The Academy Award committee faces a dual mandate to appease calls for more representation while still appealing to their white base. This year, the Oscars straddled the two and symbolically sterilized the Telugu film RRR of its revolutionary origins by awarding the 2023 Best Original Song to “Naatu Naatu.”
RRR embodies Brown rage against white colonizers. The plot centers around two South Asian revolutionaries standing up to the British Raj. Without the context of the broader movie, “Naatu Naatu” does not show the violent, bloody, and radical message of the movie.
As such, the performance of “Naatu Naatu” at the Oscars for white Hollywood elites remains unsettling.
The Revolutionary Roots of “Naatu Naatu”
RRR follows the fictional friendship between two real-life South Asian revolutionaries, Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju. Bheem was an indigenous Adivasi leader and a forerunner to the Telangana Rebellion. Raju led an armed uprising across the subcontinent against the British colonizers in the 1920s.
The story of RRR pays homage to the oft-overlooked violent resistance to the British Raj. The movie depicts the blunt racism South Asians faced in their daily lives and their simmering disdain for the white settlers.
“Naatu Naatu” appears in the movie when the protagonists softly contemplate whether they can come to a peaceful understanding with the British. This question comes to a head when Bheem and Raju attend a party hosted by the British Governor Scott as the only nonwhite guests.
After some other attendees hurl racially motivated insults berating Bheem and Raju’s intellect, their understanding of the arts, and their ability to dance, the protagonists launch into the “Naatu Naatu” dance number to prove them…
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