Thursday

The Hot Seat

Kal Penn – Guantanamo to D.C.

From first making waves in the hit movie, “American Desi,” to turning into a hamburger-hungry-pot-head in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” to raising eyebrows with his acting skills in The Namesake, Kal Penn can now even be seen as a regular on the hit-television series, “House.” Starting Friday, April 25^th, Kal Penn will be starring in the sequel in the Harold & Kumar mischief in, “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.”

Simply put, Kal Penn’s new flick is about the infamous stoner-duo “as they try to outrun authorities who suspect them of being terrorists when they try to sneak a bong on board their flight to Amsterdam.” Looks like ‘Harold’ and ‘Kuamr’ are in for it this time. The movie picks up where the first part ended: following estranged lover ‘Harold Lee’ and his buddy ‘Kumar Patel’ to Amsterdam, where ‘Harold’ wants to confess his love to ‘Maria’, the girl of his dreams. But of course ‘all’s well’ doesn’t always ‘end well,’ as poor ‘Kumar’ is mistaken for a ‘bomb carrying terrorist’ while trying to use a bong on board a plane en route to Amsterdam. As all ‘terrorists’ they are cuffed and shipped to a Guantanamo Bay detention – surprisingly escaping! Let’s just say that they have quite the run it with Homeland Security and even the President?!

Speaking about Presidents, this New Jersey-bred actor is making headlines because of his public backing one of the most talked about Presidential candidates, Senator Barak Obama. Forget about all the other celebrities like Oprah who are backing the big B.O. – Kal Penn is the way to go! In October of 2007, Kal Penn posted on his Myspace:

I first met with Senator Obama last month during a campaign stop in Los Angeles. I was pleasantly surprised: so many of his plans echo the sentiments of folks I’d met all over the country – from my conservative buddies to the liberal ones. Simply put, Senator Obama transcends the party line on issues from the environment, health care, and national security, to business, education, and diplomacy. I believe he’s someone we can all be proud of to lead our country and represent us abroad.

But that’s not the end of Kal Penn’s support towards Obama. He also went onto write on his Myspace that:

Many of us have parents, cousins, or friends who immigrated from different parts of the world in search of a better life. Some of them came here under something called the H1B visa program, which right now leaves too many loopholes that shady employers can take advantage of. Senator Obama is committed to reforming this system, so that qualified, hard-working immigrants can contribute to society, free from any sense of vulnerability or danger of abuse by employers.

I must express that that is quite a motivating and interesting statement from Kal. Nonetheless, Kal Penn is right that many H1B workers are oppressed by their employers – fearing that they can lose their chance towards a Green Card if they switch jobs. But that isn’t the only goal which Kal has in mind.

“I hope I can help younger voters understand the power that we have,” Kal asserted in an interview with TV Guide, “people aged 17 to 25 make up a huge demographic for media folks; we already know that. YouTube makes $7.5 million in ad revenue every month. MySpace just sold for something like $580 million, and Facebook, which started out worthless, is now valued at $1.6 billion. Our generation has created this wealth for these companies just by sitting in front of our computers - and that’s great. But just think of how much power we have beyond that.”

He went onto also asserted, “If we can make Facebook $1.6 billion, just think of how deeply we can impact a presidential election, and how much we can change the fate of the free world. Two families have controlled the White House for the last 20 years. Despite their great intentions, they haven’t been able to solve much. We are still having debates over how to solve healthcare, education, national security, and immigration. If high school and college students get involved, caucus and vote, we can finally solve them…in my opinion, by electing Senator Obama.”

After seeing the success of the Iowa primaries, in February of 2008, Kal Penn even made a trip two trips to the East Coast. One was to Philadelphia to talk about the important of voting and his involvement with the Obama campaign, and the other was Kal Penn speaking at a rally for Obama at the University of Maryland’s Nyumburu Cultural Center.

A Desi boy from New Jersey would stereotypically be looked upon a future doctor, lawyer or engineer. So how did Kal Penn enter the field of acting?

In 2001, Kal Penn made his breakthrough as an actor with the film American Desi, in which he played ‘Ajay Pandya’ who believed that African-Americans and Indians had a stronger connection than just music and skin color, not to mention his fixation with Hip-Hop music! After that, it was in 2002 that Kal was one introduced in that ‘token’ role as he played the character of ‘Taj Badalandabad’ in the movie National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. ‘Hadji’ was the role he took in the 2003 for the flick Malibu’s Most Wanted, where he played a ‘gangster Indian guy,” followed by the character of ‘Mo (Mohan Bakshi)’ in the movie Dude, Where’s the Party? It’s obvious that his mainstream breakthrough was with Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle in 2004, which lead to being casted in Superman Return as a villain! Following the success of his character ‘Taj,’ Kal Penn returned to the silver screen in the movie National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, where his character is the protagonist, heading out to England’s prestigious Camford University (a homage to the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford), where he wants to join the privileged Fox and Hounds fraternal guild. But in 2007, his most noted role was that of ‘Gogol’ in Mira Nair’s The Namesake.

Kal Penn knew from a very young age that he wanted to be an actor and he worked his hardest to achieve the fan-base and recognition he has attained today. Like every other South Asian actor in the industry, Kal too has had his fair share of playing the “token Indian guy” in many movies. He played the ‘token roles’ but at the same time acted above and beyond his boundaries as a South Asian actor, taking the ‘token Indian kid’ into the limelight as the main character in many movies.

As we mentioned before April 25^th marks the premiere of Kal’s latest movie and many people believe that taking upon such a role just creates more of a stereotype of Indians in the minds of non-Indians. In actuality Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay goes to show just how narrow-minded the American society really is – thinking that just because a person is of Indian-origin and has the darker skin-tone that they can be labeled as a Middle Eastern and therefore be pointed out as a ‘terrorist.’

Though they made it quite funny, one of the most symbolic scenes, as depicted in the previews for this flick, is when the duo are in line to pass through security and the officer asks Kal Penn’s character to step aside for a “random security check.” Kal’s character questions: “…random, huh? So this has nothing to do with my ethnicity?” The security guard answers, “Sir it’s our job as airport security to search for all possible weapons or legal drugs,” followed by Kal Penn’s retort, “So just because of the color of my skin you assume that I have drugs on me? What are you a racist?” Obviously we all know that this eventually leads into a comedic scene, but it goes to show that this is actually how many people who are trying to ‘protect’ us truly feel.

Kal Penn has done a fantastic job as an actor to bring the public’s attention on actors from within our community. Not only is he active in Hollywood, but he is making an effort to enrich the minds of youngsters, not only in the South Asian community, but youngsters everywhere, that if you have the opportunity to vote, don’t let it go to waste. Kal Penn has opened doors for those who want to make a career in acting and has proved time after time that one must never let the color of his or her skin stop them from achieving their dreams and you too can make a name for yourself in Hollywood.