In Defense of Mindy Kaling: South Asian Representation in Cinema

By Rhea Ravi Kumar 

As a South Asian girl growing up in a country with a predominantly white population, TV was entirely fictional to me. I couldn’t draw any parallels between my life and the lives of the characters on my favorite Nickelodeon show, but my friends seemed to fit the profile perfectly. When I expressed my discontent about this to them, they would always draw my attention to the one brown character in the show, confident that Baljeet from Phineas and Ferb or Ravi from Jessie were perfect reflections of me. Unfortunately, they were wrong. In fact, I doubt any brown people truly feel represented by such caricatured characters. In that aspect, brown representation really is fictional in the sense that it will forever just be a dream of a reality people in the community will spend eternity fighting for. In recent years, many figures in the media have been working to right this wrong. Mindy Kaling is one such person.

Kailing is a writer and actress who has created many TV shows led by Indian women and is attempting to change the trajectory of media by placing brown girls in the spotlight. 

When Mindy Kaling wrote the Netflix original Never Have I Ever, desi girls worldwide were clouded with the hope that they would finally get the representation they deserved. Many were, however, disappointed after watching the show. Never Have I Ever follows Devi Vishwakumar, an Indian-American teenage girl experiencing the trials and tribulations of high school while also grieving her late father, and navigating a complicated relationship with her mother. In many aspects, Devi’s character was a breath of fresh air. She had all the core qualities of the typical rom-com YA fiction protagonist. Still, they were balanced out with her Indian identity, showing that the two can and do coexist: creating a sense of normalcy for marginalised brown girls.

This was true for the protagonists of some of Kaling’s other creations, like Bela from The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021), and Mindy Lahiri from The Mindy Project (2012). Both of these characters also undergo typical rom-com events just like Devi, and their identities as brown women do not change this. Furthermore, with these characters, Mindy shies away from the stereotypes that are typically associated with Indian girls. Devi’s intelligent, driven, Princeton-bound character conforms to the stereotype that all Indians - and all Asians in general - are smart and nerdy. Mindy, who is an OB/GYN, also conforms to this stereotype. This is contrasted with Bela, who is an aspiring comedian and takes a neuroscience class only as a means of appeasing her parents. Some argue the stereotype that all Indians are intelligent is not inherently harmful as it is not an insulting thing to be characterized as. While this is true, reducing Indians to this stereotype perpetuates the idea that academics are the only thing Indians are capable of.

Mindy does lean into this stereotype with Devi, but she does not make it her core quality. Alongside being nerdy and academically driven, Devi is also a typical teenager who goes to parties and dates boys. She gets the best of both worlds without compromising any aspect of her identity.

This is an impactful message for young Indian-Americans to hear, as it often feels as though two identities that are so different from each other cannot coexist, which causes many to repress their Indian identities. 

One of the biggest stereotypes that Mindy breaks by introducing characters like Devi, Bela, and Mindy into the scene is the stereotype that brown girls are unlovable. Brown girls became accustomed to never seeing themselves represented as other people’s lovers in Western media. This being said, however, many have reservations about the portrayal of characters like Bela, Devi, and Mindy because it is explicitly stated that these characters had to undergo massive glow-ups in order to become attractive to the male gaze. In the opening scene of The Sex Lives of College Girls, Bela talks about how she had to “get medical-grade botox injected into her armpits” as part of her glow-up. This shows how there is a constant emphasis on the need for a drastic glow-up in order for Indian girls to become worthy of love. While this sentiment is shared by many other brown girls, Mindy’s shows have the influence to change this mindset instead of contributing to it. In Never Have I Ever, Kamala’s character challenges this slightly. Kamala is portrayed as being conventionally attractive, but this is not something she is overtly aware of. Kamala is one of the few examples of brown girls who are portrayed as attractive without having to undergo massive physical changes. 

While all of these shows made history for representing brown girls, they also received significant amounts of backlash for the same reason.

Many felt that the brown characters were still typecasted and that Kaling still leaned into stereotypes. To me, one of the biggest stereotypes I noticed was the forced Indian accent some of the characters in these shows spoke with. In an interview, Richa Moorjani who plays Kamala in Never Have I Ever, mentioned that she had to take accent classes to learn how to speak with the accent she uses on the show. While she admits she started using it for the sake of authenticity, there is nothing authentic about it, if anything, it does more harm. The Indian accent has been mocked relentlessly in recent years and used as the butt of every offensive joke. Putting on this fake accent further caricaturizes the characters in the show, and only leans into the stereotypes Kaling aimed to break. 

Another problem that many have highlighted about Mindy’s shows is the fact that the protagonists of her shows always end up with White men as their love interests.

Throughout the 4 seasons of the show, Devi had four main love interests, only one of whom was White. At the end of the show, she still ended up with the white love interest. This seems to be a common theme with Mindy’s shows, as Bela and Mindy both end up with White men as well. Mindy defends her choice to pair all her characters with white men by highlighting that in other sitcoms, “White women always end up with White men”, but when it comes to her, she’s expected to ‘stick to her own’”. This argument falls short as Mindy is trying to make TV more diverse, and not follow in the footsteps of White writers. Mindy has the power to change this expectation, and she needs to be held accountable to make this change before she perpetuates more stereotypes. 

This considered, it is important to remember that this is just a starting point. The representation that Mindy provides us with is far from perfect, but at the very least she is giving Brown girls the opportunity to see themselves on screen. On the other hand, viewers still have the right to have high standards for Mindy, and representation will only improve if we make our opinions heard. 

SOURCES

Angelo, Megan. “Ranking the Mindy Project Boyfriends From "Total Waste of Time" to "Come Back to Us, Please!".” Glamour, January 15, 2014. https://www.glamour.com/story/ranking-the-mindy-project-boyf. 

Lee Kong, Stacy. “What Do We Do With a Problem Like Mindy Kaling?.” Friday Things, January 20, 2023. https://www.fridaythings.com/recent-posts/mindy-kaling-controversy-velma-reviews.

Lerner, Jamie. “Everyone Is Hating on Mindy Kaling and Not Just for 'Velma' — We Dig Into the Controversy.” Distractify, January 26, 2023. https://www.distractify.com/p/mindy-kaling-controversy 

Irfan, Anmol. “The messy representation in Never Have I Ever is crucial for South Asian women.” Independent, August 14, 2022. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/never-have-i-ever-muslim-south-asian-representation-b2144773.html/ 

Kadikar, Rachana. “‘Never Have I Ever’ been satisfied with partial representation.” September 20, 2022. https://dailytrojan.com/2022/09/20/never-have-i-ever-been-satisfied-with-partial-representation/ 

Schwedel, Heather. “Maybe We Were Wrong About Mindy Kaling.” Slate, January 20, 2022. https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/mindy-kaling-sex-lives-college-girls-hbo-max-netflix.html.

Silva, Rayleen. “Why Bela & Eric Need To Break Up In Sex Lives Of College Girls Season 2.” Screen Rant, December 1, 2022. https://screenrant.com/sex-lives-college-girls-season-2-bela-eric-breakup/.  

Siva, Gayathri. “As a South Asian woman, Never Have I Ever is harmful.” The Varsity, November 27, 2021. https://thevarsity.ca/2021/11/27/why-i-dont-like-never-have-i-ever/.