There is something very spicy and dangerous about putting a Tamil girl in the centre of a film, especially one about dance, and expecting a whole community — or me — to watch it nonchalantly.
One simply cannot!
So when Netflix dropped Best of the Best, starring our Tamil-Canadian sweetheart Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Maya, I knew that many of us Tamil girls weren’t going into this as unbiased viewers. Especially growing up as a Tamil-born girl raised in Toronto within a huge and diverse South Asian community.
And that distinction matters.
Because there were moments when I was watching Best of the Best and thinking, “Yes. This.” There were other moments where I couldn’t help but think, OK … whose Brown household are we talking about?
There were moments when I wanted to reach through my screen and defend Maya, and then, somewhere along the way, I found myself yelling, “No, Maya, nooo!”
So, instead of pretending I have a sophisticated film-critic rating system, here are my completely unapologetic hot takes!
Maya is Tamil, And That Matters So Much More Than You Think
While this may not be important to many, it was so huge for me. Because Maya isn’t just a vague representation of a “brown girl,” she is a Tamil Ponnu (girl). As a Tamil girl myself, I don’t think people outside our community always understand why seeing that distinction on screen matters.
Maya isn’t simply a “brown girl.”
She’s Tamil.
South Asian representation has definitely become more prominent. It has come a long way in Hollywood and in the West, but “South Asian” is an enormous label for what is essentially a collective emotion.
Tamil culture can’t be interchangeable with Punjabi culture, Gujarati culture, Bengali culture, or any of the other cultures that somehow get lumped under one giant brown umbrella. Don’t get me wrong, we have similarities, but we’re also vastly different. And Tamil identity itself isn’t one single experience.
I’m Ellam Tamil. Maya is an Indian Tamil. I’m Canadian; she’s American. I’m navigating TMU; she’s navigating UCLA.
Those aren’t tiny differences. They’re actually what made watching her more interesting to me.
I didn’t need Maya to represent my life to feel perfectly connected to her. I needed her to be specifically herself. Ramakrishnan spoke about Maya’s own identity by intentionally bringing her own Tamil identity into the character. That is so important because it opens avenues when brown on-screen characters become complex, allowing the idea that one “brown character” doesn’t have to represent every brown person at once.
TMU Dance Crews, This One Is for You
Can we talk about how fierce it is that university clubs can foster countless communities across campus? Well, this movie shows that dance is absolutely one of them.
One second, you join because you love dancing.
Next thing you know, you’ve got rehearsals, group chats, choreography changes, team bonding, performance anxiety, and a whole new group of people who somehow know everything about your life even 20 years later.
Sound familiar?
Watching Agni, a Bollywood-fusion dance team, you can’t help but think of our very own. And while I wouldn’t assume our TMU crews have the same drama as the fictional Agni team, the dedication behind university dance culture is very real.
Between classes, assignments, part-time jobs, commuting and trying to maintain something resembling a social life, student dancers still make time to rehearse and perform.
That’s commitment.
I think we forget how much goes into that commitment. It’s beyond a good performance — it’s building a space. It’s about showing up for each other, playing to your strengths, working as a unit, and building confidence and trust in the people beside you, because you just made a lifelong friendship — something so much more complex and important than outfits and perfect choreography.
You know what I’m talking about if you’re a part of any student organization, crew, or even a long-term project. With such passion being fostered in these places, you’re always sure to be in for some interesting dynamics.
Because suddenly everyone has a vision. Everyone has an opinion. And someone is definitely not responding to the group chat.
The Movie Doesn’t Have to Represent Every Tamil Girl, and That’s Actually the Point.
This might be my hottest take. I don’t want Maya to represent me perfectly.
I’m a Sri Lankan Tamil woman from Toronto. She’s an Indian Tamil-American college student.
Our experiences shouldn’t and cannot be identified by a single character or a set of actionable traits. That’s where conversations around representation sometimes lose me. For years, when there were bad Tamil characters in mainstream Western media, every such character carried an enormous amount of stress.
Are they Indian enough?… Like, what does that even mean?
Are they accurate?
Do they make us South Asians look good?
Do they represent the community properly? But that’s impossible.
One character cannot carry millions of people.
What I want instead is enough Tamil characters for us to disagree about.
Give me the Tamil overachiever.
The Tamil disaster.
The Tamil introvert.
The Tamil party girl.
The Tamil nerd.
The Tamil girl who knows the words to every Vijay song.
The Tamil girl who doesn’t speak Tamil.
The Sri Lankan Tamil girl.
The Indian Tamil girl.
The Toronto Tamil girl.
The American Tamil girl.
Give us enough stories that no single character has to be the singular Tamil representation.
Representation Gets Better When It Stops Trying to Be Perfect.
Maybe that’s what I took away from Best of the Best more than anything else. I didn’t relate to every part of Maya. I wasn’t supposed to. But I recognized pieces.
The ambition.
The cultural balancing act.
The community.
The expectations.
The complicated friendships.
The experience, though very much Western, didn’t show family, success, friendship, or being yourself. And maybe that’s why seeing a Tamil girl at the centre of a goofy, colourful, imperfect coming-of-age dance movie made me happier than I expected. Because sometimes representation isn’t about watching someone live your exact life.
Sometimes it’s simply seeing someone who shares part of that identity being allowed to have a life on screen.
To dance.
To mess up.
To fall in love.
To fight with her best friend.
To be ambitious.
To be annoying.
To be funny and take up all the space. And, most importantly, to exist without spending two hours explaining why she belongs there.
As a Tamil Torontonian girl? I’ll take that win.
But Netflix, if you’re listening: next time, give me some more kuthu.