However, since The Jewel in the Crown is also described as one of the most critical representations of the presence of Great Britain in India in the s, I will also focus on the ways the serial refers to Great Britain as a privileged vantage point but also as a locus of ambivalent attitudes, particularly so as it is seen by characters living in India but appearing on television screens at a moment when British television was trying to represent the British colonial past through various kinds of programs documentaries, fiction, serials.
Several key examples are discussed along those lines: the role of the opening and end credits, the use of excerpts from British newsreels in a work of fiction, the predominance of the British gaze and the way it is visually staged in the shots, some disturbing visual intrusions and conflagrations of unexpected shots. So the predominant location and historical focal point of the serial is definitely India, and more generally Asia, with constant references to the war against Japan.
So the favoured viewpoint is clearly that of Great Britain, which dreaded losing one of the main parts of its empire. This is illustrated by the choice of protagonists in the serial, who are mainly British and stand as the main focalisers actors and witnesses of the gradual retreat of the British from India and the ways they experienced this demise. Some critics have thus pointed out that the serial seemingly transgresses certain boundaries having to do in particular with inter-racial relations and miscegenation, as well as with hetero-normativity and patriarchy , but most of the time critics also underline the failure of those attempts at transgression which, in the end, only maintain limits and assert the impossibility of exchanges and crossovers 3.
Resorting to a familiar introductory device for TV series and serials, i. By hinting at a narrowing of perspective and mental collapse of those British people living in India especially women , they also depict India as a trap the British had to flee from if they did not want to end up mad like Barbara Batchelor a retired missionary teacher or Susan Layton a young English woman who becomes a widow while being pregnant with her first child.
Finally, episode 14 leaves the viewer in little doubt about the ultimate demise of the British, even though the dark fire smoke rising from the luminous town of Mirat is commented on by Count Bronowski and Guy Perron as a prefiguration of the coming riots between Indians more than as a sign of conflict between the British and the Indians.
