Critical Film Review – South Asian Diaspora Studies

This film review is based on two South Asian diaspora films - Mississippi Masala and East is East - which explores topics of belonging, nationhood, generational differences, cultural confusion and identity.

The subject of diaspora brings about questions of origins, locations, and identities. Where do people come from? Which directions have they traveled? Where do they belong? The topic also discusses issues surrounding culture, gender politics, belonging, national identity, and subjectivity. These issues are then disseminated through particular narratives in films, literature, and general media. This review will focus on South Asian diaspora films and how they posit concepts of representation and imaginations of a homeland central to their cultural identity through complex and contradictory narratives. I will discuss two films – Mira Nair’s “Mississippi Masala” and Damien O’Donnell’s “East is East” – and discuss the culture and identity politics covered in both these films.

 

MISSISSPPI MASALA

 

EAST IS EAST

       

Common themes in both the films:

  • Longing for a homeland nation-state
  • Second generations' sense of belongingness and fluid cultural identity

Both films make us consider various issues of the South Asian diaspora. In many ways, both films – Mississippi Masala and East is East – represent the same themes, including the struggle for individualism, cultural confusion, yearning for a fixed notion of homeland and belongingness. While East is East literalizes the interracial and multicultural dilemma in the family, Mississippi Masala, also representing interracial relationships, deals with it through the lens of contradictory racist ideologies. The generational gap between the first-generation migrants and their children has been articulated clearly in the two films and the cultural identity confusion within the second generation as a product of enforced values.

Full paper: Critical Film Review - Sarah Marvi

REFERENCES:

Desai, J. (2004). When Indians play cowboys: Diaspora and postcoloniality in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala. Beyond bollywood: The cultural politics of south Asian diasporic film. (pp. 67-95). Routledge.

Saffran, W. (1991). Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A  Journal of Transnational Studies, 1(1), 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.1991.0004

O’Donnell, D. (Director). (1999). East is East [Film]. BBC, Assassin Films.

Nair, M. (Director). (1991). Mississippi Masala [Film]. Black River Productions.

 

Share this learning activity with others