Monstrous Aunties: the Rabelaisian older Asian woman in British cinema and television comedy

Estella Tincknell

doi:10.1080/14680777.2019.1599038

Abstract

ABSTRACTRepresentations of older women of South Asian heritage in British cinema are often assumed to do little more than reiterate familiar stereotypes. Yet some British comedy films and TV shows have carved out a space for more transgressive representations of aging Asian women. From Gurinder Chadha’s debut feature, Bhaji on the Beach (1993) to the ground-breaking sketch show, Goodness, Gracious Me and The Kumars at Number 42, a range of comic older female figures have overturned the conventional discourses around race, gender and age. Here, the dominant tropes are of the carnivalesque and the grotesque rather than the submissive and repressed. The confined and conventional Indian “Auntie” is thus transformed into a Rabelaisian figure of excess – a “jester” whose ritualistic violations of norms through “clownishness” forces laughter in response. This essay explores the intersectional relationships between British popular culture and comedy, British-Asian and diasporic identities, and the forging of new and potentially subversive tropes of ageing femininity. Arising from research undertaken through the Women, Ageing, Media network, the essay seeks to reframe and re-contextualise both the politics of gendered representation and the politics of ageing.

Highlights

Representations of older women of South Asian heritage in British cinema and television are limited in number and frequently confined to non-prestigious genres such as soap opera
A final and extremely important exception to the prevailing cultural stereotypes during this period was the Birmingham-set television series, Gangsters (BBC, 1975, 1976 – 78), which was the first to feature an Asian character in a leading role, the charismatic detective Khan (Ahmed Khalil)xv
As the cultural climate in Britain has become more polarised in the wake of the Brexit referendum in 2016, the opportunities afforded to actors of Asian heritage appear to have been pulled back towards highly reductive roles as ‘radicalised’ Muslims and their victimised families in crime dramas and thrillers supposedly torn from the headlines

Summary

Introduction

Representations of older women of South Asian heritage in British cinema and television are limited in number and frequently confined to non-prestigious genres such as soap opera. In the 1990s, British comedy films and TV shows began to carve out a space in which transgressive representations of aging Asian women appeared.

Results

Conclusion