Perhaps you can remember this year’s Oscars: the plethora of titles (deservingly) awarded to “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once,” a selection of red carpet looks that ranged from glamorous to unintentionally camp, and a scintillating performance of the winner of the Best Original Song category, “Naatu Naatu,” from the Telugu language film“RRR.” And if you are South Asian, you probably remember the stir these Oscars caused within our community.
Minutes after the performance of “Naatu Naatu” had finished, Twitter was filled with questions. “Where were the South Asians?” “Why did the performance seem to feature people of every ethnicity but desis?” “WHERE IS OUR REPRESENTATION?”
Before I tear apart these questions, I must give these “activists” some credit. South Asians have rarely been featured in Western media beyond oversized caricatures of stereotypical representations of Indian people. Baljeet (from “Phineas & Ferb”), Rajesh (from “The Big Bang Theory”), and Chirag (from “Dairy of a Wimpy Kid”) are all, more or less, representations of western notions of what it means to be desi. Representations of South Asian people in ways that South Asians want to be portrayed are few and far between, and so I understand the collective craving for representation, at least to an extent.
However,“Naatu Naatu” at the Oscars may not be the place toward which we should direct this criticism. In the movie, the song is performed by two South Asian leads, surrounded by a sea of western-looking dancers. Aside from the two leads, none of the other dancers are desi. So it should not be a surprise, or a problem, that an award show performance of the same dance number has a similar-looking cast (though seemingly much more ethnically diverse than the original movie version).
Yes, it would have been far better to have desi leads for this performance, rather than desi-passing dancers in those roles. I cannot argue with that. But simply asking for desi people is not enough if you truly value representation.“Naatu Naatu” is a Telugu song heavily influenced by Kuthu, a style of music and dance from the southern part of India and Sri Lanka, and a style heavily appropriated by north Indian dancers in popular representations of this style. If you want true representation among the dancers and choreographers, then you should be asking for South Indian, Telugu dancers and choreographers, while simultaneously calling out all of your north Indian friends who choreographed “southie” segments for their competitive college dance teams. Oh, you can’t do that? Maybe lower your voice, then.
Beyond this, while uplifting desi choreographers is important, almost none of the angry tweets tagging South Asian creators that community members believed would have been better suited to choreograph the piece for the show highlighted high-caliber artists who could have brought talent and creativity to the choreography. Instead, a majority of the tagged creators were influencers who made a reel or two to “Naatu Naatu,” copying the steps from the movie exactly while giving no credit to the movie’s choreographer.
And then, the choreography. Yes, it would have been better to hire a veteran Kuthu choreographer to create this work, but a talented hip-hop choreographer is just as well suited to this role as a Bollywood one. An L.A. Times article published just after the incident features a host of desi creatives, all lamenting the performance (and their exclusion from it), and yet none of these artists are Kuthu specialists by any means. If we are looking for authentic knowledge in these spaces, one can only get that by bringing in a Kuthu specialist, someone who understands the history, context, and body language of Kuthu in a way that other talented dancers do not. If those dancers, almost all of whom reside in India and are likely unreachable on short notice due to travel difficulties, are not available, I would argue that a high-quality choreography by non-South Asians is just as good, if not better, than choreography by a desi artist who has no knowledge of Kuthu: The amount of knowledge of the form is identical.
Even though all of this Oscars nonsense is old news, I find it to be a prime example of how our quest for “representation” has led us astray. We see here the reproduction of the myth of South Asian-ness, of ethnic isolationism, and of a longing for representation over quality.
By the myth of South Asian-ness, I mean the idea that there is an essence to being desi, and that South Asians are a group. Calls for representation almost always call for “South Asian representation,” and nothing more specific. And while this inclusive umbrella term is expansive and serviceable in many ways, at the same time it eliminates the nuance of multiplicity within the South Asian community. Thus, calls for “South Asian representation” almost always rub me the wrong way, because a person from Burma and a person from Pakistan have wholly different cultural backgrounds, life experiences, and art forms that they would bring to the table, despite both residing under the umbrella of “South Asian.” If we are truly looking for authentic representation, calls for the increased inclusion of “South Asians” are not enough, and actually further promote the appropriation of desi dance styles that come from marginalized communities by privileged South Asians. After all, since they are “South Asian,” the community sees no issue with this.
Furthermore, I argue that this episode reeks of ethnic isolationism, by which I mean the South Asian community’s desire to remain insular and exclusive towards participation in desi art forms by non-desi people. To me, outrage at well-executed Kuthu choreography being danced by non-Indians implies that Indian dance forms are meant solely for Indians; no one else, no matter how hard they train, could possibly perform or reproduce them correctly. This logic renders South Asian art forms as solely belonging to people whom the desi community sees as South Asian and not allowing these practices to be learned or shared with anyone outside of a very insular community. When I first watched the performance of“Naatu Naatu” at the Oscars, I had no idea the choreographer was not desi; the steps looked just like those that one could expect to find in an Indian movie, maybe even a Telugu one. Perhaps if the piece was less true to the song’s stylistic origins, I would be more sympathetic towards these protests, but a well-executed Kuthu-fusion choreography should not be bashed simply because of the ethnicity of its creator. And if you still disagree with me, turn your anger towards any desi person teaching hip hop, jazz, heels, or waacking—after all, these styles are not desi, but were created by Black communities in America.
Finally, quality. Yes, it would have been better to have a Kuthu choreographer for the Oscars. Yes, it would have been better to have desi leads in the performance. But what is really undeniable, no matter how angry the performance makes you, is that it was well-choreographed and well-executed. And most of the influencers that were being tagged as alternate, South Asian options for dancers did not look half as good in their Instagram Reels as the cast of dancers on stage. While representation is important, as a south Indian person I would rather see a well-executed Kuthu-inspired routine void of South Asians at the Oscars than a poorly executed Bollywood-ified piece with lots of South Asians on stage. I felt represented through the song, its language, its rhythms, and the choreography, even though I perhaps didn’t see someone who looked like me on stage.
I probably made you mad. Sorry about that. You can write a letter to the editor about me—it won’t be the first. I don’t mean to rile you up, but I want to urge you to think more critically about our calls for representation. In this era of wokeness and social media activism, we frequently rush to ask for things like representation and inclusivity without thought; I simply want to ask you to think a little more about these things before you add fuel to the fire. I am by no means anti-representation; I, too, would love to see more people of my culture accurately portrayed in western media. However, I also try my best to ask for such things with nuance, with an understanding of the plurality of cultures that exist within the “South Asian” umbrella, knowledge of the history of the appropriation of South Asian art forms by other South Asians, and desire for true inclusivity that invites non-desi people to learn desi art forms. And I invite you to do the same.
Akhil Joondeph is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at ajoondeph@wesleyan.edu.