Thursday, January 8, 2009

Never enough for a desi parent

Aasif Mandvi rocks. He is hilarious in his Daily Show segment about Dr. Sanjay Gupta possibly becoming the next Surgeon General:
Daily Show with John Stewart (video)

Mandvi acts like an exaggerated desi parent, for whom no achievement is ever enough. Here are the three things about the segment I liked:

1. Let's face it, the selection of the glamorous Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, good or bad, is fertile ground for comedy.

2. Aasif plays on the prototypical desi insistence on competition (race is, let's face it, a race! China, Japan, India -- let's see which Asian superpower wins!), and love of titles and labels "actually, Jon, it's DOCTOR Aasif Mandvi..."

3. Fine gradations of status are vastly important: "You mean it's a position BELOW the cabinet?" Utter disappointment!

This segment reminds Boston Brahmin of some British TV sitcoms that feature people of Indian origin. I had never before seen such knowing fun being poked at desis in the United States. Another first for The Daily Show by Jon Stewart. Totally cool!

3 comments:

Booksnfreshair said...

Your observations are right on the button. Wonderful post.

You are right -- the Daily Show rocks!

sanjay menon said...

I hope this is a step toward the desi community being able to laugh at itself - a character trait lacking in the larger Indian population.

As far as the Daily Show goes, I had wondered whether it would be able to find a purpose after the elections. I am glad to see it keeping up to its high standards and continuing to be eminently watchable.

SVD said...

Mr Menon .. i laugh at you.. :-) ( actually with you.. :-) ) a lot..
n'est-ce pas ? ... ;-)