doc on Stuart Hall
It is worth seeing in the cinema. As with Akomfrah other work it is beautiful to look at.
It is a companion piece to Nine Muses. Nine Muses is a visual poem ( that is the only fitting way I can describe it). It uses footage of the Windrush generation coming to UK intercut with readings from the Odyssey and other works of literature. Not a straightforward history or sociological look at migration its more a psychological study using literature.
Likewise in this doc on Stuart Hall archive footage and voice of Stuart on various programmes over the years builds up a picture of the man and his work.
Plus the music if Miles Davis. Stuart is a great fan of his work. The doc cleverly used his music throughout the film.
It is riveting viewing and not your standard documentary.
Stuart Hall was a pioneer of modern cultural studies/ postcolonial studies. This doc shows how his own life lead him to questions of social theory. He grew up in Jamaica at the end of the colonial period. His parents a middle class Jamaican family.
The major theme running through his life and work is the idea of "Hybridity". He says the Caribbean is a hybrid culture. To the question of where he comes from he can say several places. His family ancestors are African, Portuguese, and possibly East Asian. This is the norm in the Caribbean.
He translates this to say that a component globalisation is hybridity. Cultures are not pure. Do not worry this film is not an Open University course. It is , like Stuart comes across, a very humane film.
Like the protagonists in the Nine Muses Stuart has always felt out of place in different degrees. That also is an effect of hybrid culture.
For him this is a positive. The film charts his life in Britain. From a committed youthful intellectual in the radical 60s to know.
In the film, its interesting that he comes across as almost at home in 60s early 70s Britain. At end of film he says he feels out of place in post Thatcherite society.
Cannot help feeling that the concept of hybridity as a positive has not turned out in the way that he foresaw. Modern Britain is a hybrid of neo liberalism and social liberalism. Modern Capitalism can accommodate itself to hybridity of culture. Or co opt it.
I also disagree with his idea that hybridity can be extrapolated globally. The Caribbean was made out of slavery and imperialism to produce a new hybrid society. But other parts of the world do not have this history. Japan for example was never colonised. It is not a hybrid society.
