My Beautiful Laundrette

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How and to what extent can My Beautiful Laundrette be seen as a critique of Thatcherism?

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) was released during Margaret Thatcher’s fifth year in power as the British Prime Minister. The “Iron Lady”, as she became known, labelled England as “sick, morally, socially and economically”.

Andrew Gamble suggests that Thatcherism is a word that is sometimes aimed at three different things. Firstly in relation to Margaret Thatcher’s political style, to the ideological doctrines of the New Right and finally to the policies of the Thatcher government.

The film represents these times with unemployment at a high. The characters in My Beautiful Laundrette represent unemployment and the minorities throughout Britain in the 1980’s; Omar (Gordon Warnecke) the lead character is from an Asian background along with his family. Daniel Day Lewis’ character Johnny is a white male who is unemployed and homeless. After a few subtle hints, the film also reveals that Omar and Johnny are homosexual. The relationship between the two is actually the only part of the film that does not try to score political points, although their relationship does suffer cruel tests with the ethnic divide testing them when Salim sadistically runs over Moose and the brutal assault on Salim from the hands of Moose and Genghis.

Also their relationship is strengthened when Johnny and Omar both cross there ethnic boundaries when Johnny fights to save Salim from his brutal attack and Omar to save Johnny from the wrath of his friends. At the end of the film, it is hinted that although they have come together in a mutual love and devotion they could also bring the two divided countries together again and rebuild their trashed shop and possibly open more laundrettes,

“”thus this ‘hybrid’ community built on sexual diversity benefits from the Thatcherite vision of private enterprise that serves it” (Chari. 21)

My Beautiful Laundrette was directed by Stephen Frears and is taken from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. It was originally shot on a low budget intended for television only but due to an excellent reception at the Edinburgh film festival it was internationally distributed on cinema screens. It also earned Kureishi an Oscar nomination.

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Stephen Frears originally intended the film to be broadcast through television because there was a shift towards television as a focal point in the 1980’s. 74 percent of Britain had never visited a cinema, but every adult watched at least twenty-five hours of television a week. Most television film-makers thought that by having their films on the television they were addressing the nation.

The film could be seen as a criticism of Thatcherism because its successes were great social costs to the public because industrial production fell rapidly during the iron lady’s government, which critics believed increased unemployment as it ...

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