Season 6, Ep. 10: My Name Is Khan (with Rowena Aquino and Winghei Kwok)

Our final episode of Saturday School's sixth semester, where we explore Asian films about Asian America, is about the 2010 Karan Johar film "My Name Is Khan," which brings us full circle to the first episode of the season, where we explored Bollywood's earlier portrayal of Indian America in "Kal Ho Naa Ho." Over the last decade, no one ever thinks to ask Brian and I, or our special guests Rowena Aquino and Winghei Kwok (who we worked with at Asia Pacific Arts), if we have touched Shah Rukh Khan. Which is probably a good thing cause turns out if we were asked, the story of how we touched his jacket, his backpack, over and over again when he was going through a crowd, in character, trying to tell the president of the United States impersonator "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist" would take a very long time - and we would sound a little bit like crazy people. But here, we tell you our story about getting racially profiled and then escorted onto a Bollywood set at UCLA, because they needed the crowd at the rally to look like America. In Bollywood's America circa 2009, they had a need for East and Southeast Asian extras, and they found a few snooping around campus early one morning after hearing that SRK would be there. This is kind of our love letter to Asian American entertainment journalism and fandom. But after freaking out and giggling through half the episode, we also think about "My Name Is Khan" and how it intersected with Asian American film history. This film, that tackles Islamophobia in America head-on, could never have been made in the U.S. Definitely not by a Hollywood studio, and independent Asian America, especially at the time, didn't have the resources or SRK-Kajol-level star power to dream about attempting something of this scope. But at the same time, Asian Americans would probably be more likely to cringe at the idea of taking topic like post-9/11 Islamophobia, combining it with a story with a man with Asperger's, putting him on a search to find President George W. Bush after a 9/11 hate crime creates a chasm between lovers, dropping him midst of Hurricane Katrina (of course), and having it all end with the unwavering belief that love conquers all. It's been a blast covering Asian films about Asian America this season. It's a reminder that it's not just Asian Americans or even Americans that tell stories about us. The motherland still thinks of us, and while their filmmakers might sometimes make distorted versions of our realities, setting their stories abroad also sometimes allows them to tackle local issues in a way that might be hard for them to address in a film set at home.