Select one of the subjects below and write a coherent mini-essay
Chocolat. One critic has written of the film: “Chocolat explores the subtle and discreet workings of power, desire, betrayal and dependency in colonial inter-relationships. The film refuses to present a reality in which characters are polarized as either good or bad, oppressor or victim; instead it dramatizes colonial relationships as complex, ambiguous and intricate.” Using this quotation as a starting point, select a scene from Chocolat and explore the way in which it stages and explores the ambiguity of relationships. Use appropriate film terminology as necessary.
White Material: Aimé Césaire declared that "colonization… dehumanizes even the most civilized man." How does the film, made after colonization and depicting a distinctly post-colonial moment and country, explore the persistence of colonial ideology/activity and the dehumanization of its characters? Use appropriate technical terminology from YFS to ground your analysis of the scenes/shots you find to be the most compelling examples of this. Think, in particular, about sound and cinematography.
La Haine: in “On Violence” (see Week 2) Franz Fanon argues that the native quarter and the colonial quarter are incompatible. La Haine, made nearly a half-century later, may be understood as exploring and engaging a postcolonial tension that is analogous to the native-colonial dialectic (banlieue-Paris). Revisit the brief excerpt from Fanon, then carefully examine 1 or 2 moments in the film when the banlieue and Paris come into contact with one another, or when the inhabitants of one quarter find themselves in the other. How do characters move between “incompatible” areas? How does the formal filmic representation change as a function of the space represented?