Colonial scientific-medical documentary films and the legitimization of an ideal state in post-war Spain

Abstract

Colonial scientificmedical documentary films and the legitimization of an ideal state in post-war Spain Documentários médico-científicos coloniais e a legitimação de um estado ideal na Espanha pós-guerraRecebido para publicação em fevereiro de 2015.Aprovado para publicação em julho de 2015.

The Changing Nature of Modernization Discourses in Documentary Films

“…Media are thus key constituents of the processes of construction and transmission of modernization discourses. Considering science as a form of communication (Secord 2004), and media as a set of communication practices, that is, focusing on what people do with these technological devices (Couldry 2004;Bräuchler and Postill 2010;Tabernero et al 2013Tabernero et al , 2017, we argue that any changes, insignificant or major, in the communication asymmetry built upon hierarchical, expertise boundaries, reflect what happens with people's everyday communication practices. The media ecology in a given context, understood as a lively, multidimensional and essentially diverse set of practices and discourses, play an essential role in shaping knowledge management processes.…”

“…These films directly addressed the regime's indoctrination and enculturation goals not only through the described depiction, but also through their technical and narrative features as documentaries. As a scientific-technological and therefore supposedly objective form of cinema, they provided information through the virtual witnessing of the feasibility, inevitability, generosity, and normalcy of the situations and processes depicted (Boon 2008(Boon , 2014a(Boon , 2014bKirby 2008Kirby , 2010Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro 2005;Tabernero et al 2017). Authority and the hierarchical management of knowledge were portrayed as unproblematic and in an entertaining way in the context of Spain's activities in a distant, exotic and heroic reality.…”

“…People who for the most part were living in dreadful conditions during the immediate postwar period had to be able to afford going to the movies. Yet, as a shared experience, cinema sustained the construction of potentially large informal socio-cultural communities around the arrangement of daily social, communication, learning and working practices, and, importantly for the regime, around a mix of sternly-selected practical, indoctrinating, and entertainment content (Taibo 2002; Gubern 2004; Tabernero et al 2017).…”

“…As portrayed in the films we analyze here, medical-health practices and discourses had an undeniable importance in building and legitimating strategies of the regime during that early establishment period (Chuliá 1997). This was particularly explicit in The Sick People of Mikomeseng , where the efficient administration of a newfangled, ideal state (in the form of a compulsorily isolated leper colony) was unabashedly depicted, and in Sick People in Ben Karrich , where the medical-health organizational tasks of the colonial administration were thoroughly shown as utterly successful (Tabernero et al 2017). In those films, the expert authority of the few providers of knowledge and the related services was explicitly juxtaposed to the ignorance and need of the many captive and beneficiary non-experts.…”

“…Some of the natives were thus trained and enlisted to perform technical albeit clearly subaltern tasks, as medical or laboratory assistants and nurses. In this way, they were allowed to be part of the modernizing endeavor (included), although always short of reaching the decision-making ranks (so, in the end, excluded) (Medina-Doménech 2009; Kusiak 2010; Tabernero et al 2017).…”