The Party is a 1968 comedy directed by Blake Edwards, written by him, and Tom and Frank Waldman. It stars Peter Sellers, with Claudine Longet, Gavin MacLeod, J. Edward McKinley, Fay McKenzie, James Lanphier, Steve Franken, Denny Miller, and Herb Ellis.
The film is a loosely structured farce, made up of a series of set pieces for Sellers to do improvisational comedy around. His character in the film is inspired by an Indian he played in The Millionairess (1960) and the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies. While The Party is considered a classic comedic film, there is the problem of Sellers, a white British actor, wearing brownface and doing a caricature of an Indian stereotype…a buffoonish one, at that. I’ll address this issue more fully later.
Here is a link to quotes from the film, and here are links to the full movie.
It begins with an example of metacinema: we see what we originally think is the actual film, but it ends up being a film set in which Hrundi V. Bakshi (Sellers) is playing a bugler in a war between Indians and the British. The film they’re making is called Son of Gunga Din, which is an interesting title when one considers the poem, “Gunga Din,” by Rudyard Kipling.
What essentially needs to be known about Kipling’s poem, as far as its relevance to The Party is concerned, is that Gunga Din is an Indian water-carrier for the British; he is often treated abusively by the British soldiers for not bringing water to them fast enough. Nonetheless, when Gunga Din bravely tends to the wounded British soldiers on the battlefield, saves the life of the soldier narrating the poem, and is shot and killed there, the narrator regrets his abuse of Gunga Din and admits, at the end of the poem, that Gunga Din was the better man.
This far more respectful attitude of a white man for an Indian is, of course, in great contrast to Kipling’s later imperialist poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” which characterizes the colonialized natives as “Half devil and half child.” Similarly, Blake Edwards’s adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s is far less apologetic than The Party is in its racist, cartoonish depiction of a Japanese man, Mr. Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney in yellowface.
I suspect that the ‘son of Gunga Din’ is not only far less servile to the British, but outright revolutionary in attitude. The filmmakers have hired Bakshi straight out of India to act in their movie, and his role is prominent: I’m guessing that he is the son of Gunga Din. If so, I see an intriguing parallel of Bakshi’s spastic messing up of the movie, one already about revolutionary resistance against whitey, and his later bumbling antics at the party of Hollywood A-listers he’s been accidentally invited to. Perhaps the best way for the Third World to overthrow Western imperialism is to be clumsy and accidentally ‘crash’ the party.
The point is that this opening scene–with the Indians fighting against British imperial rule (we see what are presumably members of a Scottish regiment, in their kilts and their playing of the bagpipes)–sets the thematic tone for the rest of the film, which can be seen as allegorical of the Third World resisting the plunder of the First World by screwing everything up in it.
Since Hollywood, as a crucial part of the Western media, has always been, in one form or another, a mouthpiece of Western capitalist propaganda (however ‘left-leaning’ and liberal that may be), then Bakshi’s bungling and screwing up of everything on the set (playing the bugle non-stop, long after he’s supposed to be shot and dead; attempting to stab a Sikh guard [presumably one of several Sikh collaborators with the British] while visibly wearing an underwater watch [the film being set in the late 19th century, when such watches didn’t exist]; and accidentally blowing up a fort before it’s filmed) can be seen as representative of Third World resistance, however unconscious, against such propagandistic narratives.
The luckless filming of Son of Gunga Din is one of three focal points in The Party. The other two are Bakshi’s accidental invite to the A-lister party, leading up to all of his buffoonery and screwing things up there; and finally, the bringing of the painted-up baby elephant–a symbol of India, as Bakshi calls it–to the party, which causes the lady of the house, Alice Clutterbuck (McKenzie) to go into hysterics, and which leads to the entire house being filled with soap bubbles, since Bakshi–offended at the hippie slogans painted on the elephant–wants them all washed off.
The odd thing about The Party is how it is paradoxically both racist and anti-racist, almost at the same time. True, it is awful to see a white man in brownface affecting an Indian accent and making use of all the typical Indian stereotypes (playing the sitar during the opening credits, for example); we can leave it up to Indian viewers of the film, as well as those of Indian descent, to decide if they want to forgive Sellers et al for presenting these stereotypes and making fun of Indian culture and–from the biased Western point of view, at least–idiosyncrasies.
Not to excuse the film for these great faults, but there are other things going on in The Party that clearly criticize racism, directly or indirectly. For one thing, while Bakshi is a buffoon for about the first hour and fourteen minutes of the film, by the time he’s changed into the red outfit and he hears Michèle Monet (Longet) crying alone in a bedroom at the party, he goes in and consoles her, demonstrating what a kind man he really is. At this moment, Bakshi finally starts to be properly humanized: he’s no longer just a stock comic Indian stereotype, but a nuanced character with some complexity. He continues to be so largely through the rest of the film. Again, this change doesn’t fully redeem the film, but for what it’s worth, it’s a lot better than what was done with Yunioshi.
Bakshi’s kindness to Michèle, which includes defending her right not to have to leave the party with the lecherous movie producer, CS Divot (MacLeod), demonstrates that he has qualities that more than compensate for his clumsiness and social awkwardness. In fact, he has good qualities that render his quirks insignificant. He has the only qualities of a human being that really matter–he has a good heart. You’re a better man than we are, son of Gunga Din.
As for Bakshi’s messing up of everything at the party–which includes getting mud on his shoe, losing it in the water he tries to wash the mud off with, laughing awkwardly at conversations he’s not a part of, shooting a dart from a toy gun at the forehead of Western movie star “Wyoming Bill” Kelso (Miller), dropping bird feed (“Birdie Num-Num”) on the floor, fiddling with a panel of electronics and disrupting the party further, getting caviar on his hand, then shaking the hands of others, thus spreading the caviar odor, catapulting his roast chicken at a woman’s tiara during dinner, setting off the sprinklers in the backyard, breaking the toilet and unrolling all the toilet paper after desperately needing to pee, and falling into the swimming pool–it should be emphasized that the A-list guests deserve to have their party ruined, given their snobbery.
Among these snobbish guests are some of the richest, most powerful and influential people in the Hollywood film industry: stars and starlets, producers, and studio heads like the host of the party, General Fred R Clutterbuck (McKinley), husband of Alice, among others. Also invited are a congressman (played by Thomas W Quire) and his wife, Rosalind (played by Marge Champion). This last one is particularly icy and snobbish to Bakshi when she butts in line ahead of him to get to the washroom.
This combination of Hollywood royalty and American politicians, as well as the fact that they’re all white, reinforces how they–in sharp contrast to Bakshi–are all part of the ruling class. In this sense, the party almost sounds like the political party in power. They look like a group of people in desperate need of a bumbling fool to intrude and be a shock to the system.
Bakshi’s disruptions of the established order even seem to have a subversive effect on the staff, intentional or not. After refusing an alcoholic drink from a waiter, Levinson (Franken), Bakshi walks off while Levinson helps himself to the rejected drink. He’ll continue his drunken devotion to Bacchus throughout the rest of the movie. Later, as the party is clearly falling apart and soap suds are everywhere, the maid (played by Francis Davis) stars dancing erotically to the song “The Party.” Even the jazz musicians, at one point in the middle of the film, sneak off to a room and pass around a joint. Instead of doing their alienating work, the staff are joining in on the fun.
The point here is that there’s a connection to be made between the staff, who represent the proletariat of the First World (including blacks like the dancing maid), and Bakshi, who represents the Third World proletariat. They should all join together and overthrow the bourgeoisie, in a revolution symbolized by the mayhem Bakshi instigates at the party. I hope that in these examples I have shown that The Party has antiracist elements as well as the unfortunate racist ones.
To be sure, the antiestablishment ethos of this film, as well as so many others of the late 1960s and much of the 1970s, never meant to carry their subversiveness to a…Soviet…extreme [!]. After all, the makers of such films are, like the Hollywood snobs of the party, just bourgeois liberals themselves, not Marxists. Still, these left-leaning types were of a sort at the time when ‘left-leaning’ actually meant something, as opposed to the liberals of the 21st century, who are unapologetically embracing such reactionary right-wing politics as the “free market,” jingoist Russophobia, and Zionism. I thus feel free to interpret this liberal film in as Marxist a way as I please.
It’s fitting that, just when Bakshi is beginning to shed his stock comic Indian stereotypes and showing his compassionate, humanized side, he’s switched from that fashion faux pas of a suit into the…red…outfit [!]. Similarly, we can hear in Michèle’s otherwise saccharine song, “Nothing to Lose,” a subtle allusion to the conclusion of a classic revolutionary text. We have “so much to gain”…even the world.
Now, while some of the staff are going along with the subversion described above, others represent the typical bootlicking class collaborators, like Harry (Lanphier), the headwaiter. He is frequently angry with drunken Levinson and his resulting incompetence, resulting in turn with Harry strangling Levinson. If Levinson’s drinking on the job is his form of rebellion against his alienating work, then Harry’s comic strangling of him represents a fascist bullying of the proletariat. In the end, when Clutterbuck learns from Divot that Bakshi is the one who blew up the fort on the movie set, he–meaning to strangle Bakshi in revenge–accidentally strangles Harry instead.
Allegorically speaking, the falling apart of the party represents the self-destruction of capitalism and imperialism, partly brought about by a Third World uprising (as personified by Bakshi). Clutterbuck, who represents the ruling class, accidentally strangles Harry (the class collaborating middle class, who fancies himself higher than that, as seen in an embarrassing scene in a room in his underwear, admiring his would-be muscles before a mirror) because when capitalism finally comes crashing down, it will crush its own in the imperial core, even in its attempts to crush those in the global south (i.e., Clutterbuck’s attempt to strangle Bakshi).
As for Bakshi’s defending of Michèle from not only Divot’s sexual advances but also his bullying demands that she leave with him, his gallantry goes against the stereotype of the patriarchal Indian male. He doesn’t see women as a man’s property, unlike Divot, who at the beginning of the movie is seen snapping his fingers at a sunbathing bikini blonde, signaling her to go in a camper with him to satisfy him sexually, something she isn’t all that keen on doing.
Bakshi’s offence at the sight of the baby elephant with hippie slogans painted all over its body (“The world is flat,” “Socrates eats hemlock,” and “Run naked”) is in itself worthy of comment. Recall that he says the elephant is a symbol of India; he considers it humiliating to have the animal presented thus publicly, so he wants the kids who painted it up to wash the paint all off. The writers of the screenplay must have seen the dramatic irony of a white man in brownface saying such things. Sellers, of course, needed to wash all the brown off, too, to stop humiliating Indians.
But again, while wearing that brownface, he says a very Indian-affirming line to Divot while defending Michèle’s right to stay at the party: “In India we don’t think who we are; we know who we are.” I’m reminded of the Hindu notion of the identity of Atman with Brahman. If we know of this unity, whether we’re Indian or not, that indeed, everyone and everything are all one, we’ll be liberated from samsara. Having seen The Party, Indira Gandhi loved that line. If one watched this film with one’s head tilted a certain way, one could see the brownface and Indian stereotypes as a kind of meta-cinematic comment on racism in Hollywood movies.
Towards the end of the film, we see not only Bakshi and Michèle dancing together, but also a white man dancing with that maid. The sexiness of the latter couple’s dance moves implies a tolerance and even a celebration of interracial romances. Such an attitude is also implied when Bakshi drives Michèle home, and that they’ll surely get together again in the near future, leading to possible dates. For a film with the problematic use of brownface and Indian stereotypes, the implied romantic interest here between an Indian man and a white woman is extraordinarily antiracist given the film’s release in 1968, when there still would have been a lot more raised conservative eyebrows at the idea than there would be today.
In the end, a film about an Indian blowing up a movie prop and messing things up at a party shouldn’t be seen as a racist portrayal of a swarthy buffoon (though using an actual Indian actor to play the buffoon, in spite of Sellers’s comic talents and box-office draw, would have been much better for the film). Instead, allegorically speaking, an Indian encroaching on the world of the American ruling class and screwing everything up for them, intentionally or not, seems like karma in action. After all, how often have Western imperialists–British, American, etc.–intentionally encroached on Third World countries like India and screwed things up for them?
And ultimately, the goal of the destruction of the old order isn’t destruction for its own sake, but its replacement with a much better way of doing things. This is what we see in the growing relationship between Bakshi and Michèle. Their initial loneliness and alienation has been replaced with love and togetherness, representative of that new way of doing things–one of sexual and racial equality, and loving human companionship.
Infinite Ocean 