International Citizenry in the Age of the Spectacle

Abstract

Hollywood cinema is an instrument of ideology par excellence, where nonwhites, both from within the nation and without, occupy a subordinate role, from D. W. Griffith’s bizarre representation of the supposed heroism of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation (1915) to the more recent brazen exercises in Eurocentrism such as Gary Synder’s 300 (2007). This is a mindset that envisions the world from a single, privileged point, which has been naturalized as “common sense” to such an extent that most people from the West are not even aware that it exists as the dominant paradigm, so much so that postcolonial film theorist Ella Shohat terms it “unthinking Eurocentrism” (Shohat and Stam, 1994). Shohat and Stam describe it as an implicit positioning rather than a political stance (Shohat and Stam, 1994: p. 4), and it is a mindset that causes the West to perceive the world only as its reflection, with everything that is different as being against the norm. Indeed, the overt propaganda of master Third Reich propagandist Leni Riefenstahl is not as dangerous as the covert propaganda of Hollywood cinema today, masked as it is in the feel-good “winning hearts and minds” model. In today’s world where the mass media have immense reach and power, they play a crucial role in developing and disseminating stereotypes that eventually take over the mindset of entire countries, with disastrous ramifications.

Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned

bell hooks, 1996: p. 2