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Film Notes:
MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (UK, 1985, color, 97 minutes)
Director: Stephen Frears; screenplay: Hanif Kureishi; producers:
Sarah Radclyffe, Tim Bevan; photography: Oliver Stapleton; editor:
Mick Audsley; sound editor: "Budge" Tremlet; designer: Hugo Luczyc
Wyhowski; music: Ludus Tonalis. Produced for Working Title/SAF Productions
for Channel 4; released by Orion Classics. Cast: Saeed Jaffrey (Nasser);
Roshan Seth (Papa); Daniel Day-Lewis (Johnny); Gordon Warnecke (Omar);
Derrick Branche (Salim); Shirley Anne Field (Rachel); Rita Wolf
(Tania); Souid Faress (Cherry); Richard Graham (Genghis); Winston
Graham (1st Jamaican); Dudley Thomas (2nd Jamaican); Garry Cooper
(Squatter); Charu Bala Choksi (Bilquis).
In an interview, Hanif Kureishi, the writer of My Beautiful Laundrette,
revealed that his original idea for the film was a historical epic
tracing the fortunes of a Pakistani family from their emigration
to Britain in 1945 until the 1970s. Yet the film was realized as
a surrealistic comedy-thriller set exclusively in Thatcher-stricken
south London, with the narrative drive supplied by the meteoric
rise of Omar, a young Pakistani businessman. The film, which cost
the meagre sum of 60,000 pounds, was commissioned for the "Film
on Four" slot on television, but after a screening at the Edinburgh
festival had received enthusiastic reviews, it succeeded on the
international cinema trail picking up prizes and helping to provoke
numerous claims of a British cinema renaissance. The film received
an Oscar for Best Screenplay.
The film's narrative centers around a young, unformed Anglo-Pakistani,
Omar, his white working-class friend and lover, Johnny, and Omar's
family of successful, rapacious entrepreneurs. Omar, adrift and
on the dole, suddenly finds direction by going to work for his wealthy
hustler uncle Nassar and becomes totally committed to the Thatcherite
ethic of making big money. For the family, that means wheeling and
dealing in slum housing, porn-video cassettes, narcotics, and a
host of other businesses. As Nassar claims, in Thatcher's England,
"there is money in the muck" for those who have the energy and drive
to "squeeze the tits of the system." Adaptable Omar learns quickly
and is not adverse to illegal dealings, but he focuses his drive
for success on transforming a squalid, graffitti-ridden South London
laundrette--named Churchill--into Powders, a glittery Ritz of poor
people's fantasies--a laundrette replete with a fish tank, video
screens, potted plants, and piped-in musak.
Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter/novelist/playwright Hanif
Kureishi also collaborated on the film, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
(1987), and Kureishi made his directing debut with London Kills
Me (1991). Frears/Kureishi's films consistently succeed in subverting
the predictable and stereotypical: the once colonial Pakastani,
who in London are often victims of racial prejusice and violence,
live well in large suburban homes and luxury flats. Kureishi's works
are "skeptical, questioning, doubting," undermining notions of political
correctness, affirming spontaneity, and shaped by a style of choreographed
discord. Both films are critical of the social inequity and brutalization
of life in Thatcher's England, but neither one posits nor defends
one particular alternative political vision. Despite the film's
leftist and counterculture sympathies, no social group has a monopoly
of virtue or wisdom. That vision makes Frears and Kureishi somewhat
unusual artists of the Left who not only acknowledge the ambiguous
nature of the social and political world, but also revel in its
ironies and contradictions.
Discussion questions for journal entry and class:
NOTE: These questions are meant as suggestions for possible directions
in your writing.
1) Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi is known for his pronounced sense
of irony in his writing. According to Northrop Frye, "irony never
says precisely what it means." It often presents a content that
is undermined or contradicted by its style or representation. Irony
may also be used to subvert character types or narrative expectations.
Discuss multiple instances of irony in the film/screenplay as they
pertain to character, dialogue, atmosphere, and narrative structure.
More specifically, you may want to comment on the ironic subversion
of the traditional imperial/colonial hierarchy, or the positionality
of the homeless/displaced.
2) Analyze the representation of the complex power relationships
between former colonizer and colonized, white Britons and Pakistani
immigrants in South London as it is inflected by class, race, sexuality
and gender. Consider some of the points Parillo makes in "Dominant-Minority
Relations." Or use Avtar Brah's conception of a multi-axial understanding
of power, "one that problematizes the notion of 'minority/majority.'
A multi-axial performative conception of power highlights the ways
in which a group constituted as a 'minority' along one dimension
of differentiation may be constructed as a 'majority' along another.
And since all these markers of 'difference' represent articulating
and performative facets of power, the 'fixing ' of collectivities
along any singular axis is called seriously into question. ... individual
subjects may occupy 'minority' and 'majority' positions simultaneously,
and this has important implications for the formation of subjectivity"
(Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 189)
3) The film was originally conceived as an Pakistani emigrant epic
spanning several decades but, in its final form, focuses on the
Pakistani diaspora in Thatcherite England and its relationship to
the white British working class. What references to the history
of Asian immigration to Britain remain in the screenplay/film? Use
Avtar Brah's historical treatment of Asian immigration in post-war
Britain, "Constructions of the 'Asian' in postwar Britain": Culture,
Politics and Identity in the pre-Thatcher years," as a framework
of reference. Also consider the relationship between the older and
younger generations depicted in the film, the opposition between
Papa and Nassar and their expectations for Omar.
4) Comment on how the central characters--Omar, Johnny and Nassar--deliberate
on and negotiate their identities as Pakastani and/or Britons. How
does this film contribute to a subversion of nationalist definitions
of images of "Britishness"? Does it construct alternative identities?
If so, how?
5) What role do sexuality and sexual identity play in this film?
Include an analysis of the film's lyrical ending as it is juxtaposed
with earlier scenes of violence and the final encounter between
Papa and Nassar. Does it offer an "utopian" vision or is the ending
more ambiguous?
6) Comment on the roles of women in this film, specifically Salim's
wife Cherry, Nassar's mistress Rachel, his daughter Tania, and his
wife Bilquis.
7) How does My Beautiful Laundrette comment on the following
quote by Avtar Brah: "Asian-British identities are in flux.
Racism may have the effect of marginalizing them, but they are not
marginal identities. The state of the economy, the activities of
racist groups, and social policies may generate some feeling of
insecurity in British Asians. But there is a growing mood of defiance,
and a refusal to allow themselves to be treated as second-class
citizens. There is, of course, no single unified strategy which
all sections of the Asian communities are equally likely to adopt.
For instance, the responses of the professional middle classes may
differ from those of the 'nouveau riche'; and the interests of these
two categories of Asians are not the same as those of working-class
Asians. Asian women may hold a different kind of investment in their
lives in Britain from the men; and the children and young people,
with their futures ahead of them, will have something quite distinctive
at stake compared to their parents" (p.48).
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