Opinion: Sanjaya’s universe is colorblind

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If you missed or TiVo’d and haven’t yet watched last night’s ‘American Idol’ (or if you tried to ignore it only to be forced to read about it on a blog where you thought it was safe), Sanjaya Malakar finally got the boot. Did his weeks-old haircut sap him of his strength? Did his grace under fire finally pale in comparison to true talent? Don’t you just wish I would shut up about him already so he can resume his suburban teenagehood in a shroud of privacy, or at least on a stage no greater than that of a regional dinner theater? Allow me one final blog post.

For all his ‘pitchy’ singing and ritualistic hair care, Sanjaya does have a legitimate claim to fame. He’s the first Indian American who not only broke into pop culture, but who also managed to escape ethnic categorization. There haven’t been too many Indians in the public eye at all; those who do fall under its gaze are often the ‘first Indian (fill in the blank)’ or outright if lovable stereotypes.

Those who break the stereotypes are still known as the Indians who broke the stereotypes--actor Kal Penn launched his career doing precisely that in movies like ‘Harold and Kumar go to White Castle’. (That also starred John Cho, who performed similar stereotype-busting duties in ‘Better Luck Tomorrow,’ another film in the Asian-kids-can-be-bad-too genre.)

But Sanjaya, despite his straight-out-of-the-Bhagavad-Gita first name and Hare-Krishna-bhajan-singing father, managed to make his ethnicity a postscript. Having an Italian mother may have helped, but more likely it was his strange self-styled persona: puppy-dog pop crooner eyes, unthreatening or even ambiguous masculinity, hipster blazers, swinging suits, Farrah hair, an ear-to-ear smile, and marginal singing skill. Whatever it was, it was beyond Indian American, beyond stereotype and beyond stereotype-breaking. It was, as ‘Idol’ judge Simon Cowell noted, Sanjaya in his own universe.

(Photo courtesy the Associated Press.)