Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha

Ever since they started making films, British Asian female directors Pratibha Parmar and Gurinder Chadha have been aiming to better represent their community and tackle the specific concerns of women from their ethnic groups. Somehow emblematic of the self-representation encouraged by Channel Four i...

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Main Author: Amandine Ducray
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires du Midi 2010-09-01
Series:Anglophonia
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/acs/2208
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author Amandine Ducray
author_facet Amandine Ducray
author_sort Amandine Ducray
collection DOAJ
description Ever since they started making films, British Asian female directors Pratibha Parmar and Gurinder Chadha have been aiming to better represent their community and tackle the specific concerns of women from their ethnic groups. Somehow emblematic of the self-representation encouraged by Channel Four in the eighties, such documentaries as Sari Red (Pratibha Parmar, 1988) and I’m British But... (Gurinder Chadha, 1989) brought the peripheral minorities to the centre of the mainstream media. While challenging commonly-held perceptions of citizens from Asian descent, such committed cinema denounced racism, encouraging a spirit of resistance to the traditional ‘Us’ vs ‘Them’ relations of power in British society.Yet as the twenty-first century approached, both directors have embraced a more consensual view of British race relations. Their aim is no longer to denounce but to entertain. Gurinder Chadha abandoned the documentary format as early as 1993. Meant to make everyone laugh, Bhaji on the Beach, her first mainstream comedy, produced a reconciled, all-inclusive portrait of Britain, as did Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004) years later. Taken up by Pratibha Parmar, with Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006), this hyphenated vision of British-Asian identity highly contrasts with their previous films. This shift in genre has further been accompanied by a shift in conflict: the dichotomy is no longer ethnic but generational, as the opposition between tradition and modernity unravels along the mother-to-daughter relationship.Following a diachronic approach, this article will study the power of representation in Pratibha Parmar’s and Gurinder Chadha’s films in order to explore how the passage from "minority" documentary to "mainstream" comedy has changed the message conveyed to the audience at large—majority and minorities, men and women—as regards both race relations and British identity.
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spelling doaj-art-0a180b9428af409f8c222e55bde5116c2025-01-30T12:34:24ZengPresses Universitaires du MidiAnglophonia1278-33312427-04662010-09-012730531710.4000/caliban.2208Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder ChadhaAmandine DucrayEver since they started making films, British Asian female directors Pratibha Parmar and Gurinder Chadha have been aiming to better represent their community and tackle the specific concerns of women from their ethnic groups. Somehow emblematic of the self-representation encouraged by Channel Four in the eighties, such documentaries as Sari Red (Pratibha Parmar, 1988) and I’m British But... (Gurinder Chadha, 1989) brought the peripheral minorities to the centre of the mainstream media. While challenging commonly-held perceptions of citizens from Asian descent, such committed cinema denounced racism, encouraging a spirit of resistance to the traditional ‘Us’ vs ‘Them’ relations of power in British society.Yet as the twenty-first century approached, both directors have embraced a more consensual view of British race relations. Their aim is no longer to denounce but to entertain. Gurinder Chadha abandoned the documentary format as early as 1993. Meant to make everyone laugh, Bhaji on the Beach, her first mainstream comedy, produced a reconciled, all-inclusive portrait of Britain, as did Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004) years later. Taken up by Pratibha Parmar, with Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006), this hyphenated vision of British-Asian identity highly contrasts with their previous films. This shift in genre has further been accompanied by a shift in conflict: the dichotomy is no longer ethnic but generational, as the opposition between tradition and modernity unravels along the mother-to-daughter relationship.Following a diachronic approach, this article will study the power of representation in Pratibha Parmar’s and Gurinder Chadha’s films in order to explore how the passage from "minority" documentary to "mainstream" comedy has changed the message conveyed to the audience at large—majority and minorities, men and women—as regards both race relations and British identity.https://journals.openedition.org/acs/2208identitécinémareprésentationGurinder ChadhaPratibha Parmarindo-britannique
spellingShingle Amandine Ducray
Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
Anglophonia
identité
cinéma
représentation
Gurinder Chadha
Pratibha Parmar
indo-britannique
title Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
title_full Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
title_fullStr Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
title_full_unstemmed Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
title_short Conflits, féminité et identités diasporiques. Le pouvoir de la représentation chez Pratibha Parmar et Gurinder Chadha
title_sort conflits feminite et identites diasporiques le pouvoir de la representation chez pratibha parmar et gurinder chadha
topic identité
cinéma
représentation
Gurinder Chadha
Pratibha Parmar
indo-britannique
url https://journals.openedition.org/acs/2208
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