Season 3, Ep. 5: The Taqwacores

On this week's episode of Saturday School, we revisit the 2010 feature film The Taqwacores, which follows a group of characters living together in Buffalo, New York who are part of the Islamic punk scene. We laugh about how in Hollywood movies, the "outsider" character who introduces the audience to a fascinating minority subculture is usually a white guy, but in The Taqwacores, it's an innocent first-generation Pakistani engineering student. We compare a joke Dominic Rains' character makes about a jihad on his nuts, to Taz Ahmed's best-selling Muslim Valentine's Day card that says "I have a ji-hard-on for you." Brian ties the movie's white girl romance storyline to the recent conversation being had about the lack of South Asian female perspectives in current South Asian stories like The Big Sick, Master of None, Meet the Patels etc., but Ada kinda forgives The Taqwacores for being so "testosterone-y." Good times.