| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, March 5, 2010 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM | Seminar Room 208N, Munk Centre For International Studies 1 Devonshire Place |
2009/2010 India-Canada Association Lecture
This paper will explore a spatial configuration that constitutes an enduring part of the urban imaginary of the city of London, one that makes its way into cinematic renderings of the city. My paper operates from the supposition articulated by Ben Highmore among others that the imaginary of a city is intensely historical, always haunted by its past and as such, can only be analyzed through recourse to the past.
Drawing from the work of scholars such as Frank Mort, John Orr and Murray Fraser, I argue that a dichotomous understanding of city space, that between “high” London, with all of its glamour and iconicity and “low” London, its gritty and dilapidated counterpart, is a spatial division with a long history that reaches back to the Victorian era, which is reconfigured within the context of the end of empire and the subsequent dawn of London as post-imperial city. More specifically, I will explore what Orr refers to as the ?neo Dickensian art of the city? in relationship to the representation of space in the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1984),one of two cinematic collaborations between writer Hanif Kureishi and filmmaker Stephen Frears that revolves around a diasporic Pakistani family living in London during the height of Thatcher’s reign. While my talk will focus on a close analysis of this film, I will make reference to films that predate My Beautiful Laundrette as well as those that come after it,in order to demonstrate how this particular legacy of “high” and “low” London remains part of the fabric of the city in its cinematic guise.
Malini Guha has recently been awarded her PhD from the University of Warwick, from the department of Film and Television Studies. Her dissertation is about the representation of London and Paris as post-imperial, cinematic cities. She has recently published on the subject of Black British cinema, including an interview with veteran Black actor Earl Cameron and an article about the trope of the cinematic street in a number of films that concern post-imperial Caribbean migration and settlement in London. Both can be found in recent editions of the Journal of British Cinema and Television.
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