How western directors present the colonial history
Indochine, the winner of
the Academy Award for best Foreign Film, is a French movie directed by Regis
Wargnier in 1992. The story is set in Indochine (former name for Vietnam). Indochine was basically a love story but
what arouses my interests is how the western directors present the colonial
history.
In the movie, Devries, as the
representation of the colonists, not only looks superior to the natives but
also has more respectable characters which the natives do not have. She is braver
and has strong will power; therefore the natives willingly obey her and respect
her. Besides, the dark side of the history, such as the human trafficking and cruel
repression of peasant uprising, is covered. The directors usually avoid showing
the plight of the natives in their movies.
It seems to me that the director misrepresents
the colonial history by embellishing both the figure of colonists and the cruelty
of history. As a result, the audience would not feel guilty for the colonial
history and re-evaluate colonization. For the westerns, colonization might be a
rightful pattern of capital accumulation, but in the history book of those
former colonies such as China and India, it’s purely evil and trampled.
The European colonization wave ended
many decades ago. However, the rise of neocolonialism shows that the unequal
relation between the former colonial states and former colonists is still not
changed. The relatively backward countries are no longer dominated by direct
military force, but instead, dominated by the economic and political control. The
neo colonialism makes it necessary for the westerns to re-evaluate the
colonialism and the first step is to rectify the misrepresentation of the
history.
I am interested in your topic about the colonization. The westerns are always proud of the history of colonization. So it is no wired for the western directors to praise this behavior. While the natives' attitude to colonization is different from the colonist. They are more likely to take the colonists as invaders. Neutrally, colonization brought both disasters and advantages to the natives.The colonists robbed a lot of sources, killed many natives but also brought some modern technology and regime to natives. However,the motive of the colonists is not to make natives independent and powerful. From this point, the colonization is evil to the natives subjectively.
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