A couple of days ago, I took some time out to do a little bit of a house-cleaning.. I chanced upon an old magazine that had a review of Armageddon, the Bruce Willis movie.. I am sure you have seen it.. you know, the movie in which an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth, and the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside, and the associated drama..
One particular scene had caught my attention. In went something like this. The world began to understand the potential mass destruction that was about to be unleashed and all the world went about to 'pray' for um.. not getting their tushies vaporized. They (the movie makers, that is..) then show a shot of people from India praying. So far so good. That is a fair and logical thing to do, you know the eastern types and all their prayer and medidation.. But the shot had something incredible. They showed a whole bunch of poor Indians (not the urban civilized educated types who I suppose figured out the end was near and went to the local bar to get sloshed!) folding their hands over their head worshipping the.. get this.. the TAJ MAHAL!!
The Taj?? To those who are not familiar with the Taj Mahal, it is a 17th century monument that was, legend has it, built as a sublime memory of love, by Shah Jahan, for his beautiful wife Arjumand Banu Begum, a.k.a Mumtaz Mahal. It is considered to be a proud member of the modern seven wonders of the world. What it is not however, is a place of worship. Ofcourse, there are thories that the Taj Mahal was really an old Hindu temple that was destroyed by Shah Jahan and converted to a mausoleum.. but I am fairly positive that this thoery was not what the director was comtemplating on when he took this shot.
Now really... how long have Indians lived in the USA? In particular, how many Indians live in California? Surely someone from the director's team could have stepped out of the office and yanked the first Indian he saw minding his own business and could have asked him how poor Indians worship in India.. that sounds fairly reasonable for a big-budget movie production director to do right? But no.. It's akin to showing a bunch of Chinese folks worshipping the Great Wall of China.
It is pathetic and smacks ignorance. Oh well.
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7 comments:
I was once asked by someone if we Hindus worshipped Gandhi.
I was honest. I said that some of us do. But that it is a rather primitive religion.
Actually I think they just showed the Taj so that the target audience, namely Americans who wouldnt know India from the mole on their buttocks, would know it is Indians that they were showing. If they had showed, say, the temple at Jagannath, the average American movie goer would have sat there saying "sweet .... the africans are prayin too".
Gawker, what you say is a possibility. However, that can easily be accomplished by putting in a caption that says 'Bhuvaneshwar, India' instead to having to insult anyone's intelligence.
Coming to think of it, if a giant asteroid is hurtling towards earth, the Taj Mahal is as good a place as any to start praying!
The Taj Complex has a mosque - it is the red sandstone building on the west side facing Mecca as is customary. Since I haven't seen the movie I can't say whether they showed this building.
I'm glad someone noticed this. I have, each time the movie shows on TV, and have often sniggered violently at it. Thanks for writing about it.
Yeah I saw that. Also saw a huge wheat field stretching from horizon to horizon with a crop cirle in it, while the voice on the news said NEAR BANGALORE, India (from the movie: Signs).
I guess after the Taj, bangalore's the next term Americans are familiar with.
Could have shown all the bangalorians praying to photos of Taj and eating all the curry they can eat before their tushies get asteroided.
I guess if there's a Bollywood movie coming up about 9/11, it'll show all the New Yorkers praying to the statue of Liberty.
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