Cinematic empire and nostalgia in Viceroy’s House and Victoria and Abdul

Abstract

The commercial viability of Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House (2017) and Stephen Frears’ Victoria and Abdul (2017) can be attributed to their effective use of heritage film elements to offer romanticized versions of British rule. Decoding the teleological intent behind these romanticized versions, this article contends that the chosen films promote nostalgia in response to the postimperial melancholia that Britain is experiencing in the contemporary period. Exploring the cinematic recreation of nostalgia, this article analyses the spatial, material, and racial aspects of Victoria and Abdul and Viceroy’s House. The spatial analysis highlights the cinematography used to depict heritage space to commemorate British tradition, the material examination focuses on colonial gifts of economic mobility and political emancipation bestowed on the colonized, and the racial analysis focuses on Muslim stereotyping through exoticism and animalization to reinforce British pride in civilizing the “inferior race”. An explication of these cinematic and narrative elements highlights the films’ invocation of nostalgia for an idealized past through a return to a closed epoch of empire that uncritically and dangerously reproduces ideologies of British cultural and racial superiority. Furthermore, this invocation of nostalgia works to glorify British historical origins and strengthen national cohesion in order to allay collective anxieties about the abject loss of the empire’s global recognition in the wake of Brexit.