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Student Research submissions 2015 (2015 research options) Research Post 1 |
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Heather Minette Schutmaat
October 14, 2015
The
Representation of Transnational Migration in Contemporary Film
Often
when studying literature, especially through the lens of New Historicism,
I find myself wondering to what extent the concepts and issues we examine in
literary texts are also depicted in other art forms. This curiosity is most
likely owing to the fact that before deciding that literature was paramount and
that I wanted to focus on literature for my master’s degree, I received my
Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, and much of my undergraduate studies involved
visual arts. Since research posts should pertain to the course’s terms and
objectives but aren’t confined to researching literary works, I like to take the
assignment as an opportunity to explore and discover the presence of our
course’s terms and objectives in other art forms, such as photography and film.
After my classmate Jan Smith presented on the T.V. adaptation of Zadie Smith’s
novel White Teeth and discussed its
portrayal of transnational migration—the rapid and continual displacement or
relocation of persons from one country to another, or the event in which
formerly colonized peoples of Third World relocate to First-World nations—I
became interested in discovering to what extent transnational migration is
represented in contemporary film.
By searching the web for “the representation of transnational migration
in film,” I came across the incredibly informative research project called “Far
Flung Families in Film” that began in 2008 and “examines the representation of
diasporic family in contemporary cinema,” and is funded by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council of Great Britain. The homepage of their website
addresses my primary question about the level of representation transnational
migration receives in film: “In the age of accelerated transnational migration,
the diasporic and other forms of transnational family are increasingly
represented in film” and “many diasporic films have enjoyed considerable
mainstream appeal.” What I also learned on this website and found interesting is
that earlier attempts to represent transnational migration in film were usually
done so through shorts and documentaries, but since the 1980s filmmakers who
aim to represent migratory backgrounds, diasporic families, and transnational
migration “have made feature films, rather than shorts and documentaries,
thereby ensuring the increased visibility and the cross-over appeal of their
films.”
However, the website also asserts that although transnational migration and
transnational families are increasingly represented in film, such films are
neglected in film studies and “an analysis of the diasporic family in cinema
from a comparative, transnational angle has yet to be attempted.” In order to
confirm this, I searched our library’s database for articles on the
representation of transnational migration in film, and my search generated an
extensive list of articles on transnational film, which is essentially a term
for the process by which a single movie is produced by (or in) more than one
country. The website “Moving People, Changes Places,” that aims to “unpack the
issues of migration, identity and diversity facing contemporary societies,”
explains transnational film in the following terms: “Many of today’s movies are
the product of companies and professionals from more than one place. A
film may be made in one country by a major company based in another, with cast,
crews and technical services from a range of different places.” However,
although I discovered several studies on transnational film, I found very few
articles that analyze the representation of transnational migration in
contemporary film, and it is because of this lack of scholarship on the subject
that the founders of Far Flung Families in Film aim to provide analyses of film
representations of families with migratory backgrounds. In short, I learned in
my research, and primarily on the Far Flung Families in Film website, that
transnational migration is certainly represented in contemporary film and has
been since the 1980s, but the representation of transnational migration in film
has yet to receive the scholarly attention that it deserves.
The Far Flung Families in Film website also provides an extensive list of
films, along with synopses, that represent transnational families, and as part
of my research I decided to watch one of the films listed. Because we are at a
point in the course that focuses on India, and have recently studied Rudyard
Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King
(1888) and Khushwant Singh’s Train to
Pakistan (1956), and are currently reading Bharati Mukherjee's
Jasmine (1989), I chose the 2002 film
“Bend it like Beckham” by the film director Gurinder Chadha, who is of Sikh
Indian origin.
“Bend it like Beckham” certainly represents transnational migration, as
it centers on a Punjabi Sikh family, a formerly colonized people of the Third
World, that has moved to London, a First-World nation, for better opportunities.
Furthermore, the youngest daughter eventually moves to America, which
demonstrates “the rapid and continual relocation of persons from one country to
another.” The Punjabi Sikh family living in London also fits Peggy Levitt’s
definition of a transnational family, “When 'Home' Means More Than One Country.”
The family lives and works in west London, but they maintain the customs,
traditions, culture, and religion of their homeland.
The
core of “Bend it Like Beckham” is the conflict between tradition and modernity,
a theme we often identify and discuss in colonial and postcolonial texts. The
main character, 18-year-old Jess, has devout Punjabi Sikh parents who represent
tradition, and work to uphold their conventional values and to continue doing
what their parents and grandparents did. Jess’s parents want her to adopt these
traditional values, and they encourage her to marry and attend law school. Jess,
however, represents modernity and the “departure
from or repudiation of traditional ideas.” She has a talent for soccer, and
dreams of playing professionally like her idol David Beckham, but because her
parent don’t approve, she has to lie to her parents and hide it from them
throughout the film. In the end, her parents allow her to continue playing the
sport and to take a scholarship in America, and there is certainly a change or
loss of continuity from one generation to the next. Overall, the film provides a
very insightful view into the lives of a transnational family living in a
First-World nation, and the struggle that the younger generations face when
caught between an individual desire for modernity and the family pull of
tradition.
When looking into the director, Gurinder Chadha, I discovered that she has
directed several other films, most of which explore the lives of Indian people
living in England. For my next research post, I plan to watch and examine her
films “Bhaji on the Beach” which involves a group of Punjabi women, and “It's a
Wonderful Afterlife” which centers on an Indian mother’s obsession to marry off
her daughter. Like “Bend it Like Beckham,” both of these films depict the
conflict between modernity and tradition.
Web Links
http://www.farflungfamilies.net/
http://www.movingpeoplechangingplaces.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurinder_Chadha
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/M/modtrad.htm
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/T/transnat.htm
