The Nation Case Study

Mira Nair's The Namesake:

The Struggle

Mira Nair’s film adaptation of The Namesake touches on many of the issues of globalization today. In the film, a young Indian couple moves to New England, and starts a family in their new country. Their son, Gogol, is forced to face many obstacles in holding onto his Indian nationality, but also growing up in a distinctly American setting. According to Appudurai “a main problem in today’s global interactions is the struggle between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization” (Appudurai, 32). In the film adaptation of the Namesake the character of Gogol can be seen as a mediascape that exemplifies this struggle.

Appudurai says that a mediascape is an “imagined world” (Appudurai, 33). For us, we see young Gogol’s world as one that is always in transit. In the film, travel is a constant theme. Gogol is constantly going on trips and bringing us with him. We see that he does not feel at home with his parents when he visits India, however, he also does not fully fit in with his White American girlfriend’s family when he travels with them to their lake house in New England. As a result of this constant push and pull, he eventually settles in New York City known for its cosmopolitan mix of cultures. The cosmopolitan in this sense can be seen as a place where imagined worlds collide making a sort of mishmash with no real cultural history where no one and everyone belong. A cosmopolitan setting is where young Gogol feels most at home. At the end of the movie, Gogol continues his search by taking off in a plane traveling to an unknown destination.

On one of the trips to India Gogol takes, his family brings him to see the Taj Mahal one of the most famous structures in all of India. To us, the Taj Mahal is an Indian icon. We are able to travel to this place that for most of us exists only in the imagination through the travels and experiences of Gogol. Also, in the story, seeing the Taj Mahal inspires Gogol to become a successful architect. His success, however, is more based on a western sensibility than the spiritual and artistic success that the Taj Mahal represents.

Some of the struggles that Gogol faces do not require a trip to India or a weekend away from his parents to be realized. Some actually are more pronounced at home with his family. For example, when Gogol’s father passes away, he feels like he has failed him by allowing himself to be homogenized within American culture and western ideals. As a response to this, he shaves his head for his father’s funeral and leaves his American girlfriend who, he feels, is holding him back from his Indian roots. Through the mediascape of Gogol we begin to see how his struggle to find out his national identity can often interfere with potentially healthy relationships.

Gogol, unlike his father who came to America from India, does not need to create an imaginary nation for himself out of longing for his original home because he does not share a direct relationship to an Indian national identity. However, because of his upbringing, he also does not want to deny his past. Though the idea of the nation may be clear and distinct for Gogol’s parents, national lines are blurred for Gogol himself. Throughout the film The Namesake, these struggles are illustrated, and it is concluded that a person like Gogol must embrace this sense of displacement and use it to discover new things about, not just America and India, but all across the globe. For Gogol, national borders can often have no meaning.