(Wiling away time in nail-biting anticipation for the penultimate episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo....)
So, like a good South Asian-American, I did absolutely binge Indian Matchmaking, knowing full well all of the problematic crap behind it and in front of it. Huge, HUGE biased caveat right now before this review: for me, writing about South Asian culture will often have me feeling that familiarity breeds contempt. I feel like my biases will seep through my pores when I think about these issues, but alas, at least I know I’m feeling these feelings.
I honestly do not watch very much reality TV -- as this blog indicates, I mostly watch East and Southeast Asian shows. (If you’ve ever watched the daily dramas on Zee TV, you might understand why.) I also don’t watch very many Bollywood films. And finally -- I grew up in a Western religious background, so many of the customs around “Indian” relationships that are directly tied to Hinduism/Islam/Sikhism/Jain practices aren’t necessarily ones that I grew up with.
However. There are many cultural practices, sometimes loosely associated with the religious practices previously mentioned, that I AM familiar with and was expected to follow from my childhood into adulthood.
Putting that all together, I could relate somewhat to what was happening on Indian Matchmaking. (Important caveat, though: my particular cohort of friends who are South Asian, including myself, have largely partnered with people of different races.)
What I can’t stand about lazy show reviews is that oftentimes, viewers ask the show to do things that the show is not intended to do. I can’t ask Indian Matchmaking to, say, address intergenerational trauma of arranged marriages, especially those that absolutely don’t work out. I can’t ask Indian Matchmaking to address misogyny in the expectations that women -- very often, professionally educated and trained women -- are expected to give up their jobs to live at home, often with their in-laws, and produce and raise children. I can’t ask Indian Matchmaking to address to the parents of adult children that the purpose of marriage is NOT the actual wedding and party itself, but the lifelong commitment to a partner to create a family.
And.... yet. Of course, I want this show to address all of this, because all of these expectations, including the expectation that I would give up a professional career, were placed on me by my own parents. Thus, did I get any joy out of watching this show?
Somewhat. I was actually fascinated by watching the continued journey of Aparna from Season 1, who very clearly does not want to do the work of dating. And you know what -- if she would just admit that, I would seriously respect her more. Dating is hard! Finding a partner is hard! She’s deeply committed to her career. How could a show about the antiquated notions of Indian relationships and marriage possibly push her to think any differently? She was just so not into dating, and I had to give her respect for kind of recognizing that.
I ultimately think the portrayal of Sima Taparia as a kind of relationship guru is painfully detrimental, and unfortunately accurate, to my Indian culture. She states that marriages are “between two families.” For those of us who are a part of the Indian immigrant diaspora, that kind of “arrangement,” even with partners of different races, is, I think, deeply flawed. It doesn’t take into account, in multiracial relationships, how other cultures may view marriage themselves. And that notion places Indian cultural mores as dominant in the fashioning of a relationship and a marriage.
My partner and I fought against a lot of these practices when we were getting together, and frankly, even after years and years, I still suffer the effects of the stress of getting through those demands to get to a point where we could marry. Indian Matchmaking reinforces notions that a marriage is a surface agreement -- not a deep, lifelong commitment to creating a family between two people, and acknowledging the incredible emotional compromises that come with that pairing.
