Why Do Some Indians Often Talk About OTT Content Being 'Too Black' for Their Comfort?

On a late evening in Delhi, a group of friends browses Netflix, searching for something new to watch. Titles roll by: Dear White People, Top Boy, Supacell, Queen Sono. Someone frowns. “It looks too Black,” they remark casually. The room shifts—others nod, half-embarrassed, half-honest. No one intends harm, but the sentiment lingers in the air. What does “too Black” even mean? For many Indian audiences, it signals a discomfort with representation they are not accustomed to seeing: casts dominated by Black actors, stories centered on Black life, narratives unconcerned with catering to white or Asian gaze. This reaction, though awkward, isn’t rare. Across WhatsApp groups, office banter, and even Bollywood gossip, some Indians express unease with international OTT series led predominantly by Black actors. They may dismiss them as “not relatable,” “too gritty,” or “too much.” Yet behind these offhand remarks lies a tangle of history, psychology, and cultural conditioning: India’s long entanglement with colonial colorism, Bollywood’s obsession with fair-skinned beauty, and the cognitive shock of encountering global diversity unfiltered. Streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime Video are reshaping global entertainment. They amplify Black voices long sidelined by Hollywood. But in doing so, they also confront Indian viewers with their own inherited biases. To understand why some Indians talk about OTT content being “too Black,” we need to trace the interplay of history, cinema, and psychology—where personal discomfort meets global representation.

Colonial Hangovers and Colorism in Indian Imagination

India’s unease with darker skin tones is not born in the OTT age; it has deep colonial roots. Under British rule, whiteness became synonymous with power, prestige, and aspiration. Over centuries, this colonial psychology intertwined with pre-existing caste and regional prejudices to produce one of the world’s most entrenched obsessions: fairness. Matrimonial ads in Indian newspapers still list “fair bride preferred.” Bollywood songs praise heroines for being gori, “like milk” or “moonlight.” Supermarkets overflow with fairness creams, still among the best-selling cosmetic products. Against this backdrop, international OTT shows with unapologetically Black casts disrupt conditioning. A series like Dear White People (Netflix), set in a majority-Black Ivy League community, doesn’t offer the “balance” of lighter-skinned leads. It places Black identity unapologetically at the center. To an Indian viewer accustomed to white protagonists in Hollywood and fair-skinned stars in Bollywood, the screen suddenly looks “too much.”

Colorism studies, such as those by the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, show that darker complexions are unconsciously coded as negative in many Indian minds. When OTT platforms center Blackness not as villainy or marginality but as beauty, strength, and aspiration, it collides with ingrained cultural bias. The discomfort is less about the stories themselves than about confronting a worldview that has long preferred light over dark.

Bollywood’s Global Lens vs. OTT’s Disruption

Bollywood has long curated Indian viewers’ expectations of what “global entertainment” should look like. Even in stories set in rural India, the heroines are often fairer than the average Indian woman. Leading actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, or Deepika Padukone project an urbane glamour aligned with lighter skin, Eurocentric beauty standards, and global exportability. Darker complexions, when shown, are coded as villains, tribal characters, or comic sidekicks. Compare this with Black-led shows on Netflix and Prime. Top Boy (Netflix), a gritty British drama set in London’s Black urban communities, refuses to dilute its authenticity. Supacell (Netflix) centers ordinary Black Londoners who suddenly develop superpowers. Queen Sono (Netflix) unapologetically places an African spy in the lead role, steeped in Pan-African identity. On Prime Video, Black-ish foregrounds an upper-middle-class Black family navigating identity, and A Different World (revived on streaming) dramatizes life at an HBCU with an all-Black ensemble. For Indian audiences, used to seeing themselves reflected in Bollywood’s globalized yet color-filtered cinema, this shift feels disorienting. OTT doesn’t bend its lens to the Indian comfort zone—it presents stories as they are, with Blackness not as “flavor” but as the narrative core. For some, that honesty feels refreshing; for others, it feels overwhelming, even alien.

The Psychology of Unfamiliarity

Psychologists call it the mere-exposure effect: humans tend to prefer what they’ve seen frequently. Familiarity breeds comfort, and unfamiliarity triggers discomfort. Indian audiences rarely grew up with large Black casts on screen. Hollywood’s blockbusters exported to India usually featured token Black characters at best. Bollywood, for its part, avoided Black representation altogether, instead using darker skin tones as shorthand for villainy or regional otherness. So when OTT suddenly introduces series where everyone on screen is Black, the viewer’s brain registers it as unfamiliar. This unfamiliarity can be coded as “too much,” “too Black,” or “not for us.” It is not always overt racism; sometimes it is the psychology of exposure. Studies in media psychology confirm that representation patterns shape taste. Just as Korean dramas once felt alien but now attract passionate Indian fan bases, Black-led content may, over time, move from discomfort to acceptance through repeated exposure. The problem is that in casual conversation, this psychological unfamiliarity gets expressed in clumsy or even hurtful ways. What is really a reaction to the unfamiliar often gets voiced as “too Black”—a phrase that reveals more about the speaker’s conditioning than about the content itself.

Generational Shifts and Urban Comfort Zones

It would be simplistic to suggest that all Indians react with discomfort. Generational shifts are visible. Younger Indians, immersed in global subcultures—hip-hop, NBA, K-pop crossovers—are more at ease with diverse representation. College students in Bengaluru stream Dear White People with the same enthusiasm they bring to Money Heist or Emily in Paris. Urban metros, with their cosmopolitan identities, are also quicker to absorb diversity. A Delhi twenty-something may see Supacell not as “too Black” but as “fresh storytelling.” But in Tier-2 cities, where Bollywood remains the dominant cultural lens, the same show might be dismissed. This generational and geographical divide shows how exposure, education, and social circles shape reactions. What one group calls “uncomfortable,” another embraces as modern, cool, and overdue. Over time, as streaming penetrates deeper into India, these divides may soften—but they reveal how layered “Indian audience reaction” truly is.

Is There a ‘Saawlaa and Hence, Indian Enough’ vs. ‘A Bit Too Black’ Subculture in Audience DNA?

In India, the word saawlaa—meaning wheatish or medium-brown complexion—has long carried its own paradox. Unlike outright dark skin, saawlaa is often framed as “Indian enough.” Bollywood romanticized it through songs like “hum kale hain to kya hua, dilwale hain” or heroines described as “saawli saloni.” In matrimonial ads, families hedge by advertising for a bride who is “fair to wheatish,” as though saawlaa is a tolerable compromise between fairness and darkness. This cultural coding creates a troubling hierarchy: fair is ideal, saawlaa is acceptable (because it still belongs within the imagined Indian spectrum), and anything darker—closer to African or Afro-diasporic shades—is coded as alien. It is within this hierarchy that Indian viewers often locate their unease with Black-led OTT shows. A saawlaa Bollywood heroine feels relatable; a fully Black cast feels like “too much otherness.” Sociologists describe this as the psychology of gradation, where color bias isn’t binary but tiered. An Indian audience that embraces saawlaa identity as authentic still distances itself from darker shades, aligning with a subconscious colonial hangover that equates Blackness with foreignness. This is why some Indians can enjoy Shah Rukh Khan’s saawlaa romantic hero persona yet balk at Top Boy or Dear White People—because the shade tips over an arbitrary boundary.

This “saawlaa vs. Black” mindset isn’t about skin color alone; it is about belonging. Wheatish skin is seen as part of the Indian narrative, while darker skin is unfairly labeled “outside.” Recognizing this subculture in audience DNA is essential to unpacking why OTT diversity feels like discomfort rather than celebration.

Why OTT Platforms Push Representation

To understand why Indian viewers are suddenly seeing so many Black-led series, one must look at global streaming politics. Platforms like Netflix, Prime, and Disney+ have made conscious efforts to correct Hollywood’s historic underrepresentation of Black voices. After movements like Black Lives Matter, streaming companies pledged billions of dollars toward diverse storytelling. For Indian audiences, this global correction can feel abrupt. While Hollywood once offered a handful of token Black stars, now entire shows center on Black communities. Netflix’s Dear White People directly interrogates racial politics at an Ivy League campus. Top Boy immerses viewers in the socio-economic realities of London’s Black neighborhoods. These are not side stories; they are the story. OTT’s logic is simple: representation sells globally. The African diaspora is vast, and audiences worldwide are hungry for authentic narratives. But for some Indian viewers, accustomed to Bollywood’s lighter-skinned glamor, the change feels like an overload. This is not pandering—it is balancing. Yet from the comfort of an Indian living room, it looks like the world’s media landscape changed overnight.

The Indian Parallel — Our Own Diversity Blindspots

There’s an irony in Indian viewers labeling content “too Black.” Indian screens themselves have glaring blind spots. How often do mainstream Bollywood films center Dalit characters without caricature? How many movies showcase North-East Indians, often mistaken as foreigners in their own country? Even regional film industries, while more diverse, have their hierarchies of skin tone and caste representation. When Indian audiences dismiss Black-led content as excessive, they overlook their own discomfort with diversity at home. Just as Dear White People challenges racial privilege in America, India needs shows that challenge caste, region, and skin-color hierarchies here. In that sense, Black OTT content offers a mirror: what makes us uncomfortable abroad is often what we refuse to confront within.

When Discomfort Becomes an Opportunity

Discomfort is not always negative. In fact, it often signals growth. The first wave of Korean dramas in India met skepticism: “too foreign, too melodramatic.” Today, they have massive fan bases. Turkish dramas, Mexican telenovelas, and even Japanese anime followed similar trajectories. Black-led OTT content may follow the same path. The discomfort some Indians express is not necessarily hatred—it is the unease of entering unfamiliar worlds. But repeated exposure builds familiarity, and familiarity breeds acceptance. Today’s “too Black” may become tomorrow’s favorite binge.

So why do some Indians talk about OTT shows being “too Black”? Because colonial hangovers made fairness aspirational. Because Bollywood trained audiences to see light skin as glamorous. Because the psychology of unfamiliarity codes diversity as excess. Because global streaming has corrected underrepresentation faster than Indian taste could adjust. Yet discomfort is not the end of the story. It is a chance to expand horizons, to notice our own blind spots, and to see that what feels alien today may feel natural tomorrow. Representation is not about making everyone comfortable; it is about telling truths long ignored. For Indian audiences, acknowledging discomfort is the first step. The next is asking why. Behind the awkward comment “too Black” lies the possibility of growth—not just as viewers, but as a society learning to see beyond its mirrors.

References

Indian Journal of Psychiatry – Colorism in India: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917085/

WHO – Impact of skin color bias globally: https://www.who.int/news/item/27-06-2022-skin-colour-discrimination

Matrimonial ads and fairness preference – The Hindu: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/fairness-in-ads-study/article34901056.ece

Netflix – Dear White People series: https://www.netflix.com/title/80095698

Netflix – Top Boy: https://www.netflix.com/title/80217627

Netflix – Supacell: https://www.netflix.com/title/80222639

Netflix – Queen Sono: https://www.netflix.com/title/81035848

Prime Video – Black-ish: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Black-ish/0PM5GUXM5NRVL99XEANQTY745Y

Netflix Tudum – A Different World streaming return: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/a-different-world-netflix-date-details

The Guardian – OTT diversity pledges after BLM: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/12/netflix-pledges-funds-black-creators

NYT – Black representation in Hollywood: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/movies/oscars-diversity.html

Harvard Business Review – Mere exposure effect in bias: https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-familiarity-breeds-acceptance

BBC – Bollywood fairness bias: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53216993

Al Jazeera – India’s skin color obsession: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/6/17/india-skin-colour-discrimination

Scroll.in – North East Indians and cinema invisibility: https://scroll.in/reel/839011/where-are-the-northeastern-faces-in-indian-cinema

Times of India – Dalit representation in Bollywood: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/bollywood-and-dalits

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology – Media bias and unfamiliarity: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022022110381120

Variety – Netflix global representation strategy: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/netflix-diversity-strategy-1234692112/

Pew Research – Generational media differences: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/07/28/generational-differences-in-media-use

Economic Times – OTT growth in Tier-2 Indian cities: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/media/entertainment/media/ott-growth-tier-2