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annwfynI went to see ‘The Eagle’ last week, which I actually really quite liked. One thing that did occur to me (and I’m not sure if I’m articulating this well, so forgive me if I’m incoherent) was how much of a Western it was. It was as if all the truths of the rugged colonial west (as taught by Hollywood) had been taken and carefully applied to Roman Britain. You could have called it ‘Dances with Celts’ and you’d not be too inaccurate. It was a tale of one brave white man Roman and his Indian Celtic side kick and their adventures among the savage tribes of the colonized people. The Picts seemed, at times, to be a great big collection of Other, all glued together. I mean, admittedly, they were kind of awesome with it (I want to be an Aztec-Eskimo-Punk when I grow up!) but the imagery was weirdly familiar, and normally would be applied to people from Scotland.
And it got me thinking.
Do we create the racist images that we do – of Africans, of Native Americans – because those are the images that we have of the ‘Other’? Are they basic human responses to ‘those people are different’? Or do we create the images of the ‘Other’ in fiction – be they alien, or Pict, or whatever – based on the images that got manufactured by our society when we were romping across the globe in imperial glee, because that’s how we now see ‘the Other’?
Or…I suppose…did we create the iconography of the Wild West, and of the Native American, and the Noble Savage, and the Great White Hunter in Africa, and all of the above from a bunch of basic human instincts to ‘different people’ and would the Romans have viewed our ancestors much as our more recent ancestors viewed the Native Americans? Or do we now recreate that relationship using the iconography of the Wild West, or maybe the British Empire, because we can’t imagine how else it might have functioned, having so thoroughly brainwashed ourselves since the 19th century?
Does that make sense?
And does anyone have any opinions?
And it got me thinking.
Do we create the racist images that we do – of Africans, of Native Americans – because those are the images that we have of the ‘Other’? Are they basic human responses to ‘those people are different’? Or do we create the images of the ‘Other’ in fiction – be they alien, or Pict, or whatever – based on the images that got manufactured by our society when we were romping across the globe in imperial glee, because that’s how we now see ‘the Other’?
Or…I suppose…did we create the iconography of the Wild West, and of the Native American, and the Noble Savage, and the Great White Hunter in Africa, and all of the above from a bunch of basic human instincts to ‘different people’ and would the Romans have viewed our ancestors much as our more recent ancestors viewed the Native Americans? Or do we now recreate that relationship using the iconography of the Wild West, or maybe the British Empire, because we can’t imagine how else it might have functioned, having so thoroughly brainwashed ourselves since the 19th century?
Does that make sense?
And does anyone have any opinions?
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Date: 2011-04-18 07:05 pm (UTC)There is definitely an element of the second. Every time I see depictions of Australian Indigenous people in fiction from the US I get weirded out at the way they get depicted like American Indians, which is a whole different set of racist tropes to what I'm used to. (On the plus side this highlights both US racist tropes and the Australian ones I was expecting)
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Date: 2011-04-22 02:55 pm (UTC)