Sorry about the late post - I didn't realize until this evening that you guys were supposed to be able to comment on this stuff all day... and excuse my writing, It's been a little while. Actually it's been a really long time.
I guess the sort of imperial underpinnings of film described in this essay were apparent to me before, I just hadn't given them much thought. I was always turned off by old style conquest and exploration films. I thought they were quaint in their depiction of nationalism (which I was never instilled with much of) and foreign places (which I had already learned weren't necessarily rife with savages). I thought it was because just about everyone back then was a racist, ignorant, etc. This essay definitely makes it seem a little more sinister. I thought it was interesting that England went as far as to pass laws enforcing the official image of the British colonials as superiors to their heathen counterparts abroad. No compromising the white man's position of superiority, no savages fooling around with our women, and none of the brutal realities of colonial power. And going as far as to fund industries to oppose local film movements was much more blatant than I expected. It would be interesting to learn more about early opposition to this trend. Someone must have been trying to show a different take on empire through film, or those rules would have been a waste. If not some intellectuals here in the west, then perhaps some of the early film makers in the colonies of the world.
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