I argue that these “traditional” clothes are actually significant of a much more insidious trend that we see in everything from film to Halloween costumes: superficial ethnic and cultural performance for the white gaze. In other words, Parvati and Padma aren’t dressed like that because Harry Potter is trying to pay generous homage to Desi culture in Britain, but because they want to look like they are. They are interested in the performance of cultural literacy.
A Discussion of Audience
Harry Potter was not written with an audience of color in mind. This much, I think, is clear, and I don’t make this claim from a place of bitterness. When J.K. Rowling (who has her own set of problems) penned the first few books, including characters of color in “mainstream” children’s literature was still a revolutionary idea. She has to be commended for bucking the trend of featuring just white children: despite their problems, it’s kind of a miracle that characters like Dean Thomas, Parvati and Padma Patil, Angelina Johnson, and Cho Chang even exist. But the audience was still white. The audience was still imagined to be the default.
The result of this was that little research was actually done into the breaking and bending of stereotypes that children’s literature has the power to do. Cho Chang is not a real Chinese name; it is two Korean surnames chained together. A throwaway comment in Deathly Hallows reveals that Dean Thomas has a dead father, an ungenerous trope of Black children in the media. As such, it is clear that merely including characters of color is not enough; one needs to have fleshed them out enough to not fall into the trap of mistaking stereotypes for unique characteristics. Rowling’s negligence to do so unintentionally reflected in her audience; many mispronounce Parvati’s name as “Pavarti” (like Havarti cheese) not from a place of malice, but mere lack of knowledge.
Is Inclusion Enough?
Consider my discussion of performance from earlier. The franchise performs cultural literacy without embodying it – it checks its boxes after having done the bare minimum. But maybe I’m being ungenerous: Parvati and Padma did a lot of good for the media world, and I can’t write about them without acknowledging that. Putting two Brown British girls in traditional Desi clothing onscreen in the most successful Potter film at that time is arguably radically progressive. For once, young Desi girls got to see familiar women wearing familiar clothes and jewelry onscreen. And, what’s more, those two girls got to be the dates of the heroes of the whole franchise (never mind that they were somehow the last possible choices for Ron and Harry). Parvati in particular had a revolutionary moment of fame: not only was she one of the select few chosen to begin the Yule Ball, she also rendered Harry speechless when she demanded he put her hand on her waist. A commanding woman clearly desired by many – recall the strapping Durmstrang lad that asks her for her hand once Harry decides to spend the rest of the ball sulking with Ron – Parvati embodies humor, power, sex, beauty, and ability.
What a liberating moment for young Brown girls! We could be that, too. We could be desired despite being in a room full of our attractive white peers; for me, what was once key was that we could be desired by a white man. This was important to highlight. As a child watching these two girls, it felt remarkable to be shown possibility. And I still think Parvati and Padma are vessels of possibility for young Brown girls, but it is not enough to just be possibility. Before the Yule Ball, Dean Thomas remarks that he thinks Parvati and Padma are two of the prettiest girls in their year, and marvels that Harry and Ron somehow got them. The fact that the only Black man in their year is the one who recognizes the beauty of the Indian women – and that no one else at Hogwarts had – caused me to raise an eyebrow, to say the least.
The beauty of these girls in lehengas are not a priority. It’s not obvious, Western beauty, and it doesn’t need to be treated as such. They are the last picks for the dance, and they are given poorly tailored outfits with gaudy colors and awkward designs (as if the costume designer thought, “India? Color and shiny things. Yup.”). Their achingly traditional long hair is pinned up into a lazy, aunty-style half-up half-down. What am I looking at? Recall the way Hermione looks in the same scene – with the caveat that yes, she is one of the main characters and this is her real butterfly moment and I love this scene for that reason – and then look back at Parvati and Padma. Every single detail is more carefully thought out to fit Emma Watson’s figure than to fit Shefali Chowdhury’s and Afshan Azad’s. This scene isn’t about the Patil twins, it’s true. But the utter lack of attention to their characters that, because of the books and the script, would take up space in the movie anyway, is striking. The production team appears to have been okay with glossing over the twins. They are but stops on the way for both of our male protagonists, one of whom is lusting after Cho Chang and the other who is lusting after Hermione Granger. And so they must look like stops on the way.
I won’t call this slight against the Patil twins a missed opportunity – like I’ve said, it was kind of a big deal that they existed in the first place. And I’m proud that they were the first Brown women on screen I really saw myself in. But as we grow up, as we give literature and media like Harry Potter to younger generations, it’s important to acknowledge it as fallible. It’s important that we imagine the Patil twins, the only Desis in the series, as much more than we were shown.
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