The Familial Funnel

            English Vinglish beautifully captures the struggles of being an outsider. Shashi, in her struggle to be heard, must learn to speak the language of those with power. However, unlike the other protagonists we’ve seen, Shashi faces the harshest criticisms from her own immediate family. Radha, Lenny, and Vijay faced the harsh realities of the world directly as their families tried in vain to protect them. Shashi’s family, on the other hand, serves not as a shield from the judgment of society but instead as a perpetuator of the judgment from the outside. Thus English Vinglish can be seen as a commentary on familial complacency. When the injustices of the world affect all family members, as they do in Mother India for example, parents and children work as a team. However, Shashi’s story demonstrates how injustices that selectively affect only some members of a family create a microcosm that mirrors external oppression.

            Partition traumatized everyone, but unlike Shashi’s family, Lenny’s family attempted to shield her from talk of unrest. At the very beginning of the film, when Shanta mentioned that India might split, Lenny’s mother insisted that was nonsense. Throughout the film, Lenny’s family tried to maintain a sense of normality and happiness within the household. While often unsuccessful in protecting their child from witnessing the horrors of Partition, Lenny’s family aimed to shield their daughter from the trauma. Shashi’s family, on the other hand, constantly reminds her of her inferiority because of her inability to speak English. The other members of the family share a high status through their fluency in English, and as a result they alienate the one person in the family who society deems lesser. This family acts not as a shield but as a funnel, capturing the larger sentiment of the outside and channeling it home to their dutiful mother and wife.

            This familial funnel is a unique storytelling technique that offers powerful commentary on Indian society as a whole. Unlike traditional films, in which societal problems directly affect protagonists, Shashi receives a filtered version of society’s oppression through those who are supposed to love her most. Mother India offers the traditional commentary on external oppression through a moneylender who torments the entire family directly. Radha and her husband are united against this man, and the film offers social commentary by showing how external actors directly harm the protagonists. English Vinglish makes a powerful choice in limiting the amount of disrespect Shashi receives from Indians outside her family. Most of the contempt of her weak English comes from her daughter, who has been indoctrinated by those around her to be embarrassed. Her husband also offers little respect for Shashi, only complimenting her cooking and often making demands that force Shashi out of her comfort zone. Society does not directly torment Shashi, but she indirectly experiences the disrespect and oppression of the masses through her family. Thus English Vinglish offers social commentary by demonstrating that even when society shows ostensible respect, larger injustices still manage to find their way home through family.

            English Vinglish highlights the discrepancy between Indian society's claims to respect its mothers and an individual's actual treatment within her own family. The films we have watched thus far have presented an idealized version of the powerful matriarch that India claims to revere, and they seem to argue that society respects women. However, English Vinglish demonstrates that women often face the most oppression not from society as a whole, but from their own families. This film is thus a powerful commentary on the role of family and its ability to aggravate unfairness. When Shashi describes a family as "your small little world" inside this larger world, she drives home the effects of her familial microcosm, and the film ends encouraging us to look internally so that we avoid bringing daily injustice home to those we love.