As a master’s and Ph.D. student at Anglia Ruskin University in 2011, I recall the central message in lectures given by my eventual Ph.D. supervisor Professor Guido Rings was that we cannot underestimate the enduring strength of the legacy of colonialism in Europe and its influence on shaping contemporary attitudes towards immigration. Indeed, as I was completing my studies, I became increasingly aware of the negative rhetoric towards migrants in politics and right-wing press. In an attempt to placate the far-right of his party and address a growing threat from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a discourse of ‘othernising’ migrants on the basis of their supposed rejection of ‘Britishness’ from former UK Prime Minister David Cameron in particular caught my attention. The result of this was tightening of immigration regulations, which culminated of course in the now-infamous Brexit vote of 2016. Almost a decade after my graduation, Professor Rings is currently Vice Chair for the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission and continues to work at Anglia Ruskin University at the level of Ph.D. supervisor. He still publishes widely in the field of Migration Studies and his recent high-profile book The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema (Routledge, 2016) and editorships in the fields of culture and identity (iMex Interdisciplinario Mexico) argue for increased intercultural solidarity in Europe as well as a strengthening of supranational organizations like the EU and the UN to offset growing nationalism. I got in touch with Professor Rings to find out where he feels Europe stands today with regard to migration and get his comments on the continued rise of nationalism on the continent.
This article analyses Neill Blomkamp's Academy Award-winning District 9 (2009) to investigate the extent to which popular cinema might support neoliberal ideological positions. It draws upon Slavoj Žižek's psychoanalytic theory of ideology to explore how far anti-capitalist and anti-colonial tendencies in the film should be regarded as an “unconscious fantasy” (1989, p.30) that works towards reinforcing key aspects of neoliberalism. Through an exploration of private military contractor Multinational United (MNU), lead protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), and the film's spatial composition, this article argues that District 9 works in support of neoliberalism by constructing a social reality that sidesteps genuine criticisms of neoliberalism's role in continued socio-economic marginalisation and ongoing human suffering. This is evident in hollow criticisms of corporate capitalism vis-à-vis MNU and ignorant misrepresentations of the alien Other, which reinforce discourses of cultural and ethnic superiority associated with neoliberalism.
The Wachowskis’ and Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas indicates strong potential for an investigation into the advancement of transcultural messages in global cinema because of its conceptual commitment to narrate the story against the backdrop of sexuality, race, gender, and class. By combining critical discourse analysis (Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Power/Knowledge) with literary criticisms of postcolonial works (Hall, Hardt and Negri) and transcultural concepts of culture (Welsch, The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today; Rings, The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema), this paper investigates how far Cloud Atlas promotes transcultural identity constructs. Upon analysis of central themes and prominent characters Cloud Atlas transmits a message that if the aforementioned socio-cultural barriers can be overcome, we can cultivate something akin to a transcultural society. However, linkages to colonial discourse and quintessential cinematic conventions vis-à-vis white individualistic heroism demonstrate that Cloud Atlas’s liberal-humanist worldview is one that can ultimately be branded as compromised by monocultural assumptions of US values and ideals as superior.
Spatial fixing was an integral part of maintaining imperial power structures throughout the colonial period, and like other discourses, it later found itself reproduced in cinema. As such, the physical and mental use of space has become key to the dissemination of ideological messages in many films. Confronting this tendency, this study applies theories of postcolonialism to selected examples of contemporary Hollywood film to examine how far it reconstructs traditional binaries of space. This investigation finds that despite attempts to disseminate more culturally sensitive and globally-minded portrayals of the Other, space remains particularly problematic. It also remains vital to storytelling narratives of race, gender, class and society in consideration of the film cases analysed in this study. While Fanonian notions of space continue to permeate cinema—with Total Recall and Avatar in particular drawing upon stereotypical motifs, it is possible to observe developments upon these discourses. Elysium and District 9 exemplify this, with each feature employing space to address increased questioning of US cultural superiority since the failed Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and the 2008 global economic crash.
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