Another melting pot

(originally published in The Outreach Connection in July 1997) (obviously at a very specific time in modern Canadian history – a referendum on independence for Quebec had failed very narrowly in 1995, and the risk of a second, successful attempt at it felt very high).

It’s obvious by now that I can hardly articulate my thoughts, except by referring to movies. But then, why would I need to, when fate (or as the case may be, Alliance, Norstar and so forth) keeps delivering such eerily topical stimulation to our local screens.

Last Friday night I had some drinks and, the way the conversation went, I ended up getting all depressed about Quebec. The next afternoon, clear-headed again, I went to see Broken English, a new film directed by Gregor Nicholas. This movie tells us (a) that diverse societies can be hell, (b) that they needn’t be, and (c) that either way, it’s better than the alternative.

The alternative, in Broken English, is war. In one of the more idiosyncratic melting pots I’ve encountered in a movie-going life, based largely on the search for diversity, the movie presents a family of Croatian refugees, living in New Zealand, and the consequences when one of the daughters (played with effective sexiness by Aleksandra Vujcic) falls in love with a Maori cook from the restaurant where she’s a waitress.

The most prominent subplot involves the Vujcic character’s arranged marriage (she has citizenship by virtue of her mother having been born there) to a workmate’s Asian boyfriend. Just on a basic line-by-line and scene-by-scene level, the movie isn’t always easy to assimilate for the very reason suggested by its title: the mix of accents and idiosyncrasies – intermingled with bursts of foreign dialogue that are sometimes translated and sometimes not – means that your sense of what’s happening is occasionally only approximate.

This isn’t a big problem, though, because the characters aren’t staking out particularly complex positions. The Croatian father (Rade Serbedzija, whose other movie this year was The Saint) has managed, through his entrepreneurial activities (at least some of which aren’t quite within the law) to acquire a passably middle-class house and such trappings as a mobile phone, into which he talks a lot.

Economically and structurally, he’s essentially absorbed into the society. Culturally, on the other hand, he doesn’t even try. He basks in his difference; he asserts it frequently. He doesn’t even seem to try modifying his hot temper and (by Western standards at least) wildly unreasonable treatment of his family; he conducts himself with a self-righteous, passionate swagger. When Vujcic’s character brings her Maori boyfriend and Asian friends for a visit (a venture that we always know will end in tears), he makes a remark about it resembling a UN peace-keeping force, which isn’t delivered with the tone of an endorsement.

This all plays out in a relatively unsurprising fashion (and, coming on top of Once Were Warriors a couple of years ago, has the effect of making you a bit depressed about New Zealand). The climax of the movie is violent and hopeless – a racial war on a suburban lawn. But the final image is uplifting: a moment of unambiguous, pragmatic, cultural unity that, however – because it consists of people posing for a photograph – is also an explicitly artificial creation. So can we take away a feeling of optimism about this particular melting pot (and, by extension, our own), or are we just being thrown a final reconciliatory mirage to distract us from the ongoing fractures?

As usual, the answer is probably both, although it’s encouraging that the younger people are, on the whole, better integrated than the older ones (also as an aside, the Croatian daughters seem to be more independently minded than the son). Love, economic opportunity and the plain desire to have a life that’s easy and uncomplicated, and that allows you a measure of pride and self-respect: these seem like obvious motives for assimilating as much as you can of your governing environment.

On the other hand, depending on the time and place, and on how the cards are dealt, they might all seem like equally obvious motives for rejecting it. Serbedzija’s character might be described as prejudiced against the Maoris and the Asians (one wonders how he’d react to a WASP, but the movie hardly contains any of them), but his actions are based in his desire to perpetuate values and traditions that he knows will otherwise be swallowed whole by the multi-cultural society. That’s not a justification, but it’s the way he is.

So I said I was thinking about Quebec. As Jack Nicholson said in Mars Attacks, just before the aliens zapped him, “Why can’t we all just get along.” Movies, or any media products for that matter, seldom suggest that any situation is utterly intransigent. The nature of a narrative, of the artistic process, and of imagination itself, is to find a way to get from here to there – however crazy and idealistic the goal.

The real world, unfortunately, generally follows more incremental mechanisms: in politics, it pretty much always does. Our leaders may or may not have vision, but they seldom apply it to their policy-making (which is perhaps just as well, given that the Megacity idea was a bold enough leap to be attributed to a vision of some sort). And I guess we just have to accept, for the most part, that they do the best they can given the tradeoffs required.

The thing that depresses me about our current situation is that we might actually need some inspiring leadership. If I were in Quebec, listening to the Bloc trying to pull me out of the country on the one hand and (if this is how it develops) Preston Manning seeming to push me out of it on the other – of course I’d be tempted to vote for independence.

Why would I want to be locked into that perpetual debate and psychic trauma with its uncertainty -  I’d rather pull the plug and hope for the best. Which would be the wrong decision. The economics of separation are probably just devastating. But as we know, people play their hunches as far as economics goes.

Next time round, then, the argument for continuing unity had better be as clear as a bell. Which it wasn’t last time, and won’t be again, unless someone starts meticulously communicating it long before the situation becomes dire. And as for whether Chretien’s the person to lead that communication…well, I think we’re all aware of his limitations by now.

Paradoxically, perhaps, the reason that Broken English gives me some hope isn’t in the characters who assimilate, but in the Croatian father who doesn’t. Despite his hot-headedness, he knows that culture and economics are two different things: separation in one can – in a diverse world – must coexist with assimilation in the other. Not everything is a matter for the gun, or even for the ballot box. Although the world of Broken English is hopelessly fragmented, this is just a reflection of the fact that in an open facilitating society, people make the choices they must. And if they choose to erect internal walls, well…there’s nothing wrong with separation as long as we’re all in it together.