Much
has been said about Cultural Studies’ “poverty” in recent times and its decline
from a state of grace. Nevertheless, despite this threat of descent to a “let-us-study-everything-under-the-sun”
approach, some of the readings for this week have shown us that the potency of
a cultural studies approach lies in the liminal space it occupies academically.
John Hartley, for instance points out Cultural Studies’ origins in the
opposition to the rationalization of education and culture and the perceived
need for an “ethical” engagement with the immediate social surroundings. Even
Michael Bérubé’s lament for Critical Studies’ apparent lack of impact in the
United States and the left’s simplistic appropriation of cultural studies as a pre-determined
approach in which the faults of neoliberalism are already “given” (and all
analysis is subsequently subsumed under this pre-determined frame) does not
totally write off its critical potential.
One thing is certain
though—Cultural Studies, at least as the Birmingham School envisaged it, sought
to write against a monolithic
explanation of the world. Williams’ dictum, “culture is ordinary” (1989) stood
in stark contrast to Matthew Arnold’s characterization of culture as the “best
that has been thought and said in the world” (2006: 5) and necessitated a material
and mental re-orientation of what comprised a legitimate object of study. Marginalities,
therefore, became essential to Cultural Studies and the “popular” became a
valid focus of research. This was not merely an expansion of the “list” of
objects that could be studied, but a reorientation of the boundaries of
disciplines themselves—for instance E.P Thompson’s work on the English working
class and the work of the Subaltern Studies Group in the field of history.
When we watched Stephen
Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette last
week, my initial query was “Why are we watching this?” The question was not
loaded as much with a judgment of what one should or should not watch, as with
a curiosity about the context in which we were watching it. This specific
instance of viewing My Beautiful
Laundrette was different from my earlier viewings, and stopped being merely
“a Stephen Frears film about immigrants in London.” Rather, the film became
part of a dialog with the texts assigned in the syllabus. In corollary, maybe
the “syllabus” too ceased being a “list” of readings and chores, and became an
organic entity that sought to define Cultural
Studies even as it purports to “teach” it. For me, the larger connecting strand
between the readings and the film was a focus on various levels of marginality
and a polyvocal approach that Hartley
defines as a “philosophy of plenty” (2003: 3). The “ontology of the syllabus”
is one thing, and reading the film is quite another. From a cultural studies
perspective, what does My Beautiful
Laundrette tell me about Thatcherite Britain?
I think that it is precisely
in the film’s focus on the travails of individuals, rather than on “real”
political events that the film becomes potently political. What does it mean
for Omar to be immigrant and homosexual? Conversely, what does it mean for
Johnny to be part of a sweeping racist, anti-immigrant form of Nationalism, and
at the same time homosexual? The “culture(s)” of Thatcherite Britain are
captured in these pressure points of multiple marginalities. The destruction of
the launderette itself (much like the destruction of the pizzeria in Do the Right Thing) stands a symbol of
the frictional relationship between these different marginalities that can
explode at any moment. As a film that was released during the heydays of
Thatcherism, My Beautiful Laundrette can
also be seen as a “cultured” response (if one may use the pun) to the immediate
and pressing social issues of the day.
Finally,
I am left wondering what Adorno, with his complete dismissal of film as a culture industry would say about a
film like My Beautiful Laundrette. True
that as a film, My Beautiful Laundrette is
a product of a set of industrial and commercial practices—but what art isn’t?
Michael Baxandall, writing about Renaissance painting once wrote, “money is
very important in the history of art” (1988: 2). The same axiom could perhaps
be extended even more accurately in case of film. Perhaps what is crucial is recognizing
what the film manages to convey, even while it operates within the constraints of an industrial system.
Arnold, Matthew. Culture
and Anarchy. Oxord: Oxford University Press, 2006
Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer
in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Hartley, John. A Short
history of Cultural Studies. Sage: London, 2003.
Williams, Raymond. “Culture is Ordinary” in Resources of Hope: Culture Democracy and
Socialism. London: Verso, 1989.
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