Aguirre, Caché, and Creating Anti-Colonialist Puzzles: A Normative Perspective

Introduction

In this chapter, two particular ways are offered and explored in which the historically dominant and othering discourse towards the other are questioned via the narrative of a work of cinema. In other words, this chapter assigns an anti-colonialist narrative potential to certain works of cinema.

One particular way that is offered is the intentional lack of representation of the other as a subject-matter; leaving the colonialist protagonists without any material in the script, which otherwise can produce a justificatory set of knowledge for their conquest. It is this very dialectic process where the colonial power or the empire defines itself as superior in relation or in opposition to what the other is and vice versa (Spivak, 1985; Spivak, 1988; Said, 1978). Notably, the othering is not only about colonial or imperial forces defining and ascribing certain characteristics or norms to the people of distant lands, and acknowledging them as ‘truly’ the other (Ashcroft et al., 1998). It is also about defining itself, one’s characteristics and norms as universal; creating a (superior) subjectivity on the basis of and in contrast to what the other is assumed to do or be. The very question of representation of the other should then be subject to a well-warranted scrutiny in any intellectual endeavor including the works of cinema – especially considering the recent progressive turn in media industries accommodating a higher degree of cultural diversity in production, narration, and casting (Gonzalez-Sobrino et al., 2018.).

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) is an exemplary movie, which has such a narrative that goes to the point of ridiculing the colonial state of mind, whose othering practices fail throughout the movie. Such practices throughout the script seem to fail, in particular, due to partial lack of representation of the other. In the end, Aguirre, the Wrath of God seems to point to the madness of the colonialist state of mind when faced only with itself.

The second anti-colonialist puzzle is turning the historically dominant and othering gaze upside down. Caché (2005) accommodates such a narrative, resembling the Foucauldian disciplinary power of surveillance conducted rather on the privileged, enforcing to question one’s own privileged positionalities (Foucault, 2012; Winokur, 2003). While Caché’s narrative has been analyzed in relation to its debate on colonialism and its prospective features for the age of surveillance, such a normative questioning has not warranted much attention (Celik, 2010; Herzog, 2010; Levin, 2010).

Movie narratives featuring a critical or even emancipatory prospect warrant a normative assessment as such, so their interpretative prospects are better comprehended and evaluated in respect to relevant philosophical and normative perspectives. Such a normative outlook is one of the gaps in media studies that would highlight and scrutinize such emancipatory narratives in the works of cinema. In addition, while there are many discussions on Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Caché and their exposure of colonialism, they have not drawn much attention in regard to their anti-colonialist narrative potential. As well as the contemporary forms of orientalist and othering discourses in different media outputs, the movie narratives on underprivileged groups, inner workings of privilege, colonial history and the Western subject deserve a critical analysis especially now when many media formats claim to provide non-discriminatory or even progressive representations of minority groups, racial politics and whiteness (Hughey & González-Lesser, 2020). With the proposed normative and anti-colonialist outlook, this chapter aims to complement many media discourses and representation studies offered in this edited contribution.