LO: Practice applying post-colonial theory to Yasmin

Media and Collective Identity How the media presents representations of a collection (or group) of people What effect this has on society

Stuart Hall - a recap Discuss – what does Stuart Hall suggest about human identity? He says that human identity is never fixed - it is always transforming: – You, for instance, will be a different person after University because you will have had new experiences and met new people – your perception of yourself and perhaps even other people’s of you will have shifted According to Hall it would therefore be wrong to think that a person from a particular ethnic group has a fixed identity (or that they will even always belong to that ethnic group!) – as the media often do Hall also suggests that when two ethnicities combine to create a hybrid ethnicity (e.g. British Muslim) the original ethnicity often becomes more explicit and differentiated: – British Muslims become defined by their “Muslim” characteristics rather than by those that are “British”

Yasmin Compare and contrast the identity of Yasmin in these extracts: – How apparent is her “Asianness” in either? – What evidence do you have (e.g. her mise-en-scene her language, her attitude to religion)? Written task: – 1 paragraph about Yasmin before 9/11 – 1 paragraph about Yasmin after 9/11 – 1 paragraph about how Yasmin’s transformation can be related to Stuart Hall Swap with your partner – note any similarities and differences in what you wrote.

Yasmin’s perception of her own identity changes, in part as a result of a shift in other people’s perception of her, in the aftermath of 9/11. Yasmin is represented as a highly westernised women at the start of the film, through her lifestyle, her language and her mise-en-scene; she very rarely visits the local mosque, drives a newly bought Golf GTI, speaks in a broad Yorkshire dialect, amiably socialises with her white colleagues, and dresses casually. It is only when she is at home with her family that she reverts to traditional Muslim attire and adopts a more reserved relationship with her father.

After 9/11 she becomes alienated from the white community she felt a part of – her colleagues mock her, teasingly labelling her a terrorist conspirator, and we are made aware that some of them do have racist beliefs. This forces her to revaluate and reconstruct her own identity as an outsider; she supports Faysal, the husband she reluctantly married to give British citizenship to, and becomes a more observant Muslim, both in the way she dresses and acts.

The transformation of Yasmin can be related to Stuart Hall’s theory about human identity. Hall suggests that when two identities combine to create a hybrid identity, the original identity somehow becomes more explicit and differentiated and it could be argued that Yasmin does seem to be defined be her “Asianness” more than by her “Britishness” by some characters in the film. Hall also puts forward the idea that human identity is never fixed but always changing, that it is dangerous, for instance, to assume that a person of a certain ethnicity has a rigid, perhaps even a stereotypical, identity. Indeed, Yasmin’s identity, as I have outlined, changes quite suddenly in the film as other people’s perception of her alters.