Review of English Vinglish
While watching the movie English Vinglish, the most initial fact which captured my interest were the English subtitles and for a while I was distracted due to continuous stream of translation. Meanwhile my mother came into the room and stood by me to watch the movie for a while. However that particular scene being in English and my mother being an avid Hindi user, she left with a dissatisfied expression. The subtitles then were more of a nuisance than help. I was left to ponder, if such movie which so vehemently tries to oppose the encroachment of our colonizers’ language into our daily lives, couldn’t really touch it’s actual victims then who we’re it’s target viewers? The title itself pushes the Hindi alphabets to the periphery.
However, the movie does delve into some of most serious issues of the contemporary times, the effect of a language being the central one. When the overly conscious daughter of the protagonist Shashi throws tantrums on having to take the Hindi speaEnglish speaking ther instead of an English speaking father, majority of the viewers can relate to that particular scene, having witnessed and/or being indulged in such acts themselves. Such have been the struggles from both the sides, the parent(s) and the child being controlled by a language which was introduced to it’s colonies like an alien entity, probing the natives. When a nervous Shashi hesitatingly asks her daughter’s teacher to converse in Hindi due to her inability to fluently speak in English, a visibly mortified Sapna casts death glares towards her mother. However the same inability preached by the teacher, albeit in a different context is received with sympathy, and not just by the mother and the daughter, buy by us viewers as well. What makes the incapability in Hindi more virtuosic than that of in English? The answers may lie somewhere in the ‘dark moors’ of one’s culture. When Shashi’s husband portrays her one job, making laddoos as a mere leisure-time hobby than a serious passion and later on seemingly condemns the laddoos as more of a backward territory in the world of snacks, one gets the sense of one’s innate desire to caste away the bonds of primitive norms of cultures and traditions in order to embrace modernity. This biasness of one section leads to the suffocation of another, probably a larger section where in order to get accepted, people like Shashi are ready to discard love, their emotions in order to gain respect. When Laurent, the French chef, calls his English “not clean” and “dirty”, the hierarchies even within the English speaking communities bubble up. The Mexican nanny, Eva, needs to learn English in order to ease her Spanish influence over the baby so that the foreign ‘contamination’ doesn’t corrupt white supremacy.
This cleansing of one’s natified English creates echelons not just within nationalities but in classes as well. Shashi correcting the pronunciation of her servant, showcases the constant need to assert one’s dominance, consciously or subconsciously, over the subdued stratus. However coming back to Shashi’s resolve to learn English appears out from a forced necessity. The poster shown in the train in the movie “Uncle Sam wants you to learn English” with wants doubly underlined for one to understand the subtle exposure of power play exercised by super powers under the pretext of thrusting language. This external agency to make one actually believe to be handicapped when being under the shadow of one’s native culture has now taken a more naturalistic turn. The previously thought burden of learning English, as depicted by Shashi, has now become an essential component to survive in this world. This is why Ngugi says “How did we, as African writers, come to be so feeble towards the claims of our language on us and so aggressive in our claims on other languages, particularly the language of our colonization?” one is obliged to seek out various sources out of which this aggression stems out.
Yesterday, while browsing through FB posts, I came across a meme which I subconsciously consented to before even analysing it’s actual meaning. It said “Never argue with someone who speaks better English than you”. The humongous number of likes were enough to advertise the actual inkling of acquiesnce. Thus Ngugi saying that the language is the means of spiritual subjugations reflects this state of mind. His avowal of English language becoming the measure of one’s intelligence shows the now gradually surfacing inclination towards an English speaker, who for us, becomes a dominating figure, reigning over the supposed lesser subjects of a society. Thus Rama, in our movie English Vinglish can only allege ascendancy when the English language holds the reins of his tongue and ergo his personality, which his brains, his position in the company fails to do so.
Frantz Fan very aptly said “ To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” This world isn’t just the physical and material place but its manifestation as well. Shashi in her happiest moments dances the Michael Jackson moves, even before she’s properly exposed to that world, her emotions already in synchronization with an entirely different world. While the movie ends with Shashi acquiring her self respect, she needs to be garbed in a trench coat, her saree promptly hidden beneath it. Thus the triumph of her accomplishment cannot be completed without the grease of it’s foe’s influence. As Ngugi said that his language of education was no longer the language of his culture. Thus this friction, this gap in preserving one’s culture from foreign ‘corruption’ cannot be easily reduced neither can it be completely disregarded. The fact is, as Charlemagne says “To have another language is to possess another soul” and which Achebe points out in his The Politics Of Language the English language might have risen out from the shackles of coercion but when viewed from contemporary times’ lenses, it projects a picture of necessity. Human beings cannot exist in isolation. Influence, either seen as corruption or necessity, will exist in either manner. As to how to accept it depends entirely on the user of it. Thus while English Vinglish may be a story of a victory, but it is a mirror of every minute problems underlying the grandeur of the language .
Garima Plawat
While watching the movie English Vinglish, the most initial fact which captured my interest were the English subtitles and for a while I was distracted due to continuous stream of translation. Meanwhile my mother came into the room and stood by me to watch the movie for a while. However that particular scene being in English and my mother being an avid Hindi user, she left with a dissatisfied expression. The subtitles then were more of a nuisance than help. I was left to ponder, if such movie which so vehemently tries to oppose the encroachment of our colonizers’ language into our daily lives, couldn’t really touch it’s actual victims then who we’re it’s target viewers? The title itself pushes the Hindi alphabets to the periphery.
However, the movie does delve into some of most serious issues of the contemporary times, the effect of a language being the central one. When the overly conscious daughter of the protagonist Shashi throws tantrums on having to take the Hindi speaEnglish speaking ther instead of an English speaking father, majority of the viewers can relate to that particular scene, having witnessed and/or being indulged in such acts themselves. Such have been the struggles from both the sides, the parent(s) and the child being controlled by a language which was introduced to it’s colonies like an alien entity, probing the natives. When a nervous Shashi hesitatingly asks her daughter’s teacher to converse in Hindi due to her inability to fluently speak in English, a visibly mortified Sapna casts death glares towards her mother. However the same inability preached by the teacher, albeit in a different context is received with sympathy, and not just by the mother and the daughter, buy by us viewers as well. What makes the incapability in Hindi more virtuosic than that of in English? The answers may lie somewhere in the ‘dark moors’ of one’s culture. When Shashi’s husband portrays her one job, making laddoos as a mere leisure-time hobby than a serious passion and later on seemingly condemns the laddoos as more of a backward territory in the world of snacks, one gets the sense of one’s innate desire to caste away the bonds of primitive norms of cultures and traditions in order to embrace modernity. This biasness of one section leads to the suffocation of another, probably a larger section where in order to get accepted, people like Shashi are ready to discard love, their emotions in order to gain respect. When Laurent, the French chef, calls his English “not clean” and “dirty”, the hierarchies even within the English speaking communities bubble up. The Mexican nanny, Eva, needs to learn English in order to ease her Spanish influence over the baby so that the foreign ‘contamination’ doesn’t corrupt white supremacy.
This cleansing of one’s natified English creates echelons not just within nationalities but in classes as well. Shashi correcting the pronunciation of her servant, showcases the constant need to assert one’s dominance, consciously or subconsciously, over the subdued stratus. However coming back to Shashi’s resolve to learn English appears out from a forced necessity. The poster shown in the train in the movie “Uncle Sam wants you to learn English” with wants doubly underlined for one to understand the subtle exposure of power play exercised by super powers under the pretext of thrusting language. This external agency to make one actually believe to be handicapped when being under the shadow of one’s native culture has now taken a more naturalistic turn. The previously thought burden of learning English, as depicted by Shashi, has now become an essential component to survive in this world. This is why Ngugi says “How did we, as African writers, come to be so feeble towards the claims of our language on us and so aggressive in our claims on other languages, particularly the language of our colonization?” one is obliged to seek out various sources out of which this aggression stems out.
Yesterday, while browsing through FB posts, I came across a meme which I subconsciously consented to before even analysing it’s actual meaning. It said “Never argue with someone who speaks better English than you”. The humongous number of likes were enough to advertise the actual inkling of acquiesnce. Thus Ngugi saying that the language is the means of spiritual subjugations reflects this state of mind. His avowal of English language becoming the measure of one’s intelligence shows the now gradually surfacing inclination towards an English speaker, who for us, becomes a dominating figure, reigning over the supposed lesser subjects of a society. Thus Rama, in our movie English Vinglish can only allege ascendancy when the English language holds the reins of his tongue and ergo his personality, which his brains, his position in the company fails to do so.
Frantz Fan very aptly said “ To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” This world isn’t just the physical and material place but its manifestation as well. Shashi in her happiest moments dances the Michael Jackson moves, even before she’s properly exposed to that world, her emotions already in synchronization with an entirely different world. While the movie ends with Shashi acquiring her self respect, she needs to be garbed in a trench coat, her saree promptly hidden beneath it. Thus the triumph of her accomplishment cannot be completed without the grease of it’s foe’s influence. As Ngugi said that his language of education was no longer the language of his culture. Thus this friction, this gap in preserving one’s culture from foreign ‘corruption’ cannot be easily reduced neither can it be completely disregarded. The fact is, as Charlemagne says “To have another language is to possess another soul” and which Achebe points out in his The Politics Of Language the English language might have risen out from the shackles of coercion but when viewed from contemporary times’ lenses, it projects a picture of necessity. Human beings cannot exist in isolation. Influence, either seen as corruption or necessity, will exist in either manner. As to how to accept it depends entirely on the user of it. Thus while English Vinglish may be a story of a victory, but it is a mirror of every minute problems underlying the grandeur of the language .
Garima Plawat
