White Saviors and Magical Negros are well-established cinematic archetypes that have been identified, analyzed, and subsequently labeled as unadvisable storytelling tropes due to their innate cultural arrogance and racially offensive undertones. The following paper classifies a related cinematic phenomenon the author calls the White Fanatic. By analyzing three recent films in which white lead characters suffer existential crises and demand relief from Magical Natives, the paper makes the case that the White Fanatic represents a colonial mindset shared by filmmakers who continue to emphasize the experience of European colonizers at the expense of Indigenous peoples.The three films included in this analysis are Zama (2017), directed by Lucrecia Martel; The Lost City of Z (2016), directed by James Gray; and Embrace of the Serpent (2015), directed by Ciro Guerra. The author concludes that such stories are more sensitive to Native cultures than previously accepted versions of the White Savior. However, the essay calls for greater Indigenous representation that is uncorrupted by fanatical white protagonists.
In Print and On Screen: Film Columns, Criticism, and Culture in Early Hollywood - Richard Abel. Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913–1916. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. 424 pp. ISBN 9780520286788, $34.95 (paperback). - David Bordwell. The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 176 pp. ISBN 9780226352206, $20.00 (paperback). - Volume 19 Issue 1
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Mind, Music, and Motion Pictures: The Making and Remaking of the Sensuous Consumer - Joshua Yumibe. Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012. 230 pp. ISBN 9780813552965, $72.00 (cloth). - Lauren Rabinovitz. Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 256 pp. ISBN 9780231156608, $82.50 (cloth). - Neil Verma. Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 296 pp. ISBN 9780226853505, $90.00 (cloth). - Timothy D. Taylor. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 368 pp. ISBN 9780226791159, $40.00 (cloth). - Volume 16 Issue 2
In his 2013 Enterprise and Society presidential address, Kenneth Lipartito examined trends in business and cultural history and concluded that neither the focus on profi t-seeking self-interest and organizational structure nor language, mentality, and symbolic structure alone were suffi cient to explain the economic past. Instead, he made a case for the importance of practice theory in reintegrating “mentality and materiality in the study of history,” calling for a broader interpretive model through which cultural and business history can be viewed as inclusive. “What we can bring to this discussion,” he invited, “is the insight that what we call business or profi t-making activity can be found on both sides of what others assume to be a clear divide between commerce and culture.” Furthermore, he argued that “cultural forms and practices have often been enacted through businesses.” 1 In discussing the use of practice theory in history, Lipartito was careful to note that it is the historian’s job to “disentangle” certain elements that “come together historically” and “coalesce into a practice.” 2 Only through analyzing power, language, symbols,
