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Film Notes:
BHAJI ON THE BEACH
BHAJI ON THE BEACH (UK 1994, 100 mins., color)
Director: Gurinder Chadha; screenplay: Meera Syal; cinematography:
John Kenway; editing: Oral Ottley; production design: Derek Brown;
sound: Ronald Bailey; costume design: Annie Symons; music: John
Altman, Craig Pruess and Kuljit Bhamra; production: Nadine Marsh-Edwards
for Umbi Films and Film Four International; released by First Look
Pictures. CAST: Kim Vithana (Ginder); Jimmi Harkishin (Ranjit);
Sarita Khajuria (Hashida); Mo Sesay (Oliver); Lalita Ahmed (Asha);
Shasheen Khan (Simi); Zohra Segal (Pushpa); Nisha Nayar (Ladhu);
Renu Kochar (Madhu); Surendra Kochar (Bina); Souad Faress (Rekha);
Pecter Cellier (Ambrose Waddington).
"Bhaji" of the film's title refers to a traditional Indian dish--"Bhajia"--that
has changed into a snack food served only in Great Britain and the
United States. It alludes to the cultural changes and reconfigurations
of Asian immigrant identities in Britain, particularly British-Indian
women who must create spaces for themselves in a male-dominated
world where traditional and modern cultures intersect and make demands
on their lives.
The narrative is built around a day trip that three generations
of lower-middle- and middle-class Asian women (in England defined
as women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) take from Birmingham
to the working-class, seaside resort of Blackpool. The film abounds
in subplots, chance encounters, and angry confrontations, but its
most striking aspect is its complex, ironic view of how Asian women
live in England today. The cast of women characters includes three
"aunties"--traditional older women wearing saris; Ginder, who has
fled with her five-year old son from her handsome, abusive husband
and his claustrophobic, controlling family; Hashida, one of the
community's shining hopes with a place in medical school, but pregnant
by her West Indian boyfriend, Oliver, a relationship she's kept
secret from her parents; two giggly teenage sisters carrying a boombox
and obsessed with English boys; Rekha, a chic, moneyed visitor from
Bombay, who is dressed in fashionable Western clothes; and Simi,
the trip's organizer, a passionate feminist, wearing a leather jacket
over a sari, who is deeply linked to the Asian community while being
critical of many of its values. Temporarily liberated from their
shop counters, parents, university places, boyfriends, and battered-wife
refuges, the women share adventures and discoveries about themselves,
as well as divisive struggles with racism, xenophobia, and cultural
diversity. The day is cathartic for each woman, and they all return
home to their everyday lives laughing raucously in a shared moment
of recognition at a cake moulded in the shape of a pair of enormous
breasts.
Gurinder Chadha is the first Asian woman film director from Britain,
and Bhaji on the Beach is her first full-length feature film
that has been internationally critically acclaimed. The provocative
and humorous film has been nominated for the Alexandre Korda award
for the Best British Film in the British Academy of Film, Television,
and the Arts. Chadha's first documentary film, I'm British But...,
explores the varied experiences and multiple identities of British-born
Asian youth in different localities in metropolitain, rural, and
regional Britain. Set to the fast pace of Bhangra music, it fundamentally
contests notions of "what it means to be British." Her other films
include "What Do You Call An Indian Woman Who's Funny?" and A Nice
Arrangement. Gurinder was born in Kenya and raised in Southall in
London by East African-born Punjabi parents. This biographical trajectory
of multiple movements is powerfully played out in her vibrant, funny
and "very English" films. Bhaji has points in common with
other socially conscious British directors, particularly the pioneering
Ken Loach, whom Chadha views as a mentor, and Mike Leigh, whose
ideas of extensive rehearsals to define character she has made her
own. Yet Bhaji contains its own unique blend of politics and comedy.
The film was produced by the "Film on Four" series on British television,
which also produced My Beautiful Laundrette, The Crying
Game, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Chadha received
financing for Bhaji at Barclay's in London, where her father
has been rejected from a job thirty years earlier.
Discussion questions for journal entry and class discussion:
1. Avtar Brah writes in "Gendered Spaces: Women of South Asian
descent in 1980s Britain": "At home, Asian women combine with other
female kin and friends to create a dynamic and lively social and
cultural life. These female cultures are not devoid of contradictions,
tensions, rivalry or intergenerational differences that may spill
over into conflict, but they are constitutive of structures of support
and space within which gender-specific activities, inlcuding leisure,
may be constructed and performed. They are a means of negotiating
and/or combating hierarchies of power in the household and in the
wider community. These cultures are the arena where diverse and
heterogeneous women's identities are played out" (Cartographies
of Diaspora, p. 82). How does Bhaji on the Beach as a film stage
and represent the diversity of experiences, attitudes and concerns
among different generations of South Asian women and the diasporic
community in contemporary Britain?
2. Discuss the interrelationship of politics and humor in the film.
3. Comment on Chadha's paradoxical statement: "I think of Bhaji
as a very English film." How does the film musically, visually and
dramatically construct a hybrid vision of British and Asian identity?
4. Discuss the film's treatment of "taboo subjects" of interracial
relationships, wife battering, pregnancy out of wedlock, and prejudice
within minority or diaporic communities within the context of intergenerational
relationships and values.
5. Comment on the various characters' relationship to the "imaginary
homeland" of India and the physical home of contemporary British
society. How does the film address and respond to the question:
"How do you preserve traditional cultural values without falling
into a ghetto mentality?"
6. Analyze the references to film, performance and the carnivalesque
in the film--from Asha's cinematic fantasies to the aging thespian
Ambrose Waddington to the women's visit to a Chippendale dancer
strip club, pop songs, and the setting of the Coney Islandish Blackpool
and the illumination festival.
Check out additional resources on the South Asian Diaspora at this
Berkeley
University site.
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