Week Monday 5 October: three lessons

POWER & THE MEDIA: BRITISH ASIAN IDENTITY

We are preparing for the 'Power' exam question. Your final essay may consider three topics. Today's lesson on how collective identities (black and Asian) are represented therefore may give you a third to a half of your final exam answer. We have already covered some of this material in class.Today's lesson will give you a third to a half of your final exam answer.

You will write a short essay on British Asian identity as part of this topic in answer to the exam question: "The media construct identity." How far do you agree with this view? Please email me your completed essay by Friday 9 October.

Additional case studies: 

Yasmin (Kenneth Glenaan, 2004) written by Simon Beaufoy and starring Archie Panjabi as Yasmin and Renu Setna as her father, Khalid. The film was a response to the demonisation of Muslims as terrorists. It was made a a time when British Muslims felt that they were being treated badly by the wider population, the media and the government because of growing concern over an extremist minority within Islam. The variety of different representations of this ethnic group could be viewed as positive as it does not simplify what it means to be Asian. In the film, Yasmin is seen changing her clothes in secret in her car as she moves between her family identity and her work identity. 

Despite this, the film still uses several stereotypes. Yasmin has been criticized for its representation of white people in so far as there are few likeable white characters in the film. They are also shown as racist. This starts lightly but gathers momentum over the course of the film with remarks such as ‘get back to your own country’. The collective term ‘you’, to describe anyone from an ethnic minority, becomes important as a symbol of the way that racism simplifies difference as a simple case of ‘us’ meaning white and ‘them’ meaning non-white. 

The film is clearly critical of these attitudes. It is set amongst a British Pakistani community in parts of Keighley (in West Yorkshire, England) before and after the events of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Building. 

At the start of the film, English-Pakistani girl, Yasmin, lives two lives in two different worlds: in her community, she wears Muslim clothes, cooks for her father and brother, Nassir, and has the traditional behaviour of a Muslim woman. On top of this, she has a non-consummated marriage with the illegal immigrant Faysal Husseini who is a friend of the family from Pakistan. From Yasmin's perspective, she has gone along with the arranged marriage just in order to facilitate his getting a British passport, before divorcing him. 

In the second act, we see the instant and the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The effect of those terrible events meant an upsurge in prejudice against the Muslim communities in many parts of Great Britain. In her job she endures prejudice when people start sticking notes on her locker stating 'Yaz loves Osama'. She is eventually asked to take some paid leave and given no valid explanation. We see ordinary people in the pub looking down at her as well as yobs on BMXs attacking an innocent old Asian woman in the street who Yasmin rescues. We see how young male members of the once harmonious Pakistani community in Keighley go against their parents and start to become radicalised by corrupt readers of the Koran to rise up and fight against the West for the way that they have started to demonise Islam and persecute their people. Yasmin's younger brother is easily recruited by a Radical Muslim Group. Finally, after Yasmin's husband is arrested on suspected terror charges that turn out to have no basis in reality, she too takes sides against the British establishment and changes her life, dressing in traditional costume, waiting for her husband outside a police station for days and eventually comforting him when he is released, traumatized, without charge. Yasmin refuses to grant her blessing to him as he prepares to go to a training camp in Afghanistan. Between the White English characters, both of the young British-Pakistanis, the old Pakistani father and the newly arrived immigrant Faysal there are many huge contrasts in belief about what it is to be British.

Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2011) is a jihad satire depicting four homegrown jihadis from Sheffield who fail to disrupt the London marathon with a series of own-goals. Originally rejected by both the BBC and C4 as too controversial, Morris describes it as an attempt to explore the war on terror after 9/11 and in the wake of 7/7; he describes it as a good-hearted farce, the Dad's Army of terrorism:" Suddenly you're not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time and who make curry and are a part of the landscape." It pushes mainstream comedy to the edge, allowing a discussion about an incendiary subject within the safe framework of satire.

East is East (Damien O’Donnell, 1999) is a comedy drama based on a Punjabi family in the 1970’s based in Salford. It is arguably one of the first hits to have established British Asian cinema as a true contender across the world. The film touches upon the controversial topic of arranged marriages and traditional families. Based on award-winning actor and playwright, Ayub Khan-Din’s play of the same name, it depicts BrAsian family life as a site of conflict with Bollywood actor, Om Puri, leading the cast in his role as father Zahir George Khan with British actress Linda Bassett playing his wife. 

Media representations can only ever be just that: individual stories, not stereotypes anchored in 'truth'. Khan Din rejects the notion that George Khan is 'typical' Muslim father.

Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002)

Theory: Erving Goffman and Performance 

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) is Goffman's seminal sociology book. It uses the imagery of the theatre in order to portray the importance of human social interaction.

Goffman writes about the nature of social interaction e.g. notions of ‘performance’ reflecting a certain identity. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is relevant when looking at the whole idea of identity and can be mapped onto contemporary media. Identity can be a site of conflict, especially between generations and often more so between second and third generation immigrants. There are several film that explore this.

Many second and third generation immigrants openly and confidently challenge their parents (like Anita in Anita and Me), whilst others 'bend', showing flexibility and moving between two cultures (like Jess /Jasminder in Bend It Like Beckham). Some feel forced to hide their real identities in the face of entrenched traditional values (East Is East, where 'east' and 'west' Do not meet).

For Erving Goffman, identity becomes a matter of performance, with front and back stage behaviours, which serve to define appropriate behaviours in two different spheres.

For example, in East is East, Tariq pays lip service to obeying his Muslim father but morphs into his western identity as ‘Tony’ at college and in the night club. Some conflict leads to outright war, with positions taken that are poles apart, as when Nazir is disowned by George after fleeing an arranged marriage for a homosexual relationship. The message of this film is that hybrid identities are not accepted by traditional Muslim parents.

Note to self: work on Collective Identity here Essay on Identity and Media Representation here