In Hakani, the division is clear: the world has two parts, the civilized and the uncivilized, and indigenous peoples are characterized as the latter. The messages in Hakani take shape under the guise of “missed representations” – narratives that misrepresent for a purpose. Hakani, is an example of misrepresentation, inaccuracy, sensationalism, cavalier treatment of Indigenous individuals and communities, demonstrating a general disregard for the effects of careless filmmaking on the people who are portrayed. Indigenous peoples are shown as “irrational, depraved, (fallen), childlike, 'different', this way, the West can be seen as “rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal’" (Said 40). The film reproduces these dominant values, ideas, and beliefs that circulate as hegemonic discourse -- the adoption of a self-serving tutelage.
This situation of dominion is reshaped by the avowed aim of bringing Indigenous people closer to the forefront of civilization and its supposed benefits. For example, the Zuruwaha -- indigenous people in the film -- are defined as uncivilized and exotic simply through the framing that occurs at the beginning of the film: the naked bodies painted with red dye (Urucum)
, the eating with the hands,
the absence of commodities and of recognizable characteristics – clothing, artifacts, tools, cooking utensils, hunting gear.
Hakani's filmmaker disregards Indigenous peoples, cultures, and geography by essentializing them and denuding them of their humanity. This is not a new tactic. Said quotes part of Henry Kissinger’s essay as an example: "'cultures which escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking have retained the essentially pre-Newtonion view that the real world is almost completely internal to the observer …[meaning] empirical reality has a much different significance for many of the new countries than for the West because in a certain sense they never went through the process of discovering it … [consequently, we must] construct an international order before a crisis imposes it as a necessity" (Said 47).
The pre-Newtonian/post-Newtonian concept, a totally artificial boundary, is an example of how we can promote the concept of "them and us" or "theirs and ours": whatever they are, we aren’t. Said states, “Since one cannot ontologically obliterate the Orient ... one does have the means to capture it, treat it, describe it, improve it, radically alter it" (Said 95). The filmmaker alters the place of the Zuruwaha people and puts them in the position of the negative “other,” culturally and ideologically, demonizing indigenous peoples by opposing them to the film's heroes -- the missionaries -- and by mis-representing Indigenous peoples as potentially more violent. It positions its protagonists as ill-fated victims throughout the film and uses the indigenous people as a backdrop to show the redemptive qualities of Western culture.
As a mode of discourse using a range of language, imagery, doctrine, and styles, the film tries to dominate, restructure, and authorize the conversation surrounding Hakani – shutting Indigenous peoples in from all sides, eliminating any connection to the outside world, requiring approval from them regarding rights and responsibilities. Dualism serves as a control mechanism, as the main lens through which the story is told. The manipulation of the representation of “other,” the power over the “other,” by way of a twofold view of the world is seen in Hakani, as well as other films by the same filmmaker.
The theme that emerges in one of Cunningham’s other films, the Path to 9/11, for example, is the juxtaposition of the evil Arab
against the good American -- the framing of a war with a good side and a bad side. Containing a strong overt dualistic Christian worldview with moral overtones – prayers and church scenes are interwoven throughout the movie – the Path to 9/11 is a very conservative story that makes a case for surveillance, vigilance, and pre-emptive investigations, and frames Islam as a barbarous, self-destructive, mean-spirited religion. In Cunningham’s The Seeker, the Christian worldview again predominates, this time in a story set around Christmas time that begins with “Joy to the World” being sung in the background. The film includes references to scripture, sin, sacrifice, and resurrection. The moral elements are based on an epic battle between good and evil, light and dark, with clearly defined characters, fighting for the light and standing for morality. For example, a young soldier states he is “defending the free world,” and servants of Light battle the Dark Horseman.
The film, embedded with a fundamental dualism, envisions two worlds at war. Promotional phrases, such as “The darkness is rising,” “You are the seeker,” and “The fate of the world is in your hands,” are an indication of the film's atmosphere. Indeed, in all of Cunningham’s films -- including To End All Wars, Path to 9/11, and The Seeker -- there is a clear opposition between good and evil. Cunningham relies heavily on depictions of the “exotic other” as the negative backdrop. This is especially true in Hakani where the “other” is negatively portrayed as frightening and subhuman, and is offset by the morally upright Westerner. The dichotomy presented is the fearful unknown stranger versus the familiar and humane servant of the United States.
As a form of Orientalism, the restructured dichotomy is not simply a question for politics, academia, or institutions, but neither is it a set of characteristics reflected passively by culture; “it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world” (Said 51). What this means is that the boundaries are a way to maintain a certain belief in place -- that one is in control of the physical space.
In essence, the restructuring or recategorizing is not a way to receive new information, but is instead a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to an established order. “If the mind must suddenly deal with what it takes to be a radically new form of life … the response on the whole is conservative and defensive” (Said 59). By way of these assumptions, of these artificial distinctions, we build familiar spaces, shape our reality, and manipulate our thinking so as to justify the need to civilize others. For example, the images in Hakani reproduce and substantiate the idea that there is a duty towards humanity to civilize any "uncivilized" peoples.
Hakani studies, depict, and and ultimately judges the “uncivilized other” as childlike, inferior, and degenerate because they do not understand the full immensity of Western “civilized” behavior. In Hakani, we find that the filmmaker and the viewers are not simply watchers (never becoming involved, always detached), but are instead positioned to question the value of the civilization being watched. “The Orient is watched, since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher … always ready for new examples of what the Description de l'Egypte called ‘bizarre jouissance'… the Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness" (Said 103).
As watchers, our job is not to simply and idly stand by, but to judge. We are sentinels; we are there to keep order. “The point is that in each of these cases the Oriental is contained and represented by dominating frameworks...an assumption had been made that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West" (Said 40, emphasis mine). We belong to systems of meaning with definite interests and a definite history of involvement where knowledge production goes hand in hand with power issues, assumptions, judgments, or categories. We all carry these and use them as a way to formulate binary oppositions. “The Oriental is depicted as something one judges (as in a court of law), something one studies and depicts (as in a curriculum), something one disciplines (as in a school or prison), something one illustrates (as in a zoological manual)" (Said 40).
The mere activity of participating in society involves a network of practices, histories, ideas, and beliefs that are sometimes grounded on ethnocentric notions. Said affirms that people are defined by their conscious or unconscious involvement with beliefs, class systems, social positions, or by "the mere activity of being a member of society” (Said 10-11). For Said, no one can completely detach themselves from the circumstances of life.
This is not necessarily to imply that Cunningham's adoption of anti-infanticide as a leading principle was either cynical or manipulative. This is simply to place the filmmaker in history as a human being and as a party to intellectual and other currents that flow through the modern world. It is the assimilation of images and stereotypes espoused by Christians and non-Christians that has placed the filmmaker within a constructed myth of an eternal holy category practicing eternal virtues and living by eternal verities. These virtues and verities are, however, at core, categorizations and judgments that put into question our own humanity since we cannot divide ourselves and still maintain the essence of what makes us human. “Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? … For such divisions are generalities whose use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends” (Said 45).
Devising reality to substantiate the idea that historical and social boundaries are needed, as evidenced in Hakani, is a way for the filmmaker to build and construct the space in which the film is located. The main assumption upon which the filmic interpretations of indigenous people rests is a product of both the filmmaker’s modern imagination and of his reformulating or refiguring of the parts of Indigenous peoples identity and nature based on the Hegelian assumption that he knows what that would mean. In Hakani, the “other” becomes the imaginary place in which the filmmaker sets up a new self composed of the essences of an imaginary “other,” an “other” shaped as a backdrop so as to promote a contrast on which the self becomes lighter, brighter, happier (literally as well as metaphorically). In Hakani, we are given the power by the filmmaker to create an imaginary world in which we are the heroes. We become the creators, “alternating between the Old World to which one returned, as to Eden or Paradise” [and a new version of the old, being] “wholly a new place to which one came as Columbus came to America, in order to set up a New World (although, ironically, Columbus himself thought that he discovered a new part of the Old World)” (Said 58).
In the case of Hakani, though, the process is duplicated. In addition to the viewers' process of creating an image of self, the filmmaker creates an “other” that becomes the center of a network of interests -- among other things, to increase the number of people in YWAM (Youth With A Mission), educate people on Christian rights, plan communities around the model Christian, build new and protect existing Christian organizations and churches. These interests inform the filmmaker’s activity, and no single part of that network can justly be used without considering the skewed views heavily loaded with Christian thinking.
It is, therefore, important and valuable to put pressure on ourselves to examine the adequacy of our conventional ways of thinking and feeling and of the memories that inhabit our minds -- fixed memories because once we “know” something it’s hard for our minds to forget it. We are incapable of controlling or defining everything we have learned. Hence, when our memories combine they add up to a fictional reality that is difficult to overcome. Our minds are full of fixed memories, thus, we have no proper way of understanding, let alone dealing with, problems that arise out of the very concepts we use to interpret “others.” So long as we restrict ourselves to the concepts and principles through which we have been educated to perceive reality, our ability to fully grasp what we are is, in some essential manner, limited. It is clear that if we continue using the assumptions, stereotypes, categorizations present in dominant discourse these will in turn inform how we think and feel.
Consequently, the most important choices in our personal, social, and political lives will have already been determined. "When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy…, the result is usually to polarize the distinction … and limit the human encounter between different cultures, traditions, and societies” (Said 45-46). We must do away with polemicist discourse and create a space to talk about the meaning of knowledge production since “political society ... reaches into such realms of civil society ... and saturates them with significance of direct concern to it” (Said 11). Deconstructing power and repressive phenomena can only be accomplished if we are open to meanings that are developed in the spaces where political society inundates civil society and enriches it with people's intellectual and spiritual experiments: “Style, figures of speech, settings, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances” (Said 11) are all contingent with people's existence.
Works Cited
Said, Edward W. 1st Vintage Books Edition. New York: Pantheon Books, c1979.
