When the second season of Made In Heaven dropped, an episode featuring a globally successful Dalit character named Pallavi Menke (played by Radhika Apte) quickly became its most talked-about. Its sociopolitical significance and the pleasing aesthetics and revolutionary impact of the wedding it featured aside, it also became controversial when the author Yashica Dutt penned a thoughtful post about how her own life and work had been appropriated without credit. The title of Dutt’s memoir Coming Out As Dalit as well as her academic accomplishments were distinctive parts of Menke’s background.

The filmmakers initially hat-tipped Dutt on social media, then backtracked. Meanwhile, scholar Sumit Baudh posted about how she had not credited him in her book for coining the concept of “coming out” as Dalit.

Made In Heaven is a preachy show meant for a privileged audience that considers itself progressive (the Menke episode ends with intended viewers even being addressed directly, asked to “question our privilege”). It’s mostly a stylish cringefest, and we binge it. This episode was a little different, with moments of subtlety and subtext that the show isn’t known for. Still, its character-building was patently based on Dutt, and people unaware of her could have benefited, via an official acknowledgment, from knowing that she exists. To know, essentially, that Menke’s character is neither far-fetched nor purely fictional. Far more than the tricky concept of credit, that effect on the public imagination would have been inspiring.

Collectively, as consumers and creators, we are at vexing intersections. The political and economic climate is frightening, not enough diverse and well-wrought stories exist in the mainstream, and then there’s the elephant in the room: human nature, particularly elements like greed for social currency and other egoic motivations – and the ways these influence virtue-signalling and can stifle originality or result in strange, pandering work.

            This reminded me of “The Mirror”, Konkona Sen Sharma’s directorial venture in the Lust Stories 2 short film anthology. The short film was widely praised. I found it problematic and dishonest. Its premise is that an employer finds her housekeeper having sex with the latter’s husband, in the former’s bedroom. Instead of firing her housekeeper, the employer then chooses to sneak into her own home daily to spy on her. One day, she is caught.

            My fundamental problem with the film is that it appears to be about voyeurism when it is itself voyeuristic. The viewer is titillated because they cannot identify with either of the protagonists: not only are they unlikely to be in the domestic service sector (Netflix subscription and all), but they would never do what the employer does. In this way, the sexuality of the working-class woman is repurposed yet again for the satisfaction of the privileged classes, while also negating the interior life of the lonely employer and judging it through a mix of “middle class” and “woke” moralities (quote marks used because what is inferred by these words, and what these words actually mean, are not the same).

            We don’t get to create or to imbibe within a vacuum, that’s true. But when do we get to stop dreaming in, devouring and being devoured by, trends?

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in August 2023. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.