The Street Divided: Shifting Identities of British Muslims in the Post-September 11 Britain in the 2004 Film Yasmin

Abstract

                  Acculturation is the process of individuals or groups of people’s adaptation to a new cultural environment. Due to today’s globalization, more migrants, refugees, indigenous people and sojourners come to contact with different cultures, and then undergo a process of acculturation. This article analyzes the acculturation strategies that appeared in the 2004 British filmYasmin2 according to John W. Berry’s acculturation typology (2005). The objectives are (a) to describe how this social drama illustrates the shifting identities of British Muslims, and (b) to interrogate the increasingly politicized cultural identities. 
                  Yasmin explores cross-cultural tension from the eyes of the protagonist Yasmin. She is a British Muslim with Pakistani ancestry, who is trapped between the two societies of a Pakistani immigrant community and the liberal but increasingly Islamophobic British society. The filmelucidates Yasmin’s everyday negotiation of her cultural identity between the pre- and post-September 11 periods. It reminds us that cultural identity is not a static condition but a process of continuous adjustment and negotiation between the host culture and one’s original culture. The filmalso enables us to re-examine the popularized argument of the ‘clash of civilizations’ and the public image of ‘Islamic terrorists’, which are often presented in a disproportionally simplifiedway by the mainstream media. Although released more than a decade ago, this filmremains relevant, or even more so today.