My Beautiful Laundrette
As a cinematic examination
of postcolonial Britain, Stephen Frears’ My
Beautiful Laundrette, written by Hanif Kureishi, Here, I will discuss the
ways in which the film explores postcolonial identity, particularly in relation
to the politics of gender, questions of sexuality and the family unit, as well
as the cultural connotations that are inherent across each of these.
In the production, Frears
takes the approach of the postmodernist, examining the social structures and
cultural identity of Thatcher’s England in a realist fashion, offering a
narrative centred upon anti-heroes that hides from its viewers the judgements
of the storyteller. This notion is supported by Hill, who links Kureishi’s work
in the film to “ideas about the constructedness and fluidity of social
identities promoted in postmodern thinking and suggests that such formulations
are helpful in accounting for the strong sense of the criss-crossed nature of
identities”
