Abstract
Beginning with what the leaders of its three largest economies described in 2010/2011 as the ‘failure of multiculturalism’, this chapter explores issues of identity, race, and belonging in British and French science fiction, with case studies of urban dystopias in Paris and London, both European economic powerhouses in addition to being two of the most ethnically diverse cities in the EU. Exploring how the dystopian Shank (Mo Ali 2010) and alien invasion narrative Attack the Block (Joe Cornish 2011) respond to a succession of failed social policies in the UK, the chapter then focuses upon a trio of French banlieue sf films, which, for all that they strive to critique social inequality, inadvertently conspire to reinforce pre-existing, racially informed power structures.
Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.
(David Cameron)
We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.
(Nicolas Sarkozy)
This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.
(Angela Merkel)
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- 1.
In their edited collection Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam write that ‘the concept of multiculturalism is polysemically open to various interpretations and subject to diverse political force fields; it has become a contested and in some ways empty signifier onto which diverse groups project their hopes and fears’ (6).
- 2.
Writing for Reuters, for example, religion correspondent Tom Heneghan detected a clear Muslim-specific undercurrent in the pronouncements of Cameron , Sarkozy , and Merkel , noting that ‘despite their differences, all three say they have a problem with the integration of Muslims and their statements on multiculturalism clearly focus on those minorities’ (‘Sarkozy Joins Allies Burying Multiculturalism’).
- 3.
In the 2015 French regional elections, for example, the Front National topped the polls, attaining almost 28 per cent of the popular vote. In the UK, meanwhile, UKIP did likewise in the 2014 European Parliament election, an event not without irony given the party’s voluble opposition to continued UK membership of the EU . The AfD’s electoral impact in Germany had for a time been more modest—falling short of the required 5 per cent threshold in the 2013 Federal Election, for example—but grew exponentially by the 2017 General Election, when it attracted almost 13 per cent of the popular vote, making it the country’s third largest party.
- 4.
While terrorists were almost certainly smuggled into Europe via the refugee trail from Syria, the same trail exists because an overwhelming majority of Syrians were fleeing persecution from terrorism, be it the state-sanctioned variety practised by Bashar Assad’s brutal regime or the medieval acts of barbarism perpetrated across Syria and northern Iraq by ISIS .
- 5.
Stam and Shohat continue: ‘The various attacks on multiculturalism, from both left and right, have made us forget that the term does have certain advantages. The multi in multiculturalism brings with it the idea of a constructive heterogeneity, while culture-an integral part of the economy in the postmodern epoch-foregrounds an area of practice and analysis sometimes neglected by Marxist approaches. Putting the two words together enacts a coalitionary strategy that implicitly goes beyond binarism of race relations or black studies or Asian studies or whiteness studies’ (Multiculturalism 8).
- 6.
Chandra Mohanty, for instance, has argued that Western feminist movements have often been complicit in perpetuating an ideal of global struggle that nevertheless downplays historical imbalances in place of assuming ‘an ahistorical, universal unity between women’, one guilty of ‘completely bypassing social class and ethnic identities’ (Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity 31).
- 7.
For all the acclaim (and for that matter vitriol) that Merkel has received for her actions in certain quarters, it must also be acknowledged that with an ageing population and one of the world’s lowest birth rates, the decision to import a young and cost-effective workforce was not without its advantages in a German context.
- 8.
Poland was certainly not alone in expecting unique treatment for its own citizens; for instance, Ireland’s questionable follow-through on its promise to accept 4,000 Syrian refugees did little to dilute its government’s annual St. Patrick’s Day pleas that special exemptions be provided for unregistered Irish nationals living in the United States.
- 9.
The most obvious rejoinder to Trump ’s bellicose sentiment is to ask when was America great and for whom. For Europe, the cradle of colonial expansion, such questions have especial relevance.
- 10.
As I write this, the breaking Windrush scandal threatens to bring down the Theresa May-led Conservative government and has, to date, led to the resignation of the British Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
- 11.
These discourses, Bhabha continues, form a ‘double narrative movement’ that complicates the nation’s (and by proxy the continent’s) ability to define itself, begetting a liminal space wherein the claims of people to be ‘representative provokes a crisis within the process of signification and discursive address’ (Location of Culture 208).
- 12.
In The Making of a World City: London 1991–2021, Greg Clark categorises London and Paris as being, along with Tokyo and New York, two of ‘the historic big four’ global cities. Since 2012, Clarke notes, London ‘has extended its lead in the Global Power City Index and achieved top spot for the first time in the Cities of Opportunity study, while Paris, ‘Western Europe’s other urban powerhouse’, has also performed strongly ‘despite its deeper immersion in the Eurozone slump’ (126).
- 13.
The ‘long-take’ here comprises several shots in a disguised manner akin to the effect achieved by Alfonso Cuarón and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki during the extended ‘long-take’ sequences in Children of Men (2006).
- 14.
Not only does Banlieue 13 borrow freely from John Carpenter’s dystopian productions Escape from New York and Escape from LA, it also owes much to American ‘hood’ films such as Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton 1991), Menace II Society (Albert and Allen Hughes 1993), New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles 1991), and Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee 1989).
- 15.
The white saviour is a time-honoured feature of Hollywood films that shows little sign of abating. Recent examples include Tom Cruise saving nineteenth-century Japan in The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick 2003), Matt Damon saving eleventh-century China in The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou 2016), and Sandra Bullock turning an impoverished black youth into a star professional footballer in The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock 2009). For a detailed history of the white saviour complex, see Matthew Hughey’s 2014 monograph The White Saviour Film: Context, Critics and Consumption.
- 16.
Petterson elucidates: ‘In the final scene, Damien, Leïto, the president, and the gang leaders sit around a table smoking cigars. The president asks them if they know Jean Nouvel, the famous French architect. They do not, but the reference inserts the film into the context of Nicolas Sarkozy’s failed plans to remake and modernize Paris and its banlieue on a mass scale, the so-called Grand Paris project announced in 2008. Sarkozy got as far as soliciting and publicly debating proposals from architects all over the world, including Jean Nouvel, but the project stalled because Sarkozy refused to work with local political authorities, preferring instead to impose changes from on high’ (‘American Genre Film’ 43).
- 17.
A prime example of the banlieue film, a subgenre that has its origins in the policier films of the 1980s and early 1990s and was primarily concerned with the experiences of migrants on the outskirts of French cities, La Haine depicts a Parisian landscape rife with racial tension, inequality, and social disenchantment. In addition to portraying the corrosive reality of life on the margins of French society in 1995, the film operates as an almost eerie premonition of coming events, most saliently the 2005 Paris riots.
- 18.
In a review of Shank , The Guardian’s Cath Clarke writes that ‘just when you thought grimy gang drama had run out of steam, along comes this dystopian variation, set in a recession-ravaged London 2015’ (‘Shank’).
- 19.
Writing for Total Film, for example, Matt Glasby noted ‘that the entire narrative can be easily compressed into a 90-second dream sequence says much more than the garbled anti-violence messages’, while Michael Leader of Film4 decried an emphasis upon style over substance, lamenting that ‘the film becomes a pummelling succession of indulgent flourishes that serve no narrative purpose’ (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shank/).
- 20.
Ahead of a public enquiry into the fire, Michael Mansfield QC, who spoke on behalf of many of the bereaved Grenfell families, focused on this very imbalance asking: ‘How on earth, in the 21st century, in one of the richest boroughs of the United Kingdom, can a block like this just go up in flames with so many casualties involved?’ (Boycott and Gentleman, ‘Grenfell Labelled a “National Atrocity” as Lawyers Begin Giving Evidence’).
- 21.
In its simplest terms, the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme entitles residents of British council estates to purchase their homes for a nominally discounted fee.
- 22.
Attack the Block , which was produced by StudioCanal, Film4, Big Talk Pictures, and the UK Film Council, benefited from an estimated production budget of $13 million (Box Office Mojo).
- 23.
Noting its debt to sf films such as John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982), Sherryl Vint locates Attack the Block alongside contemporary ‘British films that humorously recontextualize well-known Hollywood conventions in inappropriate British contexts, such as Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007)’ (‘Visualizing the British Boom’ 174). The casting of Nick Frost as local drug dealer Ron strengthens this link further, given that he had a central role in both of Wright’s films, as does the involvement of Big Talk Pictures which co-produced them.
- 24.
This trend is unlikely to abate any time soon. In January 2018, The Guardian reported that ‘More than half of the 1,900 ultra-luxury apartments built in London last year failed to sell […] The total number of unsold luxury new-build homes, which are rarely advertised at less than £1m, has now hit a record high of 3,000 units’ (Neate, ‘Ghost Towers: Half of New-Build Luxury London Flats Fail to Sell’).
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Power, A. (2018). Multiculturalism and the Changing Face of Europe. In: Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89827-8_7
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