What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, everyday life and the materialisation of ageing
What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, everyday life and the materialisation of ageing
This chapter examines The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel cinema franchise (UK, 2011 & 2015) in relation to the care home franchise it represents. The films characterize the British seniors’ choice to outsource their retirement to India as both economically sensible and personally extraordinary, while glossing over the everyday life of Jaipur residents. The films try to make exotic the everyday (white) life of old age, including a need for new collective living situations, offering a unique perspective on contemporary aging as embodied and highly material without diminishing the potential value of older adults. However, the exoticism relies on what should be an uncomfortable racism arising from making one person’s everyday into another person’s exotic, offering a canny perspective on the disturbing and under-analyzed racial politics of contemporary aging.
Keywords: Cinema, long-term care, India, race, race and ageing, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
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