The Massive Day, like Indian Matchmaking, is inclined to see weddings as a celebration and never as an trade. There may be completely no speak in regards to the quantity of extreme cash splurged on a marriage and even on the double-standards of the establishment itself.
Within the final one yr, Netflix India has change into adept at sheltering what I wish to name the Wealthy Folks Tradition Actuality TV Present. These are sprawling documentary-esque glimpses into the lives of the prosperous within the nation that disguise greater than they reveal. These reveals use the exact, unaffordable fixations of the Indian upper-class, be it their relationship idiosyncrasies, marriage ceremony fantasies, or the perils of celebrity-adjacent dwelling, to generalise the collective aspirations of a complete inhabitants. They don’t dissect Indian tradition as a lot as summarise it, sugarcoating the thorny contradictions that make up India to retain a manufactured definition that exoticises the nation as a substitute of explaining it. And although these reveals are set in India with a largely Indian solid, they’re virtually at all times packaged with the only intention of pleasing a Western viewers. A extra acceptable moniker for this sub-genre may simply be the Dishonest Indian Actuality TV Present.
After Actual Indian Courting (What The Love! With Karan Johar), Actual Indian Organized Marriages (Indian Matchmaking), and extra just lately, Actual Indian Wealthy Wives (The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives), the streaming platform’s newest providing is “Actual Indian Weddings.” A non secular companion piece to final yr’s sneaky Indian Matchmaking, Netflix’s The Massive Day revolves across the hysteria of Indian weddings – or extra precisely, “Indian-ish” weddings. Damaged presumably into two collections of three episodes every, the primary instalment of which dropped on Valentine’s Day, The Massive Day shadows engaged {couples} within the intervening two weeks earlier than they prepared themselves for his or her massive day.
The present’s first assortment is constructed on the outrageously lavish weddings of six {couples} – composed of each Indians and non-resident Indians – who share an identical language of sophistication privilege, social capital, monetary freedom in addition to an phantasm of progressiveness. Constructed like a chunk of branded content material and never long-form storytelling, each episode alternates between two {couples}, their interviews to the digital camera intercut with a jarring rating, cheesy B-roll footage, archival images, candidly staged intimate moments, and repetitive confessionals by their household, buddies, and a knackered military of “luxurious marriage ceremony planners.” To place it merely, The Massive Day is nothing however an uninteresting, emotionally vacant compilation of marriage ceremony movies that ought to have simply been uploaded on Instagram.
Within the first episode, we meet a pair whose largest concern shouldn’t be with the ability to come to a consensus about whether or not they have been relationship for 11 years or 12 years. The opposite participant is a California-based couple who steadfastly imagine that one of the simplest ways to honour their Indian roots is by flying all the way down to Chennai and internet hosting a beach-side Americanised marriage ceremony. For an episode that retains hinting at how each Indian marriage ceremony has a definite character to it, it’s awfully devoid of any.
The second episode focuses on two brides lovingly villainised by their mother and father, prolonged household, and marriage ceremony planners for being too controlling about their very own marriage ceremony. That the thought of a girl in cost rankles Indian society throughout class constructions, isn’t essentially a brand new discovery. And The Massive Day (the present is produced by Conde Nast India, a media firm that publishes luxurious journey and trend magazines) doesn’t possess the narrative heft to plumb by the depths of the internalised misogyny that expects a girl to behave a sure approach for the comfort of others.
That is greatest evidenced within the subjects that the present brushes beneath the carpet. Take for example, the truth that the present, like Indian Matchmaking, is inclined to see weddings as a celebration and never as an trade. There may be completely no speak in regards to the quantity of extreme cash splurged on a marriage and even on the double-standards of the establishment itself. The present by no means acknowledges that one of many causes that two folks selected to get married to one another is the truth that they fall beneath the identical bracket of sophistication, religion, or caste. Even worse is the way it delusionally states that weddings occur between two households who find yourself turning into one glad household. The implication that there isn’t a battle in any respect between the 2 events is laughably absurd.
As an alternative, there may be ample posturing – a pair speak in regards to the varied methods they’re intent on decreasing carbon footprint at their marriage ceremony that has invitees flying to a special state to attend it, one other declares how weddings present employment to locals, and virtually all brides make a present about customising their marriage ceremony in a approach that they’ll reject the regressive facets of Hindu rituals (two brides select to scrap “kanyadaan,” the act of a bride’s household formally giving her away to her husband’s household). In that sense, the duplicity of the filmmaking is maybe the present’s largest undoing.
On one hand, by foregrounding two brides who insist on taking their very own choices as a substitute of carrying a cloak of coyness, The Massive Day methods us into believing that it’s providing a counter to the expectations that Indian households have of submissive ladies. However however, that pressure of progressiveness is undercut when it additionally chooses to recommend that the strategies employed by these ladies are certainly exasperating.
The third, arguably the one episode that invitations any curiosity, follows the marriage of two homosexual Indian males (considered one of them is a star hairstylist so naturally Katrina Kaif reveals up at his marriage ceremony) who’ve two separate ceremonies – one in Germany and the opposite in India. Their story is complemented by the ostentatious Delhi marriage ceremony of Gayatri Singh, the daughter of journalist Seema Mustafa. This episode flits between inclusivity and tokenism; for example the accidents of Part 377 that prevented such a marriage to happen for many years are by no means uttered though it makes an enormous deal of underlining the significance of a homosexual marriage being handled as “simply one other marriage”.
But the true pleasures of The Massive Day is its unintended reveals of hypocrisy. In a lot of the matches, it’s evident that the ladies are settling for mediocre males, revealing that even to at the present time Indian males are exempt from societal expectations of attractiveness. One bride who in any other case champions the thought of not dropping her individuality takes to complaining about not trying like a ”coy bride” in her marriage ceremony images. One other episode has a groom confess that he’s completely safe about his spouse incomes greater than him, though his face tells one other story.
For all of the discuss these {couples} claiming that they’re marrying males who have a look at them as equals, the unequal funding in marriage ceremony planning is stark. On multiple event, the grooms proudly boast about the truth that they haven’t contributed in any respect to any of the marriage preparations. One claims that strolling into his marriage ceremony goes to be “as a lot of a shock for him” as it’s going to be for the company. That the present by no means picks up on any of them is telling of how out of depth it’s within the first place. If something, it feels ironic to look at a present insist that trendy Indian weddings are freed from the standard pressures of weddings once they nonetheless depend on the singlehanded labour of ladies.
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