COLLECTIVE IDENTITY DATA & THEORY

OLDER TEXTS   TV                               Film Radio Internet Press            The                     The Millionairess [Goodness Gracious Me] (Pe                                                             Peter Sellars 1960)                                                           Goodness Gracious Me                                    The Coopers Go To Church Meera Syall                                                                                 The Kumars                                                                     Anita And Me (2002)                           My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)                                                          Bend It Like Beckham 2002                                Bhaji On The Beach Gurinder Chadha 1992                    East Is East  (Damien O’Donnell) Ayub Khan Din           A                                              Ae Fond Kiss (Ken Loach, 2004)                              Tahara:“I'm a Glaswegian Muslim woman of    P            Pakistani descent who supports Glasgow Rangers in a               Catholic school. I'm a dazzling mixture & I'm proud of                                                                              of it.”              Internet Shafilea Ahmed 'honour killing' by parents fro b                                          ecoming too Westernized (2012) IIdentity crisis of both Shafilea (drank bleach) and sister (left home; arranged robbery: It wasn't until I was at university that I saw how wrong the family life was.' nternet  Timothy Garton Ash The Guardian + blog Reasons why British Muslims identify more with being Muslim than being British (Pakistani diasporic origin;libertine urban behaviour, WOGT)

ISSUES and DEBATES    I have chosen to look at how British Asians are represented as a collective identity on TV, film, radio, the internet and the press, as well as how British Asians represent themselves. ‘British Asian’ is a collective term that encompasses a huge range of ethnicities, with different cultural practices and religious beliefs. It equally can be used to refer to people of first, second, third and later generation immigrants.Therefore there is no one single 'collective' identity.(Sathnan Sangheera, Tahara) All representations are mediated, even those that individuals or collective groups make of themselves, and we should remember this when considering issues about 'reality' of representation and whether media reflects or affects representations: Cultural Imperialism is an issue with minorities and sub-cultures particularly when ethnicity is part of the equation (evidence of pre-1990s texts)  British Asians are now active contributors and participants on media platforms such as films, TV, newspapers and radio (Gurinder Chadha, Ayub Kan Din, Meera Syall) British Asians may see themselves as BrAsians- hybrid identities- whose family life is a site of conflict because of differing approaches to cultural practices (children in Bend It, East Is East, Anita And Me) Along with film representations that British Asians make themselves, we now have Web 2.0 which offers every individual the chance to create their own representations. For Michael Wesch, this is the future and I can see that this will continue: look at the popularity of Diary Of A Badman (nearly 4 million views) in which a British Asian Muslim presents a comic video diary. Media representations can only ever be just that: individual stories, not stereotypes anchored in 'truth'. Khan Din rejects George Khan is 'typical' Muslim father. Media representations sanitize or sensationalize representations becuase of genre conventions: romcom sweeps issues under the carpet (Bend It) or generates conflict, problematizing collective identity (Make Bradford British) Individuals rather than institutions also shape representations thanks to Web 2.0: all of us chose how we present ourselves, for eg on FaceBook, online, photos, private language (LOL, WTF)

NEWER TEXTS                                        Four Lions Chris Morris (2011)                    Slumdog Millionaire  (Danny Boyle, 2009)                                         The Indian Doctor (BBC1, 2012)                                       Make Bradford British (C4, 2012) Ter                Terrorist widow: caption about ‘prom queen to hijab’                   (for Roland Barthes, this would code her as a terrorist) NE R                                                                   Rochdale convictions                      Press: Nottingham Asian Arts Council Press release on                                                                                       MELAS                   Rad                                   RADIO: The British Asian network                      Sathnam Sangheera ‘Sad to see the back of the A  sian               Network? I’m not.’ (The Times, 03.03.2010) The                                                                THE FUTURE IN                                               INTERNET: Diary of a Badman  (Mi                                         Michael Wesch's work on YouTube

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS Dick Hebdige & subcultures Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony  Gramsci says that Marx's model of economic power is outdated & that mechanisms of domination are intellectual. His focus is on culture & ideology: television & cinema are now central to popular culture and exert huge power; Erving Goffman and Performance  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a seminal sociology book by Erving Goffman. It uses the imagery of the theatre in order to portray the importance of human social interaction Roland Barthes  visual codes as signifiers (clothing codes) Michel Foucault scopic regimes: we internalize mechanisms of power Bentham'sPanopticon is the model for how we police ourselves (act as if we are being watched and conform to how our society expects us to behave as in the women of Bhaji On The Beach)