Response Paper: A Phenomenological Analysis of the film Black Robe as Social-Historical Text
Prepared by Richard Birch
First Nations in Historical Perspective HIST3216
Professor Wesley-Esquimaux
Monday, April 10 2006
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch
The film Black Robe (1991) is not a film that provides a positive regenerative message about both Canadian Aboriginal historical cultures and Eurocentric social structure. As a text, it also does not shed a light on either culture as compassionate, forgiving, progressive, or remarkable. In terms of subjective meanings and deconstructive analysis, the film as both a social and historical text is valuable for its balancing of cultural customs relating to identity, power, and a spiritual social construct. The film highlights the social fact that power, identity, and spiritualism are all social constructions – as they were during the period the film takes place, and as they are now. Where the film is also important is how it discusses the nature and global process of cultural oppression that were present in the new world in the seventeenth century. Both the Aboriginal and European cultures are in equal standing in the film’s mise-en-scene. However the mise-en-scene as institutionalized historical text, sheds light on the nature of oppression and the ever-permeating hierarchy that was structured during this period. In this response paper, I choose to utilize a methodology of phenomenological film analysis to uncover subjective texts relating to cultural oppression social processes involved in the oppression of historical aboriginal cultures.
There are various scenes in the film that show the very nature of a dialectical process of cultural oppression. The systems, the rituals, the mechanisms that were in place at this time provide a measurement of objectification not always portrayed in both contemporary and historical films on aboriginal cultures dealing with the problematic nature of colonial genocide and the commodification of aboriginal peoples. One such scene near the beginning of the film involves the existence of rituals present in both cultures. The rituals of men, circling around fires and crosses, chanting, singing, dressing in flavourful costumes, drenched in power, importance, and decadence. The scene was structured around how both cultures prepared to meet each other to negotiate political connectivity. The rituals also construct cultural-centralism, in other words, self-importance. But this bilateral measurement does not provide the feeling of horizontal synergy. The scene depicts both cultures as equally racist, intolerant, and fearful. When watching the film, taking in the actions of the men, as they circle around their own symbolic centres, either fire or the cross, I felt the two very different dialectical meanings behind each set of rituals. For one was set up for the purpose of recognizing power in ancient intelligence and ancient ways of living. The other was set up on the purpose of cultural invasion and Eurocentric hierarchical foundations, the very beginnings of which contemporary techno-capitalism is based on.
In the beginning of the film, Director Peter Beresford presents the audience with bilateral decoration scenes, showing how both cultures have their customs relating identity, power, spiritualism, both equal in meaning. The decoration of the religious leaders of both societies symbolized the shared value system of cultural continuity. Each culture has institutions and meanings for these institutions subjective to the power structures within each group. The ideas of marriage, family, union, work, social cohesiveness, and structuralism are present in both cultures and regulated by these forms of institutional concepts. Beresford successfully gains a commonality between these two cultures in both this scene as well as throughout the film.
As in forms of social oppression take shape the specific phenomenon of historic erasure bilaterally becomes reality. Whether it be from the purpose of exploiting the essential construct known as human resource based commodities, or natural resource based commodities, the globalized process of human indignation through pyramidal forms of cultural eradication and the institutional reformulation of social roles are ever permeating and ever present. The phenomenon of Eurocentricism is certainly an historical marker of such social eradicating activity. For generations the histories, the subjective meanings of everyday life, and the subjective social constructions of cultural identities throughout the globe have been subjected to the global process of Eurocentricism. Eurocentricism is not merely an adjective that describes the focal cultural epistemological ideology of people. It also does not merely describe the transmission of hegemonic from one culture to another. It is also a process, specific to that of social designation of minorities, powerless to ever permeating structures of capitalism. I criticize Peter Beresford’s film Black Robe for as a commentary on early stages of North American techno-capitalistic hegemony, it lacks the wherewithal to provide in its narrative structure more definitive connections to the hierarchical echelons of European power centres. As both a student of social analysis and historical texts, Beresford’s intention was clearly recognizable but also daunting as I felt I wanted more information presented to me as the viewer on the specific intentions of the Church in France and how these intentions fuelled the impact on native societies. Whether I wanted real proof and reason to feel anger at the Church or that I needed to see what possible reasoning an entire group of nations could fashion that would involve the intended eradication of a complete way of life in a commodified society. Though educationally one may criticize the film for it’s lack of accountability in providing adequate historical proof of events pertinent to the narrative, yet the film is fictive and any response by the viewer may not only be of academic meaning but also of emotional capacity. What makes one’s response negative and uneasy is the ever-present notion of exploitation and the devaluation of personal identity in both Aboriginal and European characterizations as a result of European economic expansion into New France.
The certain exploitation of aboriginal peoples in Quebec and of course throughout North America and the certain disregard for the subjective histories of these cultures is a theme very intrinsic to the narrative of this film. The film does attempt to supply an at times positive characterization of the priests, the black robes. They are characterized as one fully charmed and charged by the notion that they have been chosen by god to cultivate Christianity and Catholicism to the “savages” of the new world. Driven by a “divine” ordinance and purpose constructed on faith and servitude these men threw themselves into the wild, into “god’s country” as it were to bring Christianity to those who lived without faith. Yet I questioned during the film whether the notion of faithlessness in aboriginal peoples in history is a true concept. Does the notion of faithlessness shed true social knowing of the historical cultures of the new world? The film posits the answer as such. Through the lens of Eurocentricism, the historic answer was predominantly yes, that the religious leaders and rulers of Europe in the 17th century perceived aboriginals as characterized by faithless, unknowing of god, and of thus, un-actualized in their role of global economic oppression. This very racially charged rationalization arguably leads to the eradication of native spirituality and individuality.
One other element important to the film in constructing the dialectic is in the idea of dreams and paradise. Dreams measure and give account of the real world in native experience in this film. This is an interesting notion as it is compared to the Eurocentric idea of paradise, or more importantly the Christian idea. Dreams are illusions. The dreaming of paradise during specific scenes by aboriginal characters and the Jesuit priest who leads the film highlight the sharing of dream ideology, that institutions are social fictions. Paradise is an illusion, and as a viewer watching the film I had to ask rhetorically if native societies felt the idea of a Christian Paradise was equal as illusion, or void of meaning. I imagined in response how difficult it must have been for native peoples during times of sickness to flounder on their spiritual foundations and choose Christianity as not a means to spiritual enlightenment, but as a way to offset violent invasion of French militarism during a time when many of their people fell weak to illness brought to North America via the process of colonization. The film towards the end highlights this struggle as the lead character who starting to become frail in both his corporeal state and in his faith, was persuaded to baptize many ill natives on the brink of death and starvation. Symbolically it was a powerful message drenched in the ever-present notion of pyramidal structures of social power. It became clear to me during that moment in the film the nature of Christian prosthletization during this time as not to save the “savages” from their spiritual plight, but to solidify their commodification as a colonial human resources for Eurocentric exploitative mechanism of new world exploration and the means to own the means of exploiting resources. Phenomenologically the film draws connectivity to capitalistic process to Christian prosthletization. Similar to acts of war as a means of ethnic genocide, the function of fear and the loss of faith brought this to reality in the film
By constructing Christianity and Eurocentric epistemology in aboriginal cultures the gain would be to create a human resource to be exploited for use in extracting natural resources. It was clear to those who control master narratives of European power and hierarchies of political economic hegemony that in order to base a social network of cooperation and submission of the aboriginal people in North America, the introduction of cultural and religious value systems was seen to be the methodology of practicality. Black Robe posits this idea clearly through the film.
Reference:
Beresford, B. (Producer) (Director). (1991). Black Robe[Motion Picture]. Montreal, PQ: Alliance Atlantis.
First Nations in Historical Perspective HIST3216
Professor Wesley-Esquimaux
Monday, April 10 2006
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch
The film Black Robe (1991) is not a film that provides a positive regenerative message about both Canadian Aboriginal historical cultures and Eurocentric social structure. As a text, it also does not shed a light on either culture as compassionate, forgiving, progressive, or remarkable. In terms of subjective meanings and deconstructive analysis, the film as both a social and historical text is valuable for its balancing of cultural customs relating to identity, power, and a spiritual social construct. The film highlights the social fact that power, identity, and spiritualism are all social constructions – as they were during the period the film takes place, and as they are now. Where the film is also important is how it discusses the nature and global process of cultural oppression that were present in the new world in the seventeenth century. Both the Aboriginal and European cultures are in equal standing in the film’s mise-en-scene. However the mise-en-scene as institutionalized historical text, sheds light on the nature of oppression and the ever-permeating hierarchy that was structured during this period. In this response paper, I choose to utilize a methodology of phenomenological film analysis to uncover subjective texts relating to cultural oppression social processes involved in the oppression of historical aboriginal cultures.
There are various scenes in the film that show the very nature of a dialectical process of cultural oppression. The systems, the rituals, the mechanisms that were in place at this time provide a measurement of objectification not always portrayed in both contemporary and historical films on aboriginal cultures dealing with the problematic nature of colonial genocide and the commodification of aboriginal peoples. One such scene near the beginning of the film involves the existence of rituals present in both cultures. The rituals of men, circling around fires and crosses, chanting, singing, dressing in flavourful costumes, drenched in power, importance, and decadence. The scene was structured around how both cultures prepared to meet each other to negotiate political connectivity. The rituals also construct cultural-centralism, in other words, self-importance. But this bilateral measurement does not provide the feeling of horizontal synergy. The scene depicts both cultures as equally racist, intolerant, and fearful. When watching the film, taking in the actions of the men, as they circle around their own symbolic centres, either fire or the cross, I felt the two very different dialectical meanings behind each set of rituals. For one was set up for the purpose of recognizing power in ancient intelligence and ancient ways of living. The other was set up on the purpose of cultural invasion and Eurocentric hierarchical foundations, the very beginnings of which contemporary techno-capitalism is based on.
In the beginning of the film, Director Peter Beresford presents the audience with bilateral decoration scenes, showing how both cultures have their customs relating identity, power, spiritualism, both equal in meaning. The decoration of the religious leaders of both societies symbolized the shared value system of cultural continuity. Each culture has institutions and meanings for these institutions subjective to the power structures within each group. The ideas of marriage, family, union, work, social cohesiveness, and structuralism are present in both cultures and regulated by these forms of institutional concepts. Beresford successfully gains a commonality between these two cultures in both this scene as well as throughout the film.
As in forms of social oppression take shape the specific phenomenon of historic erasure bilaterally becomes reality. Whether it be from the purpose of exploiting the essential construct known as human resource based commodities, or natural resource based commodities, the globalized process of human indignation through pyramidal forms of cultural eradication and the institutional reformulation of social roles are ever permeating and ever present. The phenomenon of Eurocentricism is certainly an historical marker of such social eradicating activity. For generations the histories, the subjective meanings of everyday life, and the subjective social constructions of cultural identities throughout the globe have been subjected to the global process of Eurocentricism. Eurocentricism is not merely an adjective that describes the focal cultural epistemological ideology of people. It also does not merely describe the transmission of hegemonic from one culture to another. It is also a process, specific to that of social designation of minorities, powerless to ever permeating structures of capitalism. I criticize Peter Beresford’s film Black Robe for as a commentary on early stages of North American techno-capitalistic hegemony, it lacks the wherewithal to provide in its narrative structure more definitive connections to the hierarchical echelons of European power centres. As both a student of social analysis and historical texts, Beresford’s intention was clearly recognizable but also daunting as I felt I wanted more information presented to me as the viewer on the specific intentions of the Church in France and how these intentions fuelled the impact on native societies. Whether I wanted real proof and reason to feel anger at the Church or that I needed to see what possible reasoning an entire group of nations could fashion that would involve the intended eradication of a complete way of life in a commodified society. Though educationally one may criticize the film for it’s lack of accountability in providing adequate historical proof of events pertinent to the narrative, yet the film is fictive and any response by the viewer may not only be of academic meaning but also of emotional capacity. What makes one’s response negative and uneasy is the ever-present notion of exploitation and the devaluation of personal identity in both Aboriginal and European characterizations as a result of European economic expansion into New France.
The certain exploitation of aboriginal peoples in Quebec and of course throughout North America and the certain disregard for the subjective histories of these cultures is a theme very intrinsic to the narrative of this film. The film does attempt to supply an at times positive characterization of the priests, the black robes. They are characterized as one fully charmed and charged by the notion that they have been chosen by god to cultivate Christianity and Catholicism to the “savages” of the new world. Driven by a “divine” ordinance and purpose constructed on faith and servitude these men threw themselves into the wild, into “god’s country” as it were to bring Christianity to those who lived without faith. Yet I questioned during the film whether the notion of faithlessness in aboriginal peoples in history is a true concept. Does the notion of faithlessness shed true social knowing of the historical cultures of the new world? The film posits the answer as such. Through the lens of Eurocentricism, the historic answer was predominantly yes, that the religious leaders and rulers of Europe in the 17th century perceived aboriginals as characterized by faithless, unknowing of god, and of thus, un-actualized in their role of global economic oppression. This very racially charged rationalization arguably leads to the eradication of native spirituality and individuality.
One other element important to the film in constructing the dialectic is in the idea of dreams and paradise. Dreams measure and give account of the real world in native experience in this film. This is an interesting notion as it is compared to the Eurocentric idea of paradise, or more importantly the Christian idea. Dreams are illusions. The dreaming of paradise during specific scenes by aboriginal characters and the Jesuit priest who leads the film highlight the sharing of dream ideology, that institutions are social fictions. Paradise is an illusion, and as a viewer watching the film I had to ask rhetorically if native societies felt the idea of a Christian Paradise was equal as illusion, or void of meaning. I imagined in response how difficult it must have been for native peoples during times of sickness to flounder on their spiritual foundations and choose Christianity as not a means to spiritual enlightenment, but as a way to offset violent invasion of French militarism during a time when many of their people fell weak to illness brought to North America via the process of colonization. The film towards the end highlights this struggle as the lead character who starting to become frail in both his corporeal state and in his faith, was persuaded to baptize many ill natives on the brink of death and starvation. Symbolically it was a powerful message drenched in the ever-present notion of pyramidal structures of social power. It became clear to me during that moment in the film the nature of Christian prosthletization during this time as not to save the “savages” from their spiritual plight, but to solidify their commodification as a colonial human resources for Eurocentric exploitative mechanism of new world exploration and the means to own the means of exploiting resources. Phenomenologically the film draws connectivity to capitalistic process to Christian prosthletization. Similar to acts of war as a means of ethnic genocide, the function of fear and the loss of faith brought this to reality in the film
By constructing Christianity and Eurocentric epistemology in aboriginal cultures the gain would be to create a human resource to be exploited for use in extracting natural resources. It was clear to those who control master narratives of European power and hierarchies of political economic hegemony that in order to base a social network of cooperation and submission of the aboriginal people in North America, the introduction of cultural and religious value systems was seen to be the methodology of practicality. Black Robe posits this idea clearly through the film.
Reference:
Beresford, B. (Producer) (Director). (1991). Black Robe[Motion Picture]. Montreal, PQ: Alliance Atlantis.
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