CIN 3110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Imagined Community, Small Business, Shared Experience
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
The History of British Cinema Class 6:
Post-Colonial
• Represent immigrant experience after the war
• Both focus on immigrant families of south-asian heritage.
• Newly mutli-cultural British Isles.
Re-Imagined Community
• A series of narratives, a set of symbols in relation to which the populace, with diverse
backgrounds, imagine themselves.
• How it comes into conflict with or is reimagined with new British subjects
Comedy of Manners.
• Fit in tradition of the genre
• Derives humour and social bite from depicting the tensions between different kinds of
people in domestic, every day, social situations
Ethnicity and Eroticism
• Interracial romances
• Focuses on desire for other kinds of bodies as one of the most important engines for
integration
• Multiculturalism is an element/physical desire.
• Engaging with other bodies/kinds of people.
Imagined community
• Each of the films that we’ve studied engages with the idea of Britain as imagined
community.
• Somehow part of an accessible popular culture.
• Key crux- many of those narratives/characters/symbols were formed into standard fair of
Britain’s idea of itself before the mass immigration.
• Many of Britains ideas of itself were forged.
• Structural tension as the nation in its culture, and the new members of that nation who
don’t recognize themselves, find an easy place for themselves, etc. Feelings of national
identity.
• All subjects in empire can live/work in Great Britain itself.
• Have a place within the metropolis
• Much more immediate economic self-interest.
• Major labour shortage because of WWII.
• Mixed motivation pressed to produce new legal situation.
• First ship to arrive was the SS Windrush – Trinidad to London.
o Numbers of POC started increasing significantly starting with this ship.
• 2 key films imagine Britain through this central metaphor
o in which we serve – metaphor of the ship to stand in for the nation. A matter of
life and death – village.
o Ship & village come with implications of how nation is seen
▪ Ship- industrial, military, hyper-modern, rigidly organized. Serious
implications of the structure
▪ Village- rural, low-tech, based on face-to-face relationships, organic,
evolves overtime.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Post-colonial: represent immigrant experience after the war, both focus on immigrant families of south-asian heritage, newly mutli-cultural british isles. Re-imagined community: a series of narratives, a set of symbols in relation to which the populace, with diverse backgrounds, imagine themselves, how it comes into conflict with or is reimagined with new british subjects. Comedy of manners: fit in tradition of the genre, derives humour and social bite from depicting the tensions between different kinds of people in domestic, every day, social situations. Interracial romances: focuses on desire for other kinds of bodies as one of the most important engines for integration, multiculturalism is an element/physical desire, engaging with other bodies/kinds of people. Imagined community: each of the films that we"ve studied engages with the idea of britain as imagined community, somehow part of an accessible popular culture, key crux- many of those narratives/characters/symbols were formed into standard fair of.
