Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 11:31:46 +0800
From: salil-AT-singnet.com.sg (Salil Tripathi)
Subject: Re: Fwd: FW: Pedantic Postcolonial Point (fwd)


I'm intrigued by characterizing Merchant-Ivory's films as part of
Thatcherite version of Britain. I think Merchant-Ivory have an interest in
literary films that predates the Thatcher Years. Their early effort,
Shakespearewallah, comes to my mind, as do the Householder and Bombay
Talkies, in its choice of language, the points it made about the Indian
milieu, and so on. Other older films, The Guru, Savages, or the Wild Party,
are whimsical looks at the Europe-India encounter on one hand, or the 60s,
on the other. Heat And Dust, based on Jhabvala's novel, another MI
production, too predates the Thatcher years. Similarly, their "American"
films, like Bostonians and Europeans, were made when the Thatcher era was
still nascent. (In fact, at the time when the Thatcher era was at its
zenith, MI productions made a farce, Perfect Murder, based on Keating's
fictional inspector Ganesh Ghote, set in Bombay.

Did I misunderstand your point? Are you suggesting that Thatcherites were
appropriating images from popular culture to propagate an image of an
idyllic England? Or are you suggesting that MI Production siezed the
Thatcher years as an opportune marketing moment to get into E.M. Forster?
To me, the former sounds more likely; since during that period MI
Production has also made films like In Custody about an Urdu poet, based on
Anita Desai's novel, and have a new film on Picasso in the works. I see
some continuity in, for instance, a team that made Shakespearewallah later
making Room With A View (or Quartet), and then the Picasso film. The
Thatcher years appear as an interesting parallel phenomenon, when compared
with the total filmography of Merchant-Ivory.

- Salil





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