G325 Sec B: Contemporary Media Issues

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues (50 marks) 

 

These are the question types:
This is how it will be marked (notice that you need to write about 'historical' texts (The Millionairess; cultural imperialism, attitudes in The Indian Doctor) and future projections (Wesch & web 2.0):

These are recent questions:

Media and collective identity: how does one affect the other? (June 2014)

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“Media simply represent collective identity, they don’t create it.” How far do you agree with this  statement? Make reference to one or more group(s) of people in your answer. (June 2014)

Explain what is meant by 'collective identity' and the role of the media in its construction (June 2013)
"Media representations are just reflections of reality, not constructions or distortions." Discuss with reference to one or more groups of people (June 2013)
How do media representations influence collective identity? (Jan 2012)
Discuss different ways in which one group of people is represented in the media (Jan 2012)
Analyse the ways in which at least one group of people is mediated (June 2012) 
Discuss the social implications of media in relation to collective identity (June 2012)
Analyse the ways in which the media represent British Asians (Jan 2011)
What is collective identity and how is it mediated? (Jan 2011) 
How to start thinking about identity. 

YOUR ANSWER STARTS HERE 

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.

Is there such a thing as British Asian collective identity?
 
‘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.  Identity is hybrid, not homogenous. As Sathnan Sangheera, writing in The Times (03.03.2010) asserted when the BBC Asian Network was threatened with closure: "The idea of a BBC radio station dedicated to an 'Asian' community has always struck me as a little odd, when those Asians speak many different languages, come from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds and exhibit hugely different degrees of integration. To suggest that an 80-year old Bangladeshi immigrant who doesn't speak English and enjoys religious chants would want to listen to the same thing as a 14-year-old third-generation Hindu who doesn't speak Hindu and who enjoys Pixie Lott is as daft as expecting the whole of Britain to listen to Radio 1."

Does representation in media texts alter how we see the real world around us? 

• Yes, as media texts tend to reflect / support the dominant ideology (such as cultural imperialism).
• 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.
  

• David Buckingham: "What are the social implications of media representations?  The media do not just offer us a transparent 'window on the world', they offer us a mediated version of the world. They do not just present reality, they re-present it." 
• Julie D’Acci: ‘It is through representational or signifying systems such as language, photography, film and television that the categories that seem so natural to us and the differences that organise out thinking and our lives (like masculinity and femininity, male and female) actually get determined’ (Defining Women, 1994)

TEXTS THAT EXPLORE RACISM AND STEREOTYPING

• Cultural Imperialism is an issue with minorities and sub-cultures particularly when ethnicity is part of the equation (evidence of pre-1990s texts) The Millionairess (1960) pokes fun at the idea that a beautiful Western woman (Sophia Loren) could find an Asian man (Peter Sellers blacked up) irresistible attractive. Even though he plays the part of a highly qualified doctor, he is positioned as a figure of fun, a shared joke, with the intended reading of the text being "Goodness gracious me, how could she!" The Indian Doctor (BBC1, 2012) created by Deep Sehgal and starring Sanjeev Bhaskar, is set in the same period of the early 1960s but offers a very different intended reading: the audience is offered a sympathetic understanding of what it is like to be 'the Indian doctor' emigrating a Welsh mining village and treated with at best some suspicion and at worst outright hostility. As Dr Sharma travels hopefully through the idyllic pastoral landscape, visions of Eden are under-scored by the them tune lyrics 'I'm half way to Paradise' and then ironically punctured by the reality of his arrival at the village hall where the community is being prepared for his arrival with screenings of official broadcasts about immigrants into the NHS and a showing of 'The Millionairess'. No one sees how inappropriate such racist stereotypes are (a sign of the times) but we do, as contemporary audiences.
  • Richard Dyer (1979): "Stereotypes are about power. Those with power stereotype those with less power." "The ideological work of stereotyping involves closing down the range of possible meanings, making fast, firm, and separate what is in reality fluid."
  • Stuart Hall (1981)  proposes that there are three kinds of representation of black people – the native, the entertainer and the social problem. 
  • Alvarado et al (1987) argue that there are four main categories of race representation in the media: The exotic, the dangerous, the humorous and the pitied 
  • What are stereotypes? According to Walter Lippmann in 1922, stereotypes had four major characteristics: they were an ordering process; a short cut; referred to the ‘real world’; and expressed our ‘values’ and ‘beliefs’. Categorisation is a basic cognitive process that people employ to make sense of their lives and their group affiliations.
  • Alison Griffiths sees stereotypes as rigid, simplistic, overdetermined and inherently false…they misrepresent people’s ‘lived identities’ by falling back upon narrowly conceived preconceptions of racial, cultural and gendered difference, thus perpetuating myths about social, cultural and racial groups.
• 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. In Syal's Goodness Gracious Me (1996-2000, BBC radio and TV comedy sketch) the humour cuts both ways. took Asian stereotypes but used them to illustrate comic ideas of universal appeal. It took Asian stereotypes but used them to illustrate comic ideas of universal appeal. It was wickedly apt for the creators of this show to choose a title so reminiscent of the stereotypical portrayal of Asians that had blighted the British media for decades. They set their stall almost immediately with the classic "going for an English" sketch, in which a group of Asians embody the loutish behaviour of lager swilling Brits in an Indian restaurant (one diner asks for something "really bland"). British Asians mock their own need to integrate at the expense of retaining their own cultural roots:the Kapoors (pronounced Coopers), social climbers who were at great pains to deny any of their heritage, desperate to be seen as 100% British. In the episode The Coopers Go To Church it satirizes the wholesale adoption of British culture, religion, cultural practices and accent in a comic way as the immigrants open themselves up to ridicule by gettting it all so wrong: to the Vicar "Get me a good seat, not too near the band, my good chappie." In The Kumars at No.42 (BBC, 7 series, 2001-6), Sanjeev Bhaskar creates television comedy out of self-mocking stereotypes: he plays an inept TV presenter whose parents have built him a studio for live interviews in their garden.
  
• Michel Foucault takes a more active view of audiences: rather than viewers coming to the television screen with already-formed identities, television genres actually help to inform the identity in question. 
• My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985, from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi) marks a turning point in British cinema with its representation of the complex—and often comical—relationships between members of the Asian and White communities. Its success proved that issues of British Asian identity were of mainstream interest.The story focuses on Omar, a young Pakistani man living in London, and his reunion and eventual romance with his old friend, a street punk named Johnny. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a laundrette originally owned by Omar's uncle Nasser. The plot tackles many sensitive issues, such as homosexuality, racism and Britiain's economic policies during the 1980s. My Beautiful Laundrette was ground-breaking in its bold exploration of issues of sexuality, race, class and generational difference. It also sparked controversy, particularly within the Asian community, which was disgusted by its perceived degrading representation of Pakistanis.
  The film highlights a dilemma at the heart of the immigrant experience - the desire to belong to Western society while maintaining a clear sense of Pakistani identity. The two brothers, Nasser and Papa, demonstrate this cultural conflict. An ardent intellectual socialist, Papa belongs to old school Pakistan because, like most first generation immigrants, he believes fervently in education combating racism and is vehemently against the greed and conservative economics of Thatcherism.
  Nasser, however, has largely abandoned his immigrant roots, toasting "Thatcher and your [Omar's] beautiful laundrette". He has deserted eastern traditions in favour of money, success, and a white mistress. Despite this, Nasser retains many Asian ways: returning to his rancorous wife and attempting to arrange his daughter's marriage.
• Anita And Me (Meera Syal, 2002)   is a comedy based on the true-life experience shared by actress and writer Meera Syal about growing up in the town of Essington in Staffordshire. The story follows an Asian family who move to the rural countryside where they experience a cultural clash between their eastern origins and the ‘white’ Westerners. It deals with the delicate topic of racism (open link) from members from white supremicist groups in the 1970’s.  For Stuart Hall, we create stable identities by creating narratives of ourselves: ‘Identity is formed at the unstable point where the "unspeakable" stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture’ (Hall, 1987). Backstage behaviour: Meena, the young daughter, confides her true thought to her diary.
  Meena experiences racism firsthand at her village’s summer fete. ‘We don’t give a toss for anybody else,’ says the teenager Sam Lowbridge during a heated debate over charity funds. ‘This is our patch. Not some wogs’ handout’. Meena feels as though she has been ‘punched in the stomach’. Worse still, she later learns that he and her best friend Anita were both involved in a racist assault against an Indian man that same night.
  ‘I never meant yow, Meena,’ Sam says when she finally confronts him. ‘It was all the others, not yow!’
  As Meena observes this fear and anger towards immigrants, she also hears her parents mock the English for being selfish and hypocritical. Seemingly inhabiting two different worlds at once, even her language is split between Midlands slang, and the Punjabi she learns from her parents and her grandmother Nanima.

THREE FILMS THAT CHALLENGE STEREOTYPING: Ae Fond Kiss, Yasmin and Four Lions. These films challenge the hardening of stereotyping in the wake of 9/11

•  Ae Fond Kiss (Ken Loach, 2004) is to an extent comparable to such British-Asian themed comedies as East is East (d. Damien O'Donnell, 1999) or Bend It Like Beckham (d. Gurinder Chadha, 2002). The story's foundation is deadly serious. Laverty has said that it was prompted by the demonisation of Muslims which he observed in the wake of 9/11 (2001) - though his script is less overtly polemic than this might suggest. Ae Fond Kiss touches on the racism encountered by Casim's family, but swiftly moves on to explore the wide diversity of viewpoints among its members, from the arch-traditional patriarch to Casim's elder sister, who embraces her Asian heritage, and his younger one, Tahara, who dreams, against her parents' wishes, of becoming a journalist.
• As part of a speech about terrorism and the stereotyping of Muslims in the West, Tahara gives a speech in school assembly that refers to different types of identity in her family. “I reject the West's simplification of a Muslim. I'm a Glaswegian Muslim woman of Pakistani descent who supports Glasgow Rangers in a Catholic school. I'm a dazzling mixture & I'm proud of it." Tahara's conception of her hybrid identity chimes with research carried out into Scottish-Pakistani teenagers in the 1990s and are in line with findings of theorists such as Stuart Hall that the Pakistani community, the largest ethnic minority community in Scotland, considers itself as 'bi-cultural'. The opening scenes cross cut between Bangra nightclub dance music, the Glasgow skyline and the Asian corner shop where a British bulldog urinates on the poster. The blending of different spaces and music suggests that the city is a diasporic mixture of peoples. Tahara's brother starts a romantic relationship with Roisin, a white Catholic, despite being engaged according to his family's wishes. Previous British films like East Is East pit a repressive immigrant tradition against a more progressive or at least permissive Western context. In Scotland, both Roisin and Casim suffer from the clash between their personal desires and the institutions they encounter. The fact that Casim's father suffered racism from the time of his arrival in Scotland shapes the family's desire to uphold Pakistani tradition which is seen as integral to identity.
• Another film using the context of demonization of Muslims as terrorists is Yasmin (dir. Kenneth Glenaan 2004), written by Simon Beaufoy and starring Archie Panjabi as Yasmin and Renu Setna as her father, Khalid. The film was made at 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. 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 fi lm. They are also closely related to racism. 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 fi lm 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-consumated 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 Yasmins 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 her 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.

FOUR TEXTS THAT EXPLORE IDENTITY AS A SITE OF CONFLICT

• 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.
• 
  British Asians may see themselves as BrAsians - hybrid identities- whose family life is a site of conflict because of differing approaches to cultural practices. We have looked at several texts with this focus:  Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha),  East Is East (dir. Damien O'Donell, screenplay Auyub Khan Din), Anita And Me (Meera Syal, 2002) 
  For example Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha, 1994), a surprise commercial and critical hit. Chadha's earlier documentary I'm British But... (1989) used wry humour to examine notions of identity amongst Asians in far flung parts of the UK. It explored taboo subjects and allow a wider world into the interior lives of British Asian women, who mostly expressed a sense of cultural alienation. 
• In Bhaji on the Beach a group of Birmingham-based Asian women, are headed for Blackpool. The women are either running away from problems or in search of new possibilities. Hashida, secretly involved with a black boy, has just discovered she is pregnant. Ginder wants out of an unhappy marriage. Asha and Pushpa seek escape from the drudgery of corner-shop life. For each, the trip to Blackpool will be a journey of self-discovery.
• The trip is also an opportunity to see their country, while confronting each other's values. The women come together when confronted by white racists, but the generations clash on the issue of traditional values. Hashida's pregnancy first provokes shock then a round of anti-black prejudice from the older women. Ginder is blamed for the collapse of her marriage and urged to return home.
• Commitment, duty, honour, sacrifice - all the fossilised values which they have carried around for years are mercilessly questioned. These entrenched attitudes contrast sharply with those of a visiting Bombay relative, all slick slacks and western attire, who seems freer and more modern than the older women in their drab Saris, who cling to the ideas of the India they left behind. The women do begin to loosen up - particularly in a comic scene at a male strip joint. Finally, the appearance of Ginder's husband, and his violent public attack on her, causes a major re-evaluation of values. At the end, new notions of solidarity and sisterhood across the generations emerge as the women make their way home. 
• Bhaji on the Beach's comprehensive success reflects its ability to deal with complex issues in a simple and conventional narrative. In the process, it opens up, with humanity and warmth, the closed world of Asian women.
• Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002)
• British Asians may see themselves as BrAsians - hybrid identities- whose family life is a site of conflict because of differing approaches to cultural practices. We have looked at several texts with this focus:  Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha),  East Is East (dir. Damien O'Donell, screenplay Auyub Khan Din), Anita And Me (Meera Syal, 2002).
  
  In these texts, a hybrid identity is forged by second and third generation British Asians but the new hybrid identity is not accepted by the parents, forcing the children to mask / hide their behaviours or to openly defy their parents and face the ensuing conflict. Cultural practices are at the heart of the matter: clothing, food, obedience to parents, mother tongue, marriage, rites such as circumcision, permitted freedoms, religious observance.
  
  Many second & third generation immigrants openly and confidently challenge their parents (Anita), whilst others 'bend', showing flexibility and moving between two cultures (Bend It Like Beckham) but 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, 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.
  

CULTURAL SENSITIVITIES IN MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS: TWO CONTRASTING CASES 

• Press reports of the murder of Shafilea Ahmed in 2003 (reported in The Times 25.05.12) contrasted with the Rochdale grooming scandal (19.05.2012).
•  The very different treatment of news about Shafilea's murder and the Rochdale crimes led me to examine contrasting representations of individual as opposed to collective identity in society and in the press. Sensitivity about avoiding cultural stereotyping of Pakistani muslims prevented Rochdale authorities from tackling early accusations about organized violence against underage girls. According to Baroness Warsi, the authorities should stop pretending that ethnicity played no part in such cases as the Rochdale sex abuse gang behaviour. In the Rochdale case, many commentators played down or refused to accept that there were cultural issues involved. For Warsi, the sex grooming crimes against vulnerable young girls that led to nine successful convictions in May 2012 have a connection with the Asian cultural identity of the abusers: "Some Pakistani men see white girls as fair game. We have to be prepared to say that." It took years for the authorities to act and for the many cases to come to court in a collective trial.
• By contrast, the murder of Shafilea Ahmed by her father  (reported in The Times 25.05.12) did not shy away from reporting culturallly sensitive matters: Alesha Ahmed, a sister, reports the identity crisis of both Shafilea (who drank bleach) and herself (she left home then arranged a  robbery): "It wasn't until I was at university that I saw how wrong the family life was." Shafilea was suffocated by her father aged 17 because she had 'brought shame' on the family through her desire to live a westernized lifestyle.
• Note Sathnam Sangheera writing in The Times (10.01.2011) as the news broke about the 'barrage of generalizations' about Asian identity that led to heated contributions from asians on internet discussion boards in the vein of "Can you write that it's a Pakistani not a general Asian problem." Sangheera outlines a clutch of stereotypes about Asians (shopkeepers, drive taxis. want to be doctors, value education) before concluding that if the violent Islamic terrorism of recent years has not shatttered these images, the current controversy was unlikely to do so. 
• Desi Blitz is an online British Asian Forum which polled its community members, bringing out into the open for community discussion the role played by collective identity in the Rochdale case.

TRENDS  

• 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 sanitize or sensationalize representations because of genre conventions: romcom sweeps issues under the carpet (Bend It failed to tackle serious issues like homosexulaity) or generates conflict, problematizing collective identity (Make Bradford British, the TV reality show that threw together a mix of Bradford people under the pretext of proving that they could all rub along well as they were all British, but in fact, it screened a series of conflicts that made good television viewing).
• Hugh Mackay of The Open University describes the web as a stage where anyone can perform nuanced aspects of 'the nation'. Where this becomes particularly interesting is in the diaspora communities: the web now offeres a place where people who have left a physical location can gather to experience a sense of national belonging. They can access the same cultural touchpoints as people in residence, from local news to comedy, and can engage in the same debates. The web allows for the expression of the diversity of the UK. For example, websites like 'Desi Blitz', London Mela and Edinbugh Mela  (amongst others) advertise a variety of cultural events such as Melas (festive Asian gatherings with ethnic food, music and dance). Desi Blitz uses Twitter to reach audiences and support South Asian collective identity; unlike a film text which is fixed and static in its representations of collective identity, Twitter is a collaborative, ongoing conversation, inviting endless eclectic contributions. Desi Blitz's web magazine provides an online space for expressions of British Asian identity with features on Indian food, Bollywood, 'Raj' from Big Bang Theory, cricket, football and so on as well as, interestingly for me, discussion on the Rotherham Pakistani sex grooming scandal. Shiza Khan August 27, 2014 reports her findings on the investigation into 'Is sex grooming a Pakistani problem?" in the web magazine's open forum, with the results of an online poll:
  
•  
• 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)

• COLLECTIVE IDENTITY DATA & THEORY

  
  

  OLDER TEXTS   TV Film Radio Internet Press            The Millionairess  (Sophia Loren, Peter Sellars 1960) Goodness Gracious Me (The Coopers Go To Church) Meera Syal 1996-2002                                                                                  The Kumars at No.42 (Meera Syal BBC 7 series, 2001-6)  Anita And Me (Meera Syal, 2002)  My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha 2002) Bhaji On The Beach (Gurinder Chadha 1992) East Is East  (Damien O’Donnell 1999) Ayub Khan Din           Ae Fond Kiss (Ken Loach, 2004)  Tahara:“I reject the West's simplification of a Muslim. I'm a Glaswegian Muslim woman of Pakistani descent who supports Glasgow Rangers in a Catholic school. I'm a dazzling mixture & I'm proud of it." Internet Shafilea Ahmed 'honour killing' by parents for becoming too Westernized (2012) The Times 25.05.12 Identity 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." Shafilea was suffocated by her father aged 17 because she had 'brought shame' on the family through her desire to live a westernized lifetstyle. CONTRASTED with the Rochdale convictions (9.05.2012) 'A Nation's Shame' (headlines of The Times) and Baroness Warsi speaking out about sexual groomimg as a Pakistani problem (19.05.2012) Note Sathnam Sangheera writing in The Times (10.01.2011) as the news broke about the 'barrage of generalizations' about Asian identity that led to heated contributions from asians on internet discussion boards in the vein of "Can you write that it's a Pakistani not a general Asian problem." Sangheera outlines a clutch of stereotypes about Asians (shopkeepers, drive taxis. want to be doctors, value education) before concluding that if the violent Islamic terrorism of recent years has not shatttered these images, the current controversy was unlikely to do so. Internet  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)    The Indian Doctor (BBC1, 2012) Make Bradford British (C4, 2012)  Terrorist widow: caption about ‘prom queen to hijab’  (for Roland Barthes, this would code her as a terrorist)                                                                  Rochdale convictions; Baroness Warsi                       Press: Nottingham Asian Arts Council Press release on  MELAS RADIO: The British Asian network Sathnam Sangheera ‘Sad to see the back of the Asian Network? I’m not.’ (The Times, 03.03.2010) Article HERE THE FUTURE  INTERNET: Diary of a Badman   Michael Wesch Digital Ethnography (2007) 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 !959 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 Discipline and Punish 1975 : 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) Michael Wesch (Digital Ethnography2007).

   

 

G325 Collective Identity

‘The media do not construct collective identity; they merely reflect it.’ Discuss. (Jan 2010)

Discuss the view that collective identity is increasingly mediated.

Here we have two opposing approaches. The first suggests that the mass media follows what is already present in society, for example, that its film, TV and press representations of British Asians passively reflects what exists in reality. The second discussion topic questions this approach by suggesting that our identities are increasingly constructed by or through the media. This constructs the audience in a more passive fashion as more suggestible and pliable.

This is a complex debate and there is no one right answer, because all representations are to some extent ‘mediated’, that is, shaped by the producer with an audience in mind. The debate also touches on aspects of audience theory that tend to be opposed: the first approach is in line with the ‘uses and gratifications’ theory, according to which people are active, knowing consumers who can distance themselves from what they watch/listen to; the second approach, sometimes known as the ‘hypodermic syringe’ model, reflects the belief that the media exerts a powerful, active control. In this model, consumers’ views and behaviour are shaped by the media that they consume.

An extension of this model is provided by Althusser in the way that society shapes its subjects. For Althusser, people are ‘called into’ occupying pre-existing subject positions. Thus a policeman who calls to us is interpellating us into a subject position of subjugation by the state. For this to work, we must recognize and accept this subject position.The process of identification thus creates identity. You identify me and I become that me that you have identified. Interpellation is Althusser's term to describe a mechanism whereby the human subject is 'constituted' (constructed) by pre-given structures (a structuralist stance). This concept is used by Marxist media theorists to explain the ideological function of mass media texts. According to this view, the subject (viewer, listener, reader) is constituted by the text, and the power of the mass media resides in their ability to 'position' the subject in such a way that their representations are taken to be reflections of everyday reality. Such framings reflect a stance of structural or textual determinism which has been challenged by contemporary social semioticians who tend to emphasize the polysemic nature of texts, together with the diversity of their uses.

It goes without saying that film makers do mediate identity: there is no such thing as unmediated ‘truth’ in any film text as they are shaped by genre conventions into products aimed at specific markets, be it mainstream texts aimed at global markets or national audiences. I intend to use examples drawn from film, television and the internet in my discussion of collective identity in British Asians.

Lumping together filmmakers of any kind within a single cultural grouping is fraught with difficulty, so the term 'British-Asian' may, for example, fail to recognise individual artistic voices (such as those British-Asian filmmakers who are not making Asian-themed films). Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a notion of British Asian film, and these films do often have Asian themes and may be seen to share a number of features, including relatively low budgets.

It is clear that, over the last twenty years, attitudes in Britain towards Asian cultures have shifted, as has the taste of mainstream audiences for Asian-themed films such as East is East (1999) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002). The latter became one of the most popular British films ever and was a far cry from the colonially-obsessed images of Asians depicted in mainstream British cinema and television in the 1980s and earlier.

British Asian filmmaking has its roots in the 'Black' politics of the 1960s and '70s, as two distinct communities, Asians and African-Caribbeans, were melded together through their common experiences as racial minorities within the UK, often living under the threat of poverty and social exclusion. The need to challenge this racism and create greater awareness inspired a new wave of politically active filmmakers that pioneered new cinematic images of Britain. In the 1980s, Asian filmmakers often explored - in low-budget independent productions - issues relating to cultural activism, the fight against racism and the dilemmas of identity created by living 'between' two cultures. As Retake's Ahmed Jamal explains, Asian filmmakers were "in a position of reacting, of feeling strongly about depicting the reality of our experiences and resisting what has been imposed on us."

The 1980s also heralded the first British-Asian themed feature film to claim a mainstream market. As the director Udayan Prasad has observed: "My Beautiful Launderette showed that films with Asians in them could make money". This revolutionary film, with its mixed race, queer love story, was released in 1984. Its writer, Hanif Kureishi, went on to undertake a range of features and television drama about Asian experience throughout the 1980s and '90s, including Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), The Buddha of Suburbia (BBC, 1993) and My Son the Fanatic (1997).

My Beautiful Laundrette was ground-breaking in its bold exploration of issues of sexuality, race, class and generational difference. It also sparked controversy, particularly within the Asian community, which was disgusted by its perceived degrading representation of Pakistanis. At a New York demonstration by the Pakistan Action Committee, banners called the film "the product of a vile and perverted mind".

Much of the outrage was targeted at the homosexual affair between Omar and Johnny, whch develops from a genuine mutual fondness through the buzz of sexual experimentation, before hinting, at the end, at something deeper. On the way, it survives several obstacles, including Johnny's racist connections and Omar's resentment.

The film highlights a dilemma at the heart of the immigrant experience - the desire to belong to Western society while maintaining a clear sense of Pakistani identity. The two brothers, Nasser and Papa, demonstrate this cultural conflict. An ardent intellectual socialist, Papa belongs to old school Pakistan because, like most first generation immigrants, he believes fervently in education combating racism and is vehemently against the greed and conservative economics of Thatcherism.

Nasser, however, has largely abandoned his immigrant roots, toasting "Thatcher and your [Omar's] beautiful laundrette". He has deserted eastern traditions in favour of money, success, and a white mistress. Despite this, Nasser retains many Asian ways: returning to his rancorous wife and attempting to arrange his daughter's marriage.

Kureishi writes characters for what they are rather than what they represent, and while he may dislike his character's actions, it is evident that he is fascinated by their humanity. It is for this reason that we are able to grasp the underlying truths of My Beautiful Laundrette, often ambiguous and contradictory, sometimes obscure, but hauntingly resonant, even today.

A number of other issues concerned filmmakers in this period, and went on to flavour work in Britain and in the wider Black and Asian diasporas in later decades. These include the influence of lesbian and gay themes (reflecting the arts and politics of the 1980s). Feminism was another strong theme - women fighting injustice in the home and in the outside world. Charged by feminist concerns, politically aware female filmmakers such as Gurinder Chadha emerged. Chadha's films, from I'm British But... (1988) to Bride and Prejudice (2004), have maintained a strong feminist message. Chadha's commercial feature Bhaji on The Beach (1994), subverted the British stereotype of the passive Asian woman by depicting a group of Asian women who find empowerment in each other's company.

Genre conventions and audience pleasures also shape film representations. Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha, 2002) is the product of a commercially thriving Sikh film maker Gurinder Chadha who has used her Hounslow upbringing as the springboard for a globally successful mainstream film with a convincingly ‘feel good’ ending. It is convincing and internally coherent, but cannot be expected to stand as ‘true to life’ for all Sikh families in Hounslow let alone in Britain. The film genre is dramatic comedy, which shapes its representations of the British Sikh family portrayed in a particular way, that is, as traditional and conservative but willing to compromise for the sake of their daughter Jess’s happiness. Many aspects of traditional Sikh cultural practices in the lives of Jess Bhamra’s parents, that make up their collective identity, are shown to be at odds with Jess’s own cultural identity. For many other second and third generation immigrants, their experiences will be different from that of their parents. For these generations, terms such as ‘hybrid identity’ and more recently, ‘BrAsians’ have been used. Jess is represented as an example of a successfully integrated second generation Sikh who retains her religious faith, her respect for her parents and her acceptance of their way of doing things without sacrificing her own agenda. Jess asserts her right to agency and control over her career within a secure, loving family framework. Her sister Pinkie is depicted as choosing to marry young and within the faith community, although it is not clear how far this is arranged marriage, despite being clearly also a love match. Jess leaves Britain to take up a football scholarship at an American university with her family’s blessing. The film was extremely successful: some critics may feel that its fairy-tale ending, its unrelentingly comic tone and its side-stepping of awkward issues such as gay sexuality contributed to a less than realistic representation.

By contrast, The Observer reports the experience of Jasvinder Sanghera aged 43, a British Sikh from Derby, who was disowned by her family when she refused an arranged marriage: ‘At 14, they locked me in my room until I agreed to the marriage. I took an overdose as a protest, and my sister refused to get me medical attention. They wore me down. My friends at the time were concentrating on discos, boys. Of course I wasn't allowed to socialise, even before being locked away - white people were dirty to my parents. I had a boyfriend at the time, secretly. I saw my sisters suffer horrific domestic violence.’

Jasvider’s account forms part of an online report by Rebecca Seal and Eva Wiseman on British Asian women who are pushed into arranged marriage by their families (The Observer, Sunday 11 January 2009) The site is linked to the Honour Network helpline, features a book review on Jasvinder’s book Daughters of Shame and includes a video clip of her speaking. The site therefore functions as both reportage and helpline http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/11/british-asian-forced-marriages

‘In time I started to understand where they were coming from. My father didn't leave his traditions behind at Heathrow. Growing up in Britain taught me I had choices; I was brought up Sikh but I'm part of the new community who are breaking the silence.’

Therefore Jasvinder’s experience, and the experiences of the other young women featured, is presented in a documentary style as real experience. If we are considering realistic representation in film, we cannot ignore the social realist tradition, for example, the treatment of British Asians in My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears 1985) in which the representation of British Asian experience is shaped by the historical period: as an immigrant from Karachi, Nasser Hussein lives a wealthy lifestyle in London during the Thatcher years, and displays those values, of greed (‘looking after oneself and family and letting society take care of itself.’) Omar takes control of his Uncle Nasser's laundrette. He is helped by his friend Johnny who is an outsider, and white, but like Omar, not accepted by either the white or Asian Londoners. Frears’ representations of ugly racism against Omar help create a sympathy towards his plight as he struggles with his sense of identity and his homosexuality.

East Is East (Damien O’Donnell 1999) is an interesting example of an ‘autobiographical’ film for which the writer makes claims of authenticity and truth. The original stage play and the film screen play are by Ayub Khan Din and in interview with Mark Olden (1999) he states that ‘The parents are drawn directly from my own family. The youngest boy, Sajid, is me as a child. All the arguments in the film, all the theories behind the father's way of thinking, are my own arguments and theories.’ He is at pains to stress that he has not represented the angry patriarch George as representative of all Muslim fathers: ‘I'm sure people will have some criticism about how I portray my father. But at the end of the day, I'm portraying my father, he's not a Pakistani everyman. To a certain extent, this is a man who abandoned his culture and married an English woman, and then decided that his children should marry Pakistanis. So you know, there was huge hypocrisy there. I made a point of not going to any Q&A sessions after the play because I didn't want to have to start justifying what I'd written. It was a personal story. I wasn't writing about any specific community, I was writing about my father.’ However, Khan Din’s representation is selective and shaped for the screen; his claims are made in the context of an interview conducted as part of the process of publicizing the film. It is impossible to say categorically how far his portrayal of the Muslim community is typical of Salford in the 1970s; what we do know is that it makes powerful cinema.

Khan Din’s portrayal of a British Asian father is much harsher than Chadha’s, with a bleak ending offering little hope of any compromise or acceptance that the second generation has the right to form its own identity.  O'Donnell turns Rudyard Kipling's adage, "East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet" on its head, in a hilarious and moving portrayal of the culture clash between a traditionalist Pakistani father George and his English wife and seven Westernised children.

How far can the children successfully negotiate their ‘mixed race’ identity? The clash is captured in the first scene: the Khan kids join a Catholic ceremony, marching down the back-to-back terraced streets of Salford, sporting banners, crucifixes and wreathes. When their father unexpectedly returns early from mosque, their mother, Ella (Linda Bassett) goes to warn them. As Ella and George watch the rest of the march, the kids sneak down the alleyways and rejoin the head of the procession.

The kids are certain of their identity as 'English' and defy George's determination to raise them as Muslim-Pakistanis: Meenah (Archie Panjabi) prefers playing football in the street to a demure life in a sari; Saleem (Chris Bisson) pretends to study engineering (a Pakistani father's dream vocation for his son), but is really at art school; Tariq (Jimi Mistry) calls himself Tony, kisses English girls and gets drunk; Sajid (Jordan Routledge) is yet to be circumcised and plays with the grandson of a racist, Enoch Powell-supporting neighbour; and Nazir (Ian Aspinall) abandons his arranged marriage at the last minute to become a gay hairdresser in Eccles.

But the cultural conflict is greatest in George himself, who insists his sons marry Pakistani girls. His children see him as a hypocrite as well as a despot because he left his first wife in Pakistan, came to England to make his fortune and married an English woman (Tariq acutely asks, "If English women are so bad, why did you marry my mum?"). George studiously follows the India-Pakistan war on the radio in his chip shop, 'George's English Chippy', his broken English is punctuated by English swearwords, and having forgotten to circumcise Sajid, he buys him a watch in Arabic to mollify him. George's last words in the film reprise his recurring desire for 'half a cup' of tea.

For Asian audiences, on the website ‘Dark Matter: in the ruins of cultural imperialism’, the representations are uneasily squared with reality: at stake is whose stories get told and how they get told, writes Sharma.

‘Have we arrived at a multicultural harmony whereby the signifier ‘Paki’ has been emptied of its racialized connotations? I must admit, watching white folks slapping their thighs and falling out of their seats in fits of laughter in the Camden Odeon made me suspicious of how this film operates in mainstream culture. Maybe you could call it cultural paranoia, but what’s the state of play when the youngest Khan, Sajid, screams out ‘Mam, quick the Pakis are here!‘ on arrival of the potential in-laws, the Shah family, to the Khan household?’

http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2007/02/10/east-is-east-and-the-pitfalls-of-hybridity/

We could take this further and start the discussion by pointing out that all media representations are shaped by the producer as well as the audience. Indeed, for Roland Barthes, the meaning of a text was part of a two-way process between the author and the audience, and lay in the interpretation of the text by the audience. It is certain that any reading depends on the ideology of the audience as much as the intentions of the author.

For example, comedy depends on the shared values of a community and the acceptance of a common ideology for jokes to work. Our third example is drawn from television comedy such as Goodness Gracious Me (BBC Radio 4 1996-8 and BBC 2 1998-2001) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKc9EXo_CoU. The success of Peter Sellers blacking up as an Asian doctor and adopting a faux Indian accent in The Millionairess (1960) would be considered a politically incorrect representation now, as would The Black and White Minstrel Show (1970s).  However, the roots of comic representations of Asian identity lie in such programmes, as can be seen from the episode of Goodness Gracious Me in which the Kapoors assume English names (StJohn and Vanessa Cooper) and go the church in their Sunday best: ‘We are English after all and what could be more English than spending Sunday morning with a bunch of men in dresses?’ This representation plays with the notion that collective identity is a process of hybridization and its success as parody depends on the audience’s understanding that norms are being subverted. Hence, identity representation is very much a product of mediation as well as of audience collusion.