Ghazala Nazir Butt, PhD student at the University of Northampton, reflects on her experiences growing up in Birmingham and how Hanif Kureishi's 'My Beautiful Laundrette' explores race and capitalism.
Growing up as a 15 year old Brummie of the Asian persuasion, any glimpse of a person of colour on British TV or in British film, or anywhere in the media was a welcome addition to the catalogue of "there's someone like us/one of us on the telly". Of course, like most other Brits I loved "Only Fools and Horses", and was grateful to have an Asian family on the BBC's new flagship soap EastEnders, that is until both programmes used the "P" word casually as everyday passing comments. I was especially heartbroken with Del Boy's hilarious quick-witted chat/banter. So, we stuck to cheering on the Champ, Muhammed Ali (I don't think I've ever met a Muslim Pakistani who doesn't adore Ali), Daley Thompson, Sidney Poitier, Lenny Henry - you take your heroes where you can find them.
On the rare occasion when a film or TV programme with any slightly Asian angle or face appeared on screen, we gathered as a family around the TV with gratitude and excitement. The normal fare was the Sunday morning magazine show “Nay Zindagi, Nay Jeevan" (New Life, New Living), a news, arts, cultural roundup for my parents’ generation – they remembered home, we were already just there/here, it had little relevance to us apart from the musical performances at the end of the show.
When Hanif Kureishi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" came out for a showing on Channel 4, the whole family gathered round the TV excitedly for a family entertainment event. I distinctly recall my response, feelings, and emotions to the film - I fell in love with Daniel Day Lewis, and fell out with Hanif Kureishi, badly.
My Beautiful Laundrette is part of a long-time collaboration between Hanif Kureishi the writer and Stephen Frears as his director. The film tells the story of a young British Pakistani boy, Omar (Gordon Warnecke) who reunites with a childhood friend, Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), a local skinhead, who proceed to fall in/resurrect their love for each other, and begin a now adult love affair. At the same time, they form a business relationship, and work together successfully in the enterprise of refurbishing worn out decrepit laundrettes into glamorous flagship locations with an almost magical air about them.
But the film is so much more than the love story between Omar and Johnny, there is an examination of class, race, gender positions, racism, age expectations, family loyalty, immigration, the welfare state, drug smuggling, you name it – Kureishi has thought of it, and included a nod to recognising nearly all of the concerns of Margaret Thatcher’s British capitalist heyday of the 1980s all captured in full flow.
As we sat down to our family viewing of Laundrette, within the first ten minutes there was a fairly energetic love scene between Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) and his glamorous white English mistress Rachel (Shirley Anne Field), followed a few minutes later by his bored, rebellious daughter Tanya (Rita Wolf) flashing her breasts through a bedroom window for the good part of a minute satisfying the male gaze/taking control of her sexual liberty – choose whichever you prefer. By the time we get to Johnny and Omar kissing for the first time, they were a welcome, normalised relief to the copious bare flesh of the females. But the budding feminist in me wasn’t just offended by sight of Tanya and Rachel’s exposed bosoms, or the exploitative nature of Nasser’s landlording, or Bilquis (Charu Bala Chokshi), his brilliantly silent observing wife who ends up concocting spells and magical potions to rid her husband of his mistress. At the time of release, there was much opposition to the representation of women, Asians, and Pakistanis, in the film. Various publications such as The Scotsman and Spare Rib were critical with the latter saying that “the film had made ‘a laughing stock’ of the Asian community at a time when racism was rampant” (Geraghty, 20).
I was also personally disappointed by the lack of representation and connection I felt: this family with their whiskey drinking parties, their sexually provocative young people, and older characters engaged in affairs and drug smuggling were a world away from the reality of my experience as a second-generation daughter of ordinary working-class immigrant parents. As I have watched the film over and over again throughout the years, the one line that stands out is an exchange between Nasser and Johnny, it begins with Johnny the young skinhead, who warning the older middle class successful businessman that as an immigrant, his behaviour “doesn’t look good” is met with Nasser’s reply, “I’m a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani” (Laundrette, 1985). This single line sums up for me Kureishi’s approach to the characters and narrative. Why should his film need to be representative of anyone?
Stuart Hall applauded the film as “one of the most riveting and important films produced by a black writer in recent years and precisely for the reason that made it so controversial: its refusal to represent the black experience in Britain as monolithic, self-contained, sexually stabilised and always “right-on”- in a word always and only ‘positive’” (Hall, 449). Kureishi said he had wanted to “make the characters rounded and human” (Geraghty, 21).
I now see the film as a classic, way ahead of its time, and yet also an important documentation of the state of the country under the heyday of Thatcher’s capitalist ideology. The narrative is primarily for me a love story between two individuals who have the audacity to put their desire for each other on a par with an entrepreneurial need for financial success.
The “identity crisis” as such is not experienced by Omar, he knows who he is: the son of a Pakistani academic intellectual father Papa Hussein (Roshen Seth), with ambitions to be as rich and successful as his Uncle Nasser and cousin Salim (Derrick Branche). In fact, it is Johnny who wrestles with the choice between his skinhead identity and friends, his love for Omar, and his wish to also partner him on the journey to financial success and economic power. As Johnny’s friend Genghis (Richard Graham) warns him, “Don’t cut yourself off from your own people. There’s no one else who really wants you” (Laundrette, 1985).
There is just so much more to see and understand in the film, for me at least, every viewing brings up something fresh and new, and is a landmark not only in cinema exploring themes of being an Asian and Britishness, but a seminal work of British cinema. Besides, for me My Beautiful Laundrette is just a great introduction to the genius of Daniel Day Lewis.
References
- Frears, Stephen (Dir). Kureishi, Hanif (Writer). My Beautiful Laundrette. Film 4: UK. 1985.
- Geraghty, Christine. My Beautiful Laundrette: Turner Classic Movies British Film Guide. I. B. Taurus:London. 2005.
- Hall, Stuart. “New Ethnicities”. Stuart Hall Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Ed. Morley, D. and Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Routledge:London. 1996.