Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Critical Review #2: Maira

In "The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture", Maira focuses on the Indian American subculture that attends bhangra club nights, a part of the "desi scene". She describes the attire: hip-hop, urban youth inspired for men, and provocative, designer-inspired New York fashion for women. The reasons for this fashion appears to be because of the "macho" and "cool" look that hip-hop fashion brings, in order to contrast the "nerdy", effeminate stereotype that is commonly assigned to Asian-Americans. Women's fashion is contradicting because although they provide a way for women to express and liberate themselves sexually, yet at the same time, clothes that are too "skimpy" are shunned by both women and men. The music is a mix between American hip-hop and Indian pop and bhangra. Maira argues that second-generation Indian Americans look towards this sub-culture to express their mixed identities - both associating to their new American lifestyles but still bringing back their old cultural and traditional Indian roots in their music, dancing styles, and adornments such as nose rings and bindis. Although youths associate themselves with this new identity, their parent's rhetoric of American as seductive and polluting and Indian as pure and innocent is also a part of their rhetoric.

Do you think there are other subcultures that have similar paradoxes as the desi scene - an urge to put themselves into the mainstream American culture while at the same time criticizing its seductiveness and "dirtiness" in comparison to the traditional culture? Do you think this phenomenon is only present in Diaspora youth cultures?

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