Diasporic Characters in Film and Television

During this week’s classes, we discussed the diasporic themes found in hip hop music and the issues embedded in postcolonial media. However, what stuck me this week was the mention of how the fairly generic image of the “Bubbles,” the baby girl with the bubbles floating up from the washing basin became exclusively synonymous with Pears Soap. I began to wonder which other images have become so prominently associated with a particular brand. Though the three circle silhouette of Mickey Mouse’s head is instantly recognizable, it is by no means generic and neither are other brand manufactured symbols like it. However, one image did occur to me. The rough collie’s association with the protagonist of Eric Knight’s novel “Lassie Come Home” ever since it debuted in 1943.

Furthermore, as recently as the 2005 version of "Lassie Come Home," the Lassie franchise has been revived multiple times while other animal based ones have faded into memory. Why does the character of Lassie endure?

I believe it is due to the nature of basic story of Lassie. A Depression era Yorkshire family, suffering from financial difficulties, is forced to sell their son’s beloved collie to a Scottish duke. Despondent and homesick, the collie is freed from her new home by the duke’s kind niece Lassie then embarks on a perilous journey across the English countryside to be reunited with her family. At its heart, “Lassie Come Home” is the tale of a diaspora. The circumstances that force her family to sell her are not unlike those felt by the thousands of people that were driven from Europe during times of hardship, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her journey back home echoes the desires of those who left behind family members in their homeland, and hoped to one day be able to return and reconnect with their kin.

Today, the image of Lassie has transformed in the popular consciousness to be a rescue dog that saves Timmy from the well, but at the heart of every incarnation of the character is the theme that she always wishes to return home to her beloved master. It is the belief that one will face great dangers to return to one’s family that keeps the character of Lassie in the public’s consciousness and it is a story that is revisited again and again in books and movies featuring both human and animal protagonists.