Cinematic Urbanism - A history of the modern from reel to real

CINEMATIC URBANISM A History of the Modern from Reel to Real

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An Alternate Modernity: Race, Ethnicity and the Urban Experience

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can be said that raccl and ethnicity2 have been insufficiently undcrstood as essential mediators of the c>.perience of modernity. While scholars continue to tackle new concepts with enthusiasm, much of the work has been limited to the framcworks of segregation and difference. Despite the absence of cmpirical evidence, the presence of so-called cthnic minorities in certain socicties has often been attributed to migration, immigration and rcsettlement, gradual or sudden. It may be reasonable to suggest that all racial groups are, in a sense, ethnic groups. This however is not the position adopted in this chapter, which accepts that racc and ethniciry as social categories are modern inventions produced primarily for political reasons and governance purposes. Hence, in this chapter we will invoke both conccpts, often interchangeably, using the terminology applied by other authors to describe relevant commensurate cinematic or urban examples. In urban studies, thcre has been very littlc attention given to the interscction of ethnic difTerence, modernity, and spatial geography. Following earlier sociological studies, race has only been analysed within the modern American and European city according to a rhetoric of crisis. This has limitcd its scope either to a study of the spaces of marginality or an exploration of the phenomenon of urban violence as a rcsult of racial or

ethnic tension.

Thc understanding of urban modernity itself leans heavily upon a particularly European e>.perience that chooscs the end of thc nineteenth century as its originary moment.r Scholars such as Paul Gilroy have specifically critiqued these descriptions, and argued that such theorctical lrameworks are overly influenced

by the project of the Europcan

Enlightenment, which largcly included ongoing brutality against blacks and othcr subject races during the colonial era.a In reccnt years, howevcr, postcolonial and ethnic studies have attemptcd to adjust this model according to the notion of alternative modernities.s However, these effbcts have paid

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space, or as they constitLlte a poiitics of place. For cxamplc, nlorc often than not, 'blackness' has been conflated with othcr forms of marginaliry povcrry and discnfranchiscment to provide a generalized Other to 'whiteness'. And when black identity in the contcmporary city is analysed, it has bccn cast ollen only in tcrms of thc black hctcrosexual male, avoiding a coltversatioll of gendcr and racc as disparatc subject pctsitions. Indeed, in allalysing urban modernities in thc context of race, thc rclationship bctlveen rnoderniry and postmodernity is revcalcd to exist in a continuum; a tension depicted in the films used in this chapter. Though race and ethnicity are mcdiators through which the city is expcricnced, they unscttle critical assullptions of hybridity and struggles over the right to the city. Unlikc scholars of urbanism, scholars of cultural studies and sociology

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have long recognizcd the ditTiculties poscd by racial identity. For examplc, as

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long ago as 1899 VIE.B. Du Bois argued that:

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Herein lie buned many things which if read with patience may show the strange

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meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century This meaning is

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not without rnterest to you, Gentle Reader; for the prob em of the Twentieth Century is

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These words should be read by all who continue to evade the questiorr

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of race in their understanding of the Nventieth-ccntury city. Irr particular, Du Rois's notion of black consciousness was tied to the African-An-rerican cxperiencc of being locked into a doublc-consciousness of being both black

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and Americatr. Among other things, he saw this as creating an uncomfortablc

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oscillation of idcntiry that dcnied a confidcnt or whole self-conscioustless.' Thc time whcn Dr-r Bois was writing was also when American cities werc being rcstructured in terrns of their racial composition due to the Clreat Sor-rth-North Migration. As St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton pointed out in Black Metropolrs (1945), tlie influr of black workers into northcrn citics grew significantly during World Wars I and II, when labour shortagcs led recruitcrs to comb the South for workcrs, aud transport blacks up north to serve as metrial labourers.s Ilowever, whilc Europcan immigrants had bccn absorbcd into the city, procecding through various urbatr zones, and moving from cthnically homogenous neighbourhoods to thc 'mclting-pclt' suburbs, African-Americans retnaincd confined to the inner city, to what Drake and Cayton call 'Black Mctropolis'. The mechanisms of ethno-racial ciosurc and control, including racial violence, techttologics of city planning, and whitc flight, constitute what is the specific socio-spatial formation of the 'ghetto'. In contrast to Du llois's readir-rg of black subjectivity in the US, Stuart ]90 .

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notion of contemporary Hall has more recently attempted to address the from a postcolonial vantage black and ethnic identity in the UK' Speaking and political category point, Hall sees blackness as a broad historical, cultural thatwasrelentlesslyproduced,anddoubtlesslyresistedduringthecolonial analysis of the centrality of race in a era.e Hall has further echoed Gilroy's that the project of modernity deeper understanding of moderniry arguing of historically continuous subject has destabilized identiry and the notion of modernity as positions. According to Hall, '"' this is the beginning progress' but modernity as a trouble. Not modernity as enlightenment and problem'.10

Hall,sideaofmodernityasproblematicandunsettlingisfurthertied totherevisionofolderdefinitionsofidentirybasedonpsychoanalysisand

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by the postcolonial moment' envisioned a new subjectiviry one occasioned Other is situated at the when the Self is refl.cttd in the Other' and the

coreoftheSel|Itispreciselythispostmoderninstabilityofidentirythat ,brack identity' in Britain. Reacting to the has alrowed .."ffir-"tion of

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particularlyracistdefinitionsofwhitenessaSnationalidentiryinthel9T0s, StuartHallhasarguedthatadiversegroupofethnicities(Bangladeshi, all situated themselves Indian, Pakistani, Jamaican, Caribbean' African) hand' Hall has within the political category of black'11 Thus' on one

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thisdouble-consciousnessaSaStrategicposition,enteredintoasadeliberate the mythical' stable core ofwhite act of agency, with the intent of subverting examined in this chapter'If My identity.l2 Such issues are central to the films BeautifulLaundrettee|egantlycapturedtheracialdimensionofethnicrelations Tory regime. in the contexl 0f a lib"eralizinj London during a conservative

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response to an incident in Spike Lee:st3 film was conceived as a cinematic gallgof white youths attacked Howard Beach, Queens' NY in 1986 when a

threeblackmenwhowerelostinthearea,whichispredominantlyltalian andJewish.onemanwaskilledwhileattemptingtoescape.laThemovieis and violence in the North not only powerful in its critique of racial tension it was released tlvo years American city,15 but it was also prescient in that in the Rodney King beating before the LA riots,16 sparked by the jury verdict (1984) is based in trial in 1g91.n Stephen Frear's My Beautiful Laundrette Thatcher was intent London at a time when the government of Margaret welfare state and when on eliminating most aspects of 'nt former British ingrained in the IJK'18 virulent anti-immigration sentiments were becoming AN ALTERNATIVE MODERNITY

It is based on a 1983 screenplay by Hanif Kurcishi, a British author-dircctor of Pakistani origin, renowned for tackling issues of racc, nationalism and sexuality.le Each of thcsc fihns attempts to exposc arnbivalent spaces of an urban moderniry and postmodernity charactcrized by changing notions of

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Brookfyn of the Do the Right Thing Thc setting lor Do the Right Thing is in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, NcwYork (often refcrred to as Bed-Str-ry). The film opens with a shot of the insidc of the local radio DJ's tiny cubicle. The DJ, Scnor Love Daddy, broadcasts that it will be the hottcst day of the year, and as thc day's events unfold, the social climatc will parallel thc weather, finally exploding. From this openirrg claustrophobic space, the camera pans out to the larger colltcxt of the strcct, where the story will take place. Thcre, it follows the chief protagonist, Mookie (playcd by Spike Lee l-rimself), as he goes about his morning routine. Spikc Lee chooses thc street as hts mise-en-scine, atrd a large part of the fi1m revolves around its culture. On this hot day, when almost all of thc block's residcnts mllst come out of doors because they have no airconditioning, the strcct itself becomcs thc main arena of social intcraction. The one block where the film takes place includes Love Daddy's radicr cubiclc, Sal's pizzeria, a groccry store run by Korean immigrants, and the flats rcntcd by Mookie's sister and girlfricnd. The film is animated with a host of colourful characters. Thcse include Sal and his sons. Vito and Pino,

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the neighbourhood matriarch, Mother Sister; the local wino, Da Mayor, who mutters words of wisdom; Radio-Raheem, a bulky young black man who carries an oversized boom box that plays 'Fight the Power' (by Public Enemy), Smiley, who is retarded and carries around black-and-white photos of Malcolm X with Martin Luthcr King; Buggin' Out, a young black man who seems to be in a constant state of rage; the police ollicers who patrol the streets and surwey the block; and the Corner Men - ML, Sweet DickWillie, and Coconut Sid -who appear throughout like a Greek chorus commenting on their surroundings. With its black, white, Puerto Rican, Italian-American, Korean immigrants, and Caribbean-black rcsidcnts, the block appcars at first a caricatlJrized US melting pot. Yet it is clear from the beginning that the politics of race simmcr just bclow thc surface . Thc cracks between races and

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ethnicities are indeed deep, and they are soon erposed. An important theme that runs through the film is how people identify themselves with the neighbourhood. In various ways, they see their presence there as erpressing a fundamental right to the city. Thus, cven as the Corner Men and Buggin' Out appear to have neither homes nor jobs on the block, they refer to it as 'their neighbourhood'. The Corner Men, who sit around all day and don't work, look at the Korcans with enr,1r and loathing becausc they'vc been offthe boat for less than a year, and yet are already doing grcat business in 'our' neighbourhood. Ironically, the person who presses these charges most loudly spcaks with a Caribbean acccnt, and is duly reminded that he has not been in the country that long himself For his part, Sal sees the neighbourhood as his territory because it is where he has owned a

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AN ALTERNATIVE N/ODEBNIry

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wad ofmoney in his sister's apartment. The scene then shifts to Sal's pizzetra. the central space of the film. Sal (played by Danny Aielo) gets by with help

from his t\,vo sons, Pino and Vito, while Mookie selves as their delivery boy. Except for Mookie, the black characters are shown to do nothing to make a living though they are fully cognizant that it is they who keep establishmcnts such as Sal's running. With this recognition, and a communitarian sense of ownership, Buggin' Out asks Sal to put some pictures of 'black brothers' up on his walls. Sal refuses, citing notions of private property. In thc past he has always been able to buy off racial trouble by slipping a few dollars to Da Mayor or Smilcy or Mookic.

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memorable fragment of the fihn fcatures a quick-cutting montage of various characters (black Mookie, Italian-American Pino, Latino Stcvie, white police otEccr Long, and the Korcan store o\Mner) as thcy spew hatcspeech based on racial stercotypes. The montage follows a particularly intcnse back and forth between Pino and Mookie, when the former is irritated bccause he belicves that Mookic is lazing about on the job. In order to get back at Pino, Mookie cleverly turns the tablcs on him by simply asking him who his favourite basketball player, movie star, and rock star are. Pino innocently answers the first tlvo questions by naming black Americans. But

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he stops before thc third, as he recognizes the trap that Mookic has led him into. 'Prince', Vito answers on his behalf Pino then defends his choiccs by arguing that those celcbrities he has named are not'really'black. The tcnsion that arises betr,veen the two characters leads into the name-calling montage, ]94 .

CINEIVATIC URBANISN/

the'Wall of Fame and Sal argue in front of Dothe Rightfhing Mookie

the scene cuts rcaches its crcscendo' this chorcography ofracism and adviscs evcryone as the voice of rcason

butjust to Senor Love Daddy,i"fl" "t" to chill out' befiveen an argunlcnt in Sal's pizzena In thc finai part of thc tnovie' first down his rnusic' escalatcs rcfuses to who Raheem' Radio :urn Sal and policemen who then a full-scale brawl' The into racial natne-caliing an the r:

in Do the Right Thin-g, we see how accepted nreasurcs of success, farne, wcalth, beauty, crtltural sllprcmacy, and intelligence are all establishcd against l dornitrant ideal of whiteness. Ilowcvcr. while these are set as a benchtnark of aspirations for black Arnericans, it is undcrstood blacks will nevcr bc ablc to rcach thenr. It is in this rcgard that mor-e recerlt scholars of blackidentity such as Cornel V/cst havc argucd that it is the 'amused coutcn-rpt and pity' with which wirite Aneric:r looks dowtr at its black population that fuels black

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The spectral inipossibiliry,rf blacks achicving any fbrrn of acccptence in world orqanized by whites is madc clcar in Do the Right Thing when Pino declarcs that popular icons like Princc arc not black: 'It's ditTerent. Magic, Eddie, I)rincc arc not niggers, I mean, arc not black. I mcan, they'rc black a

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butnotreallyblack.They,remorethanblack,.Thereputationoftheblacks statements are a rcmindcr Pino namcs goes beyond thcir blackness' Pino's a level of fame and to Mookie (and others) that once black people rcach ,white,*o.id, they escape thcir racial identity. More importantly success in a likc Mookic can continLlc to cease being black in a way in whlch people they

relate.BycontrastSal,PinoandVitocanstillrclatetotheltaliarr-Atnericans whichincludenameslikeFrankSinatra,AiPacino,LizaMinnelli,Sylvester of fame' Stallone, and Luciano Pavarotti on the ptzzcria'swali is important tropc of black ragc portraycd in the film' it To understand the

toutlderstandthedifferencesinviewsofthetwohistorical{iguresofblack identitywlroappearinit.ThevastlydifTerentpoliticalideologiesofMalcolm of them X and Martin Luther King are captured both in the photographs end of thc and in the long quotes that appear at which Smiley carries ",,""td, I{ing' MalcolmXcame to embrace thc rcalrty thc movie.2r Specifically, r-rnlike

ofrageasanimportantavenucforblackconsciousness,becauseitfrcedblack and helped people from passive acceptance of their'double-consciousness' take control of their place in overturn their fecling, of po*ttltssness and this point as follows: Amcrican society' Cornel'West has summarized Ma|colmbelievedthatifblackpeople{eltthelovethatmotivatedtherage,thelove wouldproduceapsychicconversioninblackpeople;theywouldaffirmthemselvesas humanbeings,noIongerviewingtheirbodies,minds'andsouIsthroughwhltelenses,

andbelievingthemselvescapableoftakingcontroloftheirowndestinies'ri

in thc cities of ,-li c.-ttrse. these racial issr:es have plaved or'rt diflerently

the lJK, unlike the US. Slavcrywas not the overt source of race problems that are tlre subject of My Bedutiful Laundretfe.2(' Rathcr, they cmcrgcd from the legacy of colonialisrn and the desire of former colonial subjects to imnigrate to the IJK to scek better livcs for themsclves and their families. It is in this sense that a dialogue ovcr 'true' Ilritish identiry has since developcd and has involved racist notions and anti-irnmigrant sentimcnt. Ironically, howcver, the same Thatcher cousetwativc govcrnment that established quotas on immigration from former colonial regions has pointed to the vcry entreprcnellrial vigour of these immigrants as evidence of the new social

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As part of this social revolutiorr, Adrian Kearns hrs rcmarked that thc British Conscrvative govcrnment developed the concept of active citizenship as a way to facilitate the dismantling ofwelfare govcrnment ser-viccs.zTActive citizenship would transfer thc burden of providing such setwices to charity organizations, the larnily, and communiry groups. The decrcasing role of the statc was to be thus matchcd by individual citizeus acting via an incrcased sense of moral obligation. Howevcr, as Kearns pointed out, this re-definition of individual arrd statc rclationships that was sold as dinrinishing patr: rnalistic

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Omar and his uncle Nasscr fa1ls into precisely this patriarchal contract of ncedy recipient and wealthy bcnefactor. Thus, even though Omar is lcss than thrilled about his

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job cleaning cars, it is his only way to avoid going to the dole. It is important, howc'ver to rcad propcrly the motivations of individual characters itr this

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particular equation. Salim and Nasscr are bothwell awarc oftheir'constructivc' roles in providing ernployment for Omar. But Otrtar exercises agency via his role as a beneficiary of the systcm.'V/hile Kcarns has said that active citizenship reduced rccipients to passive agents of chariry On'rar seizes the opportrrnity provided by Nasser to crcate iris owu sct of pcrsonal opportunities. The idea of dcpendencc on an individual benefactor also emcrgcs in the

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arc presented as the econotnical pivot arouud which the ncighbourhood functions. It is through his mnnificencc that Da Mayor is able to sweep thc street corner and make the few dollars that will get him his next bottle of beer. Similarly Mookie's relationship with Sal echoes that between Otnar and uncle Nasser. Mookie and Omar are botli aware they are being exploited, but thcy are lurcd into thcir rcspectivc social transactions by a prospect of wealth. A newkind of social contract is presented here, whcre Mookie and On'rar's circumstances arc a product of state policics, yet their cvcryday lifc is controlled by a patriarch whose position derives from the abscncc of a statc prcscilcc in tllc c()mmuniry.

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Both movies also ofrbr insights into the producrion of gender as a result of these intricate dcpendent rclationships. In Learning to [-ahour (1977), Paul V/iliis wrote about thc constrttction of masculinity as a sign of counter-cuiture among high school students in England. In particular, he examined the formation of sociai cliqucs around erpressing resistance to normalized patterns of authoriry. In My Beautiful Laundrette, Johnny's friends fall into the category Wiilis called 'lads', those who see working for wagcs as a sign of conformity. However, it is intcresting to note that in My Beautiful Laundrette, the anger ofJohnny's BNP thug-friends does not frnd a specific 'establishment' target. There are no signs of

patrolling cops or any

other formalized means of state control. And in the absence of a centralized state apparatus the BNP lads direct their anger towards the only visible forms of social order in their urban milieu, in this case run by SouthAsian immigrants.2e

Thatcherite ideas of entreprcneurialism also have a double meaning in terms of ethnic identiry. In the film, Nasser is portrayed as having escaped thc limits of race by buying into a supposedly 'colour-blind' capitalism. Thus, the scenes showing Johnny being cvicted from his apartment are

in a curious mannef when the one-timc squatter himself helps Nasser cvict a poor, black poet. During this sccond eviction, Johnny comments that it doesn't look good for a Pakistani to evict his ou,-n kind

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i.e., atrother coloured person. But Nasser replies that he is a professitlnal businessman and not a professional Paki, and that there is no question of race in l1ew enterprise culture.30Nasser's view of Thatcherite politics is not negativc because he wants to belong to the dominant society so much that hc regards his own exclusion as a personal failing and tries to fiil the gap with visible symbols of a whitc, middle-class lifestyle. Besides the cars and

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suburban house he can afTord to provide for his family, this yearning for social rnobility is best dcfined by his white mistress, ILachel, who he dresscs in fr-rrs, and who escorts him to fancy bars. Yet, class relations in this multicultural society are complex. At the end of the fiim it is revealed that Rachel comcs from a working-c1ass background.

And when Nasser's daughter Tania accuses hcr of bcing a parasite, Rachcl reminds Thnia that thcy are of different classes and gencratiolls. Everything is available for Thnia, but the only thing that was ever available for her was Nasser. Associating hersclf with a rich, albeit colourcd, man has allowed Rachel to transcend class boundaries in much thc samc way that Johnny's association with Omar has lifted him out of his own 1ow-class background. But cven as the film holds out wealth as a grcat social leveller (since it can buy class, racial ambiguity, and even cltlturc - as seen in Salim's apartment, which is decorated with clegant paintings by the well-known Indian artist M.F. Hussain), it only providcs agcncy and inclusion within certain AN ALTERNATIVE MODERNITY

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and social a\t?reness pr-rssessed b',- Ornar's -}h.: -{l F:Lr'.-i r-l\ t irabllines that exclude him from an acti\-e pan in Tharchente sor-ien. Thus. er-en as active citizenship appears to hold the promise of influence and pos-er. clear boundaries still protect the monopoly of the stare over other imponant areas of British life.

Race, Urban Space and the Displacement of Gommunity V4rat does My Beauti;ful Laundrette tell us about London? W.hat is the sense of urban modernity related through this film? Not once in the film does the audience see any traditional images of the city. In fact, its absence is enough for some to ask if the movie is not really based in some other blighted English town. Frears deliberately bypasses the usual urban symbols of London (for example, the dome of St. Paul's, Tiafalgar Square, Docklands) to present the city as composed of derelict council houscs, grimy car garages, defunct laundromats, and the spaces underneath train viaducts. My Beauti;ful Laundrette's London is precariously perched at the intersection of multiplc ends - the end of empire (represented by the spaces of deprivation); the end of socialism (embodied by the isolated father Ali); the end of the myth of an ethnically pure and properly gendered Britain (fohnny and Omar's relationship that is taboo for reasons beyond homosexuality). Accompanying this city of endings are the continually transgressive identities of its main characters: Johnny is white by race, black by class; Omar is black by race, but white by class in relation toJohnny and his BNP friends. Johnny becomes the thug who is called on to beat up vagrants; Omar never declines the proposal to marry Tania. Yet, they easily slip out of these transitional masculine roles to be tender with one another. Class, gender, race are constantly mediating 'W.ho one another to provide this slippage. is the black person or the poor person at the end of the film -Johnny, Omar, or Nasser? As the main characters in My Beautiful Laundrette slip between idcntities, the past is always present in the idea of 'home', here used to reGrence Pakistan. Salim's wife, Cherry is the only pcrson who emphatically claims her Pakistani identiry even as she tells Omar she is 'sick of hearing about these in-betweens', in reference to him never having been to Karachi. But Omar's nostalgia for countries where he has never been is evident in the interest he expresses in knowing about Juhu beach' or the 'house in Lahore'. Like an exile, he sets up the place of his origin as an imaginary geography shaped largely through nostalgia.3lAli (Omar's father), on the other hand, has a different nostalgia for Pakistan. He says he wants to go 'home' so that he

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argues 'that country has been sodomized b)'reiigion' rvhich interleres

with

the making of money'. By leaving the usual symbols of London out of the fiim, My Beauti;ful Laundrette also presents London as a decidedlv postcolonial city. In Edge of Empire,Jane M. Jacobs tried to define London according to spatial and temporal geographies of empire.32 According to some, London is postimperial because imperialism is over. However, Jacobs maintains that ideology, is ever present under the guise of globalization and neoliberalism. As a result, Jacob prefers to designate London a postcolonial

imperialism,

as

city because local articulations of imperiallsm's heritage are reconstituted on a daily basis in the heart of the empire.33 Indeed if nineteenth-century notions of racism based on the denigration of the colonial other have been discounted, it does not mean that racism has disappeared. Along with the new form of imperialism, the terms of racism are complicated by dilTerent positions based on axes ofclass and race. F{ere race is seen as a culture' rather than a skin colour.3aIn this sense, Anne Marie Smith has explained how in the context of Thatcherite Britain 'tolerance' came to be seen as a way to denigrate others who were thought to belong elsewhere. Smith also pointed to the conflation of racism and homophobia during the Thatcher years as potential threats to the idea of a properly Christian Anglo-Saxon nation.35 Against such a political background at the centre of My Beautful Laundrette, the interracial relationship between t\,vo gay men is doubly problematic. 'Watts's assertion that 'Difference and identity The film affirms Michael J. is produced and reproduced within a field of power relations rooted in interconnected spaces linked by political and economic relations'.36 Such a society exists in the slippage of identities where no one is fixed in a position of simply black or simply white. In this alternate urban modernity, hegemony is produced by some groups through the playing offof differences that subvert collective will or choice. Here, Nasser's triumphant assertion that in the new entrepreneurial culture, there is no room for race setwes to uphold the very structures that marginalize his own ethnic group as it mandates the production of consent. The racism in Do the Right Thing is constructed as a historic and social category. Thus, the harder the characters try to escape their racial confines, the more they are locked into it. It thus shows how blackness is produced as a social category with little regard for the physicality of race.37

ln the first part of Do the Right Thing, Lee emphasizes the modern communitv among the people of this block. V/hen Pino plt;Cs r,.ith Sal ro consider moyinq to their'ou'n'neighbourhood (Little melrine-pot

nr;j;

" :re

sense of

replies that he idenntles with the people on the block because theY

hir t,:xd. In ln.-ttler scene- a cL1uPle t-tt black kids open up a .::: in'-'\' >Lt-Il-= rilrili -rrr- th: he-lr- -\ Iin'c .--1 :*-;:-: -. :'::-lt i"i:\'i:-lj

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girl draws a house and a sun with a 'smiley' face on the street. Thus the film scts up a seductive, romanticized version of conrmuniry whicl-i it thcn purposcfully destroys. What starts out as a display of hybridiry as variotls and complex identities living togethcr, soon degeneratcs into hatcful and narrow descriptions of thc Othcr in a landscape whcrc cveryone is the Other. Do the Right Thing attcmpts to challenge thc sirnplistic binary opposition uscd to describe the rnodcrn Afiicalr-American cultural crpcrietrcc. 'West have perceived such ideas Contetnporary commentators like Cornel as Du Bois's notictn of 'double-consciousncss' or the 'doublc personality'

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portrayccl byJarnes WeldonJol-rnson as a crisis of identity by an-xiety-ridden middlc-class intcliectuals.38 The filrn riscs to.West's challenge to deconstruct

tl-re early 'tnodertr black strategics of identiry formation'. Instead, it constrllcts an alternate modern or possible postmodern 'multivalent and multidimensional rcsponsc to thc divcrsity of black practices in the current global cra'.:reHeuce, the film does not ofTer a simplc closure, not even the promise of onc. Similarly, Henry Louis Gates has not seen the oLltcome of the film as predestined. Rathcr he has argucd that the dilTerent charactcrs' choices shapc its complcx outcolnc.+0 I Ic has further argucd that the film consists of dynarnic and indeterministic rclationships in which meaning and

tmth remain multiplc and notr-fixcd.+LLikcwise, thc somcwhat sympathctic portrayal of ltalian-Amcricans complicates the story and sllpports Lee's position tl-rat 'evcrybody's right. And cverybody's wrong. And nobody's a hcro'.+l

Accordiug to J.c. McKelly, 'The dramatic structure of Do the Right Thing sttuates Mookie, the film's protagonist played by Lee himsclf, in the midst of this architecture of polarities constructed around the cultural logic of "tlvo-ness"'.a3 As he has further argued, Mookie is 'Henry Louis (lates's homo rhetoritus Africatnrs'who moves freely betwecn 't$/o discursive universes'.++ Radkte has sr-rggcsted that this non-participatory ccntrality in thc film emerges from his showing us arollnd his ncighbourhood.+5 'IJc is a pair of eycs on feet who wc calt see through out into the comnrunity ... His lnotives, intentions and dcsires are not revcaled'.+6Hc is in a scnse thc racialized and ethicizcd blds,!-cttm-fineur whose disengagernent, while wiiful, is partly a product of his race. Hc represents a typc of late-t\rventiethcentury modernity, which is urban in nature but neighbourhood-based in scale. As Lirida Hutchcon has argucd, the ncighbourhood, in this case llcdStuy, bccomes an'assertion not of ccntralized sameness but of deccntralizcd community'.47

McKelly's use of Mikhail Bakhtin's work on Dostoevski is further help in explaining Mookie's erTerience in Bed-Stuy. According to McKelly, 'Mookic's eycs bccomc a medium for the "unification" ol all of thc neighborhood's "incompatible" elements'. As in Bakhtin's analysis of 206

.

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singlc ideological commo" interaction''4" Simultaneiqr.coexistence' and Bed-Stuy is the r-rnity o'O"tt' in which thc a symbolic modern space The neighbourhood tht''t btto-cs its polarization and race and ethnicifl, leads to about nces ambivale unresolved As an alternative modern pl"t,e of discursivc arnbiguity' its emergcnc. "' ' is his race' Mookie becomes: protagonist whose prirlciple identification awalkingsynecdocheforhisneighborhood,sdialogicalassimi|aiionofapluralityof culturalsigniliers'.,hebecomeswhatBakhtincalls'aninternaldialogic,character containrng'''acacophonyofautonomoustrreconcilablesrgnificationsinconflicteach

reflectingapersistenceofdouble-consclousness:Sal/BuggingOut',,PinoruitoDa thtng' '0 Love/Hate' Riqht thing/wrong Major/Mother Sisier, Cool/Heat'

of thc accepts the economic realities As a modern protagonist who a model not in which he livcs' Mookie offers rrodern capitalist for the "t"titttt of his inherent doublencss but for an integral and stable resolution cultural logic''51

refusal to abide by its'schizophrenic modcrnity the ncw {igur-es of an alternate Omar and Mookic emerge as in thc

Their prcsence ethnicif *nftt" Europe "ld 'i-t'ita' society their engagement with dominant urban scene i' "ot "t-' Rather recalibrate to us ..nt.rt1r requires within the urban spaces of the twenti.th is herc and postmodernity' There our understanding of both moderniry of the nineteenth century where continllity with the urban moderniry

of racc

ar-td

encountcrsbetr,vecnclassesrcvealedatransientandcontingentquaiityto urbanlife.Thiscontinucstohavesornevaliditythroughoutthetwentieth series of of Omar and Mookie poses a century. However, tl-re situatedness chailengcstothiswell-establishedframeofreferencc.indeed,thetwentietlr centuryhaswitnessedthcriseofstrbstantialetlrniccommunitiesinthemany citicsoftheFirst\Yorlddemandrngaredefinitionoftl.rcurbancxperietlcc same way bui also problcmatizes it in the t"tt tr"o-p""t' or.ly not that thateariyninetecnth-centurymodcrnityarticulatedclass'Moreover'theiate twentieth-centurymoderniryofclassandethniciryisequallytransientand his u'ay the new cthnic protagonist forces contingent, and ephemeral' As of identiry of the city based on new lxes into thc hybrid po"-oatt'l spaces do llot spaces we mLlst remember that hybrid and encounters of difTerence' pluralistic tendencies or multicultural always cncourage the celebratory is that hybrid places globalization' Equally true practices synonymous with do not people ' just as hybrid people dtr ilot als'ays accommodate ttyUria .l-,'. rr s crcate hvbrid places''

Notes

1

Race came nto common use in the English language around the sxteenth century as a category that designates d fferences arnongst groups of people according to real or perceived physical and blological characteristics. Although these differences between races arose as a result of mutation, selection and adaptation, the category of race has not disappeared in common culture R Wil iams, Keywords. Oxford: Oxford Unrversity Press 1976, p.248. Ethnicity has been in the Eng rsh anguage since the foL.rrteenth century when it was

2

19

originaly used to designate'heathen and pagan cultura groups', but t emerged in the mid twentieth century to des gnate dlstinct categories of national or ocal populattons whose culture and physical appearance is different from the dominanl

rajorily. /bid.. p.

3 4 5 6 7 B 9 10 11 12

1

19.

M. Berman, All Thatis So/id Melts into Air. New York: Viking, 1988. P Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consclousness. Cambridge, MA Harvard Univers ty Press. 1993. D. P Gaonkar (ed.) Alternative Modernities. Durham, NC: Duke Unrvers ty Press, 2001 WE.B. Du Bois, Ihe Sou/s of Black Folk (1903) NewYork: Penguin, 1989, p. 1.

lbid., p. 5. St. C. Drake and H.R. Cayton, Black Metropolis A Study of Negro Life in a Northern Cify. Chicago: Unrversity of Chicago 1993. S. Ha l, 'O d and New ldentities, Old and New Ethn cities' in Anthony D King (ed ) Culture, Globalizatton and the World System. Contemporary Conditions for the Representatton of ldentify. London: Macm llan, 1991, lbid,p 44 /bid,p 55

p.53

21

22 aa

24

'Third generation young black men and women know they come from the Caribbean, know that they are black, know that they are British. They want to speak from all three identlties. They are not prepared to give up any one of them. They wi I contest the Thatcberite notron of Englishness because they say th s Eng ishness is b ack'. /bid.,

p59

13

Spike Lee (1957-) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised n Brooklyn, NY He studied at traditional y black Morehouse College and later attended New York University's we I known Tisch School of The Arts, where his master's thesis project (Joe's Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads, 1983) brought him eary recognition (Student Director Oscar, 1986). Do the Right lhlng (1989) brought him national, and Malcolm X (1992) internattona fame He has directed films engaging a variety of topics,butall are'blackstores'. lnhispressprofle headvocatedmaking'back fi ms' us ng not only black stories but aso black crews, as a form of resistance to the whte dominated Hollyr,vood studio system. 'Spike Lee', n H.L. Gates Jr. and C. West (eds.) The Afncan American Century. How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002, pp.359-361 S Lee, n S. Lee and L. Jones (eds.) Do the RrghtThing. ASprke LeeJoinl NewYork Fires de, 1989, p. 1 18. Some have argued that Lee's f lms prepared the ground for the reception of other black films (e g , Boyz rn the Hood. New Jack City, Straight Out of Brooklyn, Juice). W Lane, 'No Accident: From B ack Power to Black Box Office', Afrtcan Amertcan Review, voi 34, no. 1, 2000, pp 39 59. The reference is from p. 47.

25_ 26

-

:

27-

.

14 15

16

17

2OB

D. Muzzio, "'Decent People Shouldn't Lve Here": The American City n Cinema', Journal of Urban Affarrs, no. 18, pp 189 215, cted ln N. AlSayyad, 'The Cinematic City: Between Modernist Utopia and Postmodernist Dystopia', Built Envrronmenf, vol. 26,.a. 4, p.274. The LA riots erupted at the intersect on of the Pico Union, South Central and Koreatown districts of Los Angeles. This occurred after the police, accused of beatlng Rodney

.

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Accident', p. 48. 21

H. Kureishi, Collected Screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 2002, p, 10.

22 23 24

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'The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. lt is a miracle Ihal 22 million black people have not risen up agarnst their oppressors in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even bythe democratic tradition! lt is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued io believe tn a turnlhe-othercheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophyl lt is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of man's puppet Negro "leaders", his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now'. Ihe Autobiography ol Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.

iion

=. Onal,

C. West, Race Matters. New York: Vlntage Books, 1994, p.138.

hell that they have caught, here in whrte man's heavenl The miracle is that the white

He

York

a-rject

::

Mookie's action has caused much debate in film criticism. For example, W.J.I Mitchell has argued that Mookie ndeed did do the 'right thing' by directing anger from Sal and his sons to their property. WJ.T. Mitchell, 'The Violence of Public Art: Do the Right Thing', Critical lnquiry, no. 16, 1990, pp. BB0-99. As clted in W, Lane, 'No

',:ihern

' ^l

King, were acquitted. The trial had been held in Simi Val ey, a predominantly white Republrcan stronghold, despite the fact that the jncident took place in Los Angeles. Stephen Frears (1941 ) began a career in televis on n the 1960s. He directed his first television film, Gumshoe, in 1972. He drrected My Beautiful Laundrette for Channel 4 as a TV production. lt was subsequently released in cinemas and led Frears to direct other successful films in the UK as well as in Hollyi,vood. Kureishi grew up in the suburbs of London. He describes his London as follows: '... for me, London became a kind of inferno of p easure and madness... And so I would go up to the King's Road and just see these incredible people, and the shops, and all of that. And just think, and think; you know, I just wasn't to be here with these people. And then, at the end of the day, you'd have to go home fto Bromley] and it was rather disappointing. So London was always a place that I imagined... So you know my London isn't going to be like anybody else's London, lt's a playground, it's a place where I can imagine, where I can play'. C. MacCabe, 'lnterview: Hanif Kureishi on London', Critical Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3, 1999, pp. 37-56.

29

C. West, Race Matters. In the UK, the Tory candidate, Peter Griffiths, gained notoriety for having said, 'lf you want a nigger for a neighbour, voie Labour', quoted in 'Cry Nigger: Playing the Race Card in British Politics', The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 32,2001 , pp. 69-70. A. Kearns, 'Active Cltizenship and Urban Governance' , Transactions of the lnstitute ol British Geographers, vol. 17, no. 1, 1992, pp.20-34,

It bears noting here that the concept of active crtizenship came about in reaction to the public censure that Thatcher's government received in its first two terms due to what was seen as a shameless promotion of greed and selfishness. This was characterized best by Thatcher's own statements such as, 'There is no such thing as society'. Active crtizenship was seen then as the tonic that would both counter such allegations through its emphasis on Christian morality, while providing a justification for the decrease in social services provided by the state. /bld. ln Do the Right Thing, his sons crlticize Sal for recruiting local blacks as a form of charity. Pino goes as far as to scold, 'We runnin' welfare or somethin'?'. Although Pino himself is living off his father's good will, in his understanding, his familial tie supersedes the busrness. Sal is both encouraged and disturbed by his own son's aggressive attitude, which verges on racism. He tries to protect Mookie - at ttmes

AN ALTERNATIVE IVODERNITY

.

209

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30 31

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H. Kureishi, Collected Screenp/ays, p.50. S. Rushdie, lmaginary Homelands; Essays and Criticism 1981 1991 . Loncon Grar.a and Penguin, 1 991 J.M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the Crfu. London: Routledge. 1996 Despite the ambivalence Jacobs has expressed about the designaiion of 'postcolonial' at the time of writing her book, it seems that the term is gaining acceptance in London. How London's socio-political demography is related to and constructed by diverse cultures has become of increasing inierest to mainstream inteilectual debate in the city from the Architectural Association's 1999 conference and accompanying photographic competition, 'London: Postcolonial City (12-13 March 1999), to the series of Hanif Kureishi's films at the National Film Theatre. M. Cousins, Critical Quarterly,vol.41, no. 3, 1999, p.36. A recent publication that reflects this trend is Mcleod's Postcolonial London. J. Mcleod, Postcolonial London: Rewitrng the Metropolis. London: Routledge, 2004. A.M. Smith, 'The lmaginary Inclusion of the Assimilable "Good Homosexual": The British New Right's Representations of Sexualityand Race', Diacritics,vol.24,no.2l3, .

32 33

34 35 36

1994, tbid.

pp 58

70

M.J. Watts, 'Mapping Meaning, Denoting Difference, lmagining ldentity: Dialectical lmages and Postmodern Geographies', Geografiska Annaler, vol. 73, no. 1, 1991 pp. 7-16. The quote is from page 14. S. Hall, 'Old and New ldentities'. J.W Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, New York: A. Knopf, 1927, p.72. J.C. McKelly, 'The Double Truth, Ruth: "Do the Right Thing" and the Culture of Ambiguity', African American Review, vol. 32, no. 2, Summer 1998, pp. 218 22B.The reference is from page 12. H.L. Gates, The Signifying Monkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, p.48. lbid., p. 25. As cited in J. Radtke, 'Do The Right Thing in Black and White: Spike Lee's Bi-Cultural Method', The Mrdwest Quarterly, vol. 41 , no. 2, 2000, pp.208-228. J.C. McKelly, 'The Double Truth, Ruth:...'. tbid. J. Radtke, 'Do The Right Thing in Black and White.. .'. lbid. The full quote is as follows: 'He is a pair ot eyes on feet who we can see through out into the communrty, not a hero or anti-hero who we can see inside and line up behind or against. His motives, intention, desires are not revealed'. L. Hutcheon, p. 18, quoted in J.C. McKelly, p I In L Hutcheon,'Beginning to Theorize the Postmodern' , Textual Practice, na.25, 1987, pp, 10 31 M. Bakhtin as cited in J.C. McKelly. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, C. Emerson (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, p. 17. J. C. McKelly,'The DoubleTruth, Ruth:...'. lbid., p. 32. ,

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47

.

48 49 50 51 52

lbid , p,12. For a more detailed discussion of the relationships between ethnic minorities and dominant societies, as such relationships are articulated in urban space, refer to my book N. AlSayyad (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism: On the ldentify Discourse and the Built Environment. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001

210

.

CINEN/ATIC URBANISM

.