The South Asian Neighbour and His/Her Stereotype Goes Global

The South Asian Neighbour at No. 42 Goes Global[1]:

Jorge Diego Sánchez

University of Salamanca, Spain

Television drama is one of the most remarkable cultural lenses through which to evaluate the presence and the recurrence of stereotypical artistic constructions of the many identities that coexist in the “Diaspora Space” (Brah 1996). In is in this light that this paper will introduce and discussThe Kumars at No. 42,a British sitcom thatportrayed a British South Asian family living in the London district of Wembley (UK) during the first years of the Noughties (2001-2006). The show, which enjoyed the benefit of the British audience and critics alike(it won two International Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2003), portrayed the daily routines of Sanjeev, a thirty-something British Indian man dreaming of becoming a TV presenter and Shushila, his grandmother, who constantly mocks her grandson’s obsession with moneyand his social incompetence to integrate the South Asian distinctiveness into what she calls the “British way of life”.

The present paper has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it analyses the construction of this pair of characters as illustrative of the stereotypes that are still created by the British society about the South Asian community: the old auntie stuck in the old traditions from the Sub-Continent and the first generation British Indian man only eager to work and earn money. Secondly, it studies how these two characters have been re-written in the adaptations of The Kumars at No. 42that have been producedin Australia, India and Pakistan. By so doing, this essay will ultimately aim at further contextualising the derogatory and cultural reading of South Asian difference that, both in the British and the global productions of The Kumars, are designed for these two recurrent constructions of the next-door South Asian migrant.

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SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Jorge Diego Sánchez is a research fellow at the Department of English Studies at University of Salamanca (Spain). His research activity currently focuses on postcolonial constructions of interculturality and gender concerns in the English speaking Indian Diaspora in UK and the US. Nowadays, he works on the films by Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair as for his MA thesis and as a part of his PhD thesis on Intercultural Constructions and Gender Concerns in the Cinema and Theatre of the Anglo-Indian Diaspora in UK and the US. He is the convenor of the annual congress El Arte de Hace Teatro (2009, 2010, at University of Salamanca). He is a member of the research group Artdidaktion at University of Salamanca as well as an affiliate of the Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEMUSA, University of Salamanca).

1

Diego Sánchez,

U of Salamanca, Spain

[1] Do not hesitate to use the larger title of “The South Asian Neighbourhood Goes Global: Recurrent Stereotypes in The Kumars at No. 42 and its International Adaptations” if required for the miscellany of sessions at the Conference.