Indian Mindy Kaling dates a White guy….again

Mindy Kaling as Mindy in The Mindy Project (phew), has a history of dating and lusting after white men exclusively.

According to The Wrap: “Why is it that ‘The Mindy Project’ title character has exclusively dated white men?….Season 1 depicted Mindy making a fool of herself at her ex’s wedding, going on really terrible dates, carrying on a tortured flirtation with a fellow doctor and later finding love and taking a break from her practice for a handsome Christian pastor. There was definitely an ensemble of distinct personalities in that group of suitors, though they were all Caucasian.” (source: The Wrap)

Through 2015, Mindy dates 19 different men – all white. They are tall, short, athletic, nebbish – apparently there is no kind of white man who is not ‘right’ in some way. But if you’re a minority, if you’re Asian- you don’t qualify. You’re not in the consideration set.

Josh

Casey

Morgan

Sam

Danny

Before you worry about the Morgan image above with him trapping her, here’s the context. Mindy is adamant about having sex with Morgan, she pounces on him. He has to throw her across the room and then trap her in a pizza box to keep her off him. But then he ‘reluctantly’ goes along with it. This is how TV encourages and normalizes an obsession of white men amongst women – bearing in mind that Mindy is a hero to many Indian-American women. Mindy may be a hero to some, but she is reinforcing the Hollywood racial conditioning and story-telling engine.

Episode “The Best Man” is a good example. There is no one thing that jumps out – just a collection of scenes that depict an Asian woman in a White Man’s world. In the first minute, a white man (Morgan) sitting next to Mindy is repeatedly grabbing her. In the business meeting, the men up front, the leaders, are all white. Later, Mindy waits in a sari with her family for an Indian event. But her white boyfriend (Danny) chooses not to go because he is “tired”. The message is that her Indian culture is not important.

She asks her boyfriend not to send flowers to her parents because “flowers symbolize death” in Indian culture; a joke based on a falsehood (minorities can lie about their home culture and others will unquestioningly believe it). This kind of think however reinforces the perception that Asians are “perpetual immigrants”. They occupy the role of the “other” in American society.

For Mindy Kaling herself, she is living a dream; she is surrounded by hunky men, whatever their race, the lead in a show named after herself. For once, you wonder if she considers how her personal fame may not be worth the image she’s perpetuating. Mindy lives in a White World of her making — and loves it. Too bad the rest of us have to endure the after-effects of this kind of glorification.