Dirty Laundry in “My Beautiful Launderette”

What does queer media beyond mere representation look like? This week, Mark Muster begins to answer the question that he posed in last week’s post.

In a 1986 New York Times interview regarding My Beautiful Launderette (1985), director Stephen Frears notes, “It’s a completely ironic film, isn’t it? We wanted people to have a wonderful time, but to make the film provocative, turning everything on its head.” Indeed, the made-for-TV movie highlights a topsy-turvy–like ’80s Britain.

The film’s irony comes from the portrayal of a Pakistani immigrant family at the center of a Thatcher-era story of “rich get richer, poor get poorer.” In contrast to classic images of corporate greed or poor immigrants, My Beautiful Launderette stars immigrants as greedy and corrupt, while the poor are represented by the British working class. Omar (Gordon Warnecke) is an unemployed young man taking care of his alcoholic father, a leftist ex-journalist who acts as the foil to Omar’s uncle, Nasser Ali (Saeed Jaffrey), a successful businessman who is best exemplified by the advice he gives to Omar, “In this damn country which we hate and love you can get anything you want … you [only] have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system.” Nasser and his family are decadent with their wealth: hosting lavish parties, and, at one moment, literally throwing money around.

Taking a job with his uncle, Omar’s own ’80s-inspired greed and ambition earns him a shot in the family business turning over one of his Uncle’s many properties, a destitute launderette in a poor neighborhood of London. Meanwhile, Omar’s childhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), exemplifies the poor English working class as a homeless kid whose punk gang resorts to crime and squatting for survival. These two worlds merge at the site of the launderette, owned and exploited by Nasser, whose revenue comes from his English working-class patrons. Omar and Johnny’s queer relationship and Nasser and his British mistress Rachel’s (Shirley Anne Field) infidelity represent aberrations in the film’s familial structure: where business and wealth are insulated and grown within Nasser’s vast family, Johnny and Rachel stand on the outside. They are the “dirty laundry” kept secret from the successful family. Renamed “Powders” (how gay is that?), the launderette becomes the symbol of the film’s tensions: anti-immigrant sentiment, greed, gentrification, and economic inequality play out as lovers Omar and Johnny renovate and run the launderette together.

Highly acclaimed, the film moved to theaters in Britain and America, where it received an Oscar nomination for the best original screenplay (beaten by Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters). This ability to move from British television to American theatrical distribution reflects the film’s reach and makes it a prime subject for analysis on queer representation.

In terms of queer relationships, we arrive at Johnny and Omar’s intimacy quite late. The first time we see them together on screen is a serendipitous reunion (we learn later they were very close childhood friends). We enter their relationship not at its conception but in a revival; we encounter them without experiencing their romantic past. This positioning may seem trivial but it does important work: it muddles the spectacle of queer intimacy. With much LGBT media centered around dating and romance, a potentially damaging and myopic structure emerges around these representations: What does queer love look like? What is queer love supposed to look like?

By denying us identifications with the beginnings of Johnny and Omar’s intimacy, we must find other ways to love their relationship. This makes us focus on what their love does, rather than what it looks like. We watch the two literally build a business together. Yes, it is a business that does indeed make money for Omar’s corrupt uncle and feeds Omar’s greed. But it is also a business that allows Johnny to break out of his cycle of crime for survival, and one that allows Omar and Johnny’s love to blossom.

At the height of the film, the aberrant relationships challenge the divisive theme of anti-immigrant London, showing the intersectional and connective power behind “queer” love. On the opening day of the launderette, Omar is nervous. Johnny — seeming to want to help him relax — pulls Omar into the back to fool around. However, with Johnny sitting on his lap, Omar reveals that he knows Johnny participated in anti-immigrant marches, and how xenophobia took part in his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s suicide. While Omar confesses, Johnny is sympathetic, sitting close to Omar, undressing him and caressing his chest. Johnny apologizes as Omar starts to strip Johnny in turn. Their intimacy is mirrored by Rachel and Nasser entering the launderette together. Flirting and laughing, the two seem to be truly in love. As they marvel at the beauty of the renovated launderette, Rachel says to Nasser, “Dance with me … we are learning.” They begin to waltz across the launderette as Johnny and Omar share champagne and make out behind the two-way mirror.

These two couples, whose love is immoral in structures of monogamy and heteronormativity, are actually the only characters who suture a racially and economically divided London. They kiss and dance at the very site that will connect these two sides for the benefit of both.

Looking deeper, Johnny and Omar’s queer love is actually intertwined with challenging London’s racial and economic divisiveness. In another example, queer love acts as comic relief, aimed at the audience to subvert the tension between Johnny’s anti-immigrant punk gang and Omar’s greedy drug-dealing uncle Salim (Derrick Branche). Omar exits the launderette to pay Johnny for his work, sharing glares with Johnny’s gang who are loitering at the entrance. As Salim drives by to check on the business, we look through his side-mirror, his hand in the shot, as both he and the gang observe Johnny and Omar.

The tensions of the film build and center themselves as “all eyes” are on Omar and Johnny. But the tension calms, as the audience is privileged with a shot from the opposite viewpoint: Omar hugs Johnny for a job well done, and we see a close up of Johnny’s head next to Omar’s. Playfully, he sticks his tongue out and licks Omar’s neck, a recognition of their love that eases the tension from these encroaching forces.

Other cute, quirky, and hilarious moments mingle with the queer love of these two characters and recall a specific moment that encapsulates — for me — the beauty of this film: in Nasser’s house, Salim makes a snide comment to Omar when discussing the launderette, “You haven’t fucked your uncle’s launderette, you little fool?” Omar, smug, lifts his head from his chair to meet Salim’s eyes and responds, “In my small opinion, much good can come of fucking.”

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.