A Conflict between Modern Culture and “Auntie”-quated Gender Roles in 'Bhaji on the Beach'

Bhaji on the Beach follows a group of South-Asian women who travel to Blackpool in order to temporarily escape from the ‘patriarchal demands made on [them] in [their] daily lives, struggling between the double yoke of racism and sexism that [they] bear’. However, it soon becomes clear that there is a third yoke that Simi didn’t mention, and that is the conflict caused by the contrasting cultural ideals of the aunties and the younger Punjabi women. While one may think that issues such as racism would be a bigger issue to the ladies, the hierarchy of judgment is presented perfectly through the scene in the tea shop, where the employee is hurling a barrage of racial slurs at the aunties, while they are simultaneously pre-occupied with unloading a number of unwarranted, judgemental opinions regarding Hasida’s pregnancy and their disregard for the life of her unborn child.

Although it’s easy for modern viewers to regard the ideals of the aunties as outdated, Nandi Bhatia notes that ‘from a gendered position… the homogenized discourse about the "homeland" becomes a contested terrain and assumes a fractured identity that questions these narratives, born, as they are, out of particular conditions of displacement’. Bhatia’s statement concisely explains the fundamental difference between the priorities of the aunties and the younger generation. The older characters were raised in a society where women were expected to fulfil a purely domestic role, however, these expectations conflict with the more liberal Western ideals in which women have more autonomy over their bodies and lifestyles. Bhatia explains that the resistance of the older women to adjust to Western society lies in the fact that ‘Indian women are expected to be more "moral" than western women, more spiritual, more honorable [sic], and completely willing to place the interests of the community before their own’. In a way, the women are acting as representatives of India, and the older women therefore feel obligated to uphold Indian values in the face of hostile Westerners. However, the younger women reject this immense pressure and would rather focus on creating multicultural identities as British-Punjabi women. Throughout the film, the younger women use their sexuality as a means to explore their identities, much to the disgust in the older women who reject modern ideas surrounding sexual liberation. The younger women have a much more relaxed approach to sexuality, with Madhu embarking on a flirtatious afternoon with a local boy, and on a deeper level, Hashida’s relationship with Oliver and subsequent pregnancy.

Notably, it isn’t just the older women that are hypercritical of the actions of the younger generation. The patriarchal beliefs of South-Asian culture demand that women prioritise the livelihoods of their husband and children above their own and should purely embody a domestic role within the home. Bhatia states that ‘patriarchies become critical of women's attempts towards self-empowerment, dismissing acts of resistance as contaminatory [sic] influences of western culture, and a loss of "respect" for one's own community and cultural ideals’.[4] This mindset not only expresses a strong distaste towards the possibility of women’s agency, but engrains a sense of negativity and criticism towards Western culture and implies that women must reject this culture in order to respect their own community.

While the majority of the film serves to expose and develop these conflicts, it successfully demonstrates growth on behalf of the aunties and an acceptance towards modern gender roles within their community. While it is highly unfortunate that for some of the aunties this acceptance was only solidified when they witnessed first-hand the domestic violence suffered by Ginder, the climactic scene dramatically encapsulates a unification between the generations and a redefinition of gender roles within their community.