Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nezar AlSayyad
.')
,{'o lj 5
E) Routledge
E \ Taylor& Francis Croup
r City', jn
: .. Blade
Chapter B
- S:orsese
.'= lvlellds,
---30 The An Alternate Modernity:
,- House,
Race, Ethnicity and the
- Taubin,
3:rrader
Urban Experience
: -e SIOr!
It 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
:^ Film', social categories are modern inventions produced primarily for political
;':ahy of 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
T
little atter-rtictn to the intricacics of race and ethnicity as tl-rcy play ,-rut ill H.
space, or as they constitLlte a poiitics of place. For cxamplc, nlorc often than t-... _'
not, 'blackness' has been conflated with othcr forms of marginaliry povcrry Pr -:.
and discnfranchiscment to provide a generalized Other to 'whiteness'. And th,:
when black identity in the contcmporary city is analysed, it has bccn cast at'.,
ollen only in tcrms of thc black hctcrosexual male, avoiding a coltversatioll d:::-
of gendcr and racc as disparatc subject pctsitions. Indeed, in allalysing urban h:.
modernities in thc context of race, thc rclationship bctlveen rnoderniry and p'- :.
postmodernity is revcalcd to exist in a continuum; a tension depicted in the il-,- .
films used in this chapter. Though race and ethnicity are mcdiators through f't":-
which the city is expcricnced, they unscttle critical assullptions of hybridity T
Herein lie buned many things which if read with patience may show the strange h-,.
meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century This meaning is F,r:-,
not without rnterest to you, Gentle Reader; for the prob em of the Twentieth Century is Si---,-
These words should be read by all who continue to evade the questiorr Fr.
of race in their understanding of the Nventieth-ccntury city. Irr particular, o Ll:
Du Rois's notion of black consciousness was tied to the African-An-rerican th-. .
and Americatr. Among other things, he saw this as creating an uncomfortablc tcl.::
oscillation of idcntiry that dcnied a confidcnt or whole self-conscioustless.' LtL .
Thc time whcn Dr-r Bois was writing was also when American cities werc in:..
being rcstructured in terrns of their racial composition due to the Clreat th:::
Sor-rth-North Migration. As St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton pointed D,
out in Black Metropolrs (1945), tlie influr of black workers into northcrn A:-,
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 H,',
to serve as metrial labourers.s Ilowever, whilc Europcan immigrants had th:'- -
bccn absorbcd into the city, procecding through various urbatr zones, and alt: -'
moving from cthnically homogenous neighbourhoods to thc 'mclting-pclt' il!':
suburbs, African-Americans retnaincd confined to the inner city, to what An.-
Drake and Cayton call 'Black Mctropolis'. The mechanisms of ethno-racial bt:- :
ciosurc and control, including racial violence, techttologics of city planning, tr.i ...
and whitc flight, constitute what is the specific socio-spatial formation of the Lr':-:
'ghetto'. C)lt -
AN ALTERNATIVE MODERNITY
It is based on a 1983 screenplay by Hanif Kurcishi, a British author-dircctor t::
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
racc and ethnicity.
S ir:
Brookfyn of the Do the Right Thing
.1:-:
Thc setting lor Do the Right Thing is in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of rr:- :
Brooklyn, NcwYork (often refcrred to as Bed-Str-ry). The film opens with K:'
a shot of the insidc of the local radio DJ's tiny cubicle. The DJ, Scnor Love .t 4..
Daddy, broadcasts that it will be the hottcst day of the year, and as thc day's p. -.
events unfold, the social climatc will parallel thc weather, finally exploding. --:-
flr -_
From this openirrg claustrophobic space, the camera pans out to the larger l
colltcxt of the strcct, where the story will take place. Thcre, it follows the t]-.:t
chief protagonist, Mookie (playcd by Spike Lee l-rimself), as he goes about tl-.:
his morning routine. ,\l::-
Spikc Lee chooses thc street as hts mise-en-scine, atrd a large part of th.'.
the fi1m revolves around its culture. On this hot day, when almost all of al -:
thc block's residcnts mllst come out of doors because they have no air- ti:. .
conditioning, the strcct itself becomcs thc main arena of social intcraction. b'--.::
The one block where the film takes place includes Love Daddy's radicr c i:.,,:.
cubiclc, Sal's pizzeria, a groccry store run by Korean immigrants, and the th,.,
flats rcntcd by Mookie's sister and girlfricnd. The film is animated with a tl:.
host of colourful characters. Thcse include Sal and his sons. Vito and Pino, bLr.::
:
Do the Right Thing . Ihe three black men sitting at the street corner
T
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.
bttt-'--.:
to S::r :
to cir:-,
Ir: ::-
Sal :r:: .
int..:.::
arrir; ,:,
fu tl:'.
Do the Right lhlng. Mookie delivers pizza while everyone hangs out on their stoops.
Do the Right Thing. fhe Korean shop owner tries to protect his store from the mob
to deliver them. He also tells Omar, when he starts to work for thern that,
Your unclc can't pay you rnuch. But you'll be able to afTord a dcccnt shirt, tht- i : :r
and yort'11 be with your own peoplc. Not in a dolc qneue. Mrs. Thatcher will a St.': -
be pleased with me'.21 Salim is not critical of Thatcher's policies. In fact, he c:ir -,: - -:
.
and the othcr cntrcprclrcurial Pakistanis shown in the film take pridc in their hitrr.,
assa\-- :.
hrnr. I .
SCL-S l. .
skin-r.,-'
peoP. r
his r'.'"-,
C)rn,.:.
skinl,-,--
t-rtti.:,,. . -'
skrr::: - -
th.rr :'-,
-Joh:.:.
thc-, ..
lal.r, .-.'
tr: :
Joh:-:.
My Beautiful Laundrette The revamped launderette is a huge success thcrr :',
:lnitrq
--rLlntef
\rsscr
, --!rints
''Jf :lfe
-:r slrc
.,-.CL'S
.:. T.rnia
, iLIst MyBeautifulLauncJrette'NasserandRacheldancelntherecentlyopenedlaunderette
. - .Llrl.
Salim, whorn he despises, but eventually hejoins the fight and ends up being bttt t-t,,: :.
beaten up by l-iis firrmer friends. Clearly, he is torn benveen his racial and Pintr i, :
Ti. .:
to un,- -:
Race, Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship, and Urban ldentity
idcnr:.
To asscss the thread of racial anger that mns throlrllh these two {rhns, we X lrr.: l
rnllst first retrlrn to L)u Bois's notion of double-consciousness. Particularly uticlr >
in Do the Right Thin-g, we see how accepted nreasurcs of success, farne, wcalth, the r:
beauty, crtltural sllprcmacy, and intelligence are all establishcd against l of r'.r:-
dornitrant ideal of whiteness. Ilowcvcr. while these are set as a benchtnark petlpl. '
of aspirations for black Arnericans, it is undcrstood blacks will nevcr bc ablc oYL-rl .:.
to rcach thenr. It is in this rcgard that mor-e recerlt scholars of blackidentity Arr.-: : --
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
rage.I
The spectral inipossibiliry,rf blacks achicving any fbrrn of acccptence in
aworld 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 ()i
:t
L "i;;
lb* :;:"r
@:f:
.ffi
:ww4
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 Br:
that are tlre subject of My Bedutiful Laundretfe.2(' Rathcr, they cmcrgcd from resuli
the legacy of colonialisrn and the desire of former colonial subjects to (1e;-
imnigrate to the IJK to scek better livcs for themsclves and their families. It of c,.,'-t
is in this sense that a dialogue ovcr 'true' Ilritish identiry has since developcd l-ie cr..
and has involved racist notions and anti-irnmigrant sentimcnt. Ironically, to ltrrt'tl
howcver, the same Thatcher cousetwativc govcrnment that established fi-ien.i.
quotas on immigration from former colonial regions has pointed to the vcry \\raqL':..
entreprcnellrial vigour of these immigrants as evidence of the new social Berltti:'.
As part of this social revolutiorr, Adrian Kearns hrs rcmarked that thc other- :
British Conscrvative govcrnment developed the concept of active citizenship St2Itc- -:.'-
sense of moral obligation. Howevcr, as Kearns pointed out, this re-definition the i:::
of individual arrd statc rclationships that was sold as dinrinishing patr: rnalistic Thr-rs. :
state power only serwed to substitute othcr forms of patriarchy for ccfrtralized repe ,r1:r --
Nasscr fa1ls into precisely this patriarchal contract of ncedy recipient and - i.e.. ,,:.
wealthy bcnefactor. Thus, even though Omar is lcss than thrilled about his blt-.i:r,.-:
job cleaning cars, it is his only way to avoid going to the dole. It is important, racL'i:1 :.,
howc'ver to rcad propcrly the motivations of individual characters itr this lleQ.li.': -
particular equation. Salim and Nasscr are bothwell awarc oftheir'constructivc' he rU-.: --
roles in providing ernployment for Omar. But Otrtar exercises agency via his n'ttir ' :. -
role as a beneficiary of the systcm.'V/hile Kcarns has said that active citizenship sttl.u: .- ,:-
reduced rccipients to passive agents of chariry On'rar seizes the opportrrnity soci,-.-::
provided by Nasser to crcate iris owu sct of pcrsonal opportunities. in ir,::'.. .
charactcr of Sal, thc pizzeria owlrer inDo the Right Thing. Hc and his br-rsiness the t..:-
arc presented as the econotnical pivot arouud which the ncighbourhood An.l ',. -
functions. It is through his mnnificencc that Da Mayor is able to sweep thc re n-[::-' --
street corner and make the few dollars that will get him his next bottle of is:rr'-.-..:
beer. Similarly Mookie's relationship with Sal echoes that between Otnar l\t--r'
and uncle Nasser. Mookie and Omar are botli aware they are being exploited, lbci:- :
but thcy are lurcd into thcir rcspectivc social transactions by a prospect of aSSLrJl....
wealth. A newkind of social contract is presented here, whcre Mookie and Bttt .-. -:
On'rar's circumstances arc a product of state policics, yet their cvcryday lifc is bttr ;, -.. '
controlled by a patriarch whose position derives from the abscncc of a statc rl'hic : .,
prcscilcc in tllc c()mmuniry. artisr I.l :
2O2.CNEMATICURBANISM
:roblems Both movies also ofrbr insights into the producrion of gender as a
-:d from result of these intricate dcpendent rclationships. In Learning to [-ahour
:':iects to (1977), Paul V/iliis wrote about thc constrttction of masculinity as a sign
,:rilics. It of counter-cuiture among high school students in England. In particular,
.-;e loped he examined the formation of sociai cliqucs around erpressing resistance
:,.,nica1ly, to normalized patterns of authoriry. In My Beautiful Laundrette, Johnny's
::hlished friends fall into the category Wiilis called 'lads', those who see working for
rirc very wagcs as a sign of conformity. However, it is intcresting to note that in My
-'.-.- sociai 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
repeatedin a curious mannef when the one-timc squatter himself helps
Nasser cvict a poor, black poet. During this sccond eviction, Johnny
.ts trncle comments that it doesn't look good for a Pakistani to evict his ou,-n kind
-. tlt and - i.e., atrother coloured person. But Nasser replies that he is a professitlnal
:,-.ut his businessman and not a professional Paki, and that there is no question of
ll trftllltt, race in l1ew enterprise culture.30Nasser's view of Thatcherite politics is not
: tn this negativc because he wants to belong to the dominant society so much that
::--tctive' hc regards his own exclusion as a personal failing and tries to fiil the gap
-. ..-ia his with visible symbols of a whitc, middle-class lifestyle. Besides the cars and
:-:r-rship suburban house he can afTord to provide for his family, this yearning for
,rr-tnity social rnobility is best dcfined by his white mistress, ILachel, who he dresscs
in fr-rrs, and who escorts him to fancy bars.
,. in the Yet, class relations in this multicultural society are complex. At the end of
: -:siness the fiim it is revealed that Rachel comcs from a working-c1ass background.
'-rrhood And when Nasser's daughter Tania accuses hcr of bcing a parasite, Rachcl
-r'F\ the reminds Thnia that thcy are of different classes and gencratiolls. Everything
'-,nleof is available for Thnia, but the only thing that was ever available for her was
: L)rnar Nasser. Associating hersclf with a rich, albeit colourcd, man has allowed
: -oited, Rachel to transcend class boundaries in much thc samc way that Johnny's
.::Ct Of association with Omar has lifted him out of his own 1ow-class background.
.1.- and But cven as the film holds out wealth as a grcat social leveller (since it can
.., lrte is buy class, racial ambiguity, and even cltlturc - as seen in Salim's apartment,
:r state which is decorated with clegant paintings by the well-known Indian
artist M.F. Hussain), it only providcs agcncy and inclusion within certain
girl draws a house and a sun with a 'smiley' face on the street. Thus the
sir-rql. r
film scts up a seductive, romanticized version of conrmuniry whicl-i it thcn
Bcd- S:
purposcfully destroys. What starts out as a display of hybridiry as variotls and
Th.' :r.
complex identities living togethcr, soon degeneratcs into hatcful and narrow
tlltfa>
descriptions of thc Othcr in a landscape whcrc cveryone is the Other.
its .-i:: -
Do the Right Thing attcmpts to challenge thc sirnplistic binary opposition
nl-r
r'_ rf_ :
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'
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
Illrlir I'i
promise of onc. Similarly, Henry Louis Gates has not seen the oLltcome of
ioL .-.r -
the film as predestined. Rathcr he has argucd that the dilTerent charactcrs'
re-tit.
choices shapc its complcx outcolnc.+0 I Ic has further argucd that the film
..
():t
consists of dynarnic and indeterministic rclationships in which meaning and
oi r,-.---
tmth remain multiplc and notr-fixcd.+LLikcwise, thc somcwhat sympathctic
r-tr1.... t-.
portrayal of ltalian-Amcricans complicates the story and sllpports Lee's
s tthr:
position tl-rat 'evcrybody's right. And cverybody's wrong. And nobody's a
-
cttlf -.'.1
hcro'.+l
cont,:.
Accordiug to J.c. McKelly, 'The dramatic structure of Do the Right
ellar'...
Thing sttuates Mookie, the film's protagonist played by Lee himsclf, in
rl. r il
the midst of this architecture of polarities constructed around the cultural
r-1
cL-l1l'.1:-
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
chrl.-:
cc11:,-t-
universes'.++ Radkte has sr-rggcsted that this non-participatory ccntrality in
citi..
thc film emerges from his showing us arollnd his ncighbourhood.+5 'IJc
th.ir :
is a pair of eycs on feet who wc calt see through out into the comnrunity
thai . ,,
... His lnotives, intentions and dcsires are not revcaled'.+6Hc is in a scnse
t\\ i:.:
thc racialized and ethicizcd blds,!-cttm-fineur whose disengagernent, while
CLrlll.:.
wiiful, is partly a product of his race. Hc represents a typc of late-t\rventieth-
ta'
century modernity, which is urban in nature but neighbourhood-based in
111
.111i .
scale. As Lirida Hutchcon has argucd, the ncighbourhood, in this case llcd-
alr-. .:'
Stuy, bccomes an'assertion not of ccntralized sameness but of deccntralizcd
pf .r-:
community'.47
dtr :-
McKelly's use of Mikhail Bakhtin's work on Dostoevski is further help
ah...,'
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
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'
14 S Lee, n S. Lee and L. Jones (eds.) Do the RrghtThing. ASprke LeeJoinl NewYork 2E
32 J.M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the Crfu. London: Routledge. 1996
33 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.
34 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,
1994, pp 58 70
35 tbid.
36 M.J. Watts, 'Mapping Meaning, Denoting Difference, lmagining ldentity: Dialectical
lmages and Postmodern Geographies', Geografiska Annaler, vol. 73, no. 1, 1991 ,