Screening Film Adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Hello learners. I'm a student. I'm writing this blog as a part of film screening worksheet activity. This task is assign by Dilip sir Barad. So in which I have tried to some answer in interesting questions. Click here.
Introduction - ( About Movie) :
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), directed by Mira Nair, is a political thriller based on Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel of the same name. The film follows Changez Khan (played by Riz Ahmed), a young Pakistani man who moves to the United States in pursuit of the “American Dream,” excelling in corporate finance. However, after the 9/11 attacks, he faces growing suspicion, racial profiling, and moral dilemmas that push him to re-evaluate his loyalties and identity. The narrative shifts between Lahore and New York, blending personal drama with political tension, and uses a framing device of an interview with an American journalist (Liev Schreiber) to explore themes of cultural hybridity, post-9/11 paranoia, and East–West relations. Unlike the novel’s single-perspective dramatic monologue, the film adopts a multi-perspective, visually rich storytelling style, incorporating flashbacks, music, and global settings to make the story accessible to a wider audience while retaining its central questions about power, representation, and belonging.
A. Pre-Watching Activities
1. Critical Reading & Reflection:
Read excerpts from Ania Loomba on the “New American Empire” and Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri’s Empire. How do these theories reframe Globalization beyond the center–margin dichotomy?
Ania Loomba’s discussion of the “New American Empire” and Hardt & Negri’s theory in Empire shift the understanding of globalization away from a simple center vs. margin model. Traditionally, globalization was seen as a flow of power, culture, and capital from a dominant “center” (e.g., the West) to the “margins” (developing countries). These new frameworks suggest something more complex:
1. Global Power as a Network, Not a Single Center
Hardt & Negri argue that power in the age of globalization is decentralized and deterritorialized. Instead of one imperial capital controlling the rest, we have a network of economic, political, and military nodes including multinational corporations, international institutions, and global media that operate across borders.
Loomba also notes that the U.S. plays a leading but not solitary role; its influence works in collaboration with transnational forces.
2. Blurring of Center and Margin
The “margins” are no longer just passive recipients they also generate culture, capital, and resistance that circulate globally.
Economic and political decisions made in one part of the world can have direct consequences everywhere, breaking down the binary of “core” and “periphery.”
3. Empire as a System of Control Beyond Nations
Hardt & Negri’s Empire describes a global order where sovereignty is diffused among states, corporations, NGOs, and supranational organizations (like the UN, WTO, IMF), creating a web of governance.
Loomba’s “New American Empire” ties this to U.S. foreign policy, showing how it uses both hard power (military force) and soft power (cultural and ideological influence) within this networked system.
4. Globalization as Simultaneous Domination and Opportunity
This framework shows how globalization can produce new forms of domination (economic inequality, cultural homogenization) but also new spaces for resistance, where individuals and groups in the “margins” can influence or challenge the global order.
Reflect in 300-word responses: How might these frameworks illuminate The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a text about empire, hybridity, and post-9/11 geopolitics?
Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist can be read through Ania Loomba’s “New American Empire” and Hardt & Negri’s Empire as a nuanced exploration of power, hybridity, and post-9/11 geopolitics. These frameworks move beyond the center–margin binary, showing how global power is decentralized, networked, and intertwined with cultural flows an idea that resonates deeply in Changez’s journey.
Changez begins as a product of globalization’s promise: a Pakistani man educated at Princeton, recruited into an elite U.S. consultancy firm, moving fluidly across borders. His identity embodies hybridity carrying cultural markers of Lahore while assimilating into American corporate culture. In the older center–margin model, Changez might be seen as moving from the periphery into the imperial core. However, Loomba’s and Hardt & Negri’s perspectives reveal that his position is more complex. He operates within a transnational corporate “Empire,” where economic and political influence is not tied to one nation but to a global capitalist network.
The events after 9/11 disrupt this fluidity. Changez experiences suspicion, racial profiling, and a subtle withdrawal of acceptance reminders that even in a networked world, racialized hierarchies persist. Loomba’s “New American Empire” helps explain how U.S. soft and hard power military action abroad, cultural dominance at home reassert themselves in moments of crisis, closing off spaces of hybridity.
At the same time, Empire’s idea of deterritorialized resistance is visible in Changez’s eventual rejection of his corporate role and his return to Lahore, where he engages in intellectual critique of U.S. foreign policy. His voice in the novel, addressing an ambiguous American listener, occupies a global conversational space, challenging the narratives of the dominant order.
Thus, these theories illuminate the novel as not just a post-9/11 story but a commentary on the fluid, contested terrain of globalization, where identities are hybrid, power is networked, and resistance can emerge from anywhere within the system.
2.Contextual Research :
Investigate Hamid’s background and the timeline of writing the novel. Note how the 9/11 attacks reshaped his narrative.
Mohsin Hamid’s Background & the Timeline of Writing The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Author Background
Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan. He grew up between Lahore and California (due to his father’s academic work), giving him firsthand experience of cultural hybridity. He studied at Princeton University, where he was taught by prominent writers like Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison, and later attended Harvard Law School. He worked in New York at a management consultancy firm an experience that shaped Changez’s corporate life in the novel.
Timeline of Writing
Hamid began drafting The Reluctant Fundamentalist before the 9/11 attacks, initially intending to write a story about a Pakistani man in America who faces identity struggles in a globalized world. At this early stage, the book was more of a cross-cultural romance and a commentary on ambition and belonging, without a strong political focus.
Impact of 9/11 on the Narrative
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, profoundly altered the global political climate, particularly U.S.–Muslim world relations. Hamid has stated in interviews that after 9/11, the meaning of his novel changed.
The attacks intensified questions of identity, loyalty, and suspicion for immigrants and Muslims in the West.
The rise of racial profiling, Islamophobia, and the “War on Terror” reframed Changez’s story from a personal tale into a political one.
Hamid reworked the novel’s tone and structure, adopting the dramatic monologue format a one-sided conversation between Changez and an American listener to directly confront post-9/11 tensions.
Result
By the time The Reluctant Fundamentalist was published in 2007, it had become a sharp critique of U.S. imperial power, a meditation on hybrid identity, and a narrative deeply rooted in the emotional and political aftermath of 9/11.
Write a short summary (150 words): What is the significance of Hamid having begun the novel before 9/11 but completing it thereafter?
The fact that Mohsin Hamid began The Reluctant Fundamentalist before 9/11 but completed it after the attacks is crucial to understanding its layered meaning. Initially conceived as a story of cultural hybridity and ambition, the novel shifted dramatically in tone and focus after the events of September 11, 2001. Before 9/11, Changez’s journey reflected the optimism and fluidity of globalization. After 9/11, Hamid rewrote the narrative to engage directly with the new political reality marked by suspicion toward Muslims, the “War on Terror,” and renewed U.S. imperial assertiveness. This shift transformed the novel into a tense political dialogue, highlighting how identity and belonging could be abruptly destabilized by global events. The timing underscores how personal and national narratives are intertwined, showing that a single historical moment can redefine both the meaning of a story and the lived experiences it represents.
B. While - watching activities
1.Character Conflicts & Themes
Father/son or generational split: Observe how corporate modernity (Changez at Underwood Samson) clashes with poetic-rooted values—though more implicit, think via symbolism or narrative tension
In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the tension between Changez’s corporate life at Underwood Samson and his family’s traditional, poetic-rooted values reflects an implicit father/son generational split. Changez’s father, though not heavily present in the narrative, symbolizes refinement, intellect, and a connection to Pakistan’s cultural heritage citing poetry, valuing conversation, and maintaining dignity despite financial decline. This worldview is grounded in history, literature, and moral depth rather than material gain.
By contrast, Changez’s early ambition in New York embodies corporate modernity efficiency, profit maximization, and a detachment from cultural sentiment, summed up in Underwood Samson’s mantra, “Focus on the fundamentals.” The clash is subtle yet symbolic: Changez’s immersion in the cold logic of global capitalism distances him from his family’s values, creating an unspoken generational tension. His eventual disillusionment and return to Lahore can be seen as a reconciliation rejecting the sterile corporate ethos and re-embracing the dignity, cultural pride, and poetic sensibility of his roots.
Changez and the American photographer (Erica): Watch how objectification and emotional estrangement are depicted visually and thematically
The relationship between Changez and Erica operates on two intertwined planes personal intimacy and symbolic commentary on East–West dynamics. Erica, a photographer, sees the world through a framing lens, often capturing images as objects to be fixed, preserved, and controlled. This mirrors how she perceives Changez not fully as himself, but through the lingering shadow of her deceased boyfriend, Chris. She projects an image onto Changez, using him to momentarily reconnect with her past rather than engaging with his actual identity.
This dynamic reflects objectification: Changez becomes a stand-in for another man, reduced to a role that serves Erica’s emotional needs. It also reveals emotional estrangement: while physically close at times, they remain spiritually and psychologically distant. Thematically, this estrangement parallels post-9/11 geopolitics america (Erica) unable to truly see or accept the “Other” (Changez/Pakistan) beyond its own narratives, resulting in a relationship marked by misunderstanding, projection, and ultimate disconnection.
Profit vs. knowledge/book: Look for cinematic metaphors of commodification versus literary or cultural value (e.g., scenes in Istanbul).
In the Istanbul scenes, the contrast between profit-driven corporate modernity and cultural–literary value is rendered both narratively and visually. Underwood Samson sends Changez to evaluate a struggling publishing company a space filled with books, manuscripts, and the lingering scent of history. The setting itself becomes a metaphor for knowledge as cultural heritage, representing ideas, art, and memory rather than marketable commodities.
Changez’s corporate task to assess profitability requires stripping these books of their intellectual worth and reducing them to balance-sheet figures. The act of “valuing” the company is a cinematic metaphor for commodification, where human creativity is translated into financial data. The visual contrast between dusty bookshelves and the sleek, impersonal tools of corporate analysis (laptops, spreadsheets) heightens the thematic divide.
In this moment, Changez’s discomfort signals his growing recognition that the corporate mantra of “Focus on the fundamentals” erases cultural richness in favor of monetary gain foreshadowing his ideological break from Underwood Samson.
2. Title Significance & Dual Fundamentalism
Monitor moments where Changez reflects on the nature of “fundamentalism”—does the film visually link religious and corporate forms of extremism?
The title The Reluctant Fundamentalist works on two intertwined levels religious and corporate revealing the film’s central critique of extremism in different forms. Changez never embraces religious militancy, yet he becomes a “fundamentalist” in two senses. First, his early career at Underwood Samson reflects corporate fundamentalism: a rigid, almost dogmatic commitment to profit maximization, where human and cultural values are secondary to economic “fundamentals.” This mirrors the structure of religious extremism both demand absolute loyalty, a narrow worldview, and the erasure of nuance.
The film visually links these forms through parallels in framing and tone:
Corporate boardrooms and financial evaluations are shot with the same precision and severity as scenes depicting military drills or political rallies, highlighting an underlying sameness in their pursuit of a single “truth.”
Changez’s eventual ideological shift from corporate profit-seeker to U.S. foreign policy critic replaces one form of fundamentalism with another: a committed opposition to American imperialism, which also risks becoming uncompromising.
Thus, the title encapsulates his uneasy journey between two extremes, neither of which fully satisfies his complex identity.
Note scenes where Changez’s reluctance emerges does the film capture his ambivalence toward both terrorism and corporate dominance?
1. Post-9/11 New York – When Changez smiles briefly upon seeing the Twin Towers fall, it is not joy but a complex, instinctive reaction to America’s global dominance being challenged. His discomfort afterward shows his unease with violence as a means of resistance.
2. Istanbul Publishing House – Tasked with shutting down a culturally rich but unprofitable company, Changez hesitates, visibly disturbed by the erasure of heritage in service of profit. This marks his first moral fracture with corporate “fundamentalism.”
3. Dinner Table in Lahore – In conversation with American colleagues and Pakistani intellectuals, Changez pushes back against U.S. foreign policy but avoids endorsing militant action, stressing the need for dialogue over armed struggle.
4. Final Confrontation Scene – Facing accusations of terrorism, Changez neither disavows his critiques of America nor aligns with violent extremists, standing instead for independent thought rooted in Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Through these scenes, the film captures his dual reluctance rejecting both the dehumanizing logic of corporate dominance and the destructive absolutism of terrorism, seeking instead a third space of critical engagement.
3.Empire narratives
Identify how the film portrays post-9/11 paranoia, mistrust, and dialogue across borders. How are spaces of ambiguity used to suggest complicity or resistance?
The film uses post-9/11 paranoia as a pervasive backdrop, shaping both personal relationships and political realities. Changez experiences heightened surveillance, racial profiling at airports, and a subtle shift in social interactions all emblematic of a world where mistrust of the “Other” becomes normalized. His American colleagues and even Erica begin to see him through a lens of suspicion, illustrating how empire narratives cast Muslim men as potential threats.
Dialogue across borders occurs through the central conversation between Changez and the American journalist Bobby in Lahore. This encounter is charged with tension an uneasy exchange where each man represents competing worldviews. Yet the dialogue is also a space of negotiation, where understanding remains possible despite deep ideological divides.
The film makes powerful use of spaces of ambiguity cafés in Lahore, shadowy alleys, and the non-linear narrative structure to blur the line between complicity and resistance. Viewers are left questioning whether Changez is merely a critic of U.S. policy or actively aiding anti-American actions. This deliberate uncertainty mirrors the climate of suspicion in the “New American Empire,” where identity and allegiance are constantly under scrutiny, and resistance can be misread as complicity.
In this way, the film resists simple binaries, portraying empire as a network of mistrust and uneven power where the possibility of mutual recognition still flickers, albeit precariously.
3. Post - watching activities
1.Discussion Prompts (Small Groups)
Does the film provide a space for reconciliation between East and West—or does it ultimately reinforce stereotypes?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers moments that seem to open a space for reconciliation between East and West, yet it also reflects the stubborn persistence of stereotypes. The ongoing conversation between Changez and the American journalist Bobby is central to this ambiguity it is a rare, extended dialogue across political and cultural divides. Through it, the film acknowledges the possibility of mutual understanding, showing Changez as articulate, reflective, and critical of violence while still grounded in Pakistani identity.
However, the post-9/11 lens remains dominant. Many American characters, including colleagues and security officials, respond to Changez through reductive assumptions about Muslims and Pakistanis, perpetuating the “threat” stereotype. Even the film’s framing device an American seeking answers about terrorism centers suspicion.
Ultimately, the film refuses a neat resolution. While it creates openings for empathy and dialogue, it also exposes how entrenched imperial narratives and mutual mistrust can limit reconciliation, leaving both sides wary and unresolved.
How successfully does Nair’s adaptation translate the novel’s dramatic monologue and ambiguity into cinematic language?
Mira nair on The Reluctant Fundamentalist:
Mohsin Hamid’s novel unfolds entirely as a dramatic monologue Changez speaking to an unnamed American listener in a Lahore café. Its power lies in the one-sided narration and the deliberate withholding of certainty, leaving the reader unsure of the listener’s intentions or Changez’s exact role in the events.
Mira Nair’s adaptation translates this into cinematic language by using a dual narrative structure: the conversation between Changez and the American journalist Bobby serves as the film’s anchor, while flashbacks dramatize Changez’s past in New York and Pakistan. The camera frequently shifts between tight close-ups in the present conversation emphasizing tension and intimacy and more expansive shots in flashbacks, visually marking temporal and emotional distance.
Ambiguity is sustained through selective framing and editing. Bobby’s true motives remain uncertain, and small visual cues shadows, obstructed views, and lingering glances keep suspicion alive. Changez’s own stance is never fully resolved; scenes are cut in ways that leave his complicity open to interpretation.
While some critics argue that adding multiple perspectives dilutes the purity of the novel’s monologue, Nair compensates by using film’s visual grammar contrast in lighting, cross-cutting between perspectives, and pauses in dialogue to evoke the same tension and uncertainty that Hamid achieved with words. The result is a cinematic form of the novel’s layered ambiguity, if less starkly claustrophobic than the original.
Debate: Is Changez a figure of resistance, a victim of Empire, both—or neither?
Changez can be read as both a victim of Empire and a figure of resistance. Initially, he is drawn into the machinery of the global capitalist “Empire” through Underwood Samson—embracing its values, enjoying its rewards, and embodying the ideal of a cosmopolitan elite. After 9/11, however, he experiences racial profiling, alienation, and a sudden withdrawal of acceptance in American society, revealing his vulnerability within the very system he served. In this sense, he is a victim—subject to the racialized hierarchies and mistrust embedded in the post-9/11 global order.
Yet, Changez transforms this disillusionment into resistance. By leaving his corporate role, returning to Lahore, and openly critiquing U.S. foreign policy, he rejects both economic and political imperialism. His resistance, however, is intellectual and ideological rather than militant, aiming to challenge Empire’s narratives without embracing violent extremism.
Thus, Changez embodies the duality of being shaped and harmed by Empire, yet also standing against it.
2.Short Analytical Essay (1,000 words)
Prompt: Using postcolonial theory (hybridity, third space, orientalism, re-orientalism), analyze how the film represents—through visual and narrative strategies—the complexity of identity, power, and resistance in a post-9/11 world.
Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist occupies a crucial position in post-9/11 cinema, using both visual and narrative strategies to interrogate identity, power, and resistance in an era marked by global suspicion and shifting imperial relations. Through the lenses of postcolonial theory particularly hybridity, third space, orientalism, and re-orientalism the film complicates simplistic binaries between East and West, revealing a fractured global order where belonging is contingent, and power relations are contested.
Hybridity and the Fragility of Cosmopolitan Identity
Changez’s journey begins as an exemplar of Bhabha’s hybridity a figure navigating multiple cultural codes with apparent ease. Educated at Princeton, excelling at Underwood Samson, and romantically involved with an American woman, Changez initially inhabits what appears to be a harmonious blend of Pakistani heritage and American modernity. Visually, this hybridity is conveyed through mise-en-scène: early corporate scenes bathe Changez in the cool, sleek interiors of New York boardrooms, juxtaposed with warm, nostalgic flashbacks of Lahore.
However, 9/11 fractures this hybridity. Changez’s corporate competence no longer shields him from racialized suspicion, airport interrogations, and the subtle withdrawal of trust from colleagues and strangers. Nair captures this disintegration through increasingly tense camera work close-ups that isolate Changez in crowds, and moments where his gaze confronts, but is not met by, others. The visual language underscores that hybridity is not a permanent refuge; it is precarious, contingent on the political climate, and easily dismantled by resurgent nationalist and imperial narratives.
Third Space as Dialogue and Contestation
Bhabha’s concept of the third space an interstitial zone where cultural interaction produces new meanings is most vividly embodied in the film’s framing device: the conversation between Changez and Bobby, the American journalist, in a Lahore café. This space is neither purely Pakistani nor purely American; it is a zone of translation, negotiation, and mutual suspicion.
The film’s cross-cutting between present-day dialogue and past events enacts the fluidity of the third space, where stories are contested and identities renegotiated. The café setting, with its ambient street noise and shifting light, mirrors the unstable nature of this space open to possibility, yet vulnerable to collapse under the weight of mistrust. Importantly, this third space does not resolve into harmony; it remains a site of tension where reconciliation is possible but not guaranteed.
Orientalism and the Western Gaze
Edward Said’s orientalism is evident in how certain American characters view and frame Changez. Before 9/11, his “difference” is exoticized Erica, the American photographer, is drawn to him partly for his foreign charm, visually coded through her camera lens and her fascination with his stories of Lahore. After 9/11, this exoticism shifts to suspicion; his identity becomes read through a security narrative, aligning him with a generalized Muslim threat.
The visual strategy here is telling: in post-9/11 scenes, Changez is often shown through obstructed frames behind glass, through surveillance-like angles, or partially in shadow mimicking the mediated, filtered way the “Orient” is seen by the West. His subjectivity is never apprehended directly; it is refracted through the Western gaze that either romanticizes or securitizes the Other.
Re-Orientalism and Self-Representation
The film also engages with re-orientalism, where representations of the East are constructed or reinforced by Eastern voices in ways that align with Western expectations. Changez, in his corporate life, performs a cosmopolitan Pakistani identity that is palatable to American corporate culture ambitious, articulate, and unthreatening. Even in his romance with Erica, he accepts the role of cultural interpreter, packaging Lahore’s history and customs into consumable anecdotes.
Yet, his later turn toward political critique resists this self-orientalizing role. By openly challenging U.S. foreign policy in a university lecture and through his conversation with Bobby, Changez asserts a self-representation not mediated by Western desire or fear. Visually, this is marked by more frontal, symmetrical shots in Lahore, granting him full presence within the frame, rather than the partial, surveilled images of earlier New York scenes.
Spaces of Ambiguity: Complicity or Resistance?
One of the most powerful strategies in both the novel and Nair’s adaptation is the use of ambiguity to destabilize fixed readings of Changez’s politics. The film never confirms whether he has direct links to militant activity, instead allowing suspicion to operate on both sides. This ambiguity reflects the post-9/11 reality where identity is under perpetual interrogation, and neutrality is often impossible.
Nair’s cinematic language reinforces this through lighting and pacing: night scenes in Lahore are lit with shifting shadows, and moments of potential revelation are interrupted by cross-cutting to unrelated events. The audience, like Bobby, must navigate partial knowledge mirroring how imperial power thrives on suspicion and incomplete information to justify its interventions.
The Istanbul Sequence: Profit vs. Cultural Value
The Istanbul publishing house episode becomes a concentrated metaphor for the clash between economic imperialism and cultural heritage. Changez’s corporate task is to reduce a space of literary and intellectual value to a question of profitability. The mise-en-scène contrasts dusty bookshelves and warm lighting with the cold, metallic tones of corporate tools laptops, calculators embodying the commodification of knowledge under capitalism. Changez’s visible discomfort here marks the beginning of his ideological break from corporate fundamentalism, signaling an awakening to the violence of economic imperialism.
From Victim to Resistant Intellectual
Postcolonial theory allows us to see Changez as both a victim of empire and a figure of resistance. Initially seduced by the global capitalist order, he benefits from its structures until political events reveal his racial and cultural vulnerability. His subsequent rejection of Underwood Samson and his turn to academia in Lahore reflect a shift toward intellectual resistance seeking to critique empire’s logic without endorsing violent fundamentalism.
Nair frames his lectures and conversations in open, public spaces, visually aligning him with dialogue and debate rather than clandestine militancy. This distinction is crucial: his resistance is rooted in language, critique, and the reclaiming of narrative authority.
Conclusion: The Film’s Postcolonial Intervention
Through the intertwined frameworks of hybridity, third space, orientalism, and re-orientalism, The Reluctant Fundamentalist emerges as a layered meditation on post-9/11 identity politics. Nair’s visual strategies contrasting mise-en-scène, selective framing, and temporal cross-cutting translate Hamid’s textual ambiguity into a cinematic language that resists simplistic binaries.
The film shows that in the “New American Empire,” identities are hybrid yet fragile, dialogue across borders is possible yet fraught, and resistance can emerge from the very spaces once occupied by complicity. It refuses the comfort of a clear resolution, instead leaving viewers in the same unsettled space as its characters a space where power is networked, suspicion is ambient, and the struggle for self-definition continues.
In doing so, Nair’s adaptation stands as both a critique of imperial narratives and a testament to the messy, unfinished work of postcolonial self-representation in a globalized world.
Support with reference to the novel’s framing, the film’s adaptation choices, and relevant scholarly critiques (e.g. Lau & Mendes on re-orientalism)
Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is structured entirely as a dramatic monologue, with Changez narrating his story to an unnamed American listener in a Lahore café. This one-sided framing creates textual ambiguity the reader never hears the American’s voice, leaving the listener’s motives and Changez’s reliability open to question. The novel’s tight control over perspective forces the audience to inhabit the ambiguity of cross-cultural exchange in a post-9/11 world.
Mira Nair’s adaptation retains the café conversation as its structural anchor but modifies the framing device: the listener becomes Bobby, a named American journalist, and his dialogue is heard. This choice sacrifices some of the novel’s monologic purity but allows cinematic interplay camera reversals, facial reactions, and tonal shifts to create a visual push-and-pull between perspectives. Nair’s decision to cross-cut between the present conversation and flashbacks introduces multiple temporalities, offering viewers access to events outside Changez’s narration, yet still withholding definitive “truths.”
Re-Orientalism and Self-Representation
According to Lau and Mendes (2011), re-orientalism occurs when postcolonial writers or filmmakers, even while attempting to challenge stereotypes, frame the East in ways that accommodate Western consumption often by foregrounding recognizable tropes or playing into familiar cultural binaries.
Both the novel and the film are aware of this risk. In his corporate life, Changez performs a palatable cosmopolitanism narrating Lahore’s history to Erica as charming anecdotes, translating his culture into digestible fragments. In the film, Nair visually reinforces this by showing Erica’s camera lingering on Changez, echoing the way the West frames the East through selective fascination.
However, both texts also subvert re-orientalism. As Lau and Mendes note, self-representation can strategically use familiar frames to destabilize them from within. In the café scenes, Changez speaks on his own terms, refusing to be reduced to either the exoticized Other or the terrorist stereotype. The film underlines this with frontal, symmetrical shots during his political lectures in Lahore granting him full visual authority. This marks a shift from being the object of Erica’s gaze to controlling his own image and narrative.
Scholarly Critiques of the Adaptation
Scholars have debated whether Nair’s choice to broaden perspectives dilutes the novel’s intentional ambiguity. While some argue that giving Bobby a voice lessens the claustrophobic uncertainty of the monologue, others suggest it opens a “third space” of cinematic dialogue (Bhabha), where both sides articulate their positions in real time. This aligns with Lau and Mendes’ view that self-representation in postcolonial contexts can involve negotiation rather than outright rejection of Western interlocutors.
Ultimately, the adaptation’s combination of framing, flashbacks, and visual symmetry seeks to translate Hamid’s thematic ambiguity into cinematic form, while acknowledging the risk and strategic use of re-orientalism in telling a story that must speak to both Eastern and Western audiences.
3.Reflective Journal
Reflect on your own positionality as a viewer: Did the film shift your perspective on issues of identity, power, or representation? How might these reflections deepen your understanding of postcolonial subjects under global empire?
Watching The Reluctant Fundamentalist made me confront how easily global narratives about identity and power are shaped by dominant voices often Western and how those narratives seep into my own perceptions. Before the film, I understood post-9/11 suspicion toward Muslims largely as an abstract “issue” of prejudice; after watching Changez’s story unfold, the emotional and political weight of living under that suspicion became visceral. I realised how identity, in a globalised world, is not just self-defined but constantly negotiated and sometimes weaponised by others in positions of power.
The film also made me aware of how cinematic representation can subtly challenge or reinforce stereotypes. I noticed my own initial comfort with Erica’s New York world, which felt familiar through its cinematic tropes, compared to my relative “outsider” feeling in the Lahore scenes an indication of how much Western media frames my visual expectations. Yet as the film progressed, Lahore became the centre of moral and intellectual authority, and this shift unsettled my earlier alignment.
This experience deepened my understanding of postcolonial subjects under a global empire by showing that their agency often lies not in rejecting the West entirely, but in speaking back from within systems of global interconnectedness. Changez’s journey from corporate America’s golden boy to a vocal critic of imperial power demonstrated that resistance can be intellectual, cultural, and dialogic, not only physical. As a viewer, I was reminded that my own positionality as someone consuming this story through film places me inside the very circuits of representation and interpretation that postcolonial critique seeks to question.
Reference:
Barad, Dilip. “(PDF) Nostalgic Impact on Characterization in the ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid.” ResearchGate, www.researchgate.net/publication/350517947_Nostalgic_Impact_on_Characterization_in_the_Reluctant_Fundamentalist_by_Mohsin_Hamid. Accessed 14 Aug. 2025.
https://youtu.be/k2w_-a9rt7s?si=BoYaBgQLFFcWCr3B
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