Sexy Sammy and Red Rosie? From Burning Books to the War on Terror

Abstract

Writing within the sonic register of a soundtrack that plundered the diasporic mind-set of a certain “London” massive, Hanif Kureishi was widely criticized for his contribution as writer to two films in the 1980s: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987). Less lyrically perhaps—and less filmic—Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses was famously set on fire in Bradford in 1989. Antiracist sexualities, street riots, and book burnings were taken to mark the mobilization of a diverse and complicated British Asian presence on the streets of the United Kingdom. The point that interests the author here is the reconfiguration of the streetscape of diaspora and terror in the years since these films and the burning of the book. Burning streets and books (not particularly good in themselves) are replaced with a more virulent racial profiling in contemporary times—a constant anxiety about and accusations againstMuslims (and by extension all British Asians), who are made uncomfortable at best, bombed into democracy elsewhere.