African American Family

What benefits does looking at a family provide for storytelling through films? When looking at a family there tends to be a lot of characters: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the close family friends who are not even blood related. Why would a filmmaker ever choose to work with such a large number of characters and people? The stories that can be told from a family tend to be universal such as, love, marriage, heartbreak, hardship and so on. These stories can only exist within a family do to one thing—generations. Family can have upwards of three generations or maybe even more. These generations have all experience different events in life which shapes their beliefs and morals. Filmmaker Mira Nair uses the family as the locus within
The families range from the intimate three person nuclear family of Mississippi Masala, to the huge extended family of Monsoon Wedding. Specifically, within Mississippi Masala, we the audience see the life of an Indian family who lives in Uganda until the Ugandan government deport all African Indians. As Jay’s (Roshan Seth) friend Okelo (Konga Mbandu) tells him, “Africa is for African’s, black Africans.” Even though Jay has been born and raised in Uganda he is not perceived as being African, he is still Indian. This forces Jay and his family to move out of Uganda. Eventually, the family ends up in Mississippi. Due to these events in Jay’s past his view on Africans is different than that of both his wife, Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore) and daughter, Meena (Sarita Choudhury). Jay, “also [carries][ a sense of bitternes and betrayal in regard to…Okelo,” (Beyond, 71). This resentment stems through not only to Okelo and Uganda, but also towards any African. Whereas, Meena and Kinnu are fine with Africans—Meena even begins a relationship with Denzel Washington’s character, Demetrius. This creates a divide within the family and within the
Jay remarks that, “[He] was born in Uganda. Uganda has been [his] home, [his] country. To which [he] had the utmost loyalty and love.” While, the audience hears and sees Jay saying this the camera pans from looking down at the letter he is currently writing, up to the window. Outside is the parking lot of the motel—it is not a glamorous sight, it is just a parking lot. The camera cuts back to Jay and the audience sees him still staring out the window, commenting on how much he loves Uganda. The image cuts to a shot of (what the audience can assume to be) a field in Uganda. As the camera pans, we the audience can feel Jay’s longing for his home country, he wants to return home. In Jigna Desai’s book Beyond Bollywood, she argues, “Many south Asian diasporic films depict yearnings for the homeland, it is rarely the protagonist that is depicted as longing nostalgically. These narratives encode diasporic affiliations primarily through the difference of generation, associating nostalgia with middle-age first generation migrants,” (70). This is depicted the situation within Mississippi Masala perfectly. Jay is the middle-age migrant longing for his family and him to return to Uganda. While, Meena is happy in America and adapting her Indian, African culture within the Western