Ratana Sambhav

3rd year , 1438

Assignment Paper 16
Q : Critically analyze the interracial relationships in My Beautiful
Launderette.
My beautiful launderette written by Hanif Kureshi in 1985 and was made into a
acclaimed film in the same year. It was nominated for the best original screenplay in
the academy awards and thus Hanif Kureshi rose to stardom soon enough. He has
been a controversial figure in the British community with his personnel relationships
and his political involvement. He is often credited as rude and arrogant; when he
was teaching in Kingston College he remarked that his course was a waste of time
and his students were talentless.
In 1981, England had major riots on account of racism. Asian and black
communities were at brawl with the police; some were getting beaten up while
some were killed. In the Thatcher era, there was a rise in unemployment, sudden
rise of nationalism in Britain and unquestionable powers were given to police
against the immigrants. This raised tensions between the all the ethnic groups
which resulted in a lot bloodshed. Coming from the politically active family, this
deeply influenced the story and his writings.
My beautiful Launderette is a story which is set during the Thatcher era. It reflects a
complex relationship between members of Asian and white communities. It is a
story of a Pakistani boy , Omar , and reunion and eventual romance with his friend
Johnny. They both are given chance to become caretakers of a messed up and
unprofitable launderette which they develop into a profitable business. It addresses
several polemical issues of homosexuality and racism. It is pungently written;
grittily lyrical comedy-drama front-loads the refurbishment and reopening of a rundown launderette in a South London Asian community to explore how Margaret
Thatchers enterprise culture fostered greed even as it created jobs.
The storys larger concern is the struggle of Asian immigrantsrepresented by
Omars father, Hussein, and uncle, Nasser to maintain their ethnic identities while
assimilating into a society that offers material rewards for those prepared to
abandon their traditions. The intellectual Hussein, formerly a campaigning socialist
journalist and friend of Pakistans reformist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has
been unable to adjust. The rise of the racist National Front political party and the
Thatcher governments aggressive monetarism has sickened him. Since the suicide
of his wife, he has become a mostly bedridden alcoholic, cared for by Omar in a
miserable flat. Nasser, on the other hand, is a cheerfully corrupt Thatcherite
entrepreneur and opportunist, whose main business tenet is knowing how to
squeeze the tits of the system. As a Pakistani family loyalist, though, he has his

values and principles, notwithstanding his also having a white mistress, Rachel. A
true figure of contempt is his relative and henchman Salim , a sleek, nouveau riche
drug trafficker who despises the unemployed white youths Thatcherism has
consigned to the gutter. Hussein is anxious for Omar to go to college but enlists
Nasser in finding him temporary work, and Omar is soon entrusted with managing
the self service laundry. He hires his newly reencountered childhood friend Johnny, a
homeless sometime burglar, as his sole worker. Once Omar takes charge of the
laundrette, it becomes the center of the storys labyrinth of thresholds crossed and
uncrossed, of lurking monsters that must be slain, a magic space where
psychological treasure as well as hard cash can be found. Its specific critique of
postcolonial Britain is achieved through Kureishis battery of conflictsbetween
whites and Asians, between whites and whites, between the Asian and African
diasporas. The fact that Omar and Johnnys sexual relationship is not a source of
social conflict, unlike that of Nasser and Rachel, is significant. Its a masterful stroke
of gay-straight taboo reversal that proposes that behavior conventional society has
historically vilified may be the most likely to promote harmony. And not just in the
films overlapping story strands does it reject the good manners and arid formalism
associated with films that endorse middle-class and aristocratic values.
One of the main sources of tension in the film is Johnnys past membership in the
National Front, which attracted Paki-bashing skinheads to its extreme-right-wing
ranks at the height of its popularity in the mid-1970s. Hussein, who helped Johnny
when he was at school, rebukes him for having become a fascist, one of the
betrayals that broke the aging socialists heart. Omar himself uses Johnnys
transgression as a stick with which to beat him when problems surface in their
relationship. Nonetheless, the constant shifts in power between the boys suggest
their partnership is more balanced than Nasser and Rachels affair, which seems to
be partially based on her financial dependence on him. The early images of Johnny
reveal he is a youth in transitionone who rejects the system crushing his
generation by rejecting the street violence that results indirectly from Conservative
policies. Newly employed by Omar, he acquires a sense of self-worth and swaps his
tribal uniform for a brighter, cleaner look. He has also become the films moral
center, for he cautions Omar, who has big plans for taking over more
launderettes, not to become greedy.
One of the most interesting things about this story is the relationship between the
government and immigrants. As Nasser puts its: What chance would an
Englishman give a leftist communist Pakistani on newspapers? Omars father is
perhaps the most significant representation of the cultural effects that stemmed
from the economic policies of the time. He expresses the value that he places in
education throughout the film, values that are clearly being disregarded in favor of
the monetarist agenda. The traditional values that he holds in high esteem are in
opposition to those of the Thatcher administration, accentuated through its policy to
reduce public expenditure on education. The Pakistanis in My Beautiful Laundrette

have excelled economically under such social structures. Their relative positions in
the socio-economic ladder are not distant, though Johnnys whiteness places him in
a position of social privilege. That changes, however, when Omar follows his uncles
footsteps in climbing the ladder of success and turning the old laundrette into a
flourishing business. At that moment, the former colonized overtakes his former
colonizer, which drastically changes their social position. In My Beautiful Laundrette
it is the Pakistanis who are business owners and managed to work themselves up to
members of the wealthy middle-class. Although Omar goes though magnificent
changes in terms of behaviour and character, it is also important to mention that he
is not a purely self-made man, but had the help and support of his wealthy uncle
on the one hand, and shows criminal tendencies on his way to the top on the other
hand. He sells a delivery of drugs he was supposed to pick up for his other, uncle
Salim, and decides to sell them to gain more money for the laundrette. This
somehow mirrors the eternal conflict of the immigrant, being torn between tradition
and the pressure to be successful in the homeland.
In conclusion , I would like to say the Hanif Kureshi has brought various character
conflicts in one story to show the day to day life of a immigrant trying to make his
place in a place where he is not welcome. In order to gain, he had to lose his
conscience of his teachings or lose his conscience of good deeds. The story shares
the belief that for the children of immigrants , education is the key to social
enlightenment and interegation.