“We don’t know what you look like but we will still show what you look like:” Decoding the cinematic aesthetics of a Dalit face

Multiple attempts have been made to portray Dalit lives in Indian cinema. While some creators have succeeded in understanding the complexity of this responsibility, others have only managed to pass with grace marks. S2E5 of Made in Heaven, created by Tiger Baby (Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti), interestingly speaks to me on the intersection of these two ends of the spectrum. The episode The Heart Skipped A Beat is a story that shows two inter-caste marriages, a Buddhist wedding and a Tamil Brahmin wedding. However, the reason this episode garnered most of its attention was for its buddhist wedding portrayal in an intercaste setting where Pallavi, a Dalit girl is marrying her Sharma fiance, Vikram. The character of Pallavi Menke, played by Radhika Apte, and her story stands to be one of the most closely relatable and 'authentic' Bollywood portrayals of a Dalit girl in the context of inter-caste marriage, in my opinion. Radhika Apte has indubitably done a remarkable job in representing the nuances of being a Dalit woman, where she succeeds in delivering a performance that aptly embraces Dalit identity politics as well as Dalit rage with conviction. But in this essay, my inquiry is not directed at Apte; it is for the creators. A closer look into the episode reveals that there is an understated stereotype of Dalit facial aesthetics at play in the larger frame.

I believe that casting Radhika Apte for this episode is not solely because of her acting prowess but also due to the ways her appearance and screen persona have been culturally coded within Indian cinema. She has often been associated with art-house or “realistic” roles, those of “common,” “rural,” or “ordinary” people. Thus, for the creators, she fits this role both symbolically and visually. My observation is that creators from the entertainment industry of India have long constructed and perpetuated a Dalit aesthetic that is deeply rooted in the semantics of the upper-caste gaze and how it ‘imagines’ or ‘visualizes’ a Dalit face. This aesthetic is strengthened by colorism and caste-coded visuality. Even though the creators of Made in Heaven tried to show the political as well as personal accuracy of a Dalit life, they could not completely decolonize their minds on the visual vocabulary of a Dalit face. Being the phenomenal actor that she is, Apte plays or has played all the roles, whether rich or poor, savarna or avarna, with utmost brilliance. But it is also important to note how roles that she plays lead up to a common matrix of class-politics themes. She is the first face that pops up in the minds of the audience when it comes to portraying roles as such. To show a Dalit girl thriving in the world, Apte had to be the best choice for the creators because there is no other face aesthetic they could think of for a Dalit face.

The Caste-Coded Visuality

Let us look closely at her on-screen family. Her father and mother, neither overly dressed or ornamented too much in the episode, look oddly brown-faced where everyone, except both of them, are glowing with pink rosey cheeks and have fairer skin tone. Menke’s brother is the only person in her whole Dalit family who has a somewhat fairer skin tone. Let us look closely once again, but this time on the other side of the Menke family, that is, the Sharma family. Vikram and his mother have a glistening fair skin tone that shines louder than their words, even in odd lighting. His father is relatively darker than both of them, but still not as brown as anyone in the Menke family. Vikram’s extended family, consisting of his casteist aunt too shares the same fair skin tone as him and his mother.

If you have already started to wonder where I’m directing you to, I hope you are not thinking of me as a shallow person who is randomly talking about people’s skin color on a Sunday morning. Because I did, when I sat down to write this. How can I write about someone’s skin color? I’m a fair skin toned girl myself, so how am I supposed to talk about a topic that is sensitive to many because of the selective privileges our society gives to people like me? I’m not unaware of the beauty privileges that come with looking a certain way; I have lived in Indian society long enough to know its roots in colorism. But it is not about me or you individually. It is about our representation on screen as a Dalit. Along with being a woman, I’m also Dalit, and it matters to me how my people are represented on-screen, especially when it is put forward by upper-caste/savarna gaze. I wish it was the case with the Menke family too, that they were naturally browner. But they are not. Their aesthetic is presented in a way that takes away light from their persona. Toned down, deliberately dulled face, with simple clothes that do not shine or give away celebration, mother’s hair partitioned in a straight line with hair tightly tied in a bun, with occasional dialogues here and there.

"It is a clear cut Dalit-Savarna equation... They gave them all a face card that ‘Glow & Lovely’s’ (to be read Fair&Lovely) shade card is scared of."

Now, parallel to this Buddhist wedding, there was another Tamil Brahmin wedding going on in the scene. Let’s switch to it for a minute. The couple, Vidya Iyer and Rohit Ajuha are set to embark on their blissfully married life bringing in their own dollops of cultural spices in the mix. Rohit, who is a Punjabi, wants a Baraat. He is fair skinned. Vidya, who is an Iyer woman, is happy with the idea of Baraat at her “simple” wedding. She too is one of the fairest person on screen in the episode. Their “North meets South” wedding surprisingly does not have dark skin toned people as their demography would suggest. I think it is an interesting choice that the creators have made by juxtaposing these two weddings in one episode. It is a clear cut Dalit-Savarna equation, not just on a molecular level but as an overarching theme. So given this clear Dalit-Savarna equation, it irks me, but does not surprise me, that the only family who has maximum number of darker complexion people is a Dalit family. They gave them all a face card that ‘Glow & Lovely’s’ (to be read Fair&Lovely) shade card is scared of.

The Unconscious Bias of Creation

An episode such as this also does not just get made on its own overnight with the help of two producers and a director. There are numbers of people involved. Here the artist is not just the actor who is acting in a particular segment but also the ones who have compiled the segment: the writers who wrote the story; the casting directors who assigned faces to the characters written by the writer; the make-up artist who readied that face; the director who shot the best, good, or worst shots of that face. It is the coming together of various artistries to make art. How did these artists unanimously yet subconsciously decide and agree to put forward a Dalit aesthetic? So many people were involved in making this episode too, so none of them bothered with the question of how Menke family is portrayed visually? Why? Because Bollywood itself is full of savarna people who have a predefined image of ‘Dalit’ face in their minds. It is this Dalit face you see unfold in front of cameras. Take a good look at Menke family. This is what the creators think a Dalit family looks like. Supposedly. They might not be entirely wrong too when it comes to the nuances of our complex life, but definitely the upper-caste gaze is evident to the level one can not ignore.

A few days back a news was circulating on the internet that ChatGPT and other LLMs are stereotyping Dalits by showcasing them darker skin toned and in shabby clothes. This is not a coincidence. Neither is Menke family’s brown facing. These stereotypes emerge from the same source: the upper-caste or savarna gaze. It refuses Dalit diversity and homogenizes us into appearing something they think is right.

The thing about privileged people like Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti making an episode such as episode 5th is a bold step but not the most perfectly executed one. Marginalized people such as Dalits have manifolds of intersections working in their life simultaneously with which we deal strategically on a daily basis. Some of these battles are internal while some are noticeable publicly. They coexist and supplement each other’s bearings. Portraying an overall dark skin toned family would have not been a big deal had it been in any other setting than a Dalit household. But when you mix skin color with Dalit identity, the result always shows the depths one has understood about our being that is inspired from centuries of prejudice held against us. It reveals the creators’ understanding of a community shaped by age-old structurally prejudicial notions of our existence. While this episode is rich in story, the aesthetical representation of Menke family slips back to the deeply influenced visual iconography Dalits have been associated with for centuries.

The "Look" of Caste

I also raise this concern because time and again, Dalit people are subjected to a biased uppercaste gaze that homogenizes our identity without ever considering our diversity, and renders us into categories where they decide who can be respected and who cannot; who will be given access to their elite-savarna groups and who will remain out of it. It tries to dictate what we should look like and how we should appear. Anything other than the imagined version of a Dalit face calls in the absurd notion of not looking Dalit enough. What is more problematic is that this ideology pushes forward a deeply stereotypical identification of our being that goes beyond colorism, and seeps into other expressions of our lives, surrounding our freedom to express with unnecessary shadow of expectations born out of bias. It is majorly savarna people who have been shocked to know that I’m a Dalit, and I do not appear Dalit enough to them, like many other Dalit people who share this same experience. For them, it is only upper-caste people who have the privilege of bearing a fair skin tone. No matter how far in north a Dalit is born, if she is born fair, she is bound to face the label of “you don’t look Dalit enough” until she openly shuns the speaker about her caste. At the same time, towards a darker skin toned Dalit person, this same Brahminized society turns to practising casteism which now gets embedded with colorism.

"For them, it is only upper-caste people who have the privilege of bearing a fair skin tone. No matter how far in north a Dalit is born, if she is born fair, she is bound to face the label of 'you don’t look Dalit enough'."

When my mother married my father 30 years ago, their entire neighborhood lost it. My father, a melanin rich man, had married a fair-skin toned woman, who was too beautiful to be a Dalit for their savarna perception. The flames of rumours spread faster than pollens on bees’ toes. Everyone in the neighborhood and beyond had come to assume that my father had an intercaste marriage and did not tell anyone about it. Truth is, neither is my mother Brahmin, nor is she anywhere linked to savarna ancestry. She is as Dalit as any other person in my whole Dalit lineage. My parents did not have an intercaste marriage either. But the fact that her fair skin is too precious and ‘unreal’ to be on a Dalit woman, she was branded as a Brahmin upon her arrival in my hometown and for the most part of her life. It backfired for her in a way that now she became an outcast for everyone, savarnas and Dalits alike, amid this artificially created cloud of her caste belonging. People started to gossip about her ‘true’ caste identity. Now my mother is not a docile woman who would submit to these allegations. She stood her ground tall and strong and asserted her Dalit identity everywhere it was questioned. But the frequency of this conversation started to tire her out after a point. People are intrusive, and they forget boundaries when it comes to knowing about someone’s caste. And no one engages in a conversation about caste as abrasively as a savarna trying to find out the caste of a person. My father too had to bear a similar unnecessary brunt of this debacle. He started being questioned by his colleagues left, right and center; women asked her who my mother was and where she came from, and men asked how did he even pull this stunt in 90s Rajasthan. From the last 30 years, we have innumerably cleared this confusion of mother’s heritage by establishing her Dalit identity whenever someone mistakes her for anything else. And this is only one case of how deeply colorism is embedded in Dalit identity politics. So when someone says you don't look Dalit 'enough,' I hear “why are you not darker, docile, in dirty clothes, within your limits, submissive, poorer? Why don’t you shut up?”

Beyond Tokenism

Just having Neeraj Ghaywan as Dalit representation won’t cut it, and should not cut it anymore. He is one of us, but not all of us. Having a co-author from Dalit background won’t suffice. We cannot keep applauding Bollywood for not even meeting the bare minimum of our true representation. In the pool of 10 writers, having one Dalit co-writer is automatically a site to question. In giving space to Ghaywan as a director, I believe the creators somewhat forgot the near non-existence of Dalit actors working in the industry. A simple google search will give you a handful of Dalit actors’ names, out of whom, not even 2% work consistently in Bollywood. When was the last time we saw a Dalit actor, bold and confidently admitting her Dalit identity in public, being given the status and opportunity like her savarna counterparts? More so, when did we even see an actor assert their Dalit identity openly? To be honest, I don’t recall if there is any other Dalit actress who made it big on Bollywood’s glam screens after Divya Bharti, who too met an untimely death. Other actors, who are speculated to be Dalits currently have never admitted or talked about their identity openly that could affirm their Dalit roots, reiterating the fact of how ‘open’ Bollywood truly is to accepting Dalit artists.

The exclusion of Dalits in the entertainment industry and absolute lack of Dalit artists and creators result in the creative power control of the art in the hands of the upper caste, thus invoking the discussion of how separate the art is from their artist. Personally, I believe it is a little delusional to think that your artist is truly separate from their art. To me, when someone says that the art is separate from artist, I hear that what they are saying is the artist did not include their subjectivity in their art; that their art is so objective that they can keep aside their personal source of creativity and afford to make an art that is, not at all, inspired by their subjectivity of being. Then, such art, in my opinion, is generated by AI, and not human. There needs to be space for many more Dalit actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, singers, and dancers to emerge in Bollywood with their caste identity out in the open. If it is about true representation, then it has to come from a place that truly creates a space for Dalit art and artists to flourish. Otherwise, it is just another celebratory stunt at monetizing caste currency and Dalit narrative shrouded with some tokenism to complete the sequence of performative activism orchestrated by savarna creators.