Showing papers in "Modern Fiction Studies in 1996"

Serving a New World Order: Postcolonial Politics in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day

Abstract: In a 1994 article in GQ magazine entitled \"Stick It Up Howard's End,\" English writer John Ash identifies a growing American fascination with sentimental representations of upper-class British life. 2 A recent symptom of what Ash labels Merchant Ivory Syndrome (MIS) was the 1993 nomination of The Remains of the Day, the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's prize-winning novel, for five Oscars. The film is typical of Merchant Ivory productions in its recreation, in sumptuous (if not strictly accurate) period detail, of life within the upper echelons of English society before the Second World War. It may be read, Ash argues, as an example of what is called, in German, edelkitsch. Meaning, literally, \"noble kitsch,\" the term describes \"a form of cultural necrophilia, a slavering delectation of things we are (or should be) well rid of, such as dehumanizing class distinctions, rigid social codes and crippling repression\" (43). Speculating on the growth of the phenomenon in the U.S., Ash wonders whether it might be \"the symptom of a lingering colonial mentality\" (43) and concludes \"surely, the nation that has given us (among other things) abstract expressionism, jazz and Wallace Stevens [End Page 787] has no reason to doff its collective baseball cap in the direction of perfidious Albion\" (43).