American Masala, now what?

After re-reading the Newsweek article, it struck me, now that Newsweek has recognized the Desi contributions to the U.S., does this all of a sudden mean that South Asian American's are now the "it" minority group. Is that all it takes? Does a group just need media recognition to actually arrive? I hope not.

DESIBLOG's media rundown:

The blogosphere, especially the desi blogosphere has been discussing at great length the south asian takeover in American media, which started off I guess with Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding--Nair is set to release Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon.

I think another big stepwas Panjabi MC's musical crossover hit Mundian to Bach Ke (BTW PMC has recently given an interview to Bobby Friction of the Bobby Friction and Nihal show on BBC 1) which became a mainstream hit, much like Gurinder Chadha's feel good movie Bend It Like Beckham--Chadha is set to release Bride and Prejudice in late 2004. All this stuff, when combined with the rising desi population numbers has really made the Desi massive strongly impact advertising, and in turn Hollywood.

As a result we now have a slew of tv shows in the works featuring desis. Check out Manish Vij's and Turbanhead's posts on Nevermind Nirvana, a new pilot being directed by Friend's David Schwimmer, and starring Kal Penn, for NBC. In addition to Mira Nair's planned sitcom pilotthat Carsey-Werner-Mandabach was behind for ABC revolving around an upper-middle-class Punjabi family that runs a chain of motels in New Jersey, rumor around the block has it that her Monsoon Wedding Co-writer Sabrina Dhawan is penning a script for a Desi show on HBO which will focus on what it means to be American to immigrant Indian families as they make the transition from first-generation immigrants to second-generation Americans.

In other news, make sure to check out Desi DNA on BBC 2. Currently there is an interesting clip of Jay Sean, the British Asian med student turned pop star.

posted by sajit @ 1:28 AM