really travels from its original context, and the different ways this seemingly Indian movie (although actually American/English produced) is culturally translated then put up into the worldwide web.  I feel that all of the reinterpretations reflect Arjun Appadurai’s concept of the “global ethnoscape” and the concept of deterritorialization.  As he says in his article, “One of the principal shifts in the global cultural order, created by cinema, television and video technology…has to do with the role of the imagination in social life…In the past two decades, as the deterritorialization of persons, images and ideas has taken on new force, the weight has imperceptibly shifted.  More persons throughout the world see their lives through the prisms of the possible lives offered by mass media in all there forms.” (Appadurai 1996: 53-54)  I feel that these video reinterpretations of an Indian, yet at the same time American cultural expression are a perfect example of what Appadurai is describing – the original movie is a cross-cultural media expression, and individuals have responded to this media form to the extent that they take on the story of Slumdog Millionaire and show a part of their world through the medium of the Jai Ho dance.

Citations

Appadurai

1996    Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology.  In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.  Pp. 48-65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

IMDB

N.d.  Slumdog Millionaire.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/  Accessed January 23, 2011

Youtube

2009a  Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5OyXmHD0w Accessed January 23, 2011

2009b  Jai Ho dance.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znxCTZGQrJo&feature=fvw Accessed January 23, 2011

2009c Jai Ho Dance.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEgtwOm2BHM&feature=related  Accessed January 23, 2011

2009d  Slumdog Millionaire Dance – Jai Ho.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7AuQKFlhXI  Accessed January 23, 2011

2009e  “Jai Ho” in Chicago (the Slumdog Millionaire Dance)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxofohmohJY   Accessed January 23, 2011

2009f   Slumdog Millionaire – Official Jai Ho Music Video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRC4QrUwo9o  Accessed January 23, 2011

 

William Mazzarella’s “Culture, Globalization, Mediation”

A fixed up car from the Australian Aborigine 

TV show “Bush Mechanics”

http://icarusfilms.com/new2002/bush

In his article “Culture, Globalization, Mediation”, William Mazzarella looks at how media and globalization are affecting culture, especially through the process of mediation.  I found this article to be fascinating, because although it maintains a very distanced, almost overly scholarly dialogue that is hard to connect to, Mazzarella makes some very good observations about how people connect with each other in the brave new world of globalization.  Mediation is the main focus of Mazzarella’s argument, largely because he feels that mediation is a process that exists even before the production of “media” in any given society, whether or not they have been affected by globalization, and it is really these processes of mediation that express cultures the most, because of their reactions to and interpretations of ideas.  What these processes of mediation create is an opportunity for cultures to become aware of themselves – one of the facets of mediation that interests Mazzarella the most is the ability to assert a strong sense of national or group identity, despite the supposed homogenizing aspects of globalization. 

What Mazzarella suggests about the effects of globalization is that “contrary to longstanding expectations of McWorld-style homogenization, globalization has in fact led to a revitalization of the local.” (Mazzarella 2004: 352)  Because globalization is so present all over the world, many groups are becoming aware of how they want to present themselves through mediation, and aware of mediation itself, which makes cultures aware of other cultures as unique entities to a larger extent.  Mazzarella’s argument on globalization brings up three main points that he says are three important aspects of the globalizing process: "’the resurgence of the local,’ ‘cultural proximity,’ and ‘hybridity.’” (Mazzarella 2004: 348)  In the process of mediation, these are also the main aspects that express and mediate culture, the three aspects that make cultures reflect inwards in their own selves and think of themselves in relation to others.  The resurgence of the local has individuals thinking about what it is they want to display to the world about their culture, and “cultural proximity” and “hybridity” form grounds for cross-cultural dialogue in amongst strong assertions of group identity. 

What comes to mind when thinking of Mazarella’s concepts of mediation, for me, is a show I once read about in another anthropology class called Bush Mechanics.  Bush Mechanics is a television program where Australian aborigines living in rural areas fix up beater cars that run down fast in the tough environment of the Australian outback.  The style of the show is a light-hearted and documents the ingenuity and bush know-how needed to get around in the outback.  As the site describes, “both the documentary and the series use the memories of Warlpiri elder - Jack Jakamarra Ross - in his early encounters with both white men and motor vehicles.” (Walpiri Media 2002)  The show is a representation of Australian Aborigine identity to the world, and a fun and entertaining television program, mediating Aborigine values and lifestyle in the form of a TV documentary.  The show also riffs on contrasting traditional Aborigine life with the fact that they are fixing up old cars, a Western product.

The most striking of Mazzarella’s statements for me was how “Difference is no longer so much a measure of the distance between two or more bounded cultural worlds; rather, we may now understand it as a potentiality, a space of indeterminacy inherent to all processes of mediation, and therefore inherent to the social process per se.” (Mazzarella 2004: 360)  Mediation and globalization are inevitably changing and strengthening methods of cultural expression.  These in-between grounds and new understandings are not something that should be ignored and shunned by anthropologists as destroying culture, but rather studied by anthropologists as a new way that cultures are expressing themselves in the age of globalization.

Citations

Mazzarella, William

2004       "Culture, Globalization, Mediation". In Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 33                                   (2004), pp. 345-367

Walpiri Media

2002                Bush Mechanics.  www.bushmechanics.com.  Accessed February 8, 2011

Youtube

2009                Bush Mechanics 1962 EJ Holden Part ½. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=WopdIgBG1dA.  Accessed February 8, 2011

2009                Bush Mechanics 1962 EJ Holden Part 2/2.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wxQWwD9f6Y&feature=related.  Accessed February 8, 2011

The Media's Response to the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti

From "Cholera Death Toll in Haiti Rises to 3, 333
CNN - http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/31/cholera-death-
toll-in-haiti-rises-to-3333/?iref=allsearch

The cholera outbreak in Haiti has been developing for several months now, and a CNN update from December 31st has placed the number of deaths from cholera at 3,333 and the number of those infected at 149,000 (CNN 2010a). The origins of this epidemic link to the earthquake of last year, which devastated homes and forced hundreds of thousands into temporary camps where sanitary conditions have for the most part been inadequate (Montgomery 2011) Being the window into Haiti’s crisis for the outside world, international media outlets such as CNN and the BBC have been reporting on the outbreak as it develops, along with other pressing social issues for the country such as the struggling election and the continuing devastation a year after the earthquake. I will now discuss the role of the media in portraying the epidemic to the rest of the world, particularly CNN’s coverage directed toward English-speaking North America. By my observations, many media outlets have not presented Haiti or the epidemic in a fair light, and fails to look at all sides of the problem in favour of a sort of sensationalizing view of the epidemic.

The media cannot really be blamed for problems in Haiti, and this is not the argument I wish to make, especially considering that many media outlets have presented the problems in a relatively fair light. However, many of the most influential international news and media agencies do not really seem to be helping. I went over several CNN articles all on the topic of the cholera outbreak, and I could not help but detect a condescending tone to many of the reports. One reporter in particular, Ivan Watson, is CNN’s man in the field, providing live video footage onsite. I watched two reports of his from the month of December. The images are shocking, depicting an unstable political environment, juxtaposed to dead bodies and ill children. However devastating the scenes though, I find the reporter’s tone, although possibly unintentional, to be that of an omniscient observer who seems to know the solution, and is reporting the tragedy of a country that is falling to pieces, and watching it all with a sigh of hopelessness. In the first report of his I watched, entitled “Witnessing cholera’s toll in Haiti” he reported on the removal of a dead body, suspected to be a cholera victim, from a village by the government. The people of the village were angry because they had asked the possibly infectious body to be removed hours ago, and the government had taken a very long time to respond (CNN 2010c). Both sides, the government and the locals, are frustrated and there is a great deal of tension between the two. Watson ends his report by wondering if the country will ever be able to emerge from the chaos it is experiencing. The tone is pessimistic, and he comes off as a wise foreigner in the midst of two arguing sides - the people and the government.

The second report I watched, entitled “Haiti struggles with cholera epidemic” has him visiting an MSF hospital camp treating cholera patients, which after its treatment procedures, incorporates education on general hygiene and prevention. Watson concludes this section of the report “The key to preventing the spread of cholera is really sanitation and hygiene, and that’s one of the lessons that patients coming through here are taught, and they’re sent home, after treatment with the most basic of tools: a bar of soap to help wash their hands with.” (Watson in CNN 2010b) To me, the tone implies that the root of the problem is that Haitians don’t know how to wash their hands. What the quote doesn’t mention how sanitation sites, poorly funded and developed by the government and outside agencies before the earthquake, have since been destroyed leading to the lack of sanitation that caused the outbreak (Montgomery 2011). The “most basic of tools” as he calls the soap, seems to be alluding to a carelessness on the part of the Haitians, but considering that the average Haitian cannot afford clean water, or the propane or charcoal to boil the water they can obtain for free (Montgomery 2011), soap may be the least of their worries. The overall tone of both of Watson’s reports is of a cool, composed reporter who is on the scene, distant from the troubles and implies in a way that he understands and can deal with the situations better than the Haitians, but at the same time does not fully understand the problem and does not deal with the situation.

I find that the response of CNN has been to sensationalize, but not necessarily point out what the deeper problems of the outbreak are such as poor sanitation even before the earthquake hit, or the fact that the scale of this cholera outbreak has larger implications in general besides a “poor Haiti” response. Other news agencies like the Montreal Gazette take a more open approach, looking at various solutions and the long term problems that have plagued Haiti over the years. But even their report lacks optimism, and reports on solutions that are the best people can do at the moment, rather than what people are doing for long term stability. And perhaps this is just the nature of the destruction in Haiti – perhaps there is no reporting on the long term goals apart from the crisis and little reference to the deep seated issues that have escalated the problems because there is no one in the country to focus on them. If the media is the main way that the general public is obtaining information on crises like the cholera outbreak in Haiti, I feel suggestions for actual solutions and reporting on more in depth approaches than handing out bars of soap should be looked at. But perhaps, when it comes down to a one column or 3 minute slot, as has been the case for much of the recent coverage for Haiti, there is only so much the media outlets can do.

Citations and Sources

CNN
2010a Cholera Death Toll in Haiti Rises to 3,333, December 31. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/31/cholera-death-toll-in-haiti-rises-to-3333/?iref=allsearch, accessed January 9, 2011
2010b Haiti struggles with cholera epidemic. December 24. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/11/25/watson.haiti.deadly.cholera.cnn?iref=allsearch, accessed January 9, 2011
2010c Witnessing cholera’s death toll in Haiti. December 31. http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/12/01/bs.watson.haiti.cholera.elections.cnn?iref=allsearch, accessed January 9, 2011

MacCormack, Charles
2010 A chance for a prosperous, stable Haiti. CNN, December 27. http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/27/maccormack.haiti.children/index.html?iref=allsearch, accessed January 9, 2011

Montgomery, Sue
2011 Seeking the Water of Life. Montreal Gazettle, January 8. http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Seeking+water+life/4079995/story.html, accessed January 9, 2011

WHO (PAHO)
2010 Health Cluster Bulletin: Cholera Outbreak in Haiti. http://new.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4500&Itemid=3527&lang=en, accessed January 9, 2010