Accented Cinema: A review of Mangrove (part of the Small Axe pentalogy) by Steve McQueen
By Mara Etienne-Manley
Introduction:
This paper examines Steve McQueen’s film Mangrove through the lenses of his diasporic experiences and the formation of the cinematic aesthetic described by Hamid Naficy as ‘accented cinema’.I will therefore examine the aesthetics and politics of Mangrove, the first of the BBC’s five part anthology series Small Axe and in applying Naficy’s theory, argue that McQueen’s film can be regarded as an ‘accented’ film as it deals with displacement and migration and representations of migrant and diasporic experiences.
Hamid Naficy’s Accented Cinema
In Hamid Naficy’s ground-breaking An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), he introduced the theory of ‘accented cinema’ by describing various characteristics that define exilic, diasporic and post-colonial filmmaking. While Naficy sees mainstream films as accent-free, he refers to films directed and produced by post-colonial filmmakers in exile or the diaspora as ‘accented’ films. According to him, “If the dominant cinema is considered universal and without accent, the films that diasporic and exilic subjects make are accented” (Naficy, 2001:4). He posits that “an accented film” is from and about marginalized people and communities of immigrants in Europe and North America, often highlighting issues of topical interest and provide insight into the migrants’ socio-political struggles and attempts to negotiate their transnational identities.
Naficy’s concept of ‘accented cinema’ refers to the filmmakers’ experiences of displacement, their stylistic approach to the production, and the underlying themes present in the films. He explains further that “the accent emanates not so much from the accented speech of the diegetic characters as from the displacement of the filmmakers and their artisanal production modes” (Naficy, 2001:4).
Naficy highlights the conditions of production that characterizes “accented mode” and argues that diasporic productions are fragmented, multi-lingual and self-reflective with themes centred on displacement, sense of belonging and identity. Apart from the displacement of filmmakers, Naficy contends that the mode of production, distribution and consumption of the film are other defining characteristics of the “accented style” (Naficy, 2001:40). In the context of production, Naficy makes a case for what he refers to as an ‘interstitial mode of production’ – by this he means accented filmmakers are not so much marginal, living and working on the peripheries of society or the film industry for that matter, as they are interstitial – that is to say they are situated inside and work in the interstices of both (Naficy, 2001:46).
Using Naficy’s perspective, I argue that Steve McQueen operates within the interstitial space and therefore employs the interstitial mode of production. To a large extent, Mangrove fits Naficy’s description of the interstitial mode of filmmaking which I will explore further later on in this paper.
Moreover, Naficy asserts that the life story of the filmmaker gives a sense of the personal as well as socio-political influences on the production of accented films, and so I will give a brief biography of Steve McQueen, highlighting various aspects of his life which will help us understand his need to tackle both personal and political conflict in his films.
Steve McQueen
To what extent can it be said that Steve McQueen’s personal experiences as a second generation Windrush immigrant are expressed in his films? And what features of the “accented cinema” are present in those films? In order to understand McQueen’s artistic journey as an accented filmmaker, it is important to know his biography.
Steve McQueen is an award-winning British video artist and filmmaker. He was born in London in 1969 to Trinidadian and Grenadian parents who were part of the Windrush generation – the first group of Caribbean migrants to settle in the UK from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. A direct descendant of the Windrush generation, McQueen grew up in West London where, as a dyslectic, he encountered difficulties at secondary school and was placed into a class for students believed to be best suited for ‘manual labour’. At the age of just 13, McQueen felt let down by the education system. Several years later, following an investigation, the new head of the school revealed that there had been institutional racism at the school during McQueen’s enrolment.
McQueen had a natural ability to draw and for him “art was liberating” (McQueen, 2021). Inspired by American pop artist Andy Warhol and the French minimalist filmmaker Robert Bresson, McQueen developed an interest in visual art. He then studied Fine Art at the University of London where he gravitated towards filmmaking and subsequently moved to New York to study the art of making films. There, he found the approach too restrictive and inadequately experimental. McQueen’s early work as a visual artist were short films which he often appeared in, typically “projected onto walls of an enclosed space in an art gallery for heightened intimacy” (Goldsmiths, University of London).
He won the Turner Prize in 1999 for his “original and uncompromising approach to film installation and innovative work in other media” (Goldsmiths, University of London). McQueen was then commended for his ability to “take a simple incident or image and evoke complex emotions and ideas from them” (Goldsmiths, University of London).
In 2011 he was awarded an OBE for his contribution to the visual arts and in 2013 he became the first Black film director to win an Oscar for Best Film for 12 Years a Slave. He went on to win a BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for that film, described by The New Yorker as “easily the greatest film ever made about American slavery” (Goldsmiths, University of London).
McQueen’s Small Axe film anthology explicates the experiences of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain - a complex intermingling of personal and political events of Black British history spanning thirty years. The stories, previously ignored in film history received critical acclaim at the 2020 New York Film Festival and were included in the official Cannes selection that year while Mangrove, the first film in the series opened the London Film Festival in October 2020. As a passion project which took McQueen more than a decade to realize given the personal nature of the stories, Mangrove provides us with an opportunity to study the aesthetic characteristics that Naficy refers to as ‘accents’ in films made by diasporic filmmakers.
Small Axe ‘Mangrove’
Mangrove is a 2020 historical drama film written by Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons and directed by McQueen, starring Letitia Wright (Guyana-born), Malachi Kirby (Jamaican heritage) and Shaun Parkes (Jamaican and Grenadian heritage). The film is the first instalment of the BBC’s five-part anthology which sheds light on the experiences of the UK’s West Indian community – the Windrush generation, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Known for making bold impressions and tackling real life controversial subject matters, in his latest anthology series, McQueen engages with a project much closer to home, exploring his own cultural upbringing and personal experiences as a member of the Caribbean diasporic community in Britain.
Mangrove recounts the true story of Frank Critchlow, a Trinidadian born civil rights campaigner and owner of the Caribbean restaurant, Mangrove. Since opening the restaurant in 1968, Critchlow encountered twelve racially charged police raids at his establishment over an eighteen month period, prompting members of the Black community to take to the streets in protest.
Involved in the marches were nine prominent men and women – known as the Mangrove Nine – including restaurant owner Critchlow, Altheia Jones Le-Cointe leader of the British Black Panther Movement, human rights activist Darcus Howe and community activist Rhodan Gordan, a family friend McQueen knew since he was a child.
During the protests, violence ensued between the West Indian community and the Metropolitan police force when, after considering a variety of reasons for arrests such as ‘inciting racial hatred’ under the 1968 Race Relations Act and deportation, police eventually arrested the Mangrove Nine, charging them with ‘incitement to riot and affray’ (John-Baptise, 2021). The charges were initially rejected by the magistrates’ courts but was later reinstated by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Instead of being heard at the local crown court, the case was tried at the Old Bailey, traditionally used for violent crimes like rape and murder, with only two of the twelve member jury being from the black community. Not trusting the British judicial system, three of the defendants opted to represent themselves so they could address the jury directly in a highly publicized, ground-breaking trial lasting 55 days (John-Baptise, 2021). The Mangrove Nine were later acquitted of the main charge and received suspended sentences for the lesser offences in the trial that became the “first judicial acknowledgement of ‘behaviour motivated by racism’ in the Metropolitan Police” (Royal Television Society, 2020).
This landmark case in British history inspired other civil rights activists to take on the legal establishment through the court system.
Mangrove:An Accented Film
I will now explore the features of accented cinema that are present in Mangrove. To begin with, as a second generation Windrush immigrant, McQueen is therefore part of the Caribbean diasporic community in Britain. Diaspora in this sense refers to the scattering of people from their home country and their attempts to maintain an identity to overcome feelings of displacement. That said, using Naficy’s dichotomy of exilic / diasporic filmmaker, McQueen can be placed into the second rubric - the diasporic filmmaker. With regards to the notion of accent, Naficy refers not to the speech patterns of the characters in the film but to the narrative and stylistic elements of the films as well as their modes of production (Naficy, 2001:23). However, I think it is important to note that in linguistics, an “accent” is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual that identifies them as being an outsider and so Naficy borrows this linguistic concept of accent to identify the kind of films he sees as ‘different’ from the dominant mode of production. That said, taking the linguistic concept into consideration, as it relates to Mangrove, the “range of accents of the characters in the story authentically illustrates how West Indians were defined as one assimilated group by the British, and how in fact their culture, language and identity can vary” (BBC Media Centre, 2020).
Using Naficy’s definition of ‘accented cinema’ I therefore argue that the ‘accent’ in Mangrove is created through the West Indian aspects of the film which influenced not only the filmmaking process but also the overall style of the production. As stated earlier, Mangrove fits neatly into the ‘interstitial mode of production’ identified by Naficy, based on sources of funding, the use of language in the film and the ethnic origin of the cast and crew.
Naficy states that one of the characteristics of the ‘interstitial mode of production’ is the financial provisions under which it operates, with filmmakers often needing to be creative in raising funds for their films.
From the moment the project was conceived, McQueen insisted that the events depicted in the film would be recreated as accurately as possible, and to be true to the subject matter, great effort was made to hire West Indian cast and crew. This attention to detail undoubtedly helped to deliver authentic perspectives on Mangrove.
Although McQueen got the idea for the film from real-life experiences of first-generation West Indians living in London, told to him by his parents while he was growing up, the story of the Mangrove Nine, which marked a significant juncture in British race relations history was not taught in schools or documented in history books and so McQueen had to dig deep to unearth that part of British history which has for the most part been kept in the dark. Not having a comprehensive recording of these historical events meant that the production underwent an unusual process which required funding to be secured before the scripts were completed. As a result, McQueen found it challenging to seek funding for a concept without having tangible scripts to present and eventually succeeded in securing funding from a range of public and private sources. These financial constraints faced by McQueen confirms that Mangrove depicts the characteristics associated with Naficy’s notion of ‘interstitial mode of production’ (Naficy 2001:46), a defining attribute of ‘accented films.
According to Naficy, apart from ‘the fundraising experiences that filmmakers undergo, other characteristics of interstitial mode include the language used as well as the origins of the cast and crew. He explains that the use of language, voice overs and multilinguality of the filmmakers and their crew, the stories the films are based on and the film’s target audience all contribute to the film’s accented style. For McQueen, not only was it important to accurately capture the character’s distinct West Indian accents, he felt it was also necessary to collaborate with Black and other ethnic minority cast and crew members in order to recognize the subject matter of the film.
Furthermore, in an effort address the lack of diversity and underrepresentation of Caribbean people in the film industry, McQueen appointed a trainee from an ethnic minority background in every department to give them the experience of working on a high-end TV drama. With regards to increased opportunities for Black British artists in the film industry, McQueen believes that ‘the landscape is changing due to individuals making change - laying down a path for people to come into’ (McQueen, 2020), which was the case with Mangrove. Adapting to the ever-changing landscape is up-an-coming cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, an Antiguan native who was given the opportunity to take on the role of director of photography on not only the Mangrove film, but the entire Small Axe anthology.
In closing, Naficy suggests that accented cinema is characterised by the filmmakers feeling of displacement that is projected and encoded in the film, and as a diasporic filmmaker, McQueen consciously makes films that deals with displacement and identity crises, and that exhibit a subtle personal and autobiographical flair, rather than a direct attempt to tell his own personal story. Mangrove which offers an absorbing portrait of the West Indian experience in Britain, reflects McQueen’s unique cinematic style and recurring political themes and neatly falls into the category described by Naficy as ‘accented cinema’.
