Construction of Identity in British and Indian Cinema: a Postcolonial Approach

The object of the dissertation is British and Indian popular (commercial) cinema and the construction of identity there. The problem of identity construction in Indian and British films was researched employing three approaches found in the postcolonial theory: the critique of colonial discourse, anticolonial nationalism and the construction of national identity and the problematics of diasporic identity. The comparative analysis of the films from the two industries of the countries which were bounded by colonial relationships in the past let us see the complex ways of how identity is articulated in the postcolonial period. It also shows that the colonial memory is not merely a historical relict, but one of the ways to construct identity, which is always brought up and rethought in contemporary popular culture. The comparative analysis of British and Indian films leads us to the following conclusions: Nadion constructs itself through the constant employment of the resources of colonial memory – and does so depending on various goals: fantasy, nostalgia, fear etc. The ever-present use of colonial memory in the context of the present shows that postcoloniality is a process rather than achieved state, thus letting us observe the positions and functions of imperialism not only in the past, but present as well. British as well as Indian cinema includes the cultural “otherness” in the narratives, which is modeled and manipulated according to the historical period when the film was made and reflecting different ideological displacements. Talking about “Other” becomes related to the “Self”, in this way creating the mechanisms of meanings