I’ve been meaning to write a post about all the colonialism movies I’ve seen and how they SUCK but Sociological Images has a video up that pretty much covers it

I think the line “OK boss” is the key.

That said, I recently watched Even the Rain which was refreshing mostly in it’s attempts to show what a load of bullshit the Great White savior idea is. The story is about a film crew deciding to shoot a movie about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Boliva (and yes, they make fun of themselves for shooting Incans who speak quechua as Tainos) because the labor is cheap there. They meet Daniel, a fiery local organizer who causes some trouble at the open casting for extras, and decide to cast him as Hatuey, a Taino rebel. What they don’t realize is that Daniel is a local organizer against water privatization and that battle is about to get fierce.

Over and over, the film shows how that white film crew, while making a movie about the evils of colonialism and the birth of the slave trade, ignores what is going on around them. When they can no longer ignore it (Daniel gets arrested for protesting) they buy their way out of trouble but sell Daniel out in the process.

Unfortunately at the end, there is a little bit of white savior-ing, but for the most part it a nice change of pace from standard “I will show you poor oppressed brown folk the way!”