“The English are great lovers of themselves and of everything belonging to them. They think there are no other men like themselves and no other world but England and whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say he looks like an Englishman and it is a great pity he should not be an Englishman…”
The Venetian Ambassador of 1497, quoted in ‘English Traits’ In Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays 1856 London: Read Books (2006 edition p.85-6)
“They’re rubbish the French. They’ve never forgiven us for the Armada.”
Irate English holidaymaker, interviewed by the BBC during the 1995 French seamen’s blockade of English ferries.
The film I have chosen to analyse as a representation of my personal cultural identity is Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006). My identity, at its broadest level, is ‘white English’. However, the white identity is one in crisis, and has been since the mass immigrations of the 1960s and 1970s, which saw a totally unprepared Britain become a multi-racial society in the space of one generation. I personally find the racial definition ‘white English’ entirely unhelpful when considering contemporary cultural identity.
Today, with the added threat of global Islamic terrorism, and the converse emphasis of Islamic rights and culture, a dangerous breed of white English anti-immigrant sentiment, the like of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s and 70s, is threatening to rear its ugly head once again.
randomcrusader 