Critical Connections: Forum on Cultural Studies in Asia and Beyond
16 March 2012, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SCHOLAR AND GUEST SPEAKER

Ms. Nirmala ISWARI                                               (National University of Singapore)                                                                                         email: <Nirmala@nus.edu.sg>

"Asia in Europe: Le Grand Voyage as Cinematic Pilgrimage"

Dominating the debate on Muslim integration in Europe is an often reductivist discourse that portrays Muslim populations in Europe as a social problem. This discourse asserts that European Muslims fail to adapt to secular values considered to be the foundation of European societies, such as tolerance, democracy and the freedom of speech. Claims that isolated acts of aggression, such as murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the London and Madrid Bombings, are symptomatic of communal tendency towards hostility, only reinforces reductive portrayals of Europe’s Muslim community. First released in 2004 to European audiences, Le Grand Voyage, a film that tells the story of a father and son who journey across Europe on their way to Mecca for the Hajj, is remarkable for its lack of reference to the ongoing debate on Muslim integration in Europe. If the popularity of the recent The Assault and United 93 in Europe is any indicator of audience’s expectation of cinematic representation on the subject of Islam, Ferroukhi’s choice to overlook this discourse certainly risks depriving the film of its potential market. Predictably, Ferroukhi admitted to encountering a lot of difficulties in securing funding to shoot the film, largely because potential donors felt that the film wouldn’t have a “mass appeal” and was not “commercially viable” (Toler 2007: 34). This paper argues that Ferroukhi’s strategy of weaving a non-mainstream content (the subject of Hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage) with a popular road movie format produces a film that introduces an alternative perspective to regarding Islam’s presence in Europe as a social issue and, in this way, interferes in the Muslim integration debate in Europe without being propagandistic.