Colonialism in Arrival
The 2016 film Arrival staring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, is a science fiction movie that tells a story of colonialism. The film was directed by Denis Villeneuve and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Colonialism is a common theme among many science fiction films, and these films offer different perspectives on colonialism, either from the perspective of the dominant colonizing culture, or from the indigenous culture which has been, or is in the process of being, colonized. Arrival offers an example of the second of these two general types of colonizer films, where Earth is being colonized by a mysterious alien race. The interactions between the humans and the aliens parallel interactions between colonizers and the colonized. These interactions also display the fears of colonialism that have developed in a post-colonial world, while at the same time maintaining a perceived sense of western cultural dominance.
The film follows the main character Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, who is a professor of linguistics studies, as she is recruited by the military to help them in their attempts to communicate with the aliens that have landed at twelve locations around the planet. The alien craft that landed in the United States did so in Montana, and this is where much of the film takes place. In many science fiction films involving a potential alien threat “there is a balance of horror and delight in the man-killing actions of the alien, both visceral distaste for the bloodshed and a certain admiration for the beauty and form of the alien itself, its instinctual ingenuity, its grace.” [1] The original intention of the aliens is not known to the military, but their reaction to the alien presence suggests a caution based on the fear of colonialism. When the Americas were colonized by European powers, the colonizing nations where successful primarily because of their superior technologies, and the presence of alien ships arriving on the planet suggest a similar example of interaction between a technologically superior culture and a less advanced one.
As Banks reaches the military encampment, she meets Ian Donnelly, played by Jeremy Renner, who is a physicist that has also been recruited to help engage in contact with the aliens in their ship. In the clip below, we see the very real fears of the others when Banks removes her protective head gear near the aliens.
She shows a fearlessness in engaging with the aliens despite their potential threat because so little is still known about what they want. The film offers a unique look at the colonial relationship, one that reverses the traditional colonial gaze which “distributes knowledge and power to the subject who looks, while denying or minimizing access to power for its object, the one looked at.” [2] In Arrival, we experience the colonial gaze from the other side, that of the less advanced culture.
The interactions between Banks, Donnelly, and the aliens continue to become more advanced, but there is still little that is known about their intent, which frustrates the military leaders. In the scene below, Banks describes a story about the origin of the word Kangaroo in order to illustrate the importance of establishing accurate communication.
The growing tensions in the United States are paralleled by other national governments interacting with similar spaceships around the world. The main focus of the movie is on the interactions of the Americans which serves to perpetuate a western cultural dominance. The history of colonialism has typically reflected such a western dominance, as it was suggest that other cultures “capacity to narrate anecdotal parts of the world story was always subsumed under a North Atlantic historicity that was deemed universal.”[3] As the Chinese government begins to pull back from the alien spacecraft because of the inability to learn more about their intent, other nations follow suit. However, the Americans are eventually able to save the day by learning what it was the aliens were trying to communicate. The threat of the aliens as colonizers has been assuaged, and the dominance of the western culture has once again been established, which is characterized by the other nations quickly reversing their actions and following the American’s lead.
[1] Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction: The New Cultural Idiom, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 81.
[2] Rieder, John. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008) 7.
[3] Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Global Transformations: Anthropology in the Modern World, (London: Palgrave, 2003), 12.