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Race and identity in colonial and early Hollywood Cinema:
In addition to the location and social environments in which African films are set, each characters actions, beliefs, relationships and attitudes help construct the overall reality represented in each film. The reality that is derived from film creates a narrative context through which critics and audiences perceive African cultures and ideas about African identities. I would be presenting a critical analysis of how nineteenth century perceptions or ideas about race helped in contributing to colonial and early Hollywood cinema in relation to the preparation of contemporary filmmakers observations of post-colonial African identities and realities. An analysis of African identities will be made to focus on filmmakers portrayals of African realities in the film Shaka Zulu.
This paper will be observing the filmmakers representation of African identities and for this observation we would be looking at legitimacy and authenticity acquired from within the represented reality of the film. Shaka Zulu represents the overreaching, uni-dimensional African identities defined by one set of tradition, language and one ethnicity. Filmmakers however, problematize the representations of African identities based on the interpretation and applications of the concept of race . Filmmakers present the topic of African identity and explore historical insights of race and forms o racism which exist in contemporary African communities. Analyzing Shaka Zulu will provide an insight into the African identities that are observed by filmmakers.
Before proceeding further with how African identity is represented in Shaka Zulu, I would like to discuss first black and white identities. One needs to first understand these definitions before we indulge in a well-informed analysis of African identities and realities represented in films.
Race discourse in nineteenth century
Discovering the historic applications of the term race and the social implications of racial discourse in European and African communities helps understand a filmmakers idea of African identity in a film. Race was not most certainly a European invention (Banton 1983: 4) as witnessed by the pervasive use of the concept American colonial history (Allen 1994: 23-24). This paper will however focus on the European constructions of race in the nineteenth century. During this period of time other countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Gr1eat Britain, Italy, Portugal and Spain (Roberts 1985: 302; Pfaff 2004: 51; Meredith 2005: 1-5) began to colonize Africa for prestige, Strategy and resource ( 1986: 297) based on a sense of racial superiority promoted by popular racial discourses. In the 1970s, Britain became the leading slave-trading nation in the world, the foremost slave carrier for other Europeans and became the centre of the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa and the Caribbean (Hiro 1973: x: Ukadike 1994: 29).
Several theories about humanity that it is divided into a limited number of distinct races or species based on biological physical differences originated in the Enlightenment era in the early nineteenth century (Jones 1997: 40-41; Thackway 2003:17) at the same point of time the slave trade and colonization of African continent were unfolding. Typologists claim that humanity could be divided into types or species categories which were defined based on assumptions of permanent differences included in physical appearance (Banton 1983: 44-45). Examples of physical differences included skin, colour, facial type, cranial profile and size, texture and colour of hair (Stocking 1968: 56). These differences were measured in relation to an ultimate physical idea, to which the greater number of the individuals in the group more or less approach, but is better in some than in others (1968: 58). According to typology theory, mental and cultural differences could be perceived as a direct reflection of a persons racially determined physical structure Biddiss 1979: 12; Odum 1967: 7; Stocking 1968: 56) This theory also suggests that different races innately feel animosity or a sense of rivalry toward one another.
In the year 1859 Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in which he prosed a theory of natural selection. Darwins theories did not end the development of the term race but further engaged with its meaning as a reference to sub-species and varieties instead of primordial types or species identified by typology theorists. Darwin used the term race to refer to domestic races as the outcome of human breeding (Banton 1983:46). With his theory based on natural selection, typologists proposed that there were permanent physical characteristics or forms in human nature that could be traced back to one, primordial race (Banton 1983: 46). Influenced by the interpretations of Darwins writings, especially the us of race in the sub-title of The Origin of Species English writers employed the term race frequently when elaborating their philosophies of history, for it was believed that the growing economic and political strength of the European powers rose from qualities inherent in the white race, or races and that these promised European supremacy (Banton 1983: 51). The negative image of non-Europeans races and the inherent superiority of Europeans was thus established based on rigid hierarchical methods of classification, which typologists and doctrines reinforced: In turn-of-the-century evolutionary thinking savagery, dark skin, and a small brain and incoherent mind were, for many, all part of the single evolutionary picture of primitive man (Stocking 1968: 132).
White and Black Identities :
By the end of the nineteenth century, a three stage model of race was established on cultural and social categories instead of only biological and physical criteria. The three stages of cultural progress were identified as savagery, Barbarism and civilization (Young 1995: 35) civilization placed at the top and primitives at the bottom (Young 1995:94). John Stuart Mills essay Civilization helped formalize the trio not as general categories but as a hierarchy of the historical stages of man, bringing geography and history together in a generalized scheme of European superiority that identified civilization with race (Young 1995: 35). On this hierarchical scale, the white race European societywas equated with civilization and all non-white, non-Europeans at the lowest ranks of the ladder were linked to primitives (Young 1995: 94). In fact, Africans were placed at the bottom of the human family, next to the ape, and there was some discussion as to whether the African should be categorized as belonging to the species of the ape or of the human (Young 1995: 7).
Later during the medieval period as the West expanded its imperial domination, a triple conflation of White, Europe and Christian arose that imparted moral, cultural and territorial content to Whiteness (Bonnett 1997: 175). This period witnessed the beginning of the usage of White as an ethnic type (Bonnett 1997: 175). Further adding to the three- stage model of race is James Cowle PrichardS theory of racial difference , which is the first people had been black and identified the cause of subsequent whiteness as civilization itself (Young 1995: 35). According to Prichard, white skin was both a marker of civilization and a product of it (Young 1995:35). Hence, people in Africa became black when they were conquered and defined by European people, who in the same move defined themselves as white (Arnfred 2004: 18). According to Ania Loomba , black Africans were considered bestial both because of the medieval and religious associations of blackness with filth and dirt, and also because this provided a justification for colonizing and enslaving them (Loomba 2005: 64). The method distinguishing was not only based on physical differences, but on what was not considered white . In other words Whiteness was a term used in conceptual opposition to Blackness (Bonnett 1997:177), the defining expression of the other.
Race and Colonialism
When European colonization reached its peak on the African continent the development of Darwins racial theories emerged at the same time. Thus. colonial conquest was firmly embedded in a racism that gave superhuman pre-eminence to white people (Davis 1996:1). Colonization spread as a byproduct of its real objectives of trade, economic exploitation and settlement (Young 2001: 24) A significant aspect colonization was not only the transmutation of European cultural values, but most importantly, the restructuring of local economies. Which yielded all raw materials and markets to colonial powers (2001: 24). As a result, restructuring led to the decline of local economies. (Young 2001: 24). Though, the concepts of imperialism and colonialism are different, yet they are associated with each other or rather used a synonyms, because similar to colonialism, imperialism entailed conquest through political and economic subjugation (2006).
Hence, at Berlin conference of 1884-85, European countries officially divided the African continent into colonies and spheres of influence (Pfaff 2004: 64-65) based on a supposed moral duty to civilize Africa (Diawara 1992:1) validated by terms such as civilizing, Christianizing and enlightenment (Davis 1996: 1), and the motivation to economically exploit the continent. Ironically, at the Berlin Conference it was also decided that the practice of slavery and free-market imperialism would cease (Ukadike 1994: 29). In 1985, European empires dominated over three-quarters of the earths surface and were at the apparent height of their power and influence (Armes 1987:9). In the colonial history of Africa, the concept of race was always an issue because physical descriptions such as black and white were used as mechanisms not only to categorize people racially but to create social hierarchies for the sake of power subjugation, and colonial expansion (Berkeley 2001: 5-20; Scherrer 2002: 365; Ukadike 1994: 43). The term whiteness represented a narrow Eurocentric vision, which degraded and de-valued non-White identities:
As we have seen, Whiteness has developed, over the past two hundred years, into a taken-for-granted experience structured upon a varying set of supremacist assumptions (sometimes cultural, sometimes biological, sometimes moral, sometimes all three). Non-White identities, by contrast, have been denied the privileges of normativity, and are marked within the West as marginal and inferior (Bonnett 1997: 188).
Real or imaginary differences such as facial features and skin color based on racial categories helped the colonizers devalue African cultures and instill Eurocentric values: So Africa was suffused with the language and racist ideology of the colonizer and it is not surprising then that racism has historically been both an ally and product of the colonization process (Ukadike 1994;38). Hence, one of the problems of colonialism was that all self-understanding and vale [were] based on race (Hoogan 2000: 77). The concept of race was used to mark boundaries for otherness, a category which Europeans placed Africans. In order to define European identity, Africans were classified according to the grid of Western thought and imagination, in which alterity [was] a negative category of the Same&The African [had] become not only the Other who [was] everyone else except me, but rather the key which, in its abnormal differences, specifies the identity of the Same (Mudimbe 1988: 12). The view of Africa as a savage other became the symbol of an inverted European civilization, the European world expressed in upside-down fashion, a primitive version of Europe onto which a variety of European fantasies and fears were projected (Ray 1976: 3). Thus, one of the most striking contradictions about colonialism is that it needs both to civilize its others and to fix them into perpetual otherness (Loomba 2005: 145).
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