Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 17:43:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: east is east


i'd been following this thread with some interest for a while- meant to
write in, never did and then it got drowned in all my other mail. 
perhaps i felt some sort of shame for liking the movie and recommending it
to american friends. whatever. 

here's what i'd wanted to say/point out in a disconnected way, and i'm
sure others have said it before:

as contaminated as the film may be by the very racial contradictions we
would like it to cut through:

1. the film itself, it seems to me, makes no black and white
identifications of father=old-world=bad and children=england=escape from
oppressive tradition. in addition to the father's response to his
immigrant dilemma we have the portrayal of the one son (gandhi) who is a
devout muslim himself and the other (abdul?) who, while he disapproves of
his father's treatment of the family doesn't want what tariq wants
either. i would suggest that the true extremes the film tries to reject
are those of george and tariq, the nostalgic embrace of the most
oppresive parts of tradition and also, the ahisorical rejection of all 
of it. in any event the film provides a number of subject positions with
which to identify- only two are linked directly to explicit racial
politics. our discussion of the film seems to have largely focussed on
these.

2.there is the film- with all that is good and bad about it- and there is
the marketing of it. we should not discuss one without the other.

3. the wide variety of responses to this film even on this academic list
suggests a greater heterogeneity in the film than seems to have been
acknowledged by those who seem to be placing an unfair burden of
representation on it. why do so many south-asian immigrants in the uk and
us like this film so much? is it because we are all so west-identified?

4. i can't dislike any film that samples "chaudhvin ka chand" so lovingly.

arnab




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