HYBRIDITY AND DIVERSITY IN MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE

Abstract

As one of the fiercest critiques of Thatcherite regime, My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) vividly portrays the economic and social issues of the 1980s Britain: poverty, unemployment, free-market philosophy, enterprise culture and racial conflicts. Within this context, scriptwriter Hanif Kureishi and director Stephan Frears introduce hybridity as an inevitable consequence of the collision of the white British and the Asian-British who belong to the second generation of immigrants. Kurieshi and Frears constantly refer to the omnipresent state of hybridity and diversity as a new sense of belonging in post-colonial Britain, while ridiculing monoculturalist and essentialist points of view. Moreover, their characters are devoid of any sharp divisions and represent various hybrid forms within the same parameters: British and Asian. These in-betweens introduce a new way of being British without any possibility of returning to clear-cut ethnic identities. Seeing that it is impossible to resist the influence that both the white British and the second generation of immigrants exert on each other, the characters must learn how to embrace hybridity and diversity in order to live and survive in modern British society.