Return of the native: reverse migration and the unification of self with other in the film the best exotic Marigold Hotel

• Autores: Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram
• Localización: Visiones multidisciplinares sobre la cultura popular: actas del 5.º Congreso Internacional de SELICUP / coord. por Eduardo de Gregorio Godeo, María del Mar Ramón Torrijos, 2014, ISBN 978-84-617-0400-2, págs. 238-245
• Idioma: español
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• Resumen

  • The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel imagines a �reverse migration� of elderly British citizens, seeking a new life in India. This reverse migration could be analysed as an assimilation of �Self� (by the figurative former �colonisers�) via interfusion with the �mirror image� of the �Other�. This paper postulates that the themes in the film could be framed through Arjun Appadurai�s concept of global communities and his five �scapes� of cultural interflows. The preservation of �colonial order� within colonial discourse has been facilitated by a continuum of discrimination and difference. The film�s primary characters either exert agency, or become participative subjects of a transformative process that repudiates the differentiating colonial disavowal of the Other. Homi Bhabha conceives a process of �agonistic� negotiations between binary oppositions that eviscerates a �third space� � from which emerge �hybrid� discourses. This paper locates the symbolic encounter between the film�s British immigrants and postcolonial India, as initially being interlocked in such a tumultuous arbitration. It argues that �The Best Exotic� subverts a Eurocentric disavowal of the Other, instead of extricating a dialogic hybrid from a �third-space� concatenation of binary oppositions. The process of reverse migration arguably subverts the cultural-frontier of the �nation-state�, and subsequently Britain and India�s colonial/postcolonial historical master narratives. It affirms the Lacanian notion of the true apprehension of Self as being in recognition and relation to the Other. The paper ultimately endeavours to locate whether the cathartic assimilation of Self, as manifested in the film, through hybridisation, �indigenisation� and �integration� with the Other, results in equilibrium.