Shades of Ray

Last night as I was heading to bed, I decided to browse through Netflix for a nice relaxing movie to watch while I fell asleep. I was looking through the romantic comedy section, scrolling over the different movies and reading their descriptions looking for one that sounded appealing, and came across a film I had never heard of before-- Shades of Ray. The description sounded good... your typical one-man-choosing-between-two-women conflicted, humorous love story... so I decided to give it a try.

This movie is about a man in his twenties or so, Ray, who is half Pakistani and half Caucasion. The film starts out with Ray as a child, with his Pakistani father explaining the rules of dating and marriage to him. He says, "you may date whomever you want," but when it comes to more serious relationships and the thought of marriage, that "there are certain taboos" and that he is not to marry blacks, Chinese, or Jews. When his father says, "Find nice Pakistani girl when you want to settle down," Ray asks the question, "What about just plain white girls?" Ray is probably considering his own parent's relationship, as his father is Pakistani and his mother "just plain white." His father, even being in the mixed marriage he is, tells Ray to avoid them and stick to Pakistani girls.

Later on in his life, we find Ray conflicted, as he has just proposed to a white girl, Noelle. Noelle does not immediately say yes, and says she has to talk to her parents about it, and then leaves for a vacation with her family. Ray's father then soon shows up at his house, after having an argument with Ray's mother. Ray's father is insistant on finding him a nice Pakistani girl, and coerces Ray to meet the daughter of a family friend, who in fact also turns out to be half Pakistani, half white... just like Ray. As to not spoil the ending for anyone who wants to go watch this movie, Ray finds himself conflicted between the women he's loved and planned to marry and his father's cultural values and need for homophily in relationships.

I thought this movie was interesting not only because of the controversy surrounding inter-racial marriages, but also because of the hints at cultural discrimination and ignorance that are thrown in throughout the film. There is one scene in which Ray is auditioning for an acting job, and the topic of his ethnicity comes up. The man running the audition says to Ray, "What if you did the accent?" as if all people of Pakistani origin have "the accent." Then he tries to immitate for Ray what accent he is speaking of, and when Ray starts speaking in this fake accent, the man tries to correct him based on what he has heard on a tv show. There is another scene where Ray is working at a bar, and a girl comes up and flirts with him-- until she finds out he is half Pakistani. In response to the girl walking away, Ray says, "I'm half white, too, you know."

On the flip side, at the beginning of the film when Ray is a child, he is with his friend and says, "How do you see me? Am I white, or brown to you?" His friend responds by saying, "I dont know, you're just Ray."

Anyway, just thought this was kind of a fun, relaxed, and low-key look into ways Middle Eastern (Pakistani in particular) culture has manifested here in the United States, and some of the conflicts and challenges they may face.