Oscar-winner Brie Larson’s”Basmati Blues”trailer
The trailer of Oscar-winner Brie Larson’s latest offering, ‘Basmati Blues’, is viral for all the wrong reasons. The cliche-rich trailer, complete with a Bollywood dance sequence, shows Larson’s character travelling to India to sell genetically-modified rice to farmers. The two and a half minute clip, which shows all things stereotypically ‘Indian’ like stray goats and spicy food, has been thrashed online for ‘white-washing’ and cultural appropriation. ‘Cringe-worthy’ has been used often in tweets to describe the ‘Basmati Blues’ trailer.
Outrage aside, the fact that any filmmaker, producer or star allowed a spot this poorly cut to become available for public consumption is just baffling. On top of the goat joke, Brie eats highly exaggerated spicy food, gets her feet washed in brass plates, and saves the villagers from an evil Donald Sutherland who shouts from a train how ‘the train of progress will not stop’ (all while Larson races the train on a white horse). I mean, I’ve never been to India, but this feels like the cartoon version they sold in travel brochures during the ’50s.
While many expressed their disappointment with Larson for signing up for the role of the “white savior to Indian people,” others slammed the trailer for generalizing a culture down to outdated cliches like a horse-riding heroine who dances to Bollywood music.
The musical comedy also features Scott Bakula, Donald Sutherland, Tyne Daly and Suhasini Mulay. It has been scored by Steven Argila and has songs written by Pearl Jam, Dave Baerwald, and Sonu Nigam. The film was to have been released in 2015 but was delayed. It will hit Indian screens on November end.
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