Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy House (2017) and Other Evictions: Transnational Connections of Past and Present Crises in Cinema

Abstract

Crisis is the word that seems to best characterize the twenty-first century conjuncture. The bleakness and instability of an uncertain and troubled present often encourages the proliferation of nostalgic images of past times, which become sweetened scenarios for escapist memories. On the other hand, the local and global current economic, social and political divisions have also brought to light the need to revisit certain aspects of the past from other perspectives. This is the case of Gurinder Chadha’s films, which frequently advocate for the crossing of cultural borders by showing the hybrid nature of communities and their heritage. Following Robert Stam’s cultural and filmic methodology which includes a transdisciplinary, transmediatic, transtextual, transregional, and transartistic approach (2019), I aim to analyze Chadha’s Viceroy’s House as a film that proposes a revision of India’s Partition while offering a critical transnational and intersectional connection of contemporary global and local scenarios.