A World of Ideas...
| Moyers, Bill 1994 A World of Ideas: Conquering America. The Moyers Collection series. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Notes: VHS color; 30 minutes | |
 Reviewed 12 Jun 2009 by:Sushumna Kannan <sushumnaa@gmail.com> Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, India | |
| Medium: | Film/Video |
| Subject: Immigrants - United States Mukherjee, Bharati - Interviews Keywords: Culture, Asia, America, Literature, Immigrant experience, Race, Multiculturalism. | |
ABSTRACT: Bill Moyers interviews the Indian-born writer Bharati Mukherjee about the immigrant experience in America in the 1960s and '70s. Mukherjee relates she would rather "conquer" America by contributing to the shaping of its culture and correcting its problems, rather than "adjust" to it. We learn how the 'American dream' survives for Asian immigrants despite the country's failed economic promise.
Bharati Mukherjee was born into an upper middle class Indian family in 1940, and migrated to America in 1961 where she attended the University of Iowa and later met her husband Clark Blaze. In the film, Mukherjee recalls, how, upon arrival, she immediately felt 'at home' in America, and that she had left behind the safety and circumscribed life in India, only to face the constant challenges that life in America posed.Unlike most countries or cultures where coinages such as the 'immigrant problem' and 'multiculturalism' are posed as socio-economic problems needing the intervention of the State, in this film, America emerges as a far more fluid space, at least in the 1960s. The film offers a very different perspective on issues of culture through Mukherjee's personal experiences and insights. She asserts that, historically, America offered a space where immigrants like herself could become active in shaping its culture. For her, America represented the capacity to dream, and dream big.
Mukherjee's understanding is that immigrants make America their own, despite the struggles they are faced with and the sacrifices they have to make. She sees America as "a stage for transformation" wherein the "immigrant changes the expectations of the white American," making him/her more open to the creation of a new culture. She tells us that she accepted the American challenge of "coming up from the bottom," and enjoys the challenge to the immigrant soul ''at risk," with no comfortable stereotypes available to lean upon. However, the lack of stereotypes "affects both whites and people of color", allowing for new cultural possibilities. She insists that this new possibility is not just about mimicry, or the "19th century pressure to make [one's self] in the Anglo-Saxon way", but that it is about "creating American culture daily through the improvised lives lived."
In America, says Mukherjee, "merit counts, at least theoretically". Although she sees this in sharp contrast to the constraints of the caste-class Indian society she left behind, she is also aware of the cost to original identities in new places where "we murder ourselves" and "commit violence against our old selves".
Mukherjee recalls that as a writer, she found no 'language' that could accommodate Asian experiences in American English fiction. She tells us of her disappointment with the New Yorker and Atlantic which "represented the neat lives of the whites, while the lives of the immigrants were messy" and "larger than real." In her own writing, she reveals that her attempts have been different and that she has sought to represent the lives of the immigrants.
Talking of her other early experiences in America, Mukherjee says that she has not personally experienced any racial discrimination in America but found it institutionalized in Canada in the mid-sixties. In Canada, she says, although immigrants were encouraged to retain "old world psyches" based upon a mosaic theory of culture, it only resulted in the marginalization of South Asians; the immigrants that did well for themselves were targets of scape-goating. Thus a comparative perspective is offered on historically different approaches cultural issues that is possibly very relevant for current discussion.
Bill Moyers asks Mukherjee that although she denies experiences of racial discrimination in America, why is it that the characters in her novels reveal otherwise. Mukherjee answers by saying that she differentiates the fictional world she creates from the real one, asserting at the same time that her characters face racism because of the "potential evil" in all of us. She says that Jasmine reinvents the idea of America as it attempts to capture the psychological dislocations, sacrifices and prices paid by the novel's main protagonist - a female illegal immigrant who becomes a murderer and blackmailer. Perhaps the real issue here is not so much about the relationship between life and literature and but that of actual social and cultural differences that then manifest themselves as psychological dislocations.
Mukherjee in her reply to a different question by Moyers takes up the issue of cultural differences. The question asks how is it that the main protagonist in the novel (also called Jasmine) was fighting evil if she herself was a murderer and blackmailer? Mukherje replies that "it doesn't always have to be a Judeo-Christian morality" -- her characters follow their own morality, retaining their integrity as individuals. She says that she and her characters are actually fighting evil. While admitting that her characters are Conradian [1] in nature, she insists that her work however, was a "Heart of Light!" and not a "Heart of Darkness"; it said "the wonder, the wonder!" rather than "the horror, the horror!"
Mukherjee's uniqueness indeed lies in her "embracing", and "conquering", as she puts it, of America. She does "not want to be just an expatriate, but wants to conquer and possess; to stay and fight the battles and correct the problems, rather than 'adjusting'".
The film suggests that culturality and the freedom to make cultures together, is a significant part of what the 'American dream' is actually about, and not just about economic promises.
Mukherjee mentions the violence perpetrated against Native Americans by the colonists, but fails to mention the violence of colonialism in India. Not mentioning the history of colonialism in India, but seeing it as a restrictive society and as a place where there was no "freedom from fate" constitutes a somewhat lopsided view.
Overall, Conquering America is a very good record of the experiences of the early Asian immigrants in America and introduces many key issues in a short duration. In particular, it captures Mukherjee's experience of America and her valuable insights into issues in multiculturality.
Students of Literature, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Asian Studies and American History would find the film useful and interesting.
References
[1] The reference is to Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:Kannan, Sushumna
2009 Review of A World of Ideas: Conquering America. Anthropology Review Database. June 12. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=1697, accessed June 17, 2009.
© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)
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