Does anybody know the significance of the orange bouncing toy in the film? It is shown several time throughout the movie, ie on the street, being run over, as garbage and at the end of the film being used by a kid. Maybe I am looking too much into this but I thought that it was funny cause I had one of those toys when I was a kid.
shareemmmmmmm, I think you're analyzing this a bit too much, but anyways, maybe it represents the toys used in the 70s (the film was afterall set in 1970s England), innocence, children?
shareKinda makes me think of the orange ladoo ball that the groom pushed away in refusing the initial wedding early in the movie.
Once that ball got smashed under the van, the dad's violence pretty much took over everyone's life.
I think it represents the object of desire from Sajid's POV, he wants it so when he first sees it with a kid bouncing on it. The next time he sees one, it is the one his cousin runs over in his fan when they go to Bradford and finally he sees one in the street corner all busted just before the Shah's come to visit.
It is an object of desire from the point of view of a child who desires it but does not acquire it.
So simply something he really wants but does not get!
http://imdb.com/title/tt0109872/board/nest/54510162
I took it that the space hopper was symbolic of British life and the freedom that Sajid and his family wanted but could not really have.
They are constantly wanting what they don't have really (especially Tariq and Adul in particular).
When Sajid first sees the space hopper, he says something to the effect of 'what is that?'. It's a concept that's unfamiliar to him, it's alien, it's unusual (as would be the concept of freedom for HIS family).
Later, he sees one and it's destroyed by his family's van. Ironically, the hopper belonged to another Pakistani child...symbolic of the freedom that child is about to lose, perhaps?
He sees one in a cut scene (DVD extras, baby) floating down a canal...symbollic of his desires for a normal free life seeming to literally float off beyond reach.
If I remember, at the very end of the movie though, Sajid is actually on a space hopper as his brothers run down the street chased by Peggy. I thought at that moment it was meant to signify that he got his brief moment of freedom and happiness (notice also that the Parka is finally gone now, the parka had its own significance).
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We've become a race of peeping toms.