Outsourced is one of the few movies that have always remained my favourite. Being an Indian English literature enthusiast, seeing a decent representation of India in the silver screen has always been a matter of interest. Outsourced is one such film without any exaggeration whatsoever about the Indian culture. It is a modern-day comedy of cross-culture conflicts and romance.
The movie revolves around Todd Anderson who is outsourced to India to work at a call centre who was sent with a mission of reducing the call time there. He finds the Indian work culture quite unprofessional. He believes that the calls are not duly answered or customers are often ‘hit-on’ by the agents. He goes on demanding more from his workers without actually knowing them. He starts teaching them American English, as the customers would prefer talking to a native English speaker. Here we see how the westerners keep their culture and language as the primary point of judging other cultures, just like Americans inherited the language from the brits, Indians too have acquired the language. But the accented pronunciation is somehow off-putting for them. One of his coworkers, Asha, points out this fact and even goes on to say unlike American English speakers who makes unnecessary reductions, Indians have a better pronunciation of the language. Todd goes on to reduce the call time to the required limit with the help of Asha and flies back to the USA, leaving behind a strong connection.
The most commendable part of the movie is the raw representation of India, Holi not being about filmy songs, not all Indians have an accented pronunciation, and everyone you see is not thieves, being some of them. It shows how acclimated Indians are to the western culture while still retaining their innate culture.
0 Comments