Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film

by Janne Lahti, Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Overview

This anthology adds to the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies by examining settler colonial narratives in the under analyzed medium of film.

Cinematic Settlers discusses different cinematic genres, national traditions, and specific movies in order to expose related threads, shared circulations of knowledge, and paralleled representations. Organized into thematic groupings--conquest, settlers, natives, and space--the contributors explore the question of how film compares to written genres and other visual media in representing and effecting settler colonialism on a global scale. Striving for inclusiveness, the volume covers different eras and settler colonial situations in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hawaii, the American West, Canada, Latin America, Russia, France, Algeria, German Africa, South Africa, and even the next frontier: outer space. By showing how films offer layered, contested, and dynamic settler colonial narratives that advance and challenge settler hegemonic readings, the essays enable students to better analyze and understand the complex history of diversity and colonialism in film.

This book is important reading for undergraduate classes on the history of empire, colonialism, and film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367503833
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/27/2020
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr Janne Lahti is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow in History at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He specializes in global and transnational histories of settler colonialism, borderlands, American West, and Nordic colonialism. His books include German and United States Colonialism in a Connected World: Entangled Empires (2020), The American West and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives (2019), and Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the Southwest Borderlands (2017).

Professor Rebecca Weaver-Hightower is Chair of English at North Dakota State University. Her publications include Frontier Fictions: Settler Sagas and Postcolonial Guilt (2018), Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest, (2007), Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance (2014, co-edited with Peter Hulme), and another collection on settler literatures Archiving Settler Colonialism: Culture, Space, and Race, (2018, co-edited with Yuting Huang).

Table of Contents

List of figures x

Prologue Mike Bruised Head xii

List of contributors xiv

Introduction: Reel Settler Colonialism: Gazing, Reception, and Production of Global Settler Cinemas Rebecca Weaver-Hightower Janne Lahti 1

Part I Conquest 11

1 The South Pacific as the Final Frontier: Hollywood's South Seas Fantasies, the Beachcomber, and Militarization Delia Malia Konzett 13

2 Environments of Settler Colonialism in Statehood-Era U.S. Cinematic Depictions of the Hawaiian Islands Lawrence H. Kessler 26

3 Settler-Aboriginal Alliance and the Threat of Foreign Invasion in Baz Luhrmann's Australia Travis Franks 38

4 Settler Bolsheviks in the Soviet "Eastern" Alexander Morrison 50

Part II Settlers 63

5 Gunless as Settler Colonial Borderlands Fantasy Sheila McManus 65

6 The Unbearable Settler West in The Ballad of Buster Scrubs Janne Lahti 77

7 Unser Haus in Kamerun: The Restoration of Settler Colonial Memory in German Post-World War II Cinema Wolfgang Fuhrmann 87

8 Negotiating Between Homelands: Settler Colonial Situation and Settler Ambivalence in Taiwan Cinema Lin-chin Tsai 99

Part III Natives 113

9 Hero or Dupe: Jay Swan and the Ambivalences of Aboriginal Masculinity in the Films of Ivan Sen Barry Judd 115

10 In the Land of the Head Hunters: Kwakwaka' wakw Archives and the Settler Colonial Lens Natale A. Zappia 127

11 Disrupting Settler Innocence in Latin American Films M. Bianet Castellanos 138

12 The "Knack" of the Wilderpeople: Post-Settlement Cinema in Aotearoa New Zealand Misha Kavka Stephen Turner 150

Part IV Space 163

13 Landscapes, Wildlife, and Grey Owl: Settler Colonial Imaginaries and Tourist Spaces in William J. Oliver's Parks Branch Films, 1920s-1930s Dominique Brégent-Heald 165

14 From Colonial Casbah to Casbah-Banlieue: Settlement and Space in Pépé Moko (1937) and La Haine (1996) Maria Flood 177

15 Between Sherwood Forest and the Red Sea: Settler Colonial South Africa in early Hollywood Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk 189

16 Settler Evasions in Interstellar and Cowboys and Aliens: Thinking the End of the World is Still Easier Than Thinking the End of Settler Colonialism Lorenzo Veracini 203

Index 215

Editorial Reviews

"Situated at the intersection of film studies and settler colonial studies, Cinematic Settlers is an extremely valuable volume that reflects on settler colonialism as a multifaceted process that is, in fundamental ways, still ongoing and in which cinema has been, since its invention, centrally involved. With sixteen carefully considered and clearly written essays, the collection produces an understanding of settler colonialism, and the film cultures it has produced, that is grounded in historical and textual specificity on the one hand and expansive, indeed global, on the other. The result is a volume of remarkable depth and breadth that throws into fresh relief the politics - of place, of representation, of identity - that structure settler societies." - Corinn Columpar, University of Toronto, Canada

"Cinematic Settlers challenges the field of settler-colonial studies with its ambitious geographical breadth and redefines conceptions of world cinema by interrogating the settler structures that underpin the medium. It is an essential text that spans multiple genres and historical periods to address urgent questions about the state of cinema and its role in cultivating a path beyond settlement." - Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield, Carson-Newman University, USA

"Settler colonialism is at the very core of modern global history. This wide-ranging collection reveals its huge impact on transnational film and popular culture."- Angela Woollacott, The Australian National University, Australia

"This collection of essays on cinema from across the globe offers rich new insights on the distinct cultures settler colonialism produced by mirroring and affirming settler interests, perspectives and fantasies. The collection also tackles difficult questions of how contemporary filmmakers grapple with Indigenous critiques and post-settlement politics in diverse ways; from adopting multivocal perspectives to re-staging settler narratives in new imaginary frontiers. When representing diversity in film is such a pressing issue, this timely collection explores the deep histories and ambivalences of settler cinema." - Shino Konishi, University of Western Australia, Australia

"A thought-provoking and mind-expanding anthology, which is particularly welcome in an academic milieu still inclined to nationally bounded scholarship, yet also alert to the usefulness of both a global vision and a local focus. This book will be of value to a wide audience in a range of disciplines, including both students and academics in history, film studies, and cultural studies, and particularly to scholars of settler colonialism." - Karen Fox, The Journal of Pacific History

". . . The collection produces an understanding of settler colonialism, and the film cultures it has produced . . . [with] remarkable depth and breadth that throws into fresh relief the politics - of place, of representation, of identity - that structure settler societies." - Corinn Columpar, University of Toronto, Canada

"Cinematic Settlers . . . is an essential text that spans multiple genres and historical periods to address urgent questions about the state of cinema and its role in cultivating a path beyond settlement." - Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield, Carson-Newman University, USA

"Settler colonialism is at the very core of modern global history. This wide-ranging collection reveals its huge impact on transnational film and popular culture." - Angela Woollacott, The Australian National University, Australia

"This collection . . . tackles difficult questions of how contemporary filmmakers grapple with Indigenous critiques and post-settlement politics in diverse ways . . . When representing diversity in film is such a pressing issue, this timely collection explores the deep histories and ambivalences of settler cinema." - Shino Konishi, University of Western Australia, Australia

From the Publisher