Paul Gilroy, in his book, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, raises a number of ontological questions regarding British culture and identity today—inquiries we might attempt to answer: “What is the working class today? What gender is it? What colour is it? How, in the light of its obvious segmentation, is it to be unified? Is this unification still possible or even desirable?” (19). Gilroy’s work—especially this set of diverse questions—demonstrates a larger topic of concerns regarding the identity of Britain as a nation. What defines this national identity when multiculturalism continually strains the nation’s people? By studying British film, we can see how this aesthetic medium depicts the idea of Britishness, or what it means to be British, as a highly contested space. Our analysis, which will delve into different filmmaking modes, will focus on four contemporary British films, in particular: Udayan Prasad’s My Son, The Fanatic (1997), Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Dominic Savages’ Love + Hate (2005), and Shane Meadows’ This Is England (2006).

Gilroy notes very clearly that racial tensions in Britain have undergone a radical shift in recent years. “Black” is not the biologically inclusive term it used to be, and in contemporary uses it incorporates all ethnic minorities in United Kingdom—both Asian (“paki”) and African/Afro-Caribbean (“nigger”) individuals are equally subjected to this hatred (39). That being said, we turn our attention to British Director Udayan Prasad, who was born in India. Prasad often drops his characters into this socially and politically contested Britain and invites us to watch them as they react to their surroundings. In both Brothers In Trouble and My Son The Fanatic—his first two feature films—Prasad investigates the notion of Pakistani emigration and adaptation to Britain, as well as their physical and cultural implications. In the former film, we are witness to a heavy dose of physical consequences; in the latter, we get a close examination of traditional Muslim values and how they function in a modernized Western culture. In both cases, the 20^th and early-21^st century attitudes toward a multicultural Britain are demonstrated.

In My Son The Fanatic, Parvez (Om Puri) and his son, Farid, represent contrasting poles: on one end, a hyper-capitalistic mindset and ethnic refusal; on the other, a traditional practice of the Muslim religion and an embrace of this Eastern ethnicity. So often, in films like Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Love + Hate, a film we will discuss in detail later, we see the younger generation revolt against ultraconservative, traditionalist parents; but what makes this film unconventional in its approach is the fact that Parez, the older generation, is the one rejecting his roots and assimilating into Western culture. Farid, although the film’s British diegesis seems to frown upon the idea, strongly clings to his ethnicity as a Pakistani Muslim and is disgusted by his father’s transformation.

Aside from this obvious plot structure, which features Farid rioting and disrupting British society and Parvez playing into that same society’s corruption, Prasad’s film uses other filmmaking modes to depict Britain as a troubled space. The first of these is sound mixing. In one scene, Parvez is relaxing in his basement, listening to Tommy Dorsey-esque big band music. Obviously, this is of a Western influence, and as trumpets dance around the room to crooning melodies, the sound fills the musty air Parvez inhabits—it is a completely Western space. Ironic that Parvez’’s place of retreat is in fact a space that is alien to his upbringing—it is not, or at one point was not, home. After a few moments, we begin to hear, faintly, the recorded voice of Islamic prayer upstairs. As Parvez curiously ascends the stairs to identify the foreign sound, it is revealed that his son, Farid, is on his knees in prayer. Parvez, upon observing his son’s dedication to the principles of Islam, is then seen in a long shot of the stairwell, one that frames Parvez directly in the middle. The big band music blends with the recorded prayer, forming a muddled mess on the film’s soundtrack. Parvez remains in the middle of the frame, of the space, suspended between these two ideologies. The acoustics in this moment represent Britain: the sounds, like the cultures, co-exist within this space—but this is far from a pleasant harmony.

Another aural instance occurs when Parvez shuffles through the mail as a teacher of Islam explains to him the meaning and importance of God. As the teacher begins to discuss the concept of faith, we hear his voice clearly. As Parvez begins to flip through the bills, the sound of rustling paper envelopes invades the diegetic soundtrack and trounces the teacher’s voice. It is a frustrating moment where Prasad makes us lean forward in our seats. Here, for Parvez, the importance of paper is more intriguing than learning about theology. His son’s values are apparently not important enough to merit his attention, and so, neither he, nor us, are able to hear them. We can see that Parvez is far more concerned with monetary, material status than he is family. In this case, who, then, is the fanatic?

Prasad also uses interesting lighting techniques in his first two films. In Brothers In Trouble, Arim, an illegal immigrant, shifts in and out of the shadows quite often. Whereas dark spaces conventionally lend themselves to fear and mystery, low lighting in this instance provides safety and comfort. It is in these heavily shadowed nooks where all skin types transform into the same color, and all individuals are seen in an equal light. Low lighting provides protection. Equally worthy of note is the closing scene of My Son The Fanatic, where Parvez sits on the stairway of his now-empty house, sipping from an all-too-familiar glass. Parvez’s family has chosen, and they do not want to surround themselves with the capitalistic lifestyle of British society. Instead of following his wife back to Pakistan, Parvez decides to take individuality to another level—he will live in the Western world alone, in a bare house.

The scene begins with a shot of the hallway, with light coming up from the basement. The rest of the house is completely dark. We see Parvez come up and turn on the lights one at a time—first the kitchen, then the living room, and so forth. As he paces around his house and flips on each bulb—very slowly—this not only exposes his lonely state—literally, to reveal the emptiness of the house with light—but also covers it up—the lights are present fixtures. They keep him company. In fact, they are all Parvez has left, save the aforementioned glass of whisky. We can, through these uses of lighting, unearth the inner conflicts and distopian conditions that come with this hope of being truly “British.” Is this self-discovery or self-destruction?

Photo © IFC Films

Milky, a black character in Shane Meadows’ This Is England, has to answer a similar question, but he faces more immediate consequences. The film, which is set in the not-so-distant 1983, provides a quasi-contemporary space for a story about racial and cultural anxiety in Britain. In this space, “The racial and cultural characteristics of the black population have been identified as contaminants of their white neighbours” (Gilroy 78-79). We see Combo, the leader of a group of skinheads and the antagonist of the film, look directly into Milky’s eyes as tension builds. Combo seems unhinged, ready to pounce at any minute, and with that fire he asks: “I've got one question to ask you. Do you consider yourself English, or Jamaican?” (This Is England). After a long, uneasy silence, Milky replies, “English.” To this, Combo addresses the group:

"Lovely, lovely, love you for that, that's fucking great. A proud man, learn from him; that's a proud man. That's what we need, man. That's what this nation has been built on, proud men. Proud fucking warriors! Two thousand years this little tiny fucking island has been raped and pillaged, by people who have come here and wanted a piece of it—two fucking world wars! Men have laid down their lives for this. For this...and for what? So people can stick their fucking flag in the ground and say, 'Yeah! This is England'"(This Is England) .

Milky’s answer, although it provides a temporary injection of contentment, does not save his fate. Earlier in the film, we hear, directly, the stance of the skinhead movement: “We're not racists. We're realists. Some people call us Nazis. We're not Nazis. No, what we are, we are nationalists, and there's a reason people try to pigeonhole us like this. And that is because of one word, gentlemen—fear (This Is England). So, if Milky has pledged his allegiance with England, why does he still die at the hands of a “nationalist” skinhead? This is proof that simply claiming British identity is deficient and that a deeper identity issue is ongoing.

Meadows’ film is critical of skinheadism whilst calling attention to the relevance of racial conflict in Britain. In the scene where we see Milky beaten to a pulp by Combo, Meadows weaves in stock footage of wars to draw a parallel between the “two fucking world wars” Combo refers to and the conflict of today. Meadows juxtaposes images of brutality—Combo beating Milky—with more images of brutality—soldiers carrying their dead on stretchers and piling them up on top of each other. It’s a filmmaking technique that resonates because of its rawness—both sequences depict the victims of unjust wars, and this sequence in particular shows history’s cyclical nature.

As Combo and the newly appointed skinhead, Shaun—who is no more than twelve—carry the now-crushed Milky out of the room, Combo yells, “Don’t look at his face! Don’t look at his face!” (This Is England). It is an odd line. We can see that Combo is now emotionally wrecked and regrets the physical damage he caused to Milky. Tears are visible as he calls on the help of a young boy to drag a carcass down the hallway. There is a strong inner conflict here—similar to Parvez’s condition—even in the “antagonist” of this racial storyline. Why would Combo tell Shaun to ignore Milky’s face? Is it not that physicality, that color of skin, the features of that face, which ultimately led to Milky’s suffering? We can conclude that this concept of “Britishness,” just as it is highly contested, is highly confused.

Photo © Miramax Home Entertainment

We have seen thus far how lighting, editing, sound mixing, and the narrative work to display an uncertain Britain, but in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things, it is color that underlines this depiction. In the film, Ivan, a hotel manager, oversees a lucrative illegal business where organs are traded for counterfeit passports—immigrants and illegal residents are the chief targets here. The hotel, which is literally referred to as “Hell” by Ivan, is saturated with an evil color palette. Red drips from the hallway walls, reflective blacks bounce around the lobby, and in the hotel’s kitchen, bland ivories feel as dead as cow bones. The space of the hotel is truly terrifying and dangerous, with prostitution and death being a regular occurrence. This color scheme is part in parcel with the idea of this space as Hell. We even get a reference to the hotel doors as being a passage into “Hades”—although, it should be noted that Hades and Hell are not equalities, where Hades is a general term for “the abode of the spirits of the dead” (Hades). The hotel, where the bulk of the film’s action takes place, is also an underground, unnoticed space, because most of society is fast asleep when people “come to hotels in the night to do dirty things—and in the morning, it's our job to make things look pretty again” (Dirty Pretty Things). So whereas This Is England informs us of the relevance of this quandary of identity and unity, Dirty Pretty Things shows us how under-our-noses it really is.

Dirty Pretty Things is far from your ordinary immigrant story, where the main character embeds himself and thrives in a new culture; it is a postclassical immigrant tale—remember Gilroy’s question: “Is this unification still possible or even desirable?” (19). Here, there is no struggle to enter and thrive; there is only hope to co-exist and survive. It is as if Frears is mocking this racial and ethnic prejudice; no speaking character in this film is conventionally British—a white Englishman. In an interview with BBC, Frears actually noted this, saying, “I went to a lot of trouble to ethnically cleanse my film of all white people” (Frears). Okwe is an illegal Nigerian immigrant; Senay is a Turkish hotel maid; Ivan, the only one who is economically “thriving” in this climate—is he the former protagonist of a conventional immigrant’s tale?—is Italian; even the immigrant officers who chase Okwe and Senay throughout the film are ethnic minorities.

Okwe and Senay do not have her sights on economic stability within Britain. There is a sense in both of the characters that this is not possible. Okwe is simply imprisoned in Britain by his past, while Senay is looking to escape her present. In this filmic representation of Britain, such a space offers no opportunity; it is quite the opposite: people are sacrificing their organs just for a chance to leave this “hell.” Deep within the walls of London, Ivan tells his clients, “You give me your kidney, I give you a new identity” (Dirty Pretty Things). It can be concluded that, especially for Senay, British identity does not feel like an identity at all, and there is a strong need for something more. In this constantly fluctuating space, members of the working class—people like Okwe, Senay, and Parvez—are trapped, economically and socially. Frears repeats Gilroy’s skepticism through his filmmaking: are we past the point of no return? The British filmmaker does not, however, embrace such an apocalyptic attitude in an interview with The New York Times, where he calls all of Britain to think progressively: "We can no longer pretend things are in Britain as they once were… I have two houses—one here in London, where I live in a multicultural world, and one in the country. When I go to the country, it's like the 1940's. People are frightened. If I take a black friend, they stare. Britain is very, very divided" (Cooper).

How divided is this space? Is it as divided as the Montagues and Capulets? Dominic Savage seems to think so. His film, Love + Hate, is a modern take on Shakespeare’s classic tale—a more direct modern take, Romeo + Juliet (1996), features a contemporary setting as well. In the film a Pakistani Muslim (Naseema) falls for a “British”—assumedly born and raised in the United Kingdom—boy (Adam) who has aligned himself with a group of racist young men. Naseema finds herself in the middle of a war zone as the group terrorizes her surroundings. The gang batters her father, a taxi driver—notably the same profession as Parvez and Okwe. By the end of the film, Adam has transformed—for the time being—and Naseema’s ethnic physicality and background no longer form a wall between them.

Savage, with the help of cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, uses extremely shallow focus to show the self-centered, close-mindedness of such a racist ideology. Many of the shots consist of an in-focus subject surrounded by an extremely out-of-focus mis-enscene. For instance, shots depicting Adam inside of the wallpaper store are almost surreal with different colors of wallpaper prints blending together. Here we have, in Adam, a character who only sees and is focused on himself, where everything else loses importance—or clarity. At the end of the film, we see Naseema’s brother, Yousif, being beaten by a white character. Savage makes an effective directing decision by choosing to silhouette them as the beating occurs. As Yousif, is mercilessly thrown around, we see no facial features or recognizable characteristics of either character. By silhouetting these characters, Savage shows figures, representatives, rather than individuals. This is key because in doing so Savage argues that this viciousness is a large-scale societal issue. These images stand not for a personal, private problem, but for a national problem—at least in Romeo + Juliet, the families reconciled their differences and learned from their mistakes. We get no such ending here.

(Photo © IFC Films)

Throughout the body of this essay, we have explored a vast array of filmmaking techniques that can be utilized to convey a message. In this specific case, the ontological notion of Britishness and British identity is politically contested. British filmmakers—both native-born (Stephen Frears, Shane Meadows, and Dominic Savage) and immigrated (Udayan Prasad)—constructed the films we have examined. Through these texts we can see that England is a multicultural space where individual melodies do not always meld into a pleasing composition. We have seen characters take refuge in the shadows, resemble fallen soldiers on a dusty battlefield, abandon their families, sacrifice their organs, and attempt to escape this strained space. While the four directors have applied different styles to different narratives, they all depict this political conflict, a cyclical conflict, within Britain’s society. To best illustrate this unsettled yet suppressed space, we turn to Okwe, who summarizes our study quite nicely: “We are the people you do not see [Arim]. We are the ones who drive your cabs [Parvez, Okwe, and Naseema’s Father]. We clean your rooms [Senay]. And suck your cocks” (Dirty Pretty Things).

Applebaum, Stephen. “Dirty Pretty Things Interview.” BBC October 2003: n. pag. Web. 15 July 2010.

Cooper, Rand. “Questions For Stephen Frears; Not Exactly Notting Hill.” The New York Times 20 July 2003: n. pag. Web. 13 July 2010.

Dirty Pretty Things. Prod. Robert Jones, Tracey Seaward. Dir. Stephen Frears. Perf. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Zlatko Buric. DVD. Mirimax Home Entertainment, 2002.

Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Print.

"Hades." Def. 1. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. Print.

This Is England. Prod. Mark Hebert. Dir. Shane Meadows. Perf. Stephen Graham, Thomas Turgoose, Joe Gilgun. DVD. Red Envelope Entertainment, 2006.