Katrina Kaif Playing P.T. Usha Is Cultural Appropriation And Its Time Bollywood Takes Note

If you have been following Bollywood closely, the fact that biopics, especially sports biopics , are becoming increasingly popular is no news. In fact, some of the upcoming ones like the Saina Nehwal biopic starring Parineeti Chopra has been generating a lot of buzz from the very beginning of its production.

Thus, in the wake of things, it is a welcoming news that a biopic is being made on one of India’s most celebrated athlete, Padma Shri and Arjuna Award Awardee P.T. Usha. In fact, a respected athlete of her stature deserved a biopic mush before, but now that it is finally happening, we are nothing but incredibly proud and excited. However, it’s the casting choice for the film that is making things problematic. If reports are to believed,  then Katrina Kaif is going to play P.T. Usha in the film and it is reminding us of the time when director Omung Kumar was heavily criticized for casting Priyanka Chopra to play Mary Kom.

No shade to Katrina Kaif, who has worked hard to reach the position that she occupies today, but there is absolutely no way she looks anything close to PT Usha in real life, neither does she speak Malayalam which is PT Usha’s mother tongue. Even with the best make up and prosthetics, there is no way makers can get away with this without falling for appropriations. It is especially unfortunate given there are plenty of supremely talented Malayalam actresses who would be absolutely perfect for the role. When the Mary Kom controversy emerged, makers could have used the justification that there aren’t any Manipuri actresses of repute that could have given the film the star power it needed. But, that justification cannot be used in this case because there are several popular actresses from the Malayalam film industry and some of them enjoy wide popularity among masses and have even have significant popularity among Bollywood audiences.

One might argue that if South Indian actors who regularly work in Bollywood and have played North Indian characters over the years, so is that cultural appropriation as well? To answer this one has to understand the definition of cultural appropriation in its entirety. Cultural appropriation is a tool that plays in the hand of the dominant culture. To put it simply, given the large representation of North Indian culture in Bollywood, even if a South Indian star engages in appropriation it won’t harm the way the culture in perceived. But, the thing are very different when the situation is reversed. Anyway, our representation of non- North Indian linguistic cultures are terribly inaccurate and stereotypical.

There are certain intrinsic nuances that cannot be manufactured and those nuances play an important part when you are celebrating one of the most illustrious names from that culture. Pride of Kerala and India, PT Usha, sure deserves better.