Movie makes Sikhs wary of prejudices

These days, when Mehar Mehal ties his turban to go out of the house, his thoughts are of a former Bay Area taxi driver, Balbir Singh Sodhi . . . and a new movie, “DisFunktional Family.” “I think when you tie a turban as a Sikh, at the back of your mind you are thinking you’ve got to be careful,” said Mehal, a Santa Clara engineer. “You could get hurt, you could get killed.” Balbir Singh Sodhi, if you can’t quite place him, is the gas station owner who was shot to death in Arizona shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, allegedly by a man proclaiming his patriotism. Sodhi was wearing a turban that the suspect associated with terrorists. “DisFunktional Family” is a concert movie starring the comedian Eddie Griffin, an “equal-opportunity comic who gets laughs at everyone’s expense,” according to the movie studio, Miramax. Where the two intersect, Sikhs like Mehal believe, is a scene in the film and its trailer, in which Griffin points to a turbaned elderly Sikh man walking on the street and shouts, “Bin Laden, I knew you was around here!” It’s just one of many gags in the movie that features Griffin’s take on life and celebrity, interspersed with interviews with his family. Griffin goes after his mother, too. Palpable worry But no one’s going to go after Mrs. Griffin because of this movie. Mehal, in contrast, warns his 67-year-old turbaned father to be careful on his daily walks. That’s why since February, when the trailers first surfaced in movie theaters, Sikh organizations such as the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force have tried to work with Miramax to see the movie first and temper such scenes. Not censor, says Preetmohan Singh, director of the Washington, D.C., office of Sikh Mediawatch. They know about the Constitution and freedom of expression, Singh said. “But corporations need to demonstrate corporate and moral responsibility.” Singh, a San Jose native, has a healthy respect for the First Amendment. After all, he won a San Jose Mercury News scholarship and was a standout in a South Bay journalism program called Mosaic. At age 24, he is hip, urban and squarely in the demographic that would see the movie. He’s not exactly a humorless activist. Miramax wouldn’t screen the movie for Sikh Mediawatch before the April 4 release and wouldn’t meet to discuss it, Singh said. He notes that studios have shown restraint when it suits them, delaying some films that might be perceived as too close to real events, and therefore insensitive. We can all use a good laugh in these times, Singh says. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, and again since the Iraq war began, Sikhs have been in the awkward position of having to tell the public what Sikhs are. Or, rather, what Sikhs are not. They are not Arab. They are not Muslim. (Not that anyone should be attacked because they are.) But if you see men wearing turbans in North America, they are probably Sikhs, because the turban is an emblem of their religion. Harpreet Singh of the Sikh Coalition said that a few days after the war began, a man with a big American flag on his truck spat repeatedly on Singh’s car while they were in bumper-to-bumper traffic between New York and Washington. “It hurt, because . . . I lost friends and people I knew in 9/11,” said Singh, 28. Worse, it made him feel very vulnerable on that highway. Who’s reasonable? But Miramax doesn’t get it. “Reasonable people,” Miramax’s official response to the group said, would not associate Sikhs with Osama bin Ladin, and besides, plenty of people of other faiths wear turbans. “Family,” fortunately, seems to be fading on its own, failing to crack the Top 10 in ticket sales its first week. Still, Sikhs want Miramax to remove the scene from distribution on post-theater versions on DVD or VHS. “This is not over,” promises Preetmohan Singh. “And it is not because we’re mad.” It’s because they’re scared.