Brief: Nair, Mamdani, and Culture against the Culture War (Pt 1)

Summary

Conspirituality Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Title: Nair, Mamdani, and Culture against the Culture War (Pt 1)
Release Date: August 9, 2025
Hosts: Derek Beres, Matthew Remsky, Julian Walker

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1. Introduction to the Episode

The episode delves into the intricate dynamics of the culture war, exploring how cultural narratives and influential figures shape societal conflicts. Hosted by Matthew Remsky and Mahmoud Mamdani, the discussion centers on filmmaker Mira Nair and scholar Mahmoud Mamdani's perspectives on culture, identity, and politics.

2. Mira Nair’s Influence and Filmography

Mira Nair serves as a cornerstone for the discussion, with her films exemplifying the concept of "diaspora verite." This term, coined by English Professor Amardeep Singh, highlights Nair's commitment to realism, social justice, and the nuanced portrayal of marginalized communities.

Key Quotes:

• Mira Nair [01:04]:
  "Well, I seem to always be inspired by the person who is considered marginal. Firstly, their spirit of survival, their resilience, their usually their lack of self pity..."

• Amardeep Singh [25:03]:
  "Salaam Bombay presents a critique of the illusionist conventions of commercial Hindi cinema. She shows poverty with realism, without sentimentality or melodrama."

Nair's films, such as Salaam Bombay!, Masala, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, are lauded for their authentic depiction of cultural intersections, migration, and the struggles of individuals navigating between identities.

3. Mahmoud Mamdani’s Cultural Critique

Mahmoud Mamdani provides a scholarly lens to critique prevailing cultural narratives, particularly challenging the "culture talk" framework. He argues that reductive cultural explanations oversimplify complex societal issues, fostering division and perpetuating stereotypes.

Key Quotes:

• Mahmoud Mamdani [05:39]:
  "Hardening these abstractions in a discourse of our civilization is at war with outsiders."

• Mamdani Sr. [06:24]:
  "Let's say you slap me... a cultural explanation which draws attention on one party to the exclusion of the relationship between two parties is politically self serving."

Mamdani criticizes figures like Jordan Peterson and Samuel Huntington for promoting an essentialist view of cultures, which he believes fuels Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry by ignoring underlying political and socioeconomic factors.

4. The Clash Between Culture Talk and Diaspora Verite

The podcast juxtaposes Mamdani’s critique of culture talk with Nair’s nuanced storytelling. While culture talk simplifies complex identities into monolithic groups, Nair’s films embrace the fluidity and diversity within cultural identities.

Key Insights:

• Culture Talk: Reduces diverse groups to simplistic, often negative stereotypes, fostering division and misunderstanding.
• Diaspora Verite: Celebrates the complexity and dynamism of cultural identities, promoting empathy and deeper understanding.

5. Case Study: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

A significant portion of the episode analyzes The Reluctant Fundamentalist, highlighting how the film embodies Mamdani’s rejection of culture talk. The protagonist, Changiz Khan, navigates his identity as a transnational Muslim in a post-9/11 world, challenging stereotypes and exploring personal and political conflicts.

Key Scene Analysis:

• Final Break Scene [34:07 - 36:14]:
  Changiz’s decision to sever ties with his corporate life symbolizes a rejection of reductive cultural narratives. The incorporation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry underscores the film’s thematic depth, emphasizing personal struggle over cultural determinism.

6. Zoran Mamdani’s Narrative and Relevance

Zoran Mamdani, Mahmoud’s son, emerges as a pivotal figure bridging Nair’s artistic legacy and contemporary cultural discourse. His activism, particularly in support of the LGBTQI community, reflects the progressive values instilled by his mother’s films and his father’s scholarly work.

Key Quotes:

• Zoran Mamdani [30:30]:
  "He pledges $65 million in new services for the trans community in New York City and advocates for the city to be a sanctuary for LGBTQI individuals threatened by authoritarianism."

Zoran’s journey illustrates the practical application of Nair and Mamdani’s philosophies, advocating for inclusivity and challenging entrenched cultural prejudices.

7. Conclusion and Teaser for Part 2

The episode concludes by emphasizing the necessity of moving beyond simplistic cultural narratives to foster genuine understanding and social cohesion. Hosts hint at further exploration of Zoran Mamdani’s work and its impact on contemporary culture wars in the upcoming second part of the series.

Key Closing Thoughts:

• Matthew Remsky [32:51]:
  "The whole feeling of the culture war world is dissociative. It's a wasteland. It makes me lose all sense of time and place and hope."

• Matthew Remsky [42:20]:
  "Come back on Monday with more on the work of Zoran's father, Mahmoud. Thanks for listening, everybody."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

1. Mira Nair [01:04]:
   "I seem to always be inspired by the person who is considered marginal..."

2. Mahmoud Mamdani [05:39]:
   "Hardening these abstractions in a discourse of our civilization is at war with outsiders."

3. Mamdani Sr. [06:24]:
   "Let's say you slap me... a cultural explanation which draws attention on one party to the exclusion of the relationship between two parties is politically self serving."

4. Matthew Remsky [25:03]:
   "Salaam Bombay presents a critique of the illusionist conventions of commercial Hindi cinema..."

5. Matthew Remsky [42:20]:
   "Come back on Monday with more on the work of Zoran's father, Mahmoud. Thanks for listening, everybody."

---

Key Themes and Insights

• Culture War Dynamics: Examination of how cultural narratives are weaponized to create divisions and suppress complex societal issues.

• Role of Media and Film: Analysis of Mira Nair's contributions to challenging stereotypes and promoting nuanced cultural understanding through cinema.

• Critique of Essentialism: Mahmoud Mamdani’s arguments against reductive cultural explanations that fuel bigotry and extremism.

• Intersection of Art and Activism: Exploration of how personal narratives and artistic expression can drive social change and bridge cultural divides.

• Generational Impact: The influence of parental legacies on the activism and worldview of the younger generation, exemplified by Zoran Mamdani.

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Conclusion

This episode of Conspirituality offers a profound exploration of the culture war through the lenses of film and scholarship. By juxtaposing Mira Nair’s cinematic realism with Mahmoud Mamdani’s critical analysis of cultural discourse, the hosts illuminate the complexities of identity, politics, and societal cohesion. The narrative sets the stage for a deeper examination of these themes in the subsequent part of the series, promising further insights into combating the reductive narratives that undermine public health and social harmony.

Transcript

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[Mira Nair]

Well, I seem to always be inspired by the person who is considered marginal. Firstly, their spirit of survival, their resilience, their usually their lack of self pity, the ability usually to laugh in the face of having nothing, to create a kind of sense of flamboyance and life at any cost, despite having, you know, no resources of any kind that are visible. That's what inspires me. And I think in making portraits of the so called outsiders, I'm also then allowed to question what is that society that deems us an outsider?

[Matthew Remsky]

That's the voice of filmmaker Mira Nair.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

On the BBC in 2004.

[Matthew Remsky]

She's talking about the people and characters she loves to film, but she's also sowing the seeds of the narrative, narrative.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And emotional power we can see coursing through the campaign of her son Zoran Today, 20 years later.

[Matthew Remsky]

Survival, resilience, lack of self pity, flamboyance, all put to the task of answering.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Key questions in raw material.

[Matthew Remsky]

Should anyone be an outsider in the place they live? How can everyone feel at home? Are we not all outsiders in the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Shadow of the powerful?

[Matthew Remsky]

These are the questions fascists don't want you to ask. This brief is called Nair, Mamdani and Culture against the Culture War. And it's Part one, with Part two.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Dropping on Monday on Patreon for our subscribers. I'm Matthew Remsky. This is Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism.

[Matthew Remsky]

You can follow me, you can follow Derek and Julian as well on bluesky.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And the podcast is on Instagram and threads under its own handle. Please support our Patreon.

[Matthew Remsky]

At this point in our Ragged timeline, the structure and.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Impact of culture war issues is pretty clear.

[Matthew Remsky]

Take any human social question related to sexuality, ethnicity, diet, civil behavior, education, how to protest, how to be secular, how to be religious, how to parent, whether to care about climate or not, whether guns are cool or not. The list is endless, and the culture war views the differing choices and behaviors of differing communities through the lens of cultural conflict assumed to be set in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Stone from time out of mind.

[Matthew Remsky]

If the culture warrior can use identity politics to manufacture untreatable wounds between people, they go for it. And as they do this, they make sure that they ignore or even suppress the actual political issues that are most.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Pressing to people's lives.

[Matthew Remsky]

If you haggle over pronouns, you can ignore universalized healthcare. If you gossip about whether Zoran Mamdani checked the black box on his unsuccessful.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Columbia University application, you can stop counting the dead in Gaza.

[Matthew Remsky]

There's an endless sandstorm of distractions. But underneath that sandstorm lies a bedrock.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Deception formed by what Zoran's father, the.

[Matthew Remsky]

Ugandan scholar Mahmoud Mandani, was calls culture talk, or the casual way of discussing people in the abstract that assumes every culture has a tangible and unchanging essence that defines it, and then explains politics as a consequence of that essence, rather than the consequence of, say, capitalism or colonialism. It's culture talk that puts people into homogenous but also amorphous groups pursuing simplistic and singular goals as if they were zombies. Mamdani's specialized focus is on how culture talk reduced and stigmatized Muslims in the aftermath of 9 11, to the point at which the only good Muslim was the Muslim who enthusiastically endorsed American foreign policy. And I think this is crucial for understanding Zoran Mamdani's stance on Israel. But the senior Mamdani's general framework of culture talk also also predicted the malignant rise of an influencer culture committed to.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Hardening these abstractions in a discourse of.

[Matthew Remsky]

Our civilization is at war with outsiders. This is the basic MO of Jordan Peterson, Steve Bannon, Alexander Dugan, Christopher Ruffo, and Curtis Yarvin. So on the sandstorm level of policy skirmishes over DEI or Wokeism, the these guys are bad enough, but on the bedrock level of that fundamental lie, they reduce diverse and fluid groups of people.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

To tectonic puzzle pieces in a cartoonishly.

[Matthew Remsky]

Simple world they believe they can understand.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Well enough to manipulate.

[Matthew Remsky]

So here's Mamdani Sr. Himself, giving A peak culture talk analogy.

[Unknown]

Let's say you slap me. You slap me and I decide to explain this act as a result of your culture. It's self serving because it allows me to put myself out of the picture completely. It allows me to not look at the relationship between you and me, but to see this simply as an outcome of you. I have played no role in the making of you or in your response to me. A cultural explanation which draws attention on one party to the exclusion of the relationship between two parties is politically self serving.

[Matthew Remsky]

So that's Mamdani Sr. But if you watch Mira Nair's films.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Which is what I'm going to mainly focus on in this first part, and.

[Matthew Remsky]

As you're watching them, you fall in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Love with street kids like Krishna in.

[Matthew Remsky]

Salaam Bombay, or you watch Meena and.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Demetrius kiss in the bayou in Mississippi.

[Matthew Remsky]

Masala or Changha's repatriate to Pakistan after 9 11. In the Reluctant Fundamentalist, you begin to develop an internal imaginarium of humans who.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Defy all essentialist definition.

[Matthew Remsky]

They live and breathe cultures that change.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Through identities in flux on the edges of borders, generations and eras.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's a world in which no one.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Can be reduced to the terms that culture warriors would have us accept.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's a world of families, communities and nations in which internal tensions are integral.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Paradoxically, to how everything somehow holds together.

[Matthew Remsky]

And it's kind of like love that way. And if that sounds too abstract, it's also a world in which the most.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Important moments in life unfold around the.

[Matthew Remsky]

Essentials of food, money and poetry. In Mississippi, Masala Mina crashes into Demetrius truck and his life on a rundown street in the town of Greenwood while hauling 25 gallons of milk in the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Back of her old car.

[Matthew Remsky]

And the milk is for making Indian sweets for a wedding. But it also symbolizes the spiritual and ethnic purity that falling in love with Demetrius, who's black, will challenge. In the Reluctant Fundamentalist, which is Nair's.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Rendering of the 2007 novel by Mohsin.

[Matthew Remsky]

Hamid, Pakistani born and US educated business.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Analyst, he's a prodigy.

[Matthew Remsky]

His name is Changhaz Khan and he's sent to Istanbul to restructure and eventually shutter the region's oldest and largest publishing.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

House for Middle Eastern literature.

[Matthew Remsky]

And this is at a point in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

His life in which he's starting to.

[Matthew Remsky]

Realize that in the post 911 world he doesn't know who he is or how he fits in as a transnational Muslim. He's beginning to suspect that he's betraying his Familial values. He started growing out his beard to.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The consternation of his straight laced co workers.

[Matthew Remsky]

And in his first meeting with the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Publisher, Nazmi Kemal, who simmers with this dignified rage because he knows this young guy has come as a corporate raider, Changas attempts to ingratiate himself by disclosing that his father is a poet.

[Unknown]

Well, no one can put a value.

[Kiefer Sutherland]

On what you've accomplished here.

[Unknown]

My father's a poet. He's well known in the Punjab. His greatest friend is his publisher. You are a keeper of our culture in this part of the world.

[Kiefer Sutherland]

Your father is a poet. I think you should be ashamed of yourself doing what you're doing here.

[Matthew Remsky]

Chang's spends the following days pouring over the company's anemic accounts, but also visiting the Hagia Sophia and quietly observing the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Bustle of the souks.

[Matthew Remsky]

And on one sunlit afternoon, Kemal invites him into his office to show him a copy of a book of Tsange's father's poetry that his publishing house translated from Urdu and published in Turkish. And so it's one of these many quiet turning points as Changiz fully discovers that the borders he has traversed throughout his life are not only fictional, but they have made his life abstract and unfeeling. Now, there's this other point in this film that comes at a Pakistani lunch counter in Manhattan where Changiz has ducked in for chai. And so in his internal monologue, he's recalling how the Muslims of New York in the years following 911 resorted to.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Many strategies for avoiding Islamophobic scrutiny.

[Matthew Remsky]

They kept their heads down.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

If they were taxed taxi drivers, they would fly American flags from the windows.

[Matthew Remsky]

And at this lunch counter, two cabbies.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Are discussing a rash of attacks against Muslims and South Asians.

[Matthew Remsky]

Any beard or turban is a target, one says.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And then he turns to Changhas and.

[Matthew Remsky]

Says, not a problem for you, Ag suited and booted.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And he's referring to his Wall street suit and grooming.

[Matthew Remsky]

But then the cabbie tells Changiz that the counter only takes cash, and Changiz doesn't have cash.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

He's very modern, of course, he only has plastic.

[Matthew Remsky]

And so the other CA steps in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And offers to pay for Changha's tea.

[Matthew Remsky]

And Changhas refuses initially. But then the cabbie says in Urdu, don't embarrass me.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

You are like my brother.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now, who is that cabbie in that cameo? Well, it's Mira Nair's husband, Mahmoud Mandani, and he's playing an immigrant who seems to know that neither the suit nor the manners of this young globalist tycoon, nor even his willingness to work for.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The American EMP protect him from bigotry.

[Matthew Remsky]

So these men are from the same world but different worlds. And yet the elder says, you are.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Like my brother.

[Matthew Remsky]

In Professor Mamdani's Good.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Muslim Bad the Cold War and the Roots of Terror this is a book I can't recommend highly enough.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's published the year after the release of Mississippi Masala, and in it he.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Articulates his version of Mira Nair's culture Blending project.

[Matthew Remsky]

His focus is Cold War geopolitics and the emergence of political Islam, and he basically shows that political terrorism in the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Muslim world, which is the origin point.

[Matthew Remsky]

Of the bad Muslim trope, is not the organic outcome of culture or religion, but rather a modern political response. More specifically, blowback from US funded mercenary movements to turning against the US after.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Their role in proxy wars opposing alleged.

[Matthew Remsky]

Soviet influence, Mamdani shows the pattern of supporting, training and arming radical Islamist groups.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Including exacerbating and encouraging their religious fundamentalism.

[Matthew Remsky]

In order to achieve Cold War objectives, followed by all of the perceived betrayals.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt aligning.

[Matthew Remsky]

With the US combined with blanket US support for Israel and how that directly contributed to these groups turning their focus and violent tactics learned from the CIA.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Against the United States itself.

[Matthew Remsky]

So I'm going to return to Mamdani's.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Political thesis on Monday in detail, but.

[Matthew Remsky]

For now, because I want to talk about the films, I'm going to note.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

How he illustrates what he's rejecting, which.

[Matthew Remsky]

Is the highly influential view ascendant in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The years after Reagan and still a mainstay within U.S. policy and hawkish intellectual.

[Matthew Remsky]

Circles, that cultures are not only monolithic but they are abstract, impermeable, inscrutable and unchangeable.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

You cannot change the abstract culture, you must defeat it.

[Matthew Remsky]

And this is a view that trickled down to a thousand dime store pundits. Sam Harris summed it up with his slogan co signed by Bill Maher on.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

That famous episode with Ben Affleck, that.

[Matthew Remsky]

Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas. He underlined this defamation in writing countless times, as in this Truthdig article from 2006 in which he writes, quote, in Islam we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as if a portal in time has opened and the Christians of.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The 14th century are pouring into our world.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now. Harris and the rest were not original thinkers.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

This childish view of geopolitics in which continents confine blocks of homogenous people that.

[Matthew Remsky]

US influence should be able to move around.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The monopoly board echoed the theories of.

[Matthew Remsky]

War hawk academics in high places like Bernard Lewis, who was a leading intellectual force behind the Iraq war. He regularly with Dick Cheney while claiming Iran was building a nuclear weapon back in 2006. Does that sound familiar? Also people like Samuel Huntington were responsible for this discourse.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Originally from the highest levels of academia.

[Matthew Remsky]

He developed the class of civilizations trope. Lewis and Huntington strolled into the culture war discourse so that a thousand right wing to liberal Islamophobe influencer bros could run with it. So Mamdani quotes Huntington's summation of his life's work in the first few pages.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

[Matthew Remsky]

It is my hypothesis, this is an.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Article called the Class of civilizations in 1993 in foreign affairs, that the fundamental.

[Matthew Remsky]

Source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economically. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs. But the principal conflicts of global politics.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.

[Matthew Remsky]

The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The battle lines of the future.

[Matthew Remsky]

So this guy and his comic book vision of history had the ears of Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

He was the coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council.

[Matthew Remsky]

He chaired the Democratic Party's Foreign Policy Advisory committee in the mid-1970s and he co founded the journal Foreign Policy in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Which he published bullshit like that.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now Mahmoud's answer in his scholarship rhymes.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

With his wife's answer on the screen.

[Matthew Remsky]

The remedy for abstracting and reifying complex.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Groups of changing people is to realize that no large scale culture has a defining essence.

[Matthew Remsky]

Cultural identities and political compulsions exist in tandem, not in lockstep. Like families, cultures are rife with ideological, domestic and intergenerational conflict. Individuals shape and are shaped by their groups. And like Mira Nair's characters, cultures do not act out of essentialist or predictable.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Drives, but rather in dynamic relationship to one another.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now closer to the bone of our genocidal era. Mamdani Sr. Argues that the dyad of political violence, of terrorist strikes versus massive state retribution and that sort of dynamic that goes back and forth in a state of acceleration around his writing immediately post 9 11. It can't have a military answer that perpetuates the abstractions of aggressors, victims and heroes. It must be answered politically by addressing human needs and grievances. It has to be answered in the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Way a novel or a Film would answer things.

[Matthew Remsky]

So how does Mira Nair answer things Here? I'd like to ping Amardeep Singh.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

He's an English Prof. At Lahai University in Pennsylvania where he's taught since 2001.

[Matthew Remsky]

He works on postcolonial literature, global cinema.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Modernism, African American literature and the digital human.

[Matthew Remsky]

And he's got this great book out there from 2018 called the Films of.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Mira Diaspora Verite, which is a great title.

[Matthew Remsky]

And he opens with a tight bio sketch of Nair's pre big time background.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

So I'm going to start there, but I'm then going to get to the term he coins diaspora verite.

[Matthew Remsky]

So Nair's background is pretty cosmopolitan. So the family name is typically South Indian, but she was born in Orissa.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Which is in eastern India, in 1957.

[Matthew Remsky]

To a Punjab Punjabi family, but a.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Hindu Punjabi family, not Sikh, as is the majority in Punjab.

[Matthew Remsky]

But also, it seems like the family is pretty secularized.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Religion does not play a big role in her upbringing, it seems.

[Matthew Remsky]

Singh says that many of her family.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Members today are among the large Punjabi community in New Delhi.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now. Nair's dad was a bureaucrat, and in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

One interview she comments that watching him.

[Matthew Remsky]

Work within state confines actually provided a.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Kind of indirect political fire for her lifelong quest to challeng boundaries.

[Matthew Remsky]

And her mom was a social worker. Nair's early education included attending an Irish.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Catholic boarding school in Simla. This is such an Indian story.

[Matthew Remsky]

The school was heavily influenced by British colonial values. And this is where she first encountered William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which she.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Said she read under the covers and found very fascinating. And of course she turned that into a major motion picture with Reese Witherspoon.

[Matthew Remsky]

And then she went on to study.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Political theater at the University of Delhi in 1976. Through the connections of her father's governmental contacts, in part, she was able to attend Harvard University on scholarship to study documentary filmmaking.

[Matthew Remsky]

You won't be surprised to learn that.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

She found it a little too stuffy.

[Matthew Remsky]

However, she did meet future collaborators there, like screenwriter Suneet Taraporovella and cinematographer Mitch.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Epstein, who became her first husband.

[Matthew Remsky]

And her early documentaries, such as so.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Far from India 1983 and India Cabaret.

[Matthew Remsky]

1985, established her focus and concentration as.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Being on realism, on displacement and on gender relations.

[Matthew Remsky]

For Nair, filmmaking has also often been.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Wrapped up in activism and mutual aid.

[Matthew Remsky]

So with salaam Bombay in 1988, she invested some of her capital from the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Camera d' or at Cannes and an.

[Matthew Remsky]

Academy Award nomination into the Salaam Balak.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Trust Charity, which serves slum kids in Bombay. And Nair put her mom, Praveen, in charge of the trust because she's the social worker, and she had experience with that.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now her personal life is also mixed.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Up with her work. As you can expect. She met and married Mahmoud Mamdani in Uganda in 1989, and that's a story that's tangled up with the stories of Mississippi masala.

[Matthew Remsky]

And in 2000, she founded the Maisha Film Lab in East Africa, which is a filmmaking school whose alumni include Lupita.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Nyong', o, who appeared in Black Panther, 12 Years a Slave and a bunch of other stuff, and also starred in.

[Matthew Remsky]

Nair's 2016 Disney film Queen of Katwe. So let's get back to diaspora verite.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

This is Singh's phrase where he's basically explaining that Nair uses the documentary and.

[Matthew Remsky]

Realist techniques that she started her career.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

With back in the late 1970s to explore experiences of migration and displacement in, in the later feature films.

[Matthew Remsky]

Diaspora verite is at the root of her, quote, commitment to social justice, especially.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

With respect to women and socially and economically marginalized groups.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now, there are technical and aesthetic elements.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

To diaspora verite as a genre because.

[Matthew Remsky]

Nair is always emphasizing naturalistic acting over melodrama.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

She's minimizing narrative or visual manipulation on screen.

[Matthew Remsky]

The films are shot on location rather than in studio. Wherever possible, she uses mobile and eye level cameras, which often give this kind of home movie flavor. And she also favors synchronous sound rather than overdubbing. And, you know, alongside this, she's also.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Always hiring amateur actors and transnational production teams.

[Matthew Remsky]

And she workshops many scenes off set.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

To contribute to a natural and spontaneous vibe within the cast.

[Matthew Remsky]

And that takes a lot of work.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Work, and it's extra money, but you.

[Matthew Remsky]

Can really feel it happen.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And you, you can feel that the casts are, are bonded and the scripts are polyglot. The captioning AIs really struggle with Monsoon Wedding, for instance, because, you know, it's flipping seamlessly between Hindi, Punjabi and English.

[Matthew Remsky]

And also Nair is using these syncretic.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Graphics and visual motifs that express her kind of Masala aesthetic.

[Matthew Remsky]

There's always bridges, piers, boats, train stations.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And shoes that represent movement and migration and the fluidity of Personas and identity and also the hollowness of static stereotypes.

[Matthew Remsky]

And when I say stereotypes, I mean.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

All stereotypes because, you know, she points.

[Matthew Remsky]

At cultural, ethnic, religious and gendered boxes.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

That people are in and she breaks them apart.

[Matthew Remsky]

And I'll just sprinkle in some quotes.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

From Singh here as he scans the filmography.

[Matthew Remsky]

He says that Salaam Bombay presents a critique of the illusionist conventions of commercial Hindi cinema. She shows poverty with realism, without sentimentality or melodrama.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And this is contrasted with Bollywood's, you know, kind of unconvincing portrayals where sometimes they, they take a superstar and they actually paint dirt onto her face to represent poverty. But it's, but it's obvious and it kind of fails.

[Matthew Remsky]

And then in Cabaret, Nair portrays sex workers without sentimentality or moralizing to show.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Them as empowered and self sufficient rather.

[Matthew Remsky]

Than helpless victims or fallen women. And in that one, her camera is.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Often taking the dancer's perspective, which minimizes the male gaze.

[Matthew Remsky]

And then there's Kama Sutra in which.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Nair challenges India's highly repressed sexuality culture.

[Matthew Remsky]

And she really uses that film to argue that, in the words of Singh, quote, representing sexuality is not a western.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Art, but something that's deeply ingrained in Indian tradition.

[Matthew Remsky]

Speaking of boundary blurring, she also does.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

A lot of work on what's known as colorism.

[Matthew Remsky]

So Mississippi Masala explores anti black racism within the Indian immigrant community in the southern United States as well as exposing bigotries within Indian culture that, you know.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Focuses on skin shades of lightness versus darkness.

[Matthew Remsky]

Mira Nair makes her cultural interventions around.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The world and then shares them in art houses and at film festivals.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now once in a while she hits paydays and at one point after the release of Vanity Fair, you know, big.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Budget film, Reese Witherspoon and so on.

[Matthew Remsky]

Warner Brothers comes to her to ask if she would like to direct Harry.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is the fourth movie in the blockbuster franchise.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now at the time, as she told.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The Jaipur literary festival in 2018, she.

[Matthew Remsky]

Was deep into the writing and production of a very personal film for her called the Namesake.

[Mira Nair]

I had suffered a very, very, my first death in my family, you know, of my mother in law who was like a mother to me and an unexpected death of medical malpractice and completely blew me away. And I was deep in that melancholy. And that's what inspired me to make the Namesake, because Jumpa has written in it of this terrible melancholy of losing a parent in a foreign country, which is exactly what I was experiencing. And so I was deep in the throes of like almost a month away from shooting the Namesake and they offered me Harry Potter. And I thought I had to take these meetings because my son had learned to read from Harry Potter. And I went several meetings and I was in the throes of it. And then I was very troubled to be able to give up my own film. And I asked my 14 year old son Zoran, what should I do? And he said to me, mama, many good directors can make Harry Potter, but only you can make the Namesake. And, and it was such a liberating and clarifying statement. And it kind of is about how I have lived my life, you know, like that is that what can I do that is so specific and that you cannot do. You know, how to make my distinctiveness my calling card, in a sense, you know, how to trust my own instinct. Because really, instinct is the only thing that, you know that is particular to each one of us and that defines me from you or anyone else you see.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now, the interesting timing here is that Nair gave this interview about a month before J.K. rowling entered her anti trans phase by accidentally, quote, unquote, liking a tweet from a bigot referring to trans.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Women as men in dresses.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now, I can't find Nair on record discussing trans rights per se, but with her son's full throated support of trans.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

People, in which he pledged $65 million in new services for the trans community in New York City and that he would designate the city as a sanctuary city for LGBTQI people threatened by Trump.

[Matthew Remsky]

Should he become mayor, I have a.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Pretty good idea of how her feminism impacted his views there.

[Matthew Remsky]

And if it's true that he really did grow up learning to read with the Harry Potter books, that he's now in the awkward position that so many leftist families, including my own, find themselves in as they realize something deeply troubling.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

About the writer and her world, which.

[Matthew Remsky]

We once loved, you know, and I would say that even this is a boundary bending Masala story that harmonizes with the Nair filmography. Here we have a Muslim boy born in South Africa to a Punjabi mom and a Gujarati dad who learns to read via British author J.K. rowling, but grows up to become a very different type of wizard. And now he's. He's eating chicken and rice with his.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Hands on a Manhattan park bench, answering questions about his support for Palestine, and.

[Matthew Remsky]

He'S driving liberals and MAGA folks to utter distraction with his current global visibility. Zoran Mamdani, I would say, is repping.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

His mom's Masala progressivism far beyond the art house set.

[Matthew Remsky]

And I think what's particularly thrilling about this is that it hits back hard.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Against the culture talk his dad has.

[Matthew Remsky]

Identified, and he's landing punches right on the jaws of, of anyone from the New Atheist shaking hands with the State Department.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Culture war side of things.

[Matthew Remsky]

Especially the Islamophobic stream, which always ignored.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

World building of thinkers like Nair in order to keep trafficking and cartoons and abstractions.

[Matthew Remsky]

Islam is inherently violent, they would say, more violent than any other religion, because look at this cherry picked quote from the Quran. I can't read in Arabic or contextualize. That was the mode of reducing all issues to religious ideology, neglecting the impact of colonialism, Western foreign policy and socioeconomic.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Factors in the rise of extremism.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's a paint by numbers history told by lazy thinkers who believed their brains were special. And we're living with the consequences of those abstractions today. But you know, the thing that stands out most to me is the lack of imagination, the absence of curiosity. I mean, maybe it's a temperament thing, an experience thing, an educational thing, maybe it's just outright bigotry. But listening to the familiar abstractions about Islam and Western civilization, I never hear a single on the ground reflection on what it means to live in our actual world, in the global village that we find ourselves in. So, beyond the venal cruelty of the content, the whole feeling of the culture war world is dissociative. It's a wasteland. It makes me lose all sense of time and place and hope. It's just words on screens and. And day and night merge as you never feel awake, but you're never able to sleep. And meanwhile, there's a looming fascist state clanging like a crypto convention on a Blade Runner set, where all the screens behind the bar scroll with endless bad news, punctuated by memes, glitching prophets speaking in tongues and influencers spewing bullshit and trying to make sense of it. You can wander forever through the culture war morass in search of a quiet nook, a sane conversation, a single fact. You can hold on to a friendly stranger and you'll be stymied by countless.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Dead ends of mistrust, misinformation and disillusionment.

[Matthew Remsky]

And also, you can still walk through.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

A real city, through real neighborhoods, past.

[Matthew Remsky]

Churches and food trucks, street cleaners and park gardeners, people with stories, bakers and buskers and bodega workers, muscle bros and goth girls and Bangladeshi aunties and haredi men sweating in their fur hats, people from everywhere, the world on a street. And you can look them all in the eye and feel the decency of common folks and also wonder who they are and what they need from day.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

To day, and then think about how.

[Matthew Remsky]

To help them get it. And that's what we saw Zoran Mamdani.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Do on the sticky knife of June.

[Matthew Remsky]

20Th because he walked his final campaign walk through Manhattan all the way from Dyckman park in the north to Staten Island Ferry in the south, 13 miles down the island, 13 miles of real.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Sidewalk coming back into focus through all of this noise.

[Matthew Remsky]

And then he cuts a campaign ad.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

That looks like a montage of a cast and crew party for every film and Mira Nair ever made. But it's real.

[Matthew Remsky]

I want to finish with one scene.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

From one of Nair's films that I think encapsulates her refutation of culture talk. Chonggis Khan in the Reluctant Fundamentalist makes his final break with Wall street and the American dream. At about 3/4 of the way through.

[Matthew Remsky]

He gets the news from his boss.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Played by Kiefer Sutherland, that the UK office of their analyst group has given.

[Matthew Remsky]

Them the go ahead to close down.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The Turkish publish house they came to audit and probably sell it off for scrap.

[Matthew Remsky]

But Khan has decided he can't go.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Through with it because the day before he'd had lunch with Nazmy Kamal, who's the publisher. This guy's a secular Muslim. He's kind of depressively quaffing wine and pulling on endless cigarettes while smoldering with love for his suffering world. But he tells Changiz a story.

[Kiefer Sutherland]

Have you heard of the Janissary? No. There were Christian boys captured by the Ottomans to be soldiers in the mighty Muslim army. When they came of age, they were sent to kill their former families and destroy their former homes. How old were you when you went to America?

[Unknown]

I was 18.

[Kiefer Sutherland]

Ah, much older. The Janissaries were always taken in childhood. And when they became men, they were devoted to their new caretakers to serve their adopted empire, not devoted to the empire.

[Matthew Remsky]

So notice here how the betrayal flows.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The other way, that the aggression from the trained hostages of the empire flows westward. And Khan sleeps on this story and.

[Matthew Remsky]

Wakes up knowing he can't continue.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

He can't be the shark who brings Kemal's business down.

[Matthew Remsky]

And so he tells his boss calmly.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And resolutely in the hallway of their five star Istanbul hotel. And he weathers Kiefer's screaming. How dare he walk away from the money machine who made him who he was.

[Matthew Remsky]

But no, the money machine did not.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Make him who he is. And that is the chance for Nair to catapult the film into a montage of the downstream effects of Changiz quitting. And the montage starts with him on the deck of a ferry in the Bosphorus Strait, watching the European side get farther away. Now I've Been on that ferry between the two continents, contemplating the watery boundary between erstwhile civilizations. I was on my way to Prince's island for a day's hike. So what really lies between Europe and Asia?

[Matthew Remsky]

No great mystery.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Water and Princess island, which is home to fishermen who grill their catch on the docks. And there are countless feral cats. Countless feral cats exist on an island between Asia and Europe.

[Matthew Remsky]

So then Changhas is packing up his.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Office in Manhattan, saying goodbye to the one friend he had at work. Then he's boxing up his apartment.

[Matthew Remsky]

But what takes my head off in.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

The sequence is the voice of Pakistani superstar Atif Aslam.

[Matthew Remsky]

What is he singing? It is a poem in Urdu called Mori Arajasuno.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And here's the best translation I can.

[Matthew Remsky]

O my lord, pay heed to my appeal.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

I am a faithful follower of my Creator.

[Matthew Remsky]

My true Lord, you had said, go, man, you are master of the world. My bounties on earth are your treasure.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

You are the viceroy of your Creator.

[Matthew Remsky]

And after baiting me with these promises, countless years have passed by, my lord.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And did you ever inquire what transpired with your man, what your man has.

[Matthew Remsky]

Suffered in this world? Somewhere, those in power and with the means intimidate, harass and terrorize. But elsewhere, draft and bribery are rampant.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

And my soul is shaken down to my bone, just like a bird flutters when caught in a trap.

[Matthew Remsky]

You made a fine king indeed, my sweet lord.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

All I have gotten are endless beatings. But I don't want kingship, my lord.

[Matthew Remsky]

All I need is a morsel of respect. I have no desire to live in palaces. I just want a small nook to live my life.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

If you agree with me, I will agree with you.

[Matthew Remsky]

I won't decline anything, no matter how unreasonable. But if you don't look out for me, God, then I should go and.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Seek for myself another God.

[Matthew Remsky]

With this grimace, pleading, sharing the pain.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Rowing the boat, asking for his blessings, waiting expectantly. Countless centuries have passed by and only.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now has it been revealed. The one you had appealed to, the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

One who held your hand and guided you where your boat had docked, from.

[Matthew Remsky]

Whom you had asked for a panacea.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

For your pain, the one who did not visit your temple. It was you only. It was you only. Okay, so who wrote this poem which Nair drops into this movie like an.

[Matthew Remsky]

Easter egg, as if to heal the images of the crumbling twin towers?

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Pakistani poet laureate Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

[Matthew Remsky]

And who is he?

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

A theologian?

[Matthew Remsky]

No. A Sufi mystic?

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

No.

[Matthew Remsky]

Faiz was born in 1911 and died.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

In 1984 and was a journalist and intellectual who was shaped by Marxism, anti colonialism and a lifelong commitment to social justice.

[Matthew Remsky]

In the 1930s he was a leading figure in the progressive writers movement, advocating for literature as a tool for social change and aligning himself with leftist, anti.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Fascist and anti imperialist ideals.

[Matthew Remsky]

By the end of his life he was committed to Islamic socialism. That's a thing which turns to the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Quran for inspiration in building an equal society. And as a spiritualist committed to Rumi.

[Matthew Remsky]

Some said he was a bad leftist, but as a devotee of an atheist.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Path, some said he was a bad Muslim. And that makes him sound like a Mira Nair character to me, or maybe any old complicated person.

[Matthew Remsky]

Nair put Faiz's thumbprint on Genghis journey.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Away from the Empire, away from walking his own tightrope of good Muslim versus bad Muslim.

[Matthew Remsky]

Is it a hymn? A bitter complaint and diatribe against God?

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

An ecstasy of sorrow?

[Matthew Remsky]

In the lyrics we hear more tensions between good and bad Muslim, but from.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

A perspective opposed to that of Samuel Huntington and the State Department.

[Matthew Remsky]

There are verses from the good Muslim.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Who supplicates the bad Muslim teetering in his faith. But there's also the baffled Muslim Genghes.

[Matthew Remsky]

Who misunderstood God's promises in life, who thought he was a prince destined to.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Become a king over the riches of the world, but who was brought low by the beatings of the powerful and the state.

[Matthew Remsky]

And then finally, we heard from the.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Wise Muslim who realizes that going home after centuries have gone by means reconciling at last with one's ordinary humanness.

[Matthew Remsky]

You could watch 10,000 hours of culture talk on MSNBC or listen to Sam.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Harris until his hair turned white along with yours, and you would never come close to a moment of understanding and empathy like this.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'm going to leave it there and.

[Mahmoud Mamdani]

Come back on Monday with more on the work of Zoran's father, Mahmoud. Thanks for listening, everybody.