I, like over 40 million others, binge-watched the first season of Never Have I Ever (NHIE) in 2020. And then again in 2021 when the second season came out, and then in 2022 and 2023 as the third and fourth seasons were released. Four months after the airing of the final season of the show, my feelings are clear: I hate Devi Vishwakumar. Or, at least I thought I did. The longer truth is that NHIE has forced me to face my own feelings of intense scrutiny when it comes to television that provides representation for minorities who look like me.
NHIE, a Netflix original created in part by Mindy Kaling, is a semi-autobiographical representation of Kaling’s teenage years. The TV show’s main character is an Indian-American teenage girl from the San Fernando Valley named Devi Vishwakumar, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan. The first season begins with a 15-year-old Devi, who is reeling from the recent death of her father as she begins her second year at Sherman Oaks High school. Rather than facing her grief, Devi decides to dedicate herself to making the student body forget her friend group’s unofficial title — the UN (Unf***able Nerds.)
The rest of the show chronicles Devi’s life as she continues through high school: she balances multiple love interests, navigates complicated family dynamics, applies to college, deals with high school drama and eventually comes to grips with the loss of her father.
The arrival of Devi’s character to mainstream Western television is important as it complicates the typical archetype of the nerdy, shy South Asian that has so often populated television screens. “We wanted to show an ambitious nerd … [who] wanted to lose her virginity, wanted to be cool, go to concerts.” Kaling said in an interview for NPR.
photo courtesy of Netflix
In creating Devi’s character, Kaling also adds dimension to the little-known Indian diaspora as Devi and her family are not simply Indian-American but Tamil-American.
So it seems as though NHIE is the long-awaited answer to the lack of diversity of South Asian characters in Western media. However, upon my viewing of the show, I began to develop a sort of hatred for Devi.
After years and years of waiting for some sort of adequate South Asian representation, I expected that Devi would be just like me. After all, she is South Indian, I am South Indian, she is in high school, I am in high school, she lives in California, and, as you may have guessed, I also live in California. However, there was something about her general ignorance of her Indian culture, her eagerness to distance herself from her immigrant family and her drive to be the smartest at her school that felt extremely distant to me. Devi’s character seemed to me like a recycled version of the self-hating, nerdy, academically driven South Asian dressed under the guise of a new archetype. I cringed to think that she is who would come to mind for many when they thought of the typical South Asian-American teenage girl.
What I have come to realize is that my conflict with the show is actually the symptom of a larger issue within American culture: the normalization of the lack of representation.
Too often, people of color within the film industry face difficulty getting into the room to tell their stories. Kaling, for example, started acting in The Office, an NBC sitcom, in 2005; it took her an entire fifteen years to get Never Have I Ever aired.
Even once these people of color (POC) get into the room, there is a struggle to get real, authentic stories of their lives aired without the supporting voices of other POC. “You need what’s called critical mass first, and you can’t get that critical mass if the people in charge aren’t even aware that you exist, let alone that your stories matter,” Michecia Jones, English Teacher and Department Chair, said.
At present, only 34.6% of all television producers identify as POC, which means that the amount of representation within television has been subsequently limited. It is only these producers who can more accurately create true representation of POC within television.
Because of the current lack of representation, the role of undoing years of harmful stereotypes often falls on shows that are only meant to showcase one aspect of the POC story. NHIE, for example, was created by Kaling mainly based on her high school experience. Instead of celebrating her unique story, NHIE has been characterized as the band aid solution to years of harm towards the South Asian community through TV.
In reality, shows like NHIE should simply be part of a larger conversation around what South Asian American identity looks like, not expected to provide the solution to the lack of diversity within television. “I would like to be able to be in dialogue, or for people to be in dialogue, practice calling people in and having conversations, which I think are often avoided.” Isabella Henderson, another LWHS English teacher said.
One teenage girl from the San Fernando Valley cannot represent every experience with South Asian identity, and more broadly POC identity, within America. As such, it is highly important that the discussion around identity is furthered with the release of representational television and media instead of ended.
