Arranged Marriages and Interracial Love Relationships in Women’s Cinema of the South Asian Diaspora

Abstract

Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair's films define diaspora as a diaspora space where women are portrayed as change agents. This paper explores how Chadha and Nair provide a different representation and possibilities for South Asian women in the diaspora in the description of arranged marriages and interracial love relationships so that they present pioneering female characters that subvert orientalist misconceptions about the South Asian Subcontinent and South Asian women. By so doing, this essay confirms how Chadha and Nair's selected films propose new postcolonial models that promote the construction of new roles for female characters in cinema that challenge the racial and gender inequality suffered by women in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the South Asian Subcontinent.