The Anglo-Indian community has reason to be miffed. It has been taken for granted as much in the 2023 Netflix offering The Archies as in the trope-ridden 2004 Anjan Dutta movie Bow Barracks Forever. Indians who do not know any Anglo-Indians personally have little go by other than what is portrayed in mass media like movies and TV. Thus, Anglo-Indians seem to be doomed to be either ruthlessly stereotyped or superficially imposed to suit a storyline.

The basic theme of Archie comics lends itself to desi films: the eternal Archie-Ronnie-Betty triangle with Jughead as the loyal wingman. That many hit films from Bobby to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and more, trace their roots to this Archie triangle template could be the reason for this latest avatar. But none of the earlier ones had gone so far as to transpose all the names and places—from Riverdale High to Pop Tate’s—into a fictional Indian (and Anglo-Indian) setting.

But The Archies is not meant to be a film about Anglo-Indians. That’s just a facile device to justify the use of Western character names from the iconic American comic series. The film is meant to be the launchpad for three young Indian ‘nepo’ actors. And Indian audiences are expected to buy into this grafting because the characters are supposedly Anglo-Indian and hence do not morph into Archisman ‘Archie’ Androo, Bitiya ‘Betty’ Kapoor and Varunika ‘Ronnie’ Loje.

As Anglo-Indians are caricatured in mainstream cinema and indistinguishable from the larger population of Christians of Goan and Mangalorean heritage for most audiences, the only bright spot is that The Archies steers clear of one set of tropes. There are no wastrels and drunks called Tom and Peter or squabbling harridans and sultry sirens named Rosie and Mabel, whose lilting English conversations are peppered with “dat bluddy bugger” and “wot men”.

But there is egregious cultural........

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