Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani “The Big Sick” panel at Sundance 2017, Park City UT, Photo: Punk Toad (https://www.flickr.com/photos/punktoad/32616892101)
Pakistani-American comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani has won nomination for an Oscar for film The Big Sick, which tells some of his own life experiences including his relationship and marriage to Emily V Gordon, co-writer, who has also been nominated for the award.
Nanjiani, who moved to the United States as a teenager, has closely observed the post-9/11 environment in the United States and has been commenting about it during his performances.
The film Big Sick was a success in 2017, brings out through drama issues and conflicts in the way of intercultural understanding, including how a wedding in Pakistani culture needs a family’s stamp of approval.
Nanjiani’s family in Karachi, from where he came to the U.S. at the age of 18, wants him to marry a Pakistani girl. A world apart from America’s celebration of comedy, the family is also not impressed with Nanjaini’s choice of becoming a professional comedian.
It’s only now settling in. Wow.
Emily & I met when she heckled me at a comedy show in the back of a diner in 2006. We wrote a movie about it & 12 years later we’re nominated for an Oscar.
I will never get over this. https://t.co/iaFN8mq7iu
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) January 23, 2018
Also, despite their feelings of almost instant attraction, Nanjiani and his wife have had moments when they have to argue to understand each other better.
A mix of romance, drama, comedy in the lives of characters and an attempt to highlight the need for mutual understanding between societies make the film interesting for the American audience, especially those looking to learn something about cultures of Muslims countries in a climate of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
![By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.viewsnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Kumail_Nanjiani__Steve_Agee_6997671325-1.jpg)
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ,/Wikimedia Commons
“By depicting a Muslim family as like normal people, that’s its big political statement,” Nanjiani had told Reuters in an earlier interview.
Big Sick may be a timely intervention to stimulate a candid discussion about perceptions of Muslims, who often have to contend with sweeping media and political portrayals in a time of extremist violence and Islamophobia.
