A Wiggles song from 2014 has resurfaced on Twitter today, because quite frankly, it’s a bit racist. In the clip, the (not my Wiggles) Wiggles are dressed in traditional Indian clothing (kurtas and saris) and dance alongside an Indian woman holding pappadums. The poor woman in the video clearly had no idea what she was walking into, and is visibly smiling through the pain of participating in such a cringe-fest.
“To be clear, this was not the representation i wanted,” Twitter user Ashmi wrote in the caption of the video. Same girl, same.
to be clear, this was not the representation i wanted pic.twitter.com/vNswTi0E16
— Ashmi (@_ashmip) October 22, 2020
Shortly after the original tweet went viral, many other people have taken to Twitter to air their frustrations about how cringey and insensitive the song was.
https://twitter.com/amnahours/status/1319144727397257216
https://twitter.com/oz_f/status/1319226274552795137
The Wiggles need to stop getting Andrew Bolt to write their songs
— 🇦🇺🌸Hon. Dumb Blonde🌸🇦🇺 (@thetopjob) October 22, 2020
The song creepily repeats the word pappadum over and over again, because fuck throwing some actual Hindi in there, that’s too much effort. It gets worse though, because halfway through Anthony starts haphazardly swinging a cricket bat around, because someone in the prop department must’ve thought,”you know what Indian people are good at? Cricket”. Yes, cricket and pappadums, that’s all Indians are known for *sighs*.
Honestly I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve with this song? Multiculturalism maybe? Whatever it was for, the song demonstrates two things. Firstly, that they know nothing about South Asian cuisine, because pappadums are bottom tier food. What about naan, chapati or roti? They go way better with curry. Secondly, they clearly didn’t have any South Asians working on their production team at the time, because they would’ve flagged it as culturally insensitive.
As someone from a South Asian background, this is pretty offensive. It’s not blatantly racist, it’s just ignorant. They had a real opportunity to showcase an underrepresented culture in the media, and they chose to reduce us to a seriously overhyped food. If done correctly, young South Asian kids could’ve actually felt seen for once, but were instead represented through a stereotype.
Programs like The Wiggles need to do better, because internalised racism begins at a young age and kids deserve to feel represented.
Let’s face it though, the song was written in very poor taste. Unlike Indian cuisine, which is delicious.
