Debates - Advanced Level

The Asian Question - the 'Burden of Representation'

Representation

Representation is a multi-faceted key concept and it can be approached from these four perspectives:

1. What conventions are being used in the film to re-present the world?
2. Are the characters in the film meant to be representative of particular types (and are they stereotypes)?
3. What is the film trying to say (its preferred reading)?
4. Who is the intended audience and what sense do we think they will make of the film?

The section on textual analysis considers some of the modes of representation used by East is East and the section on audience gives us some clues as to how the film was read. Here we wish to debate the use of types and offer readings of the film from two perspectives; one being from Nick Lacey (ethnically white and culturally northern English) a teacher of Media Studies in a almost wholly white secondary school in West Yorkshire; the other from Raheela Raza-Syed, a young journalist and scriptwriter for a BFI New Directors film, directed by Shafeeq Vellani.