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Filmic Representations of the British Raj in the 1980S: Cultural Identity, Otherness and Hybridity

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Filmic Representations of the British Raj in the 1980S: Cultural Identity, Otherness and Hybridity FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BRITISH RAJ IN THE 1980S: CULTURAL IDENTITY, OTHERNESS AND HYBRIDITY Tesis doctoral presentada por Elena Oliete Aldea Dirigida por la Dra. Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy Dpto. de Filología Inglesa y Alemana Universidad de Zaragoza Marzo 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………… 1 1. COMING TO TERMS WITH IDENTITY AND ‘BRITISHNESS’: THE INCESSANT CONSTRUCTION AND EROSION OF IDENTITY BOUNDARIES………………………. 21 1.1. Globalisation, Migration and Hybrid Societies……………………………… 22 1.2. Identity……………………………………………………………………….. 28 1.2.1. ‘Race’ and Racism……………………………………………………... 36 1.2.2. Miscegenation and Cultural Hybridity…………………………………. 54 1.2.3. Historical Multiculturality of the British Isles…………………………. 63 1.3. Immigration Policies in Britain……………………………………………… 76 2. BRITAIN IN THE 1980s: THE THATCHER DECADE………. 97 2.1. Definitions…………………………………………………………………….. 98 2.2. Britain Before Margaret Thatcher: ‘Labour Isn’t Working’………………….. 102 2.3. Thatcher’s Government: ‘Set the People Free’………………………………. 104 2.4. Britain’s Unique Position in the World………………………………………. 111 2.4.1. The Falklands War……………………………………………………... 116 2.5. Multicultural Britain in the 1980s……………………………………………. 120 2.5.1. New Right, New Racism……………………………………………….. 120 2.5.2. Immigration Controls for the Sake of Good Race Relations…………… 128 2.6. Thatcherism and Cinema……………………………………………………... 134 3. HISTORY, IDENTITY AND THE HERITAGE BUSINESS….. 141 3.1. History: the Ever-Present Past………………………………………………... 144 3.2. Different Perspectives of Historiography Through Time…………………….. 148 3.3. Heritage Industry: the National Identity Business……………………………. 169 3.4. Cinema and Heritage…………………………………………………………. 177 3.4.1. British Cinema, Genre and Society…………………………………….. 177 3.4.2. British Cinema in the 1980s: the Heritage Film……………………….. 189 4. THE RAJ REVIVAL FILMS IN THE 1980s…………………… 207 4.1. Cinematographic Representations of the Empire…………………………….. 208 4.1.1. Adventure and Male Enterprise………………………………………… 208 4.1.2. Feminising the Empire…………………………………………………. 219 4.2. The 1980s Raj Film Debate………………………………………………….. 232 4.3. Re-Construction of British History and Identity through a Historical Film. The Case of Attenborough’s Gandhi……………………………………………… 238 4.3.1. Re-Presenting History in a 1982 Film………………………………….. 238 4.3.2. History and the Individual: Gandhi Becomes a God…………………… 246 4.3.3. Filming India’s Independence Through a Western Lense: Bapu Goes West……………………………………………………………………………….. 258 4.4. History in Literary Adaptations. The Case of Ivory’s Heat and Dust and Lean’s A Passage to India ……………………………………………………….. 273 4.4.1. Adapting History and Literature on Screen……………………………. 273 4.4.2. Heat and Dust………………………………………………………….. 278 4.4.2.1. Past and Present Reflected in a Critical Mirror………………… 283 4.4.2.2. Olivia: an Outcast in the Memsahib’s World of the 1920s…….. 290 4.4.2.3. The Apparent Freedom of the 1980s…………………………… 299 4.4.3. A Passage to India……………………………………………………... 306 4.4.3.1. A Packaged Holiday to an Exotic Past…………………………. 312 4.4.3.2. India vs. Britain………………………………………………… 316 4.4.3.3. Race and Gender Relationships………………………………… 322 4.5. History, Heritage and Raj on TV. The Case of The Far Pavilions and The J ewel in the Crown………………………………………………………………… 341 4.5.1. Adapting History and Literature on the Small Screen………………….. 341 4.5.2. Raj serials: The Far Pavilions and The Jewel in the Crown…………… 352 4.5.2.1. Orientalism and Realism………………………………………... 352 4.5.2.2. British, Indians and Hybrid Transvestism……………………… 363 4.5.2.3. Eurocentric ‘Realism’: Rape and Punishment…………………. 385 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………… 419 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………….. 435 Websites Cited……………………………………………………………………. 454 FILMOGRAPHY……………………………………………………. 457 Films Cited………………………………………………………………………… 457 Selected Filmography……………………………………………………………... 459 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Chantal Cornut- Gentille D'Arcy for introducing me to the field of cultural studies – method or practice that has encouraged my critical thinking and provided me with the necessary references and intellectual tools for the completion of this dissertation. I also wish to thank her for her advice, guidance and continued support. Without her assistance and encouragement this thesis could not have been written. Special thanks are also due to Professor Celestino Deleyto and Dr. Luis Miguel García and to all the members in my research group at the University of Zaragoza in projects of the University of Zaragoza for their support, and formative influence during the team’s fruitful meetings. The projects the research team has been working on along the past years are entitled: “Género, cultura y sociedad en los cines estadounidense y británico contemporáneos” (HUM2004-00418), “Hibridación genérica y sociedad en el cine estadounidense y británico: cartografía del discurso cultural” (HUM2007-61183) and “Cine, cultura y sociedad” (H12), and all have been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT) and the European Regional Development Fund, in collaboration with the Aragonese Government. I am also indebted to institutions such as the Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, Obra Social CAI “Programa Europa XXI” and the Department of Science Technology and University of Government of Aragon CONAI+D for supporting my research through the granting of a scholarship that enabled me to carry out a two-month research stay in 2005 in London. In this respect Professor Peter Evans (Queen Mary, University of London) deserves special mention for his guidance and supervision of my and for giving me full access to the bibliographical funds at the said University, as well as to the Senate House, University of London, London National Library and the British Film Institute. I am also indebted to the Edinburgh University Library for allowing me access to its funds in the research stay, carried out in the summer of 2008. I owe special thanks to the lecturers of the English Department at the University of Zaragoza who taught me during my years as an undergraduate and in the doctoral courses. Nor can I forget my friends and colleagues at the Department who have constantly supported and encouraged me through this process, especially to Dr. Herrero, for both her academic advice and personal support. Finally, my warmest gratitude goes to my parents, grandmother, family and close-friends for their unfailing encouragement and understanding all these years. INTRODUCTION ‘All cultures are hybrid […]. To speak of cultural ‘mixing’ makes sense only from inside a social world’ (Werbner in Tate, 2005: 65). This introductory quotation succinctly expresses the main points I wish to explore in this dissertation. Broadly speaking, I propose to base my analysis of 1980’s British Raj films on Stuart Hall’s theories on identity formation (1997: 5-7) to prove is that identities are, for the most part, culturally and artificially constructed. Although it can be affirmed that ‘all cultures are hybrid’, from a social and political point of view, identities are built up within the social net of complex power relations. Consequently, no matter how conscious we are of the artificiality of cultural constructs, social relations create hierarchies of power and marginalisation in certain communities and within certain contexts. It is on these political grounds that the concept of ‘hybridity’ matters, as it can be used as a tool to undermine such oppressive power relations. In the post-colonial world of the 1980s,1 hybridity was a concept which cannot be overlooked. As a result of the influx of immigrants from the former British colonies after the Second World War, the United Kingdom, during the later half of the twentieth century, became a multicultural society. It was the presence of foreign cultures and the rise of New Right policies during the 1980s that provoked a reaffirmation of the discourses on national identity based on an imaginary homogeneous ‘white’ past. 1 In the book The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin give several definitions to the term ‘post-colonial’: ‘The semantic basis of the term “post-colonial” might seem to suggest a concern only with the national culture after the departure of the imperial power. It has occasionally been employed in some earlier work in the area to distinguish between the periods before and after independence […]. We use the term “post-colonial”, however, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day […]. [It] is concerned with the world as it exists during and after the period of European domination and effects of this on contemporary literatures’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1989:1-2). I share with Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin their last definition of post-coloniality. However, throughout this dissertation I shall be using the term in a broader sense, that is, in cultural rather than specifically literary terms. I will therefore include the coloniser countries and their cultural productions as belonging to the ‘post-colonial world’. 2 Filmic Representations of the British Raj During the Thatcher decade, the imperial past was seen as a point of reference in the search for a sense of ‘Britishness’ (Wollen, 1991: 179). As a consequence, the 1980s were characterised by a general harking back to the past (Bigsby, 1993:31-33), in literature, with historiographic metafictions such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
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