HYBRID

IDENTITIES IN “MY BEAUTIFUL

LAUNDRETTE”

Frears’ “My beautiful laundrette” (1985) for British cinema.

Made in a period of great social and political unrest, fuelled
by frequent clashes between Asian immigrants and the white

the characters’ identities. As a result, distinctions often taken

for granted such as colonizer and colonized, or right and left,
are blurred, suggesting that our identities are always already
products of temporary and provisional alliances, entangled in

to set standards for an ethical representation of racial and

cultural difference.

Keywords: British cinema. Hybridity. Ethics. Identity

Thirty years have elapsed since “My beautiful laundrette”

premiered in movie theatres all over the world, bearing the
unmistakable stamp of director Stephen Frears, in collaboration

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 by Channel 4 in the 1980s, “My beautiful laundrette” highlights
the decade’s profound political and economic changes, many of
which sparked by waves of Asian immigrants that had settled
in Britain, and the social tensions that ensued. This paper
argues that in this historical context marked by hybrid bodies

to ethically represent social, racial and cultural difference. We

begin with an overview of the social and historical context
of England in the 1980s, at the time grappling with an
unprecedented economic crisis.
Great Britain in the 1980s was plagued by growing social
and political unrest in many metropolitan regions, according to
Anwar (1998). Most of the violence was targeted at the Asian
community and perpetrated by gangs of white youths. A 1981

the Asian people interviewed, interracial relations were rapidly

interviewees felt that they had a better quality of life than six
years before. For example, among the Indians interviewed,

do you account for this deterioration in your quality of life?”,

organizations like the National Front. According to Anwar

(1998), the violence against Asians is directly related to the
economic crisis of Great Britain since the 70s.
Elected in 1979, Margaret Thatcher strove to put an
end to this crisis. Still in power until 1990, Thatcher helped
to consolidate an ideological position known as “New
Right”. Following economic liberalism principles, Thatcher’s
ultraconservative government set out to strengthen the market
in all areas of society and rebuild the British economy according

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spending, lower taxes so as to boost economic growth, limit the
power of unions and privatize state owned companies. Yet it still
remains to be seen whether these measures were successful or
not, as Hill (1999) states. According to Hill, if on the one hand

the 80s, on the other hand there was a considerable increase

in unemployment rates, with approximately three million
unemployed people between 1982 and 1986. As a result,
the social and economic gaps between the rich and the poor
became even wider. In addition, Thatcher’s neo-liberalism was
accompanied by a strong conservative trend. To maintain social
order, the patriarchal family and the values normally associated
with it, the government wouldn’t hesitate to restrict individual
rights and increase state control, for instance by passing stricter
immigration laws to prevent resident immigrants from bringing
their families to the country, or enforcing anti-homosexual
laws. Hence, it came as no surprise that Thatcher’s neoliberal
conservatism raised a storm of protest among homosexuals,

name only a few. In the arts and educational communities it

was not different, as Hill explains:

As with other cultural products at the time, cinema also

suffered from the lack of subsidies from the government.
Moved by its decision to cut down on public spending, the
government didn’t take into account the artistic or cultural

Thus, Thatcher’s economic policy had disastrous consequences

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 more dependent on television, especially Channel 4. Given its

that were overtly critical of the Thatcher government, among

which one could certainly include “My beautiful laundrette”,

mentioned above.

of unemployed youths could be seen wandering around their

decadent working class suburb with no particular purpose.
One of them is Johnny, a white homeless young man in his early
twenties who spends most of his time squatting and hanging
out with his mates from the National Front. His pointless
existence begins to change after a chance meeting with Omar,
one of his old Asian friends from school – though the looks on
their faces suggest they were more than friends. The son of a

ambitious and determined to climb up the social ladder. His

life changes when his uncle Nasser – a powerful and successful
entrepreneur with several lucrative businesses who supports a

that belongs to him. In no time Omar realizes this is his golden

cousin for extra money, and gets his uncle’s permission to repair
and manage the old laundrette. With his uncle’s approval, Omar
invites Johnny, whose physical strength will come in handy
and become an important asset for his family, to work for him.
Johnny starts working at the laundrette, and they soon become
lovers, triggering angry reactions from both Omar’s relatives
and Johnny’s racist friends.

This bleak scenario of social and economic decay, marked

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According to Hill (1999),

In this interstitial space emerge new identities such as

Omar’s, who is described both as “typically English” by his

at the same time a successful Pakistani businessman, a “Third

World enemy” according to one of his former Pakistani tenants
who was evicted for not paying the rent, and a “sadhu of South
London”, in the eyes of his white lover Rachel, who owns up to
Nasser’s daughter, Tania: “ Your father is the only thing that’s
ever waited for me”. This South London neighbourhood where

for whom the city is a Thirdspace characterized by simultaneity.

Thus questions of race, class, gender, sexuality and colonization

everything coexists simultaneously in this Thirdspace:

-
pend our conventional forms of conceiving space based on

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 “either”/”or” choices, and to imagine a logic of simultaneity, so
that one can theorize space from a multiplicity of perspectives
that are normally considered incompatible. In order to do this,
it may be necessary to create theories capable of crossing epis-
temological borders in favour of a transdisciplinary approach.
Thirdspace, which

In “My beautiful laundrette”, this Thirdspace is South

London, where Omar and Johnny set out to run Nasser’s
laundrette. Omar’s cousin, Tania, lives off Nasser, her well-off
Paskistani businessman/entrepreneur. Unwilling to abide by
the rules set by the patriarchal system in which she grew up,
Tania eventually breaks aways from this system. South London
is also home to Omar’s father, a former intellectual and leftist

sexual, social, gender, class, race and ethnicity, among others

– makes identities so complex that a single theoretical or
epistemological approach cannot analyze them. According to
this logic, all identities are always unstable, multiple, situated
and constantly negotiated and contested, from a variety of
perspectives that coexist in this Thirdspace.

(1994) own formulation of Third Space, seen as the space of

enunciation where all cultures are constructed, disputed and

be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew”

(1994, p. 37). Drawing upon Saussure’s idea of the arbitrariness
of the sign in the enunciative process, according to which

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arbitrary association. It is up to the language user to establish
such a connection. Bhabha contends that this Third Space of

space in which the arbitrary sign allows the language user

– and here Bhabha is especially concerned with those who
“have suffered the sentence of history” (1994, p. 172) by being

challenge the discourses of the colonizer/oppressor, suggesting

that they are always grounded in the voices of the colonized/
oppressed and are necessarily hybrid:

Far from being inherently homogeneous or original,

cultures are thus always hybrid, in the making. Doomed to

survival” (1994, p. 172), and made up of signs that can be

“appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (1994,
p. 37). In this sense, cultures are always transnational – because
they are built upon experiences of displacement like those of
enslaved, colonized or diasporic peoples – and translational –
because these experiences point to the complexity of meaning
making processes. Meanings are made in this Third Space of
enunciation, in which our words echo the words of others,
appropriating their intentions, translating and rehistoricizing
them. As a result, the discourse of the colonizer already
pressuposes that of the colonized, and the other way round,

the colonizer’s identity. Hence Bhabha’s contention that all

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 identities, languages and cultures are hybrid. This seems to
be the case in “My beautiful laundrette”, which, according
to Higson (2000, p.38), can be seen as a celebration of “the
pleasures of hybridization in cinematic form”.

According to Higson (2000), by exploring the complex

relationships between social formations and cultural identities

national cinema based on the image of nation as a homogeneous

community, celebrating difference and hybridity. In the same
essay, the author questions the validity of the term ‘post-

the 40s, which contradict the notion of nation as a coherent

or homogeneous whole, valuing dissent instead of consent,

Higson (2000), present a complex image of nation, comprising

multiple ethnic and social identities which build temporary

Johnny’s physical strength to help him renovate and run the

laundrette, and also depends on the approval and support of
his uncle Nasser, who in turn requests Johnny to do menial

the importance of considering the historical context in the

historical study of reception – and the instability of the concept

of nation, proposing a change of focus from the national to the
local or even to the transnational, given “the contingency and
the fragility of the national, and the fragmentary and mutable
nature of identity” (2000, p.40).
In this sense, “My beautiful laundrette” can be considered

is embodied in the character Omar. The son of a Pakistani father

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and an English mother, Omar’s hybridity will see him through
the challenges posed to him by both his family ties and his

an intersection of railway lines that is also a metaphor of this

hybridity. It is his father who arranges for him to work for his

arouses suspicions on the part of his other relatives, like his

cousin Cherry, for instance. Shortly after being introduced to
Omar and discovering that he has never even been to her home
town Karachi, in Pakistan, complains behind his back: “I’m so
sick of hearing about these in-betweens! People should make
up their minds where they are!”
According to Hill (1999), “My beautiful laundrette”
celebrates this in-betweenness characteristic of identities
formed at the crossroads of different social, racial and cultural

Britain not in a bad light, as a handicap or drawback, but as

“a site of mutually productive intersection” (1999, p.215).

homogeneous identities but also the stability of national

identities. What does it mean to be English? Can one be English
without at once being not-English? In other words, isn’t the
alterity of the immigrant already inscribed in the core of an
English identity? Or still, isn’t an English identity always already
hybrid?

identities and cultures, discussed by theorists like Hall (1998),

to Higson (2000), this feeling of change is present in several

a critical stance against the fallacy of national consensus based

on hard and fast distinctions between nation, culture and

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 cultural difference perspective. Based on a critical assessment
of tradition and national cultural heritage, Higson exposes the
fragility of these concepts by raising questions like: what can
actually be labelled as ‘traditional’? What is the importance
of forged or imposed traditions, in contrast to those handed
down from one generation to another? Has there ever been
a pure national heritage, or underneath has it always been a
collage of different, sometimes irreconcilable traditions? Such

with the advent of what Higson (2000) calls ‘post-national

then, post-national cinema adopted a more ambiguous view

of Great Britain by accentuating heterogeneity or difference,
as a result of post-war economic, political and social changes,
among which the appearance of new local ethnic communities.
This may have generated feelings of fragmentation and

diaspora and social mobility. In “My beautiful laundrette” this

idea of mobility is suggested by the opening scene, in which
the sound of the Clapham Junction trains can be heard from

Omar’s cousin, is waiting for the train at the platform after her
decision to leave home. All Tania’s father can do is watch her
leave, with an expression of confusion and helplessness on his
face, as if overwhelmed by changes that he cannot understand.
Like Tania, all the other characters end in a different place or

for Omar’s uncle Nasser, like throwing out a Pakistani tenant

for not paying Nasser the rent. Initially thrown out by Nasser
and now forced to do the same to Nasser’s insolvent Pakistani
tenant, Johnny is the very embodiment of social mobility in the

his doubt about Nasser’s lack of sympathy to his insolvent

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tenant. Nasser explains: “I’m a professional businessman,
not a professional pakistani. There’s no race question in the
new enterprise culture. Do you like the room? Omar said you
had nowhere to live. I won’t charge”. The way these characters

way in which

of identities and cultures, captured by “My beautiful laundrette”

seems to be the norm these days, as Bauman (2006) forcefully

argues. This implies that any hybridity constitutive of identities.
By ethics we do not mean a transcendent code of conduct
according to which actions can a priori be considered right or
wrong, good or bad, regardless of their social and historical
contexts. Rather, we locate ethics on Deleuze and Guattari’s
plane of immanence (1994), based on the presupposition that
life’s diversity of modes of being, seeing and knowing, as well

methods of immanent evaluation. “Immanence is immanent

only to itself and consequently captures everything”, argue
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p.45), suggesting that when
immanence is thought as immanent to something, this already
entails some sort of transcendence. In a way, this ethics of
immanence is similar to Foucault’s idea of ethics as a “strong
structure of existence” (FOUCAULT, 1991, p. 341), unrelated to
the law or to the power of authority. Rather, ethics is a result of
one’s relationship with oneself, or how we constitute ourselves

this formulation of ethics is also similar to Barad’s notion of

entanglement (2012). This notion entails the impossibility

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 something immutable or independent of particular social and
historical contexts. Rather, the author postulates that ethics and

the world” (2012, p.69), which in this sense is always already

an ethical matter.

In “My beautiful laundrette”, each character’s hybridity

cultural exchange. Their behaviour can only be understood in

the context of this uncertain terrain of temporary alliances and
shifting social and economic positions, where hard and fast
dichotomies like “colonizer x colonized”, or “right x left” simply
do not hold true. Instead, differentiating between colonizer
and colonized, for instance, is not about separating, but about
making connections and commitments (BARAD, 2012) –
provisional or contingent as they may be. Consequently, the
characters’ behaviours can only be understood in terms of their
immanence or entanglement with this broader context, thus

the dynamics of social change which the characters go through,

grounded in complex negotiations between different cultural

process. In this scenario, tensions abound and escape resolution,

scene where Omar and Johnny appear to settle their differences

for the time being, unlike classic happy-ever-after couples in
mainstream cinema. As the epitome of ‘post-national cinema’,
“My beautiful laundrette” presents a more ambiguous view
of Great Britain by accentuating heterogeneity or difference,
as a result of post-war economic, political and social changes,
including the appearance of new local ethnic communities. The
ensuing feelings of fragmentation and instability are depicted

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represent social, racial, ethnic, sexual and cultural difference.
In this background of social mobility, diaspora and political
unrest, the only ethical way of representing the characters is by
taking account of the hybridity constitutive of their identities.

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