Skip to main content

My Beautiful Laundrette

By The Disfactor

My Beautiful Launderette by: Hanif Kureishi 1987 “This country that we hate and love” , the ghettoization of culture and need for “otherness”. The movie’s underlying critical theme tends to focus upon the inter-relatedness of power and relationships. Despite how crude the language, within every culture possessing relationships focused upon the attainment of socioeconomic position and power there is always nigger and whitey position (pre-civil rights era terminology for black and white relationships of power). This terminology covers everything from master and slave to field nigger vs. House nigger ( old South plantation terminology ); in spite of their flamboyant cruelty, simple terms such as these clearly state the relationship between the powerless and the powerful; it also denotes the division of labor that exist between them.

These terms political importance are conveniently excluded from Postmodernist discussion and consciousness due to their inconvenient ugliness and inter-generational baggage; but it also brings clarity to why divide and conquer strategies practiced by various ruling classes, regardless of race or gender, against the lower classes. It's the baggage if these words and their ugliness that is displayed within the film through its interracial characters, their relationships and environment, but most importantly through their drive for power, money and the socioeconomic positions brought about by money.



It is money’s importance in obtaining the necessities of life that possesses importance -- not money itself. It's through money that we obtain items of survival: housing, clothes, food, medicine, sex -- items of survival. Without the items of survival, we cannot survive; thus, beneath the ugliness of racism, it’s the ugliness of survival that is disguised by racism. All of which is made very clear through My Beautiful Launderette's characters and their fight for socioeconomic survival that the ugliness of Postmodernist racial terminologies are explained and unpacked in their complete ugliness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes on Adorning “Otherness”

By The Disfactor
Picture: By The Atlantic Disfactor art: By Jabram Allen According to David Shariatmadari off the  Guardian “We think we know what a gay person sounds like. But there   are caveats to the cliche — and ‘voice-shaming’ tells us a lot more about our culture than it does about the person speaking” According to Shariatmadari; “the research says probably not. There’s mountains of evidence to suggest we adapt our speech to more closely resemble that of people we identify with. The particular sounds a group of speakers makes use of are arbitrary. They acquire meaning and recognizability only through association. The fact that these changes are usually unconscious is well documented. But, linguistically speaking, sounding gay is really no different from sounding street, sounding posh or sounding like a bro”. In other words, groups develop, practice and telegraph those actions that set them apart from other groups so that they may be intentionally recognized by those that don’t be...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why African-Americans left the south in droves — and what's bringing the...

By The Disfactor
It's important to realize the dates listed. It's through noticing these dates that we begin to realize that this country is not that far removed away from the root of those issues that African Americans still deal with. The 1970's was 48 years ago. Your dad could tell you about it if he was honest rather he was black or white. However; depending on which one he was there might be things he doesn't want to talk about or may not be proud of. It's that recent not that old.
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding Myself in the Story of Race | Debby Irving | TEDx Fenway

By The Disfactor
Post a Comment
Read more