There are times when the explanation for inspiration makes a person go ‘huh?’, and hearing that an MCU star was inspired by Harold and Kumar is definitely one of those moments. When learning why though it’s even more confusing since Kumail Nanjiani of The Eternals has expressed the idea that he admires Kal Penn, aka Kumar, because most of the in the movies those with brown skin are either nerds or terrorists, which is erroneous really, but they’re never slackers. It sounds wrong to say this, but someone might have to check Kumail’s movie and TV knowledge since brown-skinned individuals haven’t always been nerds or terrorists. It’s easy to understand what he’s getting at since there are a lot of movies that lean hard into certain stereotypes, but when it comes to what he’s already said, which might have been misconstrued, it’s not exactly uplifting. And to say that anyone being seen as a slacker is an improvement, well, ah, to each their own I suppose. It’s rare that anyone being depicted as a slacker is that great of an idea.
Plus, there have been plenty of brown-skinned individuals that have done more than portray characters who are nerds or terrorists, so it’s easier to think that Kumail was misquoted rather than thinking that he’s being willfully ignorant. The unfortunate fact is that stereotyping has occurred quite often over the years and has been seen to make a lot of people feel that some races are far more specialized in certain aspects of life. Harold and Kumar are a pretty popular exception since the two stoners don’t appear to have a whole lot of ambition in life and yet they’re not completely hopeless, even if there are times when one has to wonder how they survive from day to day. But to take inspiration from this is kind of mind-boggling simply because the life of a slacker as seen on TV or in the movies doesn’t even come close to what slackers tend to achieve in real life.
Everyone draws inspiration from a different source, so saying that Kumail is wrong about this isn’t accurate, but it does kind of make a person’s eyes cross just a bit since the whole idea of being a slacker is different for everyone. But a true, dyed-in-the-wool slacker is, to many people, someone that has no ambition and no dedication to anything other than doing as little as they possibly can to get by. Such folks usually only go to great lengths to achieve something if there’s no other option and even then it tends to become a huge job for them since they might get bored with whatever they’re doing after a short time. Thinking that this is something to aspire to is a little odd, but okay. It might be that it would help to round out the representation of a certain race in the movies, which is a little easier to understand, but seeing someone of the same race acting like a stoner/slacker in a movie and being inspired by it is kind of difficult to get behind with any real support.
When it comes to representation of each and every race in Hollywood it’s fair to state that there have been movies that have fallen down on the job when they could have done far better, but Harold and Kumar have stuck to their guns when it comes to the main idea and how it’s been presented. In other movies, the argument over the representation of one race or another is kind of silly due to the idea that the idea of each movie tends to differ from one movie to another. The funny thing about it is that when a movie is seen as diverse it tends to mean that one group of people might be seen as the protagonists while all others, or at least certain others, are seen as the antagonists without fail. The fact is that there’s no pleasing every group of people out there when it comes to a movie or a TV show, and whatever inspiration is taken from a movie will be different from one individual to another due to the fact that everyone has their own likes and dislikes.
Seeing Harold and Kumar as inspirations for anything is kind of tough for some people, even if they are pretty funny and are amusing to watch. But everyone manages to find inspiration in some form no matter where they look, so it’s not hard to keep from being too judgmental, even if it’s easy to be confused. If Kumail was misquoted then so be it, but if not then he might need to take a look at a few more movies out there and realize that brown-skinned folks have taken on quite a few roles, both positive and negative, when it comes to Hollywood.
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