Arguments over inclusion and excusion flare when terms like ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ hit the headlines and tensions are exacerbated when nation-states change as a result of a coup, conflict, referenda or elections by which national identity may freeze into a bordered block when nationalism is released or melt into common areas as treaties break boundaries. Citizenship should be rigid and inviolate, but shifts in status can impose and withdraw this actually abstract condition, rendering it subject to chimerical criteria. Boxes within boxes make citizenship increasingly opaque – Welsh, British, European; Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American; Hong Kong, Chinese, East Asian – and the consequences for World cinemas are manifold. Beyond the nation-state, between the limitations of national cinemas and before the dispersion of transnational ones, how can the remapping of contemporary World cinema cope with its ongoing coagulation and dissolution?
Who to ask?
I know I’ve been letting my pride show in presenting the experts that are contributing to The Routledge Comanion to World Cinema and the book series Remapping World Cinema, but should I?
A few weeks back in the run-up to the referendum on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU, Michael Gove, speaking for the Vote Leave campaign, declared on national television that, “I think people in this country have had enough of experts.”
Gove effectively punctured any aspirations to impact by the countless academics who had been contacted by the media for their informed opinions on the referendum. Their predictions of financial gloom, racist violence, free-falling Sterling, stalled industries and rising prices thus went unheeded. Their ambitions for academic impact achieved by public engagement also evaporated and we were left with a media blitz of soundbites that no research, data or facts could counter.
So why bother to make The Routledge Comanion to World Cinema if people have had enough of experts?
Last night I watched the Turkish film Mustang and wanted to find out more about it, but it was late and a lazy bit of googling led me to the IMDB user forum.
“The reason the West loves this movie is because it feeds into all their stereotypes about Muslims, Muslim men, and Turkey. On its own merits, it’s a very inaccurate portrayal of life, and it doesn’t even make sense in terms of the story itself.”
“It is so cringeworthy trying to prove that you ‘know better’ and want to ‘enlighten’ others because you’re from that country. I take this film to be a worrying and accurate depiction of modern Turkey. This is one reason why I might vote ‘out’ on 23/06/2016 as I want no relaxation within Schengen for Turkish citizens to travel, which will have a massive effect on the UK as a non-Schengen state as stats on Albanians, another country with relaxed travel within Schengen, show.”
“You know nothing about my country.”
“The most important question concerns your sex. Are you a man or a woman? Your defensiveness and indefensible attacks on this film answer that question.”
“How in hell does my opinion on liking a movie determine my gender? Does disliking a movie about The Holocaust make you a Nazi?”
“Because I don’t believe for a minute you are unbiased and I won’t be asking you any questions. So suck on that.”
Is that you, Gove?