Conclusion: Cohabiting in Hybridity?

Abstract

By concentrating on British Raj films produced and released in the 1980s, this book has attempted to prove the importance of the visual media as a cultural and ideological apparatus that both reproduces and constructs — or ‘refracts’ — social realities. Special attention has therefore been paid to representational practices and how meanings are articulated in the process of communication. That is, not only the way events and images are depicted and framed on the screen, but the fact that the many gaps and silences also have significant value. It is from this perspective that the present book has attempted to explore how the competing views at stake in British society during the 1980s were reflected in Raj films in their re-vision of the country’s imperial past. The relationship between form and content in this film genre has proved relevant, since the main concern of this analysis has been to focus on presences and absences and the way certain groups were (mis)represented.