The first season of Aziz Ansari’s new show, Master of None premiered earlier this month on Netflix to universal acclaim. The show is simultaneously smart, funny, thought-provoking, and covers a wide range of topics beautifully in only ten episodes. Once I started watching it, I absolutely could not stop watching it and found myself ready to start again at the beginning after completing the entire season.
Master of None is not only an excellent show, but it is also incredibly important culturally because of how it addresses serious racial issues. Hollywood has long been absolutely dreadful in terms of cultural representation. Minority actors have been largely relegated to stereotypical roles and minor, supporting characters. While things have definitely gotten better in this department, any gains made are very small steps in comparison to the overwhelming problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFvb3WKISk
Master of None is important in terms of its cultural representation simply in terms of its diverse cast and the roles that they portray. None of these characters are confined by their race, but at the same time, race is not ignored. It is shown as an important aspect of how these characters experience the world around them. In America, this is especially true because of laws that have been put in place to increase legal ramifications for immigrants who commit a crime.
Danielle Wozniak and Judy Boudman of The University of New England talk about this aspect of American immigrant life and say, “These laws have devastated our immigrant communities, as they now live in fear of detention and deportation without due process.” Because of this incredibly hostile environment that immigrants and minorities face in everyday American life, Master of None’s portrayal of race as something to be talked about, instead of ignored, is so important.
The most direct route Master of None takes in addressing race comes in its fourth episode, “Indians on TV.” In this episode, we see Aziz Ansari’s character, Dev, deal with how Indians have been portrayed through TV and movies, and what his experiences were seeing these portrayals throughout his life. What makes this episode incredibly effective is that it does not betray the personal focus of the show in order to make a broad, sweeping point about racism in Hollywood. Instead, it stays close to a specific character’s experiences, and isn’t afraid to counter those with another Indian character’s experiences. It’s a reminder that these are real, personal experiences that people have, and that is incredibly powerful.
Because of the way it looks at race, Master of None is not only a great show, but an incredibly important one, as well. It shows that, while race is a universal issue, the way that it affects people is individual and incredibly nuanced. Instead of pointing out singular issues that need to be addressed, and applying uniform “solutions” to them on a societal scale, it shows that the ways that race is thought about and discussed needs to shift.
As the episode shows, simply adding diverse characters onto a show does not address or solve racial issues within Hollywood if those characters still only serve as stereotypes and tokens. Like Master of None, Orange is the New Black, and Fresh Off the Boat have recently done successfully, racially diverse characters need to be written as unique and interesting outside of their race, and not be handcuffed by it. This is how white characters have always been written, and it’s well past time that change is made so all characters, and the actors and actresses who portray them, are given the same treatment.
Words by Zachary Evans