Hindu's Concerned over Mike Myers Parody in "The Love Guru"

As the people of Kazakhstan know all too well, mockery of culture and religion seems to be kosher in Hollywood, under the following conditions:

The humour must be so over-the-top, so beyond reality, that it could never be misconstrued as mean-spirited. That, and the targeted groups cannot be large enough, loud enough or organized enough so that their hurt feelings make an impact at the box office.

Just ask Borat. Though Kazakhs complained that their country and customs were misrepresented in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the film was a $128 million success in the U.S. – among 2006's top-grossing films.

In the context of Sacha Baron Cohen's uncomfortable in-character interactions with unwitting Americans, Mike Myers' parody of another cultural minority in the U.S. – as the oversexed, overly ambitious, American-born spiritual leader in the summer comedy The Love Guru – would hardly seem cause for complaint.

Myers' character is an amalgamation of Eastern-style spiritual movements, never making reference to any particular religion. And yet the Guru Pitka – billed as "the second best guru in India" – draws a distinct picture.

He wears long hair, a long beard and a flowing caftan. "Prepare to get your enlightenment freak on," Pitka tells visitors to his MySpace page, where he blends real information – such as the Sanskrit origins of the word "guru" – with silliness, including impossible yoga poses that would require elastic limbs. He plays sappy pop songs on the sitar. His mantra is "Mariska Hargitay."

Pitka identifies himself as "a spiritual teacher affiliated with no one faith" and has the same crass-and-goofy charm as Myers' Austin Powers and Wayne's World characters. And the movie's plot – he heads West when he's offered $2 million to heal a hockey star's romance so the team can win the Stanley Cup – is harmless enough.

Still, weeks before the film is even ready for screening, some in the Hindu community feel The Love Guru has the potential to ridicule vital elements of their religion.

Rajan Zed, a self-described Hindu leader from Nevada, demanded that Paramount Pictures screen the film for members of the Hindu community before it's release in June. Based on the movie's trailer and MySpace page, Zed says The Love Guru "appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus" and uses sacred terms frivolously.

"People are not very well-versed in Hinduism, so this might be their only exposure," he said. "They will have an image in their minds of stereotypes. They will think most of us are like that."

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Paramount, which has screened sensitive films for select audiences in the past, said early screenings would be held for the Hindu community.

"Love Guru, which is not yet complete, is a satire created in the same spirit as Austin Powers," Paramount said in a statement. "It is our full intention to screen the film for Rajan Zed and other Hindu leaders once it is ready."

Myers, who declined to be interviewed for this story, says in an episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts that spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra, his longtime friend (who also appears in the movie), was the inspiration for the Love Guru character.

"He is the basis of why I went down this path of a character like that, and it's because I am interested in higher states of consciousness and I am interested in comedy," Myers says. "The guru, he breaks down your barriers, gets you silly and gets you light so you're in a place to receive love."

But religious communities rarely take well to faith-themed comedies, said Diane Winston, a professor of media and religion at the University of Southern California.

"To be funny, you have to get in people's faces and disturb their complacent perspectives," she said. "Religious groups have tended to be very concerned about their portrayal in the media, especially the entertainment media. Often ... in comedies, it's a very broad representation which they perceive as offensive. It's the nature of stereotype."

Her take on The Love Guru trailer and website? Rather than a spoof of Eastern religion, it seems more of a satire of American culture's tendency toward materialism, promiscuity and quick spiritual fixes told through a pseudo religious figure.

"The character didn't have to be a guru. He could just as well have been a rabbi, minister, priest or imam," she said. "These are problems within the culture at large.

"Hindus were a fresh target," she continued. "Jews and Christians have been parodied before so perhaps Myers thought this was a different take on a familiar comedy routine."


Paramount officials point out that The Love Guru is ``non-denominational comedy that celebrates spirituality and that the character has his own fictional belief system."

For all its sight gags and goofy jokes, the film is about three things, Myers says: "It's about fate versus choice ... it's about self love and the third part of it is that internal validation trumps external validation."