Transcultural Images in

Hollywood Cinema
 Communication, Globalization, and Cultural Identity

Series Editor: Jan Servaes

The Communication, Globalization, and Cultural Identity series explores and complicates
the interlinked notions of “local” and “global” by integrating global dependency think-
ing; world-system theory; local, grassroots, interpretative, and participatory theory; and
research on social change.
In the current world state, globalization and localization are seen as interlinked pro-
cesses, and this marks a radical change in thinking about change and development. It also
marks the arising of a new range of problems. One of the central problems is that the link
between the global and the local is not always made clear.
The debates in the field of international and intercultural communication have shifted
and broadened. They have shifted in the sense that they are now focusing on issues related
to “global culture,” “local culture,” “(post)modernity,” and “multiculturalism,” instead of
their previous concern with “modernization,” “synchronization,” and “cultural imperi-
alism.” With these new discussions, the debates have also shifted from an emphasis on
homogeneity towards an emphasis on differences. With this shift towards differences and
localities, there is also an increased interest in the link between the global and the local and
in how the global is perceived in the local.

Recent titles in the series:

Transcultural Images in Hollywood Cinema: Debates on Migration, Identity, and
Finance, edited by Uğur Baloğlu and Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu
Media and Public Relations Research in Post-Socialist Societies, edited by Maureen
Minielli, Marta Lukacovic, Sergei Samoilenko, and Michael Finch with Deb Uecker
Rethinking Post-Communist Rhetoric: Perspectives on Rhetoric, Writing, and Professional
Communication in Post-Soviet Spaces, edited by Pavel Zemliansky and Kirk St.Amant
Representations of Islam in the News: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, edited by Stefan
Mertens and Hedwig de Smaele
The Praxis of Social Inequality in Media: A Global Perspective, edited by Jan Servaes
and Toks Oyedemi
Negotiating Group Identities in Multicultural Germany: The Role of Mainstream Media,
Discourse Relations, and Political Alliances, by David Abadi
Television, Democracy, and the Mediatization of Chilean Politics, by Harry L. Simón
Salazar
Digital Inclusion: An International Comparative Analysis, edited by Massimo Ragnedda
and Bruce Mustvairo
Transcultural Images in
Hollywood Cinema
Debates on Migration, Identity,
and Finance

Edited by
Uğur Baloğlu and Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

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 Contents

Introduction 1

PART I: TRANSNATIONAL FINANCE AND

THEIR REFLECTIONS
1 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment: Transnational Finance
Meets Transculturality 9
Steven Rawle
2 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood: An Attempt to
Transculturality in Marvel Cinematic Universe 33
Uğur Baloğlu

PART II: THE REPRESENTATION OF OTHERS BEYOND

THE BORDERS
3 Strangers at Our Door: A Baumanian Perspective to Children
of Men, Elysium, and Snowpiercer 63
Gül Yaşartürk
4 A Universe of Story and Medium: Transforming Narrative,
Representation, and Ideology in Star Wars Films
and Digital Games 79
Özge Sayılgan

v
vi Contents

PART III: IMMIGRANT DIRECTORS AND MIGRATION AS

A COUNTER-GEOGRAPHY PRACTICE
5 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films
of Guillermo del Toro 103
Jane Hanley
6 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea: “Ressentiment,” Myths,
and Gender 117
Özlem Oğuzhan
7 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 133
Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

Index 151
About the Authors 155
 Introduction

Israel Zangwill claims that in the theater play The Melting Pot, which was
first staged in 1908 and described as “an excellent play” by the president of
the United States Roosevelt, a new society has been formed in the United
States, a country of immigrants, where all European races merge and melt in
one pot. Although the idea of melting pot indicates the uprooting (deracina-
tion) and/or assimilation of immigrants, the theme of unity in differences
becomes one of the symbolic features of the society of the United States at
a time when liberal democracy is on the rise. Welsch argues that the multi-
cultural structure of the United States has been transcended from the homo-
geneous structure of cultures with globalization and that they are now highly
interconnected and intermingled. It is possible to say that in the global capi-
talist period, cultures are determined by lifestyles that prioritize consumption,
and these styles now go beyond national borders and transcend nations, and
cultures are linked with various points of contact through these lifestyles. Of
course, this new complex cultural structure is the result of the flow of forced
and noncompulsory migrants, economic dependencies, and new communica-
tion technologies connecting the whole world. In this respect, understanding
the cultural texture represented/constructed in today’s Hollywood cinema
requires addressing the globalization process at the level of economic,
political, and social institutions. Because today’s institutional structures force
individuals and societies to be open to the outside and also force cultures to
interact with each other.
Globalization is effective in transforming cultures into a heterogeneous
universe and in the interaction of individuals who want to leave their estab-
lished order and establish order in other geographies. With the transforma-
tive nature of phenomena such as globalization and glocalization, the fluid,
changeable and open to interaction structure of ethnic/cultural areas and

1
2 Introduction

cultures begins to be discussed with concepts such as transculturalism, inter-

culturalism, and multiculturalism. In order to understand today’s world and to
interpret the fluidity of these cultures, the conceptualizations in Appadurai’s
globalization debate can be used. Appadurai, while talking about intercultural
flow and transition, states that cultural areas containing ethnic patterns are
reproduced voluntarily or involuntarily. At this point, the structure of these
patterns, which are reproduced every day, destroying rules, boundaries, and
patterns, is formed by the intricate links between cultures. The culture formed
by the history of humankind and this culture gaining new meaning and qual-
ity in every geography enables hybrid concepts/transnational perspective to
be formed and even to gain continuity.
Concepts such as multiculturalism, interculturalism, and transculturalism,
which are often used interchangeably or mixed, differ from each other in
some respects. The common point of the concepts intersects with people
moving constantly by changing their living spaces. So what is the main
motivation for people to break from their roots and go on an unknown
journey? Although the answer to this question includes different causations
such as economic, ethnic, and gender, the hope of a better life lies at the
heart of motivation. However, the distinction between dominant culture
and minority culture in terms such as multiculturalism and interculturalism
may lead to the identification of the minority group as the other, although
efforts are made to overcome the differences in society through negotiation
and to establish mutual understanding. This highlights the importance of the
process of transculturalism, which offers an alternative to the structure in
which the hope for a better life is lost in an intercultural and/or multicultural
environment. Because transculturalism is a “fluid and dialogical process”
between people with different cultural backgrounds who are in constant
interaction in daily life.
Multiculturalism, which has gained new academic meaning maps, can
be interpreted as pluralism in which hegemonic powers encourage ethnic
elements within the framework of commercial and ideological purposes,
as well as a phantasy that aims to protect cultural identities and ensure the
integration of identities by stripping them from migration, colonization, and
occupation. Multiculturalism, which transcends the boundaries of the nation-
state and turns into a political structure for developing dialogue between
heterogeneous cultural groups, enables the questioning and transformation
of national identities. At this point, while multiculturalism is often used as
a roadmap for the elimination of cultural conflicts, it is often used to trigger
cultural conflicts and strengthen the borders of marginalization. Particularly,
the political discourses developed by the United States after the 9/11 attacks
and the fluid-structure of immigration policies regaining a solid character can
be evaluated within this context.
 Introduction 3

Nevertheless, the United States, which had failed in the exam it gave with
racism in the historical process, continues to behave in a way that supports
Freud’s thesis that the evil feelings of humanity do not disappear and con-
tinue to exist in a suppressed state. The events of September 11, which had
a considerable impact on security policies and immigration politics, played
a major role in the cultural encounters of Asia-Pacific (East) and West and
the difficulties faced by the immigrant population within the framework of
the phenomenon of multiculturalism in liberal democracies. This breaking
point—the 9/11 attacks—which is effective in gaining new meanings for the
concepts of multiculturalism, transculturalism, and transnationalism, which
form the center of this study, gains importance to make sense of the differen-
tiation in the reproduction of hybrid concepts in the social structure.
The concepts of transnationalism, multiculturalism, or transculturalism are
among the topics that gained popularity not only in the discussion of cultural
policies but also in the discussion of cinema studies. This discussion, which
started with Will Higbee’s conceptualization of transvergence in Beyond the
(Trans)National: Towards a Cinema(s) in 2007, has now a broader perspec-
tive within the framework of the diversity of production, distribution, and
exhibition conditions in the global European and Hollywood cinema. The
main purpose of this book is to discuss whether immigrant narratives have a
multicultural or transcultural language in US cinema of different nationali-
ties. In the study prepared specifically for the USA/Hollywood cinema, the
concepts of transculturalism, transnationalism, and multiculturalism are inter-
preted within the post-2000 productions since 9/11 is considered a breaking
point and it is thought to create discursive differences. This book study, in
which we aim to expand these discussions and to reveal the cultural policies,
which are of new interest in the field of cinema studies, but without sufficient
data/(information), is composed of three parts in order to provide depth to our
questions about whether there can be a multicultural or transcultural language
in Hollywood cinema.
In today’s world, the phenomenon of immigration, one of the most impor-
tant components of transnational cinema, needs to be dealt with in different
contexts in Hollywood and art-house film. Today, forced migration policies
can be regarded as a step forward in the development of the transnational
structure beyond the local cultures. The political events, wars, and economic
crises that are happening today cause people to live in different geographies.
However, this problem should not be problematized only in the context of
the difficulties that people experience when they are integrated into a differ-
ent country culture. The issue that has led us to do this work is the limited
view of the concepts of transculturality and transnationality. To expand this
limited outlook, this book will help researchers to look for new avenues of
research on these questions: how does cinema project intercultural diversity
4 Introduction

and experience rather than how it represents different cultures? Or, how does
cinema construct immigrant leakages in the United States, rather than how it
represents immigrants? Based on these questions, the book aims to examine
the visual deformities, the ways of seeing, the processes of imposing the nor-
mative, or the practices of excluding the normative about different cultures
of cinema by interpreting political economy, political, social, and cultural
aspects in a total view.
In the first part of the book, Transnational Productions and Their
Reflections, where the new products of transnational production companies
in the globalizing cinema industry are discussed with a political economy
approach, Steve Rawle in his chapter, “Globalizing Legendary Entertainment:
Transnational Finance Meets Transculturality,” focuses on the multinational
structures created by the mergers and/or acquisitions of film production
companies in today’s global capitalist discourse. He explores Legendary
Entertainment, which helped produce some of Hollywood’s most success-
ful films, including Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012),
Inception (2010) and the Hangover trilogy (2009–2013) as an independent
and became a subsidiary of Dalian Wanda in 2016, one of China’s most
prominent property and development companies, who also own major stakes
in global cinema chains in Australia, Europe and the United States, follow-
ing the acquisition by Wanda and the growing transculturality of their output
as a production company. Rawle states that with the addition of specifically
transcultural approaches to genre and stardom (including the casting of
Chinese stars such as Zhang Ziyi), Legendary’s production output represents
a specific form of contemporary transnational Hollywood. As Appadurai’s
disjunctive model of a global cultural economy (1990) was constituted via a
merger of flows of capital, individuals, and media, Legendary’s transnation-
alism and transculturality speak strongly to how global Hollywood mediates
such flows, both economically and textually.
In his chapter titled “New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood: An Attempt
to Transculturality in Marvel Cinematic Universe,” Uğur Baloğlu argues
that in today’s global capitalist discourse, understanding of the colonial of
nation-states has been transferred to multinational corporations and invis-
ible colonialism is experienced on slippery ground with an understanding of
transcultural. He examines the Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
in the context of the five basic frameworks of Appadurai (ethnoscapes,
mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes) based on the fact
that Hollywood productions with a different representation strategy depend-
ing on the economic, political, and social conjuncture in which the mainstream
cinema concept. Baloğlu discusses the efforts of MCU, which has structured
its new fictional universe with the different ethnic origin and racial diversity
in the globalizing film industry, to create a transcultural supra-identity with
 Introduction 5

heroes in the new universe by moving away from Hollywood’s past white-
race superhero-oriented productions.
In the second part entitled Multiple Choice Identities beyond Borders,
in which the differences should be read as reflections of cultural multiplic-
ity or marginalization arguments in the construction of American identity;
Gül Yaşartürk in her chapter titled “Strangers at Our Door: A Baumanian
Perspective to Children of Men, Elysium, and Snowpiercer,” states that,
in the science fiction genre of post-2000 Hollywood cinema, contrary to
the conservative policy and human rights violations in the United States, it
tends toward a narrative difference. The author claims that this genre pres-
ents ethnicity and class-based concerns within the framework of positive
projections of multiculturalism, far from other representations, and that the
metaphor of the creature is at the center of the narratives. Yaşartürk limits
the research universe of his work to films Children of Men (2006), District
9 (2009), Elysium (2013), Snowpiercer (2013), and Arrival (2016), which
reflect concerns after 9/11 and have dystopian features. The author states
that the current problems of Western societies, especially Islamophobia, are
included in these narratives, on the other hand, themes such as immigration/
refugee problems, ecological problems, and class differences are represented
outside of stereotypes.
In her chapter titled “A Universe of Story and Medium: Transforming
Narrative, Representation, and Ideology in Star Wars Films and Digital
Games,” Özge Sayılgan discusses the Star Wars universe through the pat-
tern of the transformation of the narrative representation from the second
half of the 1970s to 2000s, in the context of transculturalism. In the scope
of her research, departing from J. Campbell’s model “hero’s journey,” the
representation of characters as archetypes in stories of Star Wars universe
is analyzed comparatively focusing on the transformations before and after
2000s, taking into account the effect of Disneyfication as an ideological
layer. She aims to clarify this transformation and the ideology behind, with
an analysis of character archetypes in Star Wars films. Then, with an analysis
of a multiplayer mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II as a transcultural digital
space, she is aimed to reach the ways of identification through characters and
story world as represented in game. Beyond narrative analysis, Star Wars:
Battlefront II is also open to be discussed in the context of game mechanics,
in game purchase dynamics and the competitive characteristics as an interac-
tive medium to reach the decentralized and postmodern practicing of the story
in which there is no difference between the hero and the villain of a receded
myth across competition.
The heterogeneous and hybrid structure of Hollywood creates the new
intercultural dialogue areas of the cultural journeys/immigrant directors since
the silent cinema era. In the third part, Immigrant Directors and Migration
6 Introduction

as a counter-geography practice, where transnational images and narratives

are discussed within the framework of the cinematographic structures of
the directors, Jane Hanley in her chapter “Mobile Monstrosity: Boundray-
Crossing, Genre-Bending and Transnational Gothic in the Films of Guillermo
del Toro,” analyses interstices between monstrosity and the transnational in
the work of perhaps the most renowned director working through this articu-
lation: Guillermo del Toro. She states that del Toro’s films always challenge
the boundaries between times, between life and death, as well as the human
boundaries—between nations, between the self, and the monstrous other—we
build and defend out of fear. According to the author, del Toro’s most popu-
lar work, which travels both narratively and literally through Hollywood/
blockbuster global mechanisms, resists complete absorption into normative
paradigms through its insistent porosity, destabilization of control, and rela-
tional monstrous cartographies of past and present which resist geographical
containment. However, the insistent presence of death as a companion to life,
the uncanny making of strange familiar and familiar strange, and a culturally
eclectic Gothic sensibility, changes the transnational life of del Toro’s films
from purely market-oriented translatability into something that itself actually
articulates ethics of crossing.
In her chapter titled “Medea and Lars Von Trier’s Medea: “Ressentiment,”
Myths and Gender,” Oğuzhan discusses the story of Medea, which was
transported from Anatolia to ancient Greece and reproduced as a tragedy. She
thinks that in ancient Greece and its tragedy, various elements of ressenti-
ment are attributed to women and their social positions to ensure patriarchal
legitimacy. Yet ressentiment, which is a state of unrealized hatred or revenge,
is not about femininity but about masculinity in Medea. In other words, she
reveals that in tragedy woman is not the subject but the object of ressentiment.
Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu in her chapter “In Transnational Images in
Inarritu’s Cinema,” states that in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s narratives,
he mostly conveys migrant leakages and transnational images to the screen.
Birincioğlu limits the center of her chapter from Iñárritu’s films (Amores
Perros [2000], 21 Grams [2003], Babel [2006], Biutiful [2010], Birdman
[2014] and The Revenant [2015) in order to interpret the North American
perspective. The author examines the relationship between Mexican culture
and ideology, considered as the third world, and Hollywood culture, through
the symbiotic bond between the culture left behind and the host culture.
Birincioğlu interprets the multiculturalism of concepts such as immigration,
hybridity, and assimilation within the framework of representation and immi-
gration policies.
 PART I

TRANSNATIONAL FINANCE
AND THEIR REFLECTIONS
 Chapter 1

Globalizing Legendary Entertainment

Transnational Finance Meets
Transculturality
Steven Rawle

Founded in 2000, Legendary Entertainment is a major player in the devel-

opment of the modern transnational Hollywood. As an independent finance
company, from 2005 onwards, they helped finance and then produce some
of Hollywood’s most successful films, including Christopher Nolan’s Dark
Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), Inception (2010) and The Hangover Trilogy
(2009–2013). Their relationships with major Hollywood studios, Warner
Bros. and later Universal, enabled them to build a substantial slate of
blockbuster franchise movies. Through a number of Sino-American agree-
ments, Legendary, and their Legendary East division, they embarked upon
a project of creating films that had substantial appeal for Chinese audiences
and secured investment from the Chinese economy and resulting access to
cinemas in China. Then, in 2016, Legendary became a subsidiary of Dalian
Wanda, one of China’s most prominent property and development com-
panies, which also own major stakes in global cinema chains in Australia,
Europe, and the United States. Wanda’s deal represented a substantial foreign
cultural investment, which aligned with Chinese aspirations for global soft
power, as well as the acquisition of properties that had significant appeal in
Asian markets, namely the monster films The Great Wall (2016), Pacific Rim
(2013) and its sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), and Godzilla (2014) and
subsequent films in the “Monsterverse” series.1
This chapter explores Legendary Entertainment and the implications of
the acquisition by Wanda and the growing transculturality of their output
as a production company. While the company has acted as finance partner
(through its relationship with Universal) for a number of films by African-.
American directors, most notably Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018),

9
10 Steven Rawle

it has developed a series of properties that exhibit significant levels of

transcultural blending, multicultural casting and, in Mette Hjort’s (On the
Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism 2010) terms, “globalizing and mod-
ernizing transnationalism” aligned with Wanda’s corporate strategy. The
approach to intellectual property through films such as Pokémon Detective
Pikachu (Rob Letterman 2019) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Michael
Dougherty 2019) emphasizes Legendary’s appeal to both US and global
markets, particularly in China, where both films grossed a substantial part
of their international box office (in the case of the latter, 20 percent more
than the domestic US gross). With the addition of specifically transcultural
approaches to genre and stardom (including the casting of Chinese stars such
as Zhang Ziyi), Legendary’s production output represents a specific form of
contemporary transnational Hollywood, as well Chinese state approaches to
soft cultural power. As Arjun Appadurai’s disjunctive model of a global cul-
tural economy (Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
1990) was constituted via a merger of flows of capital, individuals and
media, Legendary’s flows transnational capital and transcultural content
speak strongly to how global Hollywood mediates such flows, both eco-
nomically and textually.

TRANSNATIONAL CAPITAL,
TRANSCULTURAL CONTENT

Over the last decade, the study of cross-border media has become an estab-
lished thread of inquiry in film studies. Dina Iordanova observes the emer-
gence of transnational film studies as one perceived with some suspicion in
circles devoted to the more established methods of critiquing national cin-
emas. In response, Iordanova points to how lives have become marked more
by transnational emphases, of “transplanted” and “hyphenated” scholars, or
practices of engaging with media that transcends the limitations of national
borders: “[w]atching across borders would mean, then, to opt to go beyond
the confines of any fixed national identity and problematize it as a multi-
faceted and ever-changing dynamic phenomenon” (Iordanova 2016). As the
Transnational Cinemas journal reached its tenth anniversary and reflected
on its shift from Cinemas to Screens, its editors considered the transforma-
tions that had taken in place in media distribution and exhibition, with “the
significance of streamed content within the industry [that] demonstrate [. . .]
the seismic shift in terms of production, circulation and spectatorship” that
has occurred in the 2010s since the journal’s launch (De La Garza, Doughty
and Shaw 2019, ii). In a similar vein, other scholars have raised definitional
questions of transnational media as the concept has developed alongside its
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 11

establishment as an academic discipline (Shaw 2013; Fisher and Smith 2016;

Rawle 2018; Fisher and Smith 2019).
Mette Hjort has argued that

[a]s transnationalism becomes part of the becoming and being of filmmakers,

as a core ontological feature, new and important voices become part of the
conversation of World Cinema. Far from being a symptom of monocultural
convergence linked to the putative imposition of a single (western) standard of
filmmaking, the ontological transnationalism of the filmmaker helps to make
World Cinema a rich and diverse phenomenon. (Hjort 2019, 65)

Hjort’s comment here problematizes the conception of a transnational cinema

in this chapter. The “rich and diverse” voices at the core of her argument,
regarding the development of transnational solidarity in talent development
organization Filmlab Palestine, are located in “bi- or multi-directional flows”
that secure the development and future of transnational networks that would
be threatened by “uni-directional” flows of capital and individuals. While
the phenomenon at the heart of this discussion is perhaps less concerned
with peripheral or marginal cinemas (Iordanova, Martin-Jones, and Vidal
2010), cross-border flows are a significant element of how transnationalism
is conceived in relation to our discussion of cross-border relationships and
financing. Questions of monocultural convergence with Western standards
of filmmaking raise different challenges in the context of the increasingly
prominent relationship between Hollywood and China, as American compa-
nies scramble to secure access to the growing Chinese market and Chinese
companies seek to invest in Hollywood production. This provides a point
of view that enables us to see how cross-border collaboration between US
and Chinese companies is visible both in terms of capital investment and
co-operation between executives and filmmakers from a number of compa-
nies, but also the blending of cultural content2 and the ways in which these
transnational relationships behind the scenes translate into visible phenomena
onscreen, in the presence of stories, genres, and individuals.
In her earlier, now seminal, article, “On the Plurality of Cinematic
Transnationalisms” (2010), Hjort drew attention to some of the problem-
atic dimensions of definitions of transnationalism, where the term becomes
“shorthand for a series of assumptions about the networked and globalized
realities that are those of a contemporary situation,” so that concepts play “a
strangely homogenizing role.” As she articulates in her more recent article,
transnationalism is a plural concept, subject to a range of different forms
of flow, and belongings and “values, some of which are economic, artistic,
cultural, social, or political” (2010, 30). Hjort introduces several important
taxonomic categories here. The first is the distinction between marked and
12 Steven Rawle

unmarked transnationalisms. Films are marked as transnational when they are

“properties that encourage thinking about transnationality” while “unmarked”
transnational cinema projects are those that are generally produced through
transnational relationships, but whose content is rooted in more conventional
national cultures (14). Unmarked transnational films might be products of
global capital, with multinational casts and crew, but the film’s content
will be more conventionally national, or in the case of Hollywood films,
tend toward notions of “universality.” For instance, a post-Wanda buyout
Legendary film like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Ol Parker 2018),
which the company part-financed, along with Chinese company Perfect
World Pictures through their co-finance deal with NBCUniversal (Block and
Masters 2013) is only very weakly marked as a transnational film. Although
it is a product of transnational financing, features an international crew and
a cast that is a mixture of British, American, Irish, and Swedish talent, and
involves literal border-crossing, across Europe to Greece, the film does not
“encourage thinking about transnationality.” The film’s milieu is a backdrop
to return to the pleasures of the ABBA jukebox musical of its prequel. Thus,
despite the film’s transnational finance and personnel, the flows that produce
it are not significantly marked in the film, submerged beneath the text.
By contrast, Disney’s remake of Mulan (Niki Caro 2020) is a more
marked transnational property, and therefore one that is more relevant for
our discussion here. A live-action version of the 1998 animated adaptation
of The Ballad of Mulan, a fourth/fifth-century Chinese folksong that tells
the story of Hua Mulan, who took her father’s place in battle. Originally
developed by Disney as a vehicle for Chinese star Zhang Ziyi,3 the film took
a decade to come to fruition. Throughout development, Disney’s search for
both Chinese cast and director were well-reported, with Hollywood Reporter
confirming that Ang Lee had passed on the project, as had Chinese actor-
director Jiang Wen,4 when New Zealander Niki Caro, at the time, became
just the second woman to direct a film budgeted at over $100million (Sun
2017). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee 2000) producer Bill
Kong was hired to oversee and manage the Chinese production, reportedly
working with “Chinese cultural consultants” to guarantee the film’s authen-
ticity (R. Zhang 2020). The film’s cast assembled both established global
stars and local talent, such as Liu Yifei as the eponymous hero, martial arts
stars Donnie Yen and Jet Li, notable East Asian stars such as Singaporean
Gong Li, 1960s Chinese star Cheng Pei-Pei, Hong Kong-born actor Tzi Ma,
as well as Asian American actors including Jason Scott Lee and Rosalind
Chao. Regardless of its visible Asian casting, the film was criticized for
its lack of diversity behind the camera, accusations that Caro dismissed as
sounding “a little bit like censorship to me,” but that “[i]t can’t just be white
people being hired to make movies, no matter what the subject matter is”
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 13

(Wardlow 2020). Caro’s film foregrounds its transnational origins, from

the mixture of accents in the cast’s spoken English to what the produc-
tion designer, Grant Major, referred to as the film’s “romanticized and
family-friendly” look, based on the Tang (618–907 CE) dynasty (Reinstein
2020). While this stresses the film’s targeting of Chinese audiences, with a
renowned cast (many of whom contributed their own voices to the film’s
Mandarin dubbing), and the source story reimagined as a more conventional
Chinese wuxia epic, the film became more significantly marked as transna-
tional in its reception.
A year prior to the film’s release, Liu Yifei shared a social media post
from the Chinese government-run newspaper, People’s Daily, which sup-
ported Hong Kong police in its response to pro-democracy demonstrations
in the territory that had opposed a controversial extradition bill between
Hong Kong and mainland China. There were calls for a boycott of the
film, as #BoycottMulan trended on Twitter (BBC 2019). The film became
embroiled in a second scandal after it emerged around the time of its delayed
release that the production had filmed in the Xinjiang region in north-
western China. The province is home to what the Chinese authorities refer
to as “re-education camps” where the Uighur population, a mostly Muslim
Turkic ethnic group, is reported to being subject to internment, forced labor
and sterilization, while the United States has accused China of widespread
human rights abuses and genocide in the region (BBC 2021). The credits of
the film openly thank the Chinese authorities, including the Turpan Public
Security Bureau, the local authority responsible for running the “re-edu-
cation camps.” Disney refused to respond to questions from human rights
groups regarding the involvement of local authorities and their complic-
ity in working with the Chinese authorities (Bond 2020). The film’s text,
Jeannette Ng, writes in her review for Foreign Policy, refers to “the rotten
heart of Mulan as a film, [. . . its] accidental regurgitation of China’s current
nationalist myths as part of a messy, confused and boring film.” Criticizing
the film’s intention to create “a fairy-tale China,” Ng slates the makers for
their Sinicist vision of a united China, fighting for “an all-powerful Chinese
emperor,” rather than the khan of the Northern Wei dynasty of the origi-
nal song. She reads the “black-clad elite guards who are heavily coded as
Middle Eastern assassins, [as] bringing a splash of Islamophobia into the
mix.” Yet:

None of this feels intentional. The film was put together by a team of Western
scriptwriters who seem to have done very little homework, resulting in a jum-
bled mess whose absorption of China’s nationalist myths is largely unconscious.
Given the realities of filming in China, it’s likely that scripts also had to pass the
censors’ approval, resulting in cuts that reinforced this. (Ng 2020)
14 Steven Rawle

The contentious film described by Ng here, emphasizes the problematic

dimensions of marked transnational properties, albeit even that aspect is
perceived as inadvertent on the part of its western creators. This highlights
further dimensions of transnational filmmaking emphasized by Hjort. She
identified nine categories of transnationalism, several of which are relevant
here: epiphanic, affinitive, milieu-building, opportunistic, cosmopolitan,
globalizing, auteurist, modernizing, and experimental. There is a conscious
attempt to aspects of epiphanic and affinitive transnationalism in the clumsy
storytelling of Mulan, to emphasize shared aspects of belonging and core
values, mostly in terms of the film’s discourses about gender, its empowered
vision of the protagonist, as well as the film’s core female team of director,
writers, and cinematographer whose roles on the film challenged the celluloid
ceiling. Perhaps more relevant for the discussion moving forward are oppor-
tunistic, milieu-building, globalizing, and modernizing transnationalism.
Opportunistic and milieu-building transnationalism are potentially conflicting
categories—one, opportunistic, seeks to capitalize on fortuitous conditions
on a production-by-production basis, whereas milieu-building involves more
lasting connections for film industries. There are certainly odors of both in
Hollywood’s push toward Sino-US co-production, to take advantage of the
favorable conditions around the growing Chinese market, but also to build a
lasting imprint for production within China, and sometimes to overlook the
controversies caused by those relationships. Mulan underperformed at the
box office in China, even considering the impact of the Covid pandemic, its
$23.2 million opening weekend was a disappointment, lower than Christopher
Nolan’s Tenet (2020), which had opened the week before (McClintock 2020).
Fortune reported that due to the film’s opening on Disney+ in the United
States, pirate copies had hit the market, leading to a slew of negative reviews
that accused the film of being too American. As it quoted one reviewer, the
film includes “all the features of China that Americans could come up with
. . . it’s full of Western images of China, especially ancient China.” The
article also quotes Ying Zhu, author of Chinese cinema during the Era of
Reform: The Ingenuity of the System (2003), who cites the film’s “inbe-
tweenness” that emphasizes its transnational nature, stuck between borders,
between opportunism and building a lasting milieu (Elegant 2020). As we’ll
come to see, this isn’t the only film that has faltered like this, as Legendary’s
The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou, 2016) also found itself stuck between cul-
tures. The final relevant categories here are globalizing and modernizing.
Perhaps this is less relevant in the case of Mulan than in Legendary’s cir-
cumstances; the Wanda takeover of the latter emphasizes a desire to look
outward, both commercially and culturally, rather than Disney’s attempt to
target the Chinese box office with its “love letter to China,” to use Caro’s
terms (Elegant 2020). Perhaps symptomatic of what Hjort described later
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 15

as “monocultural convergence linked to the putative imposition of a single

(western) standard of filmmaking,” globalizing transnationalism seeks to pro-
duce work that has global popular appeal, with Hollywood-style standards,
but featuring cross-cultural appeal. Legendary Entertainment has come to
reflect this form of transnational commerce and production.

LEGENDARY: FROM INVESTMENT

FIRM TO CHINESE SUBSIDIARY

Legendary Entertainment is one of Hollywood’s most successful produc-

tion and financing companies. Founded in 2000 by Thomas Tull, a venture
capitalist and comic book fan, the company made its first big splash in the
Hollywood business when Warner Bros. announced a deal with Legendary
to produce films in “marquee franchises” (McClintock 2005, 75), Batman
Begins (Christopher Nolan 2005) and Superman Returns (Bryan Singer,
2006). Backed by a $500 million fund secured from a consortium of inves-
tors in 2004, including ABRY, Bank of America Capital Investors and AGI
Direct, self-styled “movie geek” Tull (McClintock 2005, 6) embarked on a
seven year, forty film co-production deal with Warners (Graser and Abrams
2011). Legendary assumed 50 percent of the cost of films it co-financed,
paying an additional 10 percent distribution fee to Warner Bros. and profit
sharing accordingly (Robehmed 2016). Their films tended toward the big
budget tentpole blockbusters with presold appeal, such as comic books
adaptations including 300 (Zack Snyder 2006) and Watchmen (Zack Snyder
2009), as well as the continuation of Nolan’s Batman trilogy (The Dark
Knight 2008, and The Dark Knight Rises 2012) and the Superman reboot
Man of Steel (Zack Snyder 2013). The company’s string of successes con-
tinued with major blockbusters based on Warner-owned properties, such as
Inception (Christopher Nolan 2010), the script for which was reported to be
subject to a seven-figure purchase by the studio (Fleming 2009), Clash of the
Titans (Louis Leterrier 2010) and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans (Jonathan
Liebesman 2012), and The Hangover (Todd Philips 2009), produced from a
spec script by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore that Warner acquired for $2million
and rushed into production before the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike
(Garrett 2007).
This first period in Legendary’s history established the company as a
major Hollywood presence. It prospered through the exploitation of major
properties. Its own slate of production initially faltered, including moderate
critical and commercial success with the Jackie Robinson biopic, 42 (Brian
Helgeland 2013),5 but massive failures with the Michael Mann-directed
Blackhat (2015) and troubled production Seventh Son (Sergei Bodrov 2014).6
16 Steven Rawle

Variety reported that Legendary had been forced to writedown the value of
both films, reducing their asset value by, respectively, $90 million (against
a $70 million budget) and $85million ($95million) (Graser 2015). The lat-
ter however marked the beginning of Legendary’s shift from a major force
in Hollywood finance and co-production. In June 2011, Tull announced
the formation of Legendary East, in partnership with Chinese studio Huayi
Brothers and Kelvin Wu King Shiu, CEO of Hong Kong-based Orange Sky
Golden Harvest (OSGH), the company founded by Raymond Chow that
brought Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to global stardom. Founded following a
meeting at a Sino-US co-production summit, the partnership was born from
one of the first Chinese investments in the American film industry, after
OSGH took a 3 percent stake in Legendary (for $25 million, which valued
the company at around $750 million in 2010). Wang Zhongjun, then co-CEO
of Huayi Brothers, commented that the project would aim to produce “won-
derful movies with Asian themes and backgrounds.” Tull commented that
“these are global movies” (Landreth 2011). In another Sino-American first,
Legendary East secured a deal with China Film Co. for investment in Seventh
Son and their World of Warcraft adaptation Warcraft (Duncan Jones 2016)
for around $10 million (McNary, Legendary’s “Warcraft,” “Seventh Son”
Secure Chinese Investment 2014). China Film Co., part of China Film Group,
effectively operates the state-monopoly system in Chinese cinema, which
allows imports of just 34 foreign films a year, although Chinese ownership
helps bypass this and grant national film status.
As Christina Klein has discussed, both China Film Group and Huayi
Brothers have been instrumental in helping Chinese cinema expand to global
markets. In her article on Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (Gongfu 2004),
Klein demonstrates that the involvement of these two companies had helped
to secure Hong Kong cinema’s viability in the face of declining exports fol-
lowing the 1997 handover to China. The involvement of the two Chinese
studios gave Chow’s film official Chinese national status and allowed it to
bypass restrictions on film imports and to navigate local censorship. Klein
argues that, alongside helping to transform Hong Kong into a more trans-
national market in the face of globalizing pressures, Kung Fu Hustle is “a
marker of the Chinese film industry’s efforts to transform itself from a state-
run instrument of education and propaganda into a viable commercial indus-
try” (Klein 2007, 202–203). In terms of a developing transnational model,
this marks global flows in multiple directions: “flows out of Hollywood (in
the form of capital, mode of production, stylistic conventions) into Hong
Kong; reverse flows out of Hong Kong [. . .] into the United States; and
regional flows out of Hong Kong (in the form of its film workers and exper-
tise) into China (204).” In the case of this deal with Legendary, these flows
have become more complex, involving flows of capital into Hollywood, as
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 17

well as between China and Hong Kong, but also flows of films into China,
since these deals secured Legendary’s access to the Chinese market. As we’ll
see later, this deal, and subsequent agreements, also helped cement flows of
culture between Hollywood and East Asia.
In January 2016, Legendary was taken over by Dalian Wanda Group. They
paid $3.5billion for the company, although this was a surprising sum for a
company that had produced a string of major hits but owned no significant
commercial properties of their own. Through Warner Bros. and Universal,
Legendary had co-produced or co-financed films in major franchises, includ-
ing Batman, Superman, Jurassic World, and Godzilla, all of which were
owned by the two major studios or under license from another (Toho owns
the Godzilla copyright and licenses the monster on a film-by-film basis along
with its adversaries). Forbes’ coverage of the deal couldn’t understand the
valuation:

Disney paid $4.1 billion for Lucasfilm and the mighty Star Wars franchise
and another $4 billion for Marvel and a character universe—the Hulk, Thor
and Captain America—that collectively is the highest-grossing franchise of
all time. What does Wang’s $3.5 billion, which includes some $900 million in
debt, buy him? [. . .] Legendary boasts about the content it owns, but there’s no
way Pacific Rim, along with a small horror movie and three disappointments,
can almost equal the value of Star Wars. Not even close. (Robehmed 2016)

After purchasing the AMC cinema chain for $2.6 billion in 2012, Wanda,
whose development portfolio includes over 100 Wanda Plaza shopping and
entertainment complexes in China, had taken one of the biggest stakes in an
American company by a Chinese business. An investigation by The New
York Times in 2015 revealed the deep connections between Wang Jianglin,
Asia’s richest person, and the Chinese Communist Party, largely through
shares owned by relatives or business associates of high-ranking officials,
including the sister of President Xi Jinping. The article stresses that the
growth and global reach of Wanda might be less to do with smart investments
(including the over-priced acquisition of Legendary) but with the extension
of Chinese soft power. Whereas a company like Disney promotes American
soft power, China’s goal is more culturally specific to promote positive mes-
sages about the country (Forsythe 2015). This would include Wanda’s media
interests. In addition to their ownership of AMC (over which they claim to
have no control in terms of which films are shown), and Legendary, Wanda
broke ground in Qingdao on the largest film studio in the world, at the cost of
almost $8 billion (Dalton 2018). The company’s goal is suggested to be the
creation of “a global vertically integrated motion picture company” accord-
ing to former Legendary investor (Robehmed 2016), and the development
18 Steven Rawle

of facilities and the acquisition of a major global production and financing

company provides the means to begin to do so. This fits the profile strongly of
globalizing transnationalism, to marry Hollywood production standards with
content that blends aspects of Chinese soft power. One of the first produc-
tions to shoot at the Qingdao studio complex was a Legendary production,
The Great Wall, which emphasizes the transcultural content of transnational
cinema in this mold.

THE GREAT WALL

The Great Wall has been described as “a new template of formulaic, stamped
for approval, Sino-Hollywood co-productions” (Sullivan 2017). It concerns
a pair of European mercenaries, the Irish William Garin (played by Matt
Damon) and Spanish Pero Tovar (Pedro Pascal), in eleventh-century Song
Dynasty China. They are attacked by a monster near the Great Wall and are
subsequently taken prisoner by The Nameless Order. The Order are tasked
with fighting off Tao Tie, a horde of monsters that attack every 60 years. Led
by Commander Lin (Jing Tian) and Strategist Wang (Andy Lau), the Order
stoically resist the attacks by the alien monsters. After initially planning to
escape with Sir Ballard (Willem Dafoe), a captive European now teaching
English, Garin and Tovar team up with the Order to fight off the monsters.
Putting aside their greed for the “black powder” with which the Order are
equipped, individual desires are put aside in favor of the collective good.
The film is undoubtedly designed for the global and Chinese market, with
its mixture of wuxia pian spectacle, blending Hollywood stars with both
established (Lau, well known to international audiences as the star of Infernal
Affairs [Mou gaan dou, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak 2002]) and emerging
Chinese stars (Jing, who would later star in two further Legendary produc-
tions, Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim: Uprising [Steven S. DeKnight
2018]). The film’s initial announcement was criticized for its “whitewashed”
casting of Damon—Asian American actor Constance Wu criticized its “rac-
ist myth that [only a] white man can save the world” (Wong 2016). Damon
responded to the criticism that he had not taken a role from an Asian actor,
by responding that the role was written for a white European character: “It
wasn’t altered because of me in any way,” he claimed (Pulver 2016). While
Damon’s character is undoubtedly cast as the lead, and presents ingenious
solutions and displays heroism, the narrative is more symptomatic of what
Jing Yang, Min Jiao, and Jin Zhang term “East-West interchange” (Yang,
Jiao and Zhang 2020, 668). The film metaphorizes its own production, a col-
laboration between Hollywood and China Film Group that blends Hollywood
tropes with those of Chinese cinema. Hence, while there are elements of
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 19

white savior to Damon’s character, the film goes to lengths to display the
technological superiority of The Nameless Order, its use of sophisticated (for
the time) solutions, such as the black powder (gunpowder, generally held
to be a Chinese invention) and hot-air balloons. When the queen monster
is finally defeated, it is through the collaborative efforts of Garin, and Lin.
“East-West interchange” is also evident in the stone Garin carries that pacifies
and allows them to capture a monster due to the stone’s magnetism. But, at
the core of the film, is the East-West interchange of its production, the financ-
ing of Legendary and Atlas Entertainment, in co-operation with the state-run
China Film Group and Le Vision, a major Chinese distributor. Sullivan’s
comment about the “stamped for approval” co-production is emphasized
by its conscious blending of transcultural elements, but it is inescapable
that much of the production’s personnel were Hollywood insiders, includ-
ing screenwriters Tony Gilroy, Max Brooks, and Edward Zwick. The film’s
marketing even enabled cross-border collaborations, with promotional songs
by Wang Leehom and Tan Weiwei, and Jane Zhang, with production by
Timbaland and members of Maroon.5 The Great Wall, therefore, sees China,
in Aynne Kokas’s terms, “moving from the periphery to a more central role”
in the global hierarchy of World Cinema, if we see Hollywood as its centre
(Kokas 2019, 220).
The most significant area in which the film engages with national mean-
ing is through its promotion of aspects of genre. Legendary’s Hollywood
strategy had been designed through a strategic approach to developing and
financing major presold tentpole properties with mass appeal. Earlier films
had relied on established franchise properties, as we’ve seen, but The Great
Wall represented a risky venture, based on an original script, regardless of
the talent involved. This is in some way mitigated through the hybridization
of the film’s two core genres, both of which are strongly associated with
East Asian cinema: the wuxia pian and the monster film. Since the turn of
the twenty-first century, the wuxia pian (martial hero) film has been China’s
most significant film export. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brought the
genre to global prominence beyond diasporic and fan communities; Darrell
William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh refer to it as “a beacon of cultural
China” (2008, 25). Following Rey Chow’s call for becoming-visible in
Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the
Age of Global Visibility (2007), Kokas concludes that “[t]he use of popular
genres [. . .] expands visibility” (Kokas 2019, 222). As Kokas, and a number
of other commentators have mentioned (Hunt 2003; Lau 2007), this process
expanded after Crouching Tiger with films such as Hero (Ying xiong, Zhang
Yimou 2002), House of Flying Daggers (Shimian maifu and Zhang Yimou
2004), The Emperor and the Assassin (Jing Ke ci Qin Wang, and Chen Kaige
1998), and Kung Fu Hustle (Davis and Yeh, 27–28). Hjort also cites Hero as
20 Steven Rawle

a key film in the cycle of globalizing and modernizing transnational cinema.

Yet, as Lau demonstrates, the cycle is problematic in its conflicted messaging
about Chinese nationalism: “As a film which attempts to break the national
barrier and represent the emerging sense of China’s internationality Hero is
caught in the contradictions between narrow nationalism (security and unity)
and self-conscious cosmopolitanism (world peace—“Tian xia” peace)” (Lau
2007). Likewise, Kokas sees such blended processes of funding, casting and
genre developing a “particular form of visibility [that] reinforces that national
vision transnationally, strengthening Chinese power hierarchies while also
reifying the financially driven power hierarchies that already prevail in
Hollywood” (224). The gearing of production toward globalized transna-
tional outcomes, Kokas, argues is detrimental to the diversity of production
in China, where the outward-looking goals of cultural soft power is coupled
with the desire for visibility, in Chow’s terms, on the international stage.
Films that exploit popular genres globally take precedence over the growth
of a distinctively national cinema, where myths of China predominate above
films that promote either “nuanced historical retelling or an incisive cultural
critique” (Kokas 2019, 222). However, as we’ll see, audiences have generally
favored locally produced Chinese films over Hollywood blockbusters.
Another genre not necessarily noted for “incisive cultural critique” is the
monster movie. Long a source of mockery, the giant kaiju film has found a
new global focus following the production of Legendary’s “monsterverse”
series that have been enormously successful with Chinese audiences. The
kaiju film is a modern invention, 1954’s Gojira (Honda Ishirō) taking its cues
from a twentieth anniversary re-release of King Kong (Edgar Wallace and
Merian C. Cooper 1933), and has long been critiqued as a form of antinuclear
and ecological protest (Anderson 2006; Barr 2016; Napier 1993; Noriega
1987; Rhoads and McCorkle 2018; Sontag 1966; Yomota 2007). The Great
Wall adopts elements of the kaiju film but adapts these with the threat of mul-
tiple monsters with a queen as the main threat, as in Aliens (James Cameron
1986) and Godzilla (Roland Emmerich 1998). The Tao Tie in The Great Wall
became a problematic inclusion. Tao Tie is a part of the centuries old myth
of “the four perils,” one of the great evil creatures of Chinese mythology. Its
inclusion in The Great Wall shifted its basic meaning, of greed or gluttony,
to a more standard reflection of the strength in numbers. As Chinese audi-
ence members observed, the monsters in the movie owed more to the design
of lizard-like kaiju than the Tao Tie of mythology. In the Shan Hai Jing, the
creature is described as a having the body of a ram, tiger fangs, eyes under its
armpits and human nails. A goat-owl that makes noises like a baby and eats
humans (Birrell 1999, 43). It was felt that the more conventional design of the
monsters, as well as their different origins, were a result of the non-Chinese
crew who worked on the film, especially the special effects designers in New
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 21

Zealand’s Weta Workshop (Deng 2017). Yang, Jiao and Zhang have demon-
strated that a new wave of “Chinese monster films have adapted Hollywood’s
generic conventions to local realities. [Yet] The Great Wall exemplified a
new level of local-global convergence with the ambition to win a place in
the international market” (Yang, Jiao and Zhang 2020, 661). The blending
of Chinese mythology with Hjort’s definition of “a single (western) standard
of filmmaking” restates the transnational and transcultural approaches in the
film, part-appropriation-part-conscious blending: “While the highlight of
Tao Tie’s allegorical meaning might be associated with a Chinese approach
to engage with the monster genre, the adoption of the white savior narrative
signifies the re-invention of the Western paradigm” (Yang, Jiao and Zhang
2020, 659). Like the later Mulan, The Great Wall’s construction of a mythic
China and appeal to global genres failed to generate the profits and visibility
expected. Despite the blitz on marketing and the promotion of its transna-
tional nature, the film satisfied few. It underperformed at the box office in the
United States and China, with initial losses estimated at around $75million
(McClintock 2017). The Hollywood Reporter speculated that the film might
jeopardize future US-China co-productions, but as Legendary entered its
phase under Chinese ownership, it pushed on with the development of trans-
culturally designed films.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING (2018)

2013’s Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro) was a thoroughly transnational

film. Its cast and crew consisted of a Mexican director, actors from Britain
(Charlie Hunman, Idris Elba, Burn Gorman), Canada (Diego Klattenhoff,
the Chinese-Vietnamese descended Luu brothers), the United States (Ron
Perlman, Max Martini), Japan (Rinko Kikuchi), and Spain (Santiago Segura),
and it was shot predominantly in Canada. It tells a story of transnational co-
operation: a group of Americans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, and British
operatives from a base in Hong Kong fight off an invasion of space monsters
that travel via an inter-dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
known as “The Breach.” These monsters are called “kaiju” in the film. In
promoting the film, Del Toro discussed the influence of Godzilla and how the
monsters were designed to nostalgically reflect the tokusatsu (the Japanese
terms for special effects) film. The story’s core follows the pilots of Jaegers,
giant robots with two operatives whose consciousness is fused together, as
they battle off the monsters (and family issues). The film’s core concept
highlighted its appropriation of transnational tropes, largely from Japanese
media. As we’ve heard, it was perhaps the most notable franchise property
that Legendary owned. For a near $200million film, its $400million global
22 Steven Rawle

box office was disappointing. But one aspect was significant: it grossed more
in China than it did domestically (Box Office Mojo 2021). Yet, it wasn’t
without controversy: an officer of the People’s Liberation Army accused
the film of importing propaganda: “The decisive battle against the monsters
was deliberately set in the South China Sea adjacent to Hong Kong . . . . The
intention was to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to maintaining stability in
the Asia-Pacific area and saving mankind” (Coonan 2013). Nevertheless, the
success of Pacific Rim with Chinese audiences helped pave the way for later
collaborations like The Great Wall.
Even with the faltering box office of the original, Universal pressed ahead
with a sequel. The first film had been developed as part of Legendary’s deal
with Warner, but the sequel eventually fell under the terms of their partner-
ship with Universal. The release of the sequel was initially scheduled for April
2017 (McNary 2014), but it was soon delayed, then canceled, amid rumors of
a breakdown in the relationship between Legendary and Universal, reportedly
because the production of Kong: Skull Island and the planned “monsterverse”
sequels was pulling Legendary back to Warner Bros. (Masters 2015). The
Pacific Rim sequel was subsequently canceled, and Del Toro left the project.
As soon as the Wanda-Legendary deal was announced, there was specula-
tion, fueled by a social media post by Del Toro, that Pacific Rim was back on
(Chitwood 2016). In February 2016, the project was greenlit once more, with
TV showrunner Steven S. DeKnight replacing Del Toro (Fleming Jr. 2016).
Once the film was released, US commentators quickly dubbed it “China-bait”
(Yoshida 2018), drawing attention to its casting of Chinese actors, Mandarin
language scenes, images of Chinese technology, product placement for a
range of Chinese brands and some anti-Japanese sentiment.7
Unlike The Great Wall, Pacific Rim: Uprising emphasizes a different form
of Chinese modernity. Whereas the early film, developed by Legendary in
their pre-Wanda days, capitalized on a mythic China, this film presents an
ultra-modern China (of 2035) where the Shao Corporation, owned and run
by Shao Liwen (Jing Tian), has mass produced Jaeger drones that threaten
the original program from the first film. When a kaiju-corrupted Jaeger kills
Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), the adopted sister of the film’s protagonist, Jake
Pentecost (John Boyega), it’s discovered that kaiju have taken over the giant
robot with assistance from Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), the scientist
who mind-merged with the kaiju in the first film. The film ends with a giant
showdown in Tokyo between the mecha and monsters. Elements of the film
are reminiscent of the Transformers series, which is hugely successful in
China. The addition of a younger protagonist (Cailee Spaeny), the cutely
designed homemade Jaeger Scrapper, and the more active role of the Jaeger
seemingly as robots rather than giant exoskeletons feels like it shares some
of the DNA of the Transformers films.
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 23

Pacific Rim: Uprising represents a more significant shift toward the global
centre of filmmaking for China. A Hollywood film designed for the Chinese
marketplace, albeit with conventional Hollywood stars at its core, it repre-
sents clear bi-directional flows of both capital and cultural content between
China and the United States. In addition to Jing, the cast features a number
of Chinese actors, including Zhang Jin (who also starred in Crouching Tiger,
here credited as Max Zhang), Huang Kaijie (as Wesley Wong), Ji Li, Lan
Yingying, Yu Xiaowei, and Chen Zitong. The film was also shot partly at
the Qingdao studios, but features cameos from locations around China, from
Shanghai (Oriental Pearl TV Tower) and Guangzhou (Canton Tower). There
is prominent placement for Chinese brands, such as online retailer JD​.co​m,
and a holographic cameo from the penguin mascot of Tencent. As early scene
features a big close-up of bottles of Tsing Tao beer in a fridge. Legendary
partnered with Xiaomi to produce a Pacific Rim suitcase (Iafulla 2018). There
were a reported 15 brand licensing deals with Chinese firms (Week in China
2018). Even with Western writers, directors, and producers, the film presents
an image of a progressive and technologically advanced China, while at the
same time there are shades of a “Yellow Peril” narrative that hints at the tech-
nology trade war between China and the United States under Donald Trump’s
presidency. Even though the China-developed technology initially emerges
as a threat, it plays a positive role in the film’s resolution. When Shao takes
control of the mini-Jaeger Scrapper in the final scenes, her technology enables
the victory over the mega-kaiju. The positive presentation of a modern China
echoes the ruling Politburo’s call for greater cultural exposition: Xi Jinping
called for greater “socialist cultural power” during his New Year’s address in
2014 that would “enhance the overall cultural strength and competitiveness”
of the country (Xi 2014). As an exercise in demonstrating “cultural strength
and competitiveness” the Pacific Rim sequel emphasizes Hjort’s conception
of modernizing transnationalism as a means of speaking to the global com-
petitiveness of the country in an imagined future in which China dominates
economically and technologically. It transplants themes from The Great Wall
about Chinese progress into a science fiction setting.
Like the earlier Legendary East production, Pacific Rim: Uprising stum-
bled at the box office. Although lower budgeted than its prequel, at a reported
$150million, it grossed just $60million domestically, and a little under $100
million in China, almost matching the box office of the previous film (Box
Office Mojo 2021). It outperformed Black Panther (Ryan Coogler 2018)
in its opening weekend in China, but plummeted following that, with poor
word of mouth reviews cited as the reason. Pacific Rim: Uprising was the
twenty-fifth highest-grossing film of the year in China (right behind Black
Panther), but ahead of another Legendary production, Skyscraper (Rawson
Marshall Thurber), a Hong Kong-set disaster movie starring Dwayne
24 Steven Rawle

Johnson. It was outgrossed by several giant monster movies, including The

Meg (Jon Turteltaub 2018), Rampage (Brad Peyton 2018), and the Legendary
co-financed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J. A. Bayona 2018). The
Meg also benefited from Chinese co-production, star casting and settings.
Internationally, Avengers: Infinity War (Joe and Anthony Russo) was the
highest grossing film of the year, yet it came a distant fifth behind four
Chinese produced films: Dante Lam’s action epic Operation Red Sea (Hóng
Hǎi Xíng Dòng 2018), comedy Detective Chinatown 2 (Tángrénjiē tàn àn,
Chen Sicheng 2018), cancer drug smuggling comedy Dying to Survive (Wǒ
Bú Shì Yào Shén, and Wen Muye 2018) and Brewster’s Millions-style foot-
ball comedy Hello Mr. Billionaire (Xī hóng shì shǒufù, Fei Yan, and Damo
Peng 2018) (Box Office Mojo 2021). So, as the Chinese box office continues
to grow in size, local hits take precedence over major Hollywood movies
even if their content is glocally tailored to the local box office (Lin 2011).

CONCLUSION

Transnational concepts envision flows of culture and capital that are posi-
tioned as “below-global/above-national” (Ďurovičová 2010, x) and the ways
in which “contact zones” (in Mary Louise Pratt’s terms) between nations
help us to move “beyond any tendency to reduce the centers and peripheries
of present-day capitalism to the past familiar binary of cultural imperialism”
(Newman 2010, 9). Such flows are unequal but, as the term “transnational”
implies, they demonstrate “the persistent agency of the state” (Ďurovičová
2010, x). However, in the case of China, we must acknowledge the prob-
lematic dimensions of nation and the ways in which it has persistently been
described as a “translocal” (Y. Zhang 2011) or “transnational reality” (Berry
2010, 119). What persists is a transnational dimension to global Chinese
cinema that draws upon the ideological rhetoric of global capitalism in the
way that trans- or cross-border production is organized (Berry 2010, 122).
Legendary is a case study for the ways in which globalization has config-
ured areas of transnational finance and production. The cases considered in
this chapter explore how the contact zone between Hollywood’s desire to
embrace and capitalize upon China’s growing film market and the PRC’s
wish to export an image of competitive soft power is providing yet problema-
tizing visibility.
As Hjort exemplifies, modernizing transnationalism is determined at the
level of state policy as a means of expanding the nation’s global soft power.
Traditionally, Japan have been very successful in developing an outward-
looking policy of soft power (McGray 2002), built on cultural exports such
as manga, anime, kaiju media, horror movies, and toys. South Korea have
 Globalizing Legendary Entertainment 25

also prospered in terms of global visibility, with the Hallyu wave’s prolifera-
tion of K-Pop, K-Dramas and films, from the emergence of the Korean New
Wave to the triumph of Parasite (Gisaengchung and Bong Joon-ho 2019) at
the 2019 Oscars. China’s desire to develop a similar policy has emphasized
similar aspects, including the investment in Hollywood production (analo-
gous to Japanese investment in Hollywood studios from the 1980s onward).
However, in order to do so, Hollywood, as we see in the extreme case of
Mulan, have had to overlook alleged human rights abuses by the very Chinese
authorities they have collaborated with to produce the films. The films have
also presented palatable images of a progressive and unified China that fit
the rhetoric of the ruling party. And, yet, while Hollywood appears to have
been willing and complicit in their dealings with China, few co-productions
have been resoundingly successful at the Chinese box office, taking a lower
billing to both homegrown productions and more conventional Hollywood
blockbusters.
Legendary’s more recent fortunes have been mixed. In 2017, Tull stepped
down as CEO, to become “founding chairman” (Rainey and Lang 2017),
while the company reeled from some major losses, but had expanded its
portfolio to include games, TV, and comic book publishing (echoing Tull’s
geekiness). Their films continued to predominantly target the Chinese market,
and they had two solid hits in China based on Japanese properties. Pokémon
Detective Pikachu and Godzilla: King of the Monsters were both released in
2019. The former is a live-action reimagining of the card game set in Ryme
City, a combination of several global cities, including New York and Tokyo.
It features no significant Chinese casting, no “China-bait,” but the film out-
performed its tracking in China, with about 20 percent of its global box office
from China. The Godzilla movie outperformed the domestic box office by
around 20 percent as part of a disappointing global performance,8 and high-
lighted its appeal for Chinese audiences. Unlike the Pokémon film, Godzilla
imports some elements from Pacific Rim: Uprising, with some Chinese cast-
ing (Zhang Ziyi playing a double role as the Infant Island Shobijin twins who
speak on behalf of their goddess Mothra) that hints at the replacement of
Japanese actors (Shobijin have traditionally been played by Japanese perform-
ers since the 1960s, while Ken Watanabe is in both of these films but meets
his end in Godzilla). This signals something of turning point for Legendary.
While the Wanda investment is secure in terms of their role as a player in
Hollywood financially, the controversies surrounding, as well as the box office
underperformance of, blended transcultural content in The Great Wall, Pacific
Rim: Uprising, and Disney’s Mulan, may give way to less overtly marked
transnational content and pave the way for films that exploit global properties
financially without emphasizing their transnational roots, but through popular
global genres at the Chinese box office, financial above cultural power.
26 Steven Rawle

NOTES

1. These are King Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017), Godzilla: King
of the Monsters (Michael Dougherty, 2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong (Adam Wingard,
2021).
2. In this chapter, I’m making a distinction between transnational flows across
borders in terms of capital and personnel but considering products and meanings of
cultural as trans- or cross-cultural.
3. Zhang is probably best known for her roles in wuxia pian such as Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000), Hero (Yīngxióng, Zhang Yimou, 2002), and
House of Flying Daggers (Shimian maifu, Zhang Yimou, 2004), but she also plays a
prominent role in Legendary’s Godzilla films.
4. Jiang is best known as an actor outside China, for his role in Rogue One: A Star
Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016), but is an award-winning director in China, for
films including Let the Bullets Fly (Ràng Zǐ Dàn Fēi, 2010).
5. Unlike the tentpole films it was producing with Warner Bros., 42 had a relatively
low budget of $40 million, grossing $95 million domestically, but, as with many sport
films, it had little international appeal, grossing just under $2.5 million, but from a
low number of screens – it played in 160 screens in Japan, reflecting the baseball’s
popularity in Japan, but its niche appeal around the world (Box Office Mojo 2021).
This also reflects the declining fortunes of mid-budget films in Hollywood, as dis-
cussed by Alisa Perren in Indie, Inc.: Miramax and the Transformation of Hollywood
in the 1990s (2012).
6. Seventh Son was impacted by the end of the relationship between Legendary and
Warner Bros. Its production was also affected by the collapse of visual effects studio
Rhythm & Hues. The film’s release was delayed four times before it opened to largely
poor critical reception (Graser 2015).
7. Some Western commentators read the death of Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori
as pandering to Chinese anti-Japanese sentiment by removing a prominent Japanese
actor and replacing her with a Chinese star, Jing Tian, as the focus of the film.
8. Despite a higher production budget, Godzilla: King of the Monsters grossed
around $70 million less than Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

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9, 2021. https​:/​/fi​​lmsch​​oolre​​jects​​.com/​​niki-​​caro-​​mulan​​-inte​​​rview​/.
Week in China. 2018. Primed for the Pacific. April 6. Accessed February 11, 2021.
https​:/​/ww​​w​.wee​​kinch​​ina​.c​​om​/20​​18​/04​​/prim​​ed​-fo​​r​-​the​​-paci​​fic/.
Wong, Julia Carrie. 2016. “Asian Americans Decry ‘Whitewashed’ Great Wall Film
Starring Matt Damon.” The Guardian, July 30. Accessed February 11, 2021. https​
:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/fi​​lm​/20​​16​/ju​​l​/29/​​the​-g​​reat-​​wall-​​china​​-film​​-matt​​​-damo​​n​
-whi​​tewas​​hed.
Xi, Jinping. 2014. Xi Jinping: Build a Socialist Cultural Power and Focus on
Improving the Country’s Cultural Soft Power. January 1. Accessed February 11,
2021. http:​/​/pol​​itics​​.peop​​le​.co​​m​.cn/​​n​/201​​4​/010​​1​/c10​​01​-23​​​99433​​4​.htm​​l.
Yang, Jing, Min Jiao, and Jin Zhang. 2020. “An Alternative Discourse of Modernity
in a Chinese Monster Film: The Great Wall.” Cultural Studies 34 (4): 656–674.
Accessed February 11, 2021. doi:10.1080/09502386.2019.1694050.
Yomota, Inuhiko. 2007. “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishirō’s Godzilla
(1954).” In Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, edited by Alastair Phillips and
Julian Stringer, 102–111. London and New York: Routledge.
Yoshida, Emily. 2018. “Pacific Rim Uprising Might Be the Most China-Bait Studio
Release Yet.” Vulture, March 21. Accessed February 11, 2021. https​ :/​
/ww​​
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.vul​​ture.​​com​/2​​018​/0​​3​/pac​​ific-​​rim​-u​​prisi​​ng​​-re​​view.​​html.
Zhang, Rui. 2020. “Disney’s ‘Mulan’ to Hit Chinese Theaters on Sept. 11.” China​.org​
.c​n, September 3. Accessed February 9, 2021. http:​/​/www​​.chin​​a​.org​​.cn​/a​​rts​/2​​020​
-0​​9​/03/​​conte​​nt​_7​6​​66615​​9​.htm​.
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Film Institute/Palgrave MacMillan.
 Chapter 2

New Heroes in Transnational

Hollywood
An Attempt to Transculturality in
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Uğur Baloğlu

I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman,

whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now wives four of different nations. He
is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices
and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has
embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.
(Crevecoeur 1782)

It is significant to make sense of the eighteenth century American identity

imagination from the observations of a writer who has just migrated from
Europe to the United States in terms of understanding today’s US immi-
gration system, cultural and social structure, and Hollywood. As stated by
Crevecoeur, the melting pot is a key point of the US immigration system. It
symbolizes integrity that all differences of various cultures are melted down
in a pot and those differences form a whole union. However, it is also pos-
sible to say that cultural practices such as music, eating and drinking, clothing
and from different geographies have been added to American culture piece by
piece over the years, immigrants living in US society have been assimilated
and removed from their roots in order to create a new cultural environment,
and heterogeneity in the supra-cultural context has shifted toward homogene-
ity. The metaphor of the “salad bowl,” which claims that those who are con-
ceptually opposed to this term are articulated to US culture while preserving
the differences of different cultures it develops and is the part of the whole,
is still discussed in the literature (D’innocenzo and Sirefman 1992; Anderson
33
34 Uğur Baloğlu

2000; Bhattacharya and Groznik 2008; Berray 2019). However, in order to

comprehend today within the framework of today’s globalization discourses,
perhaps two opposing concepts should be used on the same conceptual ground
since the melting pot and salad bowl are insufficient. In other words, the US
cultural setting both protects and assimilates differences. It is important to
consider this claim within the framework of today’s global cultural flow dis-
courses and the dominance of transnationalism in economic, social, cultural
and political environments. Since the different cultures of the United States
and the melting of people’s lifestyles in a pot are realized by the integration of
immigrant groups into the United States in different ways. As anthropologist
Cristina De Rossi points out, an individual from a different cultural environ-
ment can preserve his own language, religion, eating, and clothing practice,
while it integrates with the cultural environment of the country and shapes the
lifestyle in a different way (Zimmermann 2017). In this context, is it possible
to say that the homogeneous structure of the present cultural environment of
the United States has been exceeded? (Welsch 1999, 194) It is more accu-
rate to respond to this in what context we look at culture. When we consider
within the framework of consumption culture discussions, we can develop
similar lifestyles by experiencing differences by approaching with industrial-
ism/post-industrialism of our increasing dependencies and consumption prac-
tices with globalization. The global space we are in today “is a space of flows
. . . , a decentred space, a space in which frontiers and boundaries have become
permeable. Within this global arena, economies and cultures are thrown into
intense and immediate contact with each other—with each Other” (Morley
and Robins 2002, 115). In this network of relationships, localisms at different
points and the dominant consumption culture of global capitalist discourse
involving all extent interact by connecting. Emphasizing the dialectical fea-
ture of globalization at this point, Giddens (1996, 64) states that the localities
that interact with each other in the global cultural environment are not merely
articulated with the universal, but also expand on the horizontal plane. In line
with this point of view, it is not convenient to read globalization as the victory
of the universal against the particular and the vision of a homogenized world.
However, the overlooked point in global capitalist discourse is the effort of
some local elements infiltrated into cultural industry products to make the
struggle of the dominant culture with the “other” invisible. This should not
be perceived as an effort by the West to globalize its own local and destroy
all other local formations. On the contrary, we should think of this as an
attempt to articulate consumption culture, which is the dominant culture of
capitalist discourse, to all localities, perhaps to strengthen their localities.1 In
this respect, when we reconsider the American identity and cultural texture
described by Crevecoeur in the eighteenth century in the global capitalist
discourse, we can say that spatial boundaries disappear (both economic and
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 35

technological) and new lifestyles, new identities, new forms of citizenship,

even new nationalities have emerged. Because today’s world is going through
a process similar to the big changes that occurred in the early nineteenth
century. With the epistemological breaks occurring on the conceptual plane,
our relationships, communication processes, experiences, and practices also
change, and we experience a period of breaking between the past and future.
Based on these discussions, it becomes important to examine the new
cultural environment formed by the changing national/transnational identity
and forms of belonging together with the representation mechanisms in the
new era films produced by transnational capital, which is described as the
“cultural policy citadel” (Miller 2005). In addition, examining the relation-
ship of identity forms created in a new universe with transnational capital
will help to understand what context in which Hollywood shapes the cultural
environment. In this study, in today’s global capitalist discourse, the upper-
identity, which is intended to be created in a transcultural environment with
the new representation strategies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU),
by transferring the colonial understanding of the nation-state to supranational
corporations will be examined in the context of Appadurai’s global cultural
flow conceptualization. I discuss the efforts of MCU, which has structured its
new fictional universe with different ethnic origin and racial diversity in the
globalizing film industry, to create a transcultural supra-identity with heroes
in the new universe by moving away from Hollywood’s past white-race
superhero-oriented productions.

IS COLONIAL UNDERSTANDING OVER?

DID IT CHANGE ITS FORM?

Subcontractor Culture or Subcontracting of Culture

Today, conflicting contingency is experienced in all institutional structures of
modernity: Right-wing populist governments lose power while gaining power,
(old publicness) resist with protests2 in real social fields as publicness trans-
forms, nationality tends to be bizarrely re-nationalization while losing power in
the face of global discourse. Based on Berman, who interprets modernity as a
maelstrom, individuals think that concepts such as equality, freedom, democ-
racy, right, justice, citizenship and identity have lost in globalization discourses
and that they may not be regained irreversibly. For all these reasons, individu-
als/groups persistently try to preserve their cultural ties, socialities and identi-
ties while submitting to the (compulsory) pressure of globalization.
The urge to preserve the past, cultural identity and/or cultural ties can be
read as the local’s response to the global. Appadurai (2017, 2) interprets this
36 Uğur Baloğlu

as a growing emphasis on the domination of the culture at a time when eco-

nomic sovereignty in the national perspective is collapsing all over the world.
In this process, the drastic measures and decisions observed in migration
policies reveal an attitude toward the cultural dimension of globalization—
different concepts such as multiculturalism, interculturalism, and transcultur-
alism. In reality, this kind of reactiveness is expected given that globalization
consists of different social and historical factors in a complex multidimen-
sional process.3 Especially nowadays, economic crises with populist policies
that increase their influence almost all over the world cause xenophobia.
Neglecting the negative impact of global capitalist discourse on the national/
local economy and the cultural and social structure of that country, this point
of view, which often makes immigrants scapegoat because of media tools,
takes the crisis out of context. In recent years, the attitude of the United States
and the world toward immigrants confirms this.4 Because the migrants used
by global capitalist discourse to overcome moments of crisis in the past are
now seen as the hunchback of the world. At this point, this negative trend in
the immigration policy of the United States is against the unity of the country
consisting of immigrants and the coexistence of elements such as different
languages, religion, race, and culture.
The journey to the new continent (North America), called the Great
Migration in 1630, is based on a longing for free and prosperous land
while symbolizing a struggle against the heavy taxes and discrimination of
Europe—especially Britain. This struggle is not just a struggle for freedom,
according to Paine (1776), but a resistance to the unequal system, which is
based on the rule of the British nobles and elites. In fact, the Declaration of
Independence (1776), issued after the rights gained by resistance, expresses
that the new country rises on egalitarian and libertarian foundations with the
following lines:

All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cer-
tain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That when-
ever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right
of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

However, the new country, which was established with the rights5 gained
after the struggle against the colonialist understanding, turn into a system that
globalizes the colonialist understanding in the coming years. Although it is
based on the rejection of the Eurocentric view, the United States is built on a
Euro-modern view/ideology. The positioning of liberal understanding in the
center brings about the capitalist economic system to become increasingly
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 37

institutionalized and gain strength at the global level in the following years.
In this context, it can be said that in the historical process, Europe first trans-
formed the United States and then the United States transformed Europe—
and even the world (Neto 2006, 52). In this dialectical process, it should
be noted that the colonial understanding still continues over the Western
instrumentalist-capitalist thought. As a matter of fact, Stuart Hall summarizes
the globalized portrait of this idea, which is also the center of postcolonial
debates today, as “West and others.” In other words, while the United States
and Europe (West, shortly) still play a “central role in cultural production and
determining global trends,” it still remains an attraction for other countries
(Dirlik 2012, 16). Therefore, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the
globalization reflex was carried out within the framework of nationalist and
colonial ideology, while today it changes form in practice in a postcolonial
and even post-national process, but in essence, it spreads through the same
ideological elements. In short, the Euro-American colonial form based on
Western modernity creates the illusion that it eliminates social, cultural and
economic inequalities in the global world.
The fact that the United States is a country consisting of immigrants
requires equal rights and freedoms for the people living in that land, firstly
the struggles with racism, then the struggles with ethnic discrimination and
the policies of marginalization indicate that the “land of liberties” discourse is
an illusion produced only in Hollywood productions. Fanon (2013, 34), who
criticizes the apparent/invisible racism against Black people especially in the
United States, states that the discourses developed in the United States such
as freedom, equality, brotherhood, love remain only on theoretical grounds,
and that the subordination policies applied in practice never end, and that
derogatory statements such as “filthy negro, filthy Jew, filthy Arab” continue
on the social plane. As a matter of fact, the continuity of such otherizing poli-
cies in social life is related to where the Euro-view positions itself within the
framework of “Me” and “Them” conceptualization. After “Me” is determined
to be of superior-white-European origin, the positioning of the outsider as the
other/inferior, causes the differences to be categorized as inferior/superior.
This may result in a subcultural organization of new migrants by coming
together. While Cesaire (2005, 125) interprets this situation as a positive
development, he negates people who live in the same social life, their imita-
tion and standardization of each other. At this point, it can be said that indi-
viduals/groups develop two different reflex in global migration flows: When
the identity and culture internalized by individuals who migrate to different
geography due to their own will or for mandatory reasons conflicts with the
social or cultural structure of the country, the individual either tries to pre-
serve his/her culture and identity by strictly abide by his/her own essence, or
fuses within the cultural texture of the country (Young 2016).
38 Uğur Baloğlu

One of the most important social and cultural problems in the world in the
discourses of globalization today is the exclusionary actions implemented by
the citizens of the host country, the political system and the rule of law during
the migration process. It has always been an ongoing process in history for
people to break away from their cultural roots and migrate to different places
due to various obligations such as education, economy, war, climate, racism
etc. However, it is not inconvenient to say that migration processes will fol-
low a different line from the past as a result of the changes in the institutional
structures of the modern world. In fact, external migration, which is shaped
around the discourses of globalization today, is changing the countenance of
the world (in particular, the United States) in a growing graphic. As of 2019,
it is estimated that approximately 270 million people in the world are interna-
tional immigrants. Although it points out to a number of around 3.5 percent of
the world’s population, it is possible to say that there has been an increasing
trend over the years. Especially after the 2015 migrant crisis, the growing
migrant population in Europe and Asia was home to 61 percent of interna-
tional migrants (McAuliffe and Khadria 2019, 24). The growing immigrant
population in the United States, especially after 1970, is now around 45 mil-
lion.6 As Todd Gitlin (1995) pointed out as The twilight of common dreams,
the social and cultural texture of the United States may be shaped differently
in different states with the flow of immigrants in the coming years. When
examined in light of demographic data, it is said that after about 40 years,
Hispanics will make up 27.5 percent of the population, Blacks 15 percent
and Asians 9.1 percent (Vespa, Medina and Armstrong 2018, 7). Surprising
data also emerges when the racial-ethnic transformation of the United States
on a states scale is examined. In the United States where there was a white-
dominant race (80%, on average) until the 1980s, this rate dropped as low
as 63 percent in 2015. In fact, it is estimated to decrease to 44 percent by
2060. Settlements such as California, Nevada, Texas, Maryland, and New
Jersey are predicted to be places where no ethnic group is in the major-
ity—the majority is made up of minorities (Teixeira, Frey and Griffin 2015,
2). Especially in recent years, the increase of migration from Asia and Latin
America rather than Europe indicates that different cultural textures such as
Mexico, the Philippines, Korea will augment. (Pew Research Center 2012).
In this context, the United States, which draws a different national framework
with new immigrants, attempts to Americanize the representativeness of dif-
ferences instead of old-style integration policies such as assimilation. But
such Americanization is also the result of the power relations established by
the view of global modernity, maintained by Euro-modernity7 discourse. At
this point, to heed the words of Gitlin (1995, 99): “Like it or not, the decisions
that shape America’s political, legal and economic institutions were largely
made by Europeans and their descendants.”
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 39

Based on the idea of Marks’s (2000, 21) “the ruling ideas are nothing more
than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant
material relationships grasped as ideas. . . . Their ideas are the ruling ideas
of the epoch,” when Gitlin’s warning is discussed, the hegemony of Euro-
modernity becomes ambiguous with the discourses of globalization. In other
words, a new understanding of supranational society differentiated or even
independent from the nations and ethnic structures created by globalization,
appears. In fact, the creation of an environment that allows individuals/groups
to express their national identities create a win-win relationship in a sense.
In this new environment where fewer state apparatus is felt, a freer move-
ment and communication environment is created, cultural boundaries are not
sharpened, ethnic groups/immigrants think that they can express themselves
with new representation strategies and feel that they exist by being separated
from the pressure of national identity. In this context, Hollywood, which pro-
duces these new representation strategies, creates a new sociocultural reality
with the identities it creates in a supra-cultural framework by making the
homogenizing emphasis of global culture invisible. Thus, an attitude adopted
more easily by Euro-American, African American and Asian American is
developed.

GLOBAL CULTURAL FLOW AND NEW

REPRESENTATION STRATEGIES

The late twentieth century was the scene of a series of political, economic,
and technological events that resulted in the bipolar world evolving into a
single pole. In fact, Daniel Bell’s (2000) “end of ideology” and Fukuyama’s
(1989) “end of history” thesis signaled the entering a new era. Although the
defeat of socialist thought to capitalism seems to justify Bell, it is important
to mention that ideology changes shape and spreads faster rather than the
end of the ideology. In fact, if necessary to use a metaphor, we can liken
the ideology of global capitalist discourse to a chameleon. This spreading
and consumerist ethics, hidden behind the local cover of every geography
it enters, can be specifically described as American culture. However, this
should not mean that there are no inverse cultural flows from the East in the
globalizing world; it demonstrates that American culture, which has become
transnationalized only within the framework of global capitalist discourse, is
dominant (Elteren 2011). It is also significant to remember the contribution
of transnational/supranational corporations in the spread of global capital-
ist discourse and the promotion of cultural consumption ideology. At this
point, Appadurai’s global cultural flow study, which explains the intersec-
tions of culture and globalization shaped in a highly complex structure, can
40 Uğur Baloğlu

be guiding: ethnoscape, technoscape, finanscape, mediascape, ideoscape.8

According to Appadurai (1990, 307), the global cultural landscape formed
by “the politics of the mutual effort of sameness and difference” consists of
complex products created by universality and the partiality that resists it.
The new global plane formed by liquid fields by crossing into each other
ambiguates geographical boundaries and deterritorializates cultures. In fact,
it is possible to say that the information and images flowing in the world
connected by technoscape are becoming increasingly distinct and mixed
hybrid-cosmopolitan cultures are formed. Tomlinson (2004) interprets
hybridization as mixing the increase in intercultural traffic in the liquid world
and the interconnecting of different cultures.9 According to Hannerz (1996),
culture is not a stable and monolithic structure, but rather a mobile and
variable. Indeed, the formation of today’s global cultural environment has
allowed cultural flows to interact with each other. However, it is significant
to remember that hybridization, which is generally interpreted as positive
and provides multiculturality, has the potential to exclude/ignore. Giddens
(2003) points out that the cosmopolitan structure of global culture will also
result in fundamentalism. Because the pressure of the globalization trend
of Western culture on Eastern culture reveals the protection motive of local
cultures/identities. This is in line with the idea that the new global cultural
environment on which Appadurai insisted is formed in the eyes of contrasts.
Hungtington (1998) also considers that the setting of conflict will emerge,
polarizations will augment, and the world will become a multipole universe
by looking at the global cultural discourses formed with globalization from
a negative perspective. With the concept of glocalization, Robertson (1992)
explains the policies of transnational companies to act locally after infiltrating
different geographies and following their global appearance as the behavior
of maximizing the capital. Thus, local cultural values are demonstrated as
if they are protected and evaluated within the framework of contributing to
cultural diversity within the discourses of globalization. If the focus of all
these discussions is paid attention, transnational cultural producers differenti-
ate localities and/or national identities in a common point in the determining
of global capitalist discourse. The goal is to reach more areas of the world
in the universe of global flows and to ensure that cultural products are con-
sumed. In this context, the fact that transnational companies start to produce
products that represent concepts such as race/ethnicity that refer to the other
from past to present, both augment the capital and make the colonialist view
invisible by affirming the multiculturalism discourse. At this point, the fact
that East and West point out different values does not jeopardize the colonial
understanding of global capitalist discourse, but rather makes it invisible as it
has just specified. In other words, the emergence of capitalism from the West
and the creation of today’s bourgeois morality and values does not exclude
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 41

Eastern capital, on the contrary, it reproduces and transnationalizes Eastern

capital within the capitalist organization.
Transnationalization of capital plays an important role in the production
and acception of hybrid cultural forms. In this respect, the transnationaliza-
tion of consumption culture, which is also named as American culture, allows
the new ideology of the globalizing capitalist discourse to spread worldwide
(Sklair 2002, 108). At the same time, the pluralization of the representation
strategy of the United States, which includes various ethnic groups, cultures,
and identities within its national borders, is also important for Crevecoeur’s
affirmation of the eighteenth-century American portrait. In this context, when
we read Appadurai’s efforts to globalize culture on the base of the theory of
scapes through the ideology of consumption culture and representation strate-
gies, we can realize that new colonial forms are hidden behind new represen-
tation. According to Althusser (1969, 233) ideology is not understood or false
consciousness through class reductionism, it is actually “a system of repre-
sentations.” As he mentioned in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
(2006), images, semantic systems and/or consumed cultural objects determine
the way an individual experiences an individual’s relationship with society
rather than concepts such as ideology, accuracy, or fallacy. Thus, a parallel
is established between cultural products and ideology. Since the world in
which the individual lives have been structured by various cultural tools and
ideological discourses, the relationship established with reality occurs indi-
rectly through representations. That is, in short, ideological devices produce
representation systems. At this point, “the media analyzes society, collects
information and filters this information in line with its position while deter-
mining its own cultural and ideological position; therefore, it creates general
acceptances in established order” (Hardt 2005, 53–54). Hall describes these
general admissions as the “dominant regime of representations” (2002, 187).
The transnationalization of Hollywood in the context of capital also creates
sameness and homogeneity by circulating mass cultural forms around the
world, while making it possible for them to localize all over the world and
especially on the territory of the United States. Each local culture and identity
include the self-appropriation and reprocess of symbols (Elteren 2011), thus
the impression that it affirms difference, otherness and diversity is created.
In this context, Hollywood, in reality, globalizes a process that deforms and
rebuilds the cultural space of the local. This also includes the experience of
both the process of unculturalization and acculturation at the same time.10 In
the process of a new culture, the individual becomes a consumer, through
transnational corporations, the values and practices of dominant cultural
forms become “new global colonialism” (Banerjee and Linstead 2001, 694).
New global colonialism conceals behind an invisible cover with
Hollywood’s transnational narratives. Since transnational Hollywood films
42 Uğur Baloğlu

undergo content changes toward transnational films that are purified of

national culture (Crane 2014). In a sense, this can be regarded as one of
the necessary steps in the transnational film market. As a matter of fact,
it is possible to have a say in the global film market without excluding
different cultural characteristics and by preparing an environment where
cultural differences are cohered together by keeping the white-dominant
view of the mainstream in the background. Because for a long time, as a
mainstream audience, there has been a conception that placed the white
race at the center. Even in films that told the stories of minorities, white
actors were taking or sharing the lead role. Indeed, other non-Euro-white
races, ethnic groups, identities and cultures from past to present were sub-
jected to stereotyping and subordinated with various stereotypes (Kim and
Brunn-Bevel 2020, 41). However, the box office success of Black Panther
in particular and the fact that it is a political film that deals with colonial
problems unlike typical hero movies—there is also critical disputes that the
film supports mainstream cinema and ideology (Eckhardt 2018; Hanchey
2020; Johnson and Hoerl 2020; Varda and Hahner 2020)11—confirms that
Hollywood encourages the production of racial-ethnic films to maximize
its capital on a global scale. In this context, transnational Hollywood films
target the global audience with racial-ethnically diverse films, changing
their representation strategies so as not to lose their dominance in the global
market; with the increasing tightening of cultural contacts in the context of
global cultural flow, it constantly tries to hybridization of cultural informa-
tion. Thus, Hollywood increases audience potential by reducing cultural
differences to a minimum and representing minorities marginalized by the
Euro-view. However, Hollywood’s inclusion and hybridization of cultural
diversity do not demonstrate that the stories are independent of ideological
elements. In other words, whether the films are produced in a narratively
multiethnic/cultural framework or draw a multicultural structure as a pro-
duction—actors, directors, screenwriters, producers, and others. can come
together from different races, nations, identities, cultures—as criticized
in Black Panther (as if to justify Gitlin) it is a product of the Euro-view,
namely, the Western hegemonic idea.
In reality, Hollywood’s success in gaining the support of other ethnic/
cultural groups in the global cultural flow environment is hidden in its ability
to globalize entertainment and create a new way of life in this regard. When
examined, this is closely related to the gradual decline of state control after
neoliberal policies and the emergence of market dominance corporate capital-
ism. It’s a fact that Hollywood today is dominated by the big six companies—
Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount. These six major
companies dominate almost 81 percent of the market share in North America
in 2019.12 These companies aim to reach not to homogeneous majority but
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 43

to a different view, notion, culture, and nation by producing movies with

worldwide box office with their large studios and capitals. At this point, “the
emergent postnational order proves not to be a system of homogeneous units
(as with the current system of nation states) but a system based on relations
between heterogeneous units” (Appadurai 2001, 23).
Today, different ethnic hero narratives are important for Hollywood,
which dominates the world with cinematic narratives from past to present,
to make its cultural hegemony invisible. The production of stories by trans-
national corporations such as Disney can still be considered a maneuver to
make the dominance of economic hegemony even stronger. In this regard,
Ritzer claims that Disney World represents a new means of consumption
(Ritzer 2000, 23). In reality, when we expand the claim that he developed
through the theme park within the framework of Hollywood hegemony, we
figure out that Ritzer is right. Disney—in particular Marvel Studios—cre-
ates stories through new representation strategies, creating a global cultural
environment that infiltrates to different identities or cultures and consumes
everything. In cultural studies, representation strategies generally begin to
change with global cultural discourses while feeding on some stereotypes
and different approaches. As the invisible cover of representation strategies
lurks behind ethnic diversity, entertainment becomes global and transna-
tional corporations strive to maximize profits. Because now “entertainment
for the masses . . . for consumption, not for production” (Ritzer 2000, 19).
This suggests that economic and cultural hegemony now works with transna-
tional corporations rather than national contexts. What Fuege, the producer
of Marvel films, says about the globalization of entertainment, says supports
this: “There will be no giant dark turns in the MCU where it then continues
to head in that direction. The humor is in the DNA of the movies, there are
no plans to change that” (Vejvoda 2015). As the real world moves into dark-
ness in a whole economic and social crisis, the cinematic universe paints a
portrait of a no dark world by creating a transcultural habitat in the opposite
maneuver. In this context, I consider that the element of entertainment (and
consumption practice) should be considered as the common ground of the
culture that is meant to be created. Because despite Hungtinton’s argument
of a clash of cultural identity between non-Western cultures against the
global culture imposed by Western civilization, transnational corporations
create a new supra-identity with maneuverability and make it look like they
are positive for the locality in the global cultural context, and melt the local
within the global, in reality. The positive correlation between the identi-
ties represented in new cultural products in global circulation and the way
minority (Latino, Black, Asian, etc.) groups are recognized/counted in real
social life has the ability to make invisible the unequal relationship between
domestic and foreign today.
44 Uğur Baloğlu

In 2018, Disney’s production of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten

Rings, a hero film of Asian descent that will be released for the first time in
July 2021, is the result of Hollywood’s policies to have a say in the Chinese
and Asian markets. This represents a similar process when the film Black
Panther, released in February 2018, is upgraded to a “hero” position for
African American or, more broadly, the way Black people represent. In this
context, transnational Hollywood films have to address different national
identities and cultures in the global film market without stereotyping them—or
hiding them behind an invisible cover as mentioned above. Song states this
is especially effective for Hollywood movies entering the Chinese market.13
Because “China imposes strict censorship on all imported films as a means to
protect its national culture while resisting conflicting Western values in the
context of film globalization” (2018, 181). However, although China or any
other country imposes bans and restrictions against Hollywood, generally this
happens with economic concerns rather than concerns of cultural imperialism.
According to Raiti (2007), this is understandable in today’s global capitalist
environment since the world has changed from past to present and will change
in the future. Our perspective on concepts, the way we understand and experi-
ence them, is also changing. Identities formed within the framework of the
concepts of nation-state and nationalism in the past are being dealt with on a
more global level today. This new environment, which Appadurai describes
as “imaginary worlds,” advocates that people can find identity, no matter how
mobile they may be. “Media, whether animation or live-action, create a sense
of global identities through various representations of people, places and
ideas” (Raiti 2007, 164). Indeed, it is the universalization of consumer culture
that global capitalist discourse enables transnational corporations to help peo-
ple find an identity in motion. No matter where the consumer culture member
goes, he is no longer a stranger. Self-recognition of the individual and defining
his/her identity through consumerism is perhaps the new form of citizenship.

SUPERHEROES IN THE NEW (TRANSCULTURAL)

CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

Could the MCU be developing a new kind of citizenship? Is it being tried to

provide the reflection of the nation consciousness in the Marvel universe with
the coexistence of various racial/ethnic/cultural groups framed by the supra-
identity? Such questions require an understanding of new forms of relation-
ships between globalization, global culture, and identity. The global cultural
flow discussed above and the circulation of cultural products of capitalist
capital indicate that concepts such as multiculturalism and interculturalism
can be overcome.
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 45

Huntington (1996, 144) emphasizes the importance of a sense of belonging

when he says, “while a country could avoid Cold War alignment, it cannot
lack an identity.” One of the most remarkable features of globalization in late
modernity is that with the quantitative increase of forced/voluntary migration,
individuals are cut off from their roots, values are broken and forced to live
in different geographies. Thus, the danger that the sense of belonging is lost
along with the cultural roots, values, principles that characterize the life of the
individual (Castro-Lucic 2004, 49). This is due to the same experience of the
post-globalization local-global process discussed earlier. In fact, the balance
between identity and the social community in which the person is located is
marked by the values and principles that characterize life. In theory, ways
to get out of this contradictory environment are sought through concepts
such as multiculturalism, multiculturalism, interculturalism, hybrid cultural
partnership, and transculturalism that is most recently theorized by Welsh.
For example, Charles Taylor (1996, 12) argued that the recognition of the
cultural identity of groups by the political authority in a pluralistic multicul-
tural environment lead to a solution, while Habermas (quoted in Abadan Unat
2002, 297) stated that political authority, individuals, groups should approach
each other within the framework of the politics of respect for each other in
order to create a multicultural environment. However, the point to be noted
here is that in such discussions it should be overlooked that the crises that
will arise from global capitalist discourse are unpredictable. In other words,
in a world where addictions are decreasing to the extent that they increase,
people’s reflexes to economic, political, and cultural changes are variable
and incalculable. Therefore, it may not be possible to apply such discussions
from theoretical grounds to practice, or even if possible, they may erosion
over time.14 So, what kind of imagination exist in the new cinematic universe
created by Marvel which is parallel to real life?
Robert Bocock (1993, 28) suggests a connection between the new type of
consumers and the sense of identity: “The construction of a sense of identity
can be seen as a process which may make use of items of consumption such
as clothing, footwear, popular music, or sporting activities, including being
a supporter of particular music groups, singers, or soccer clubs.” Bocock’s
relationship between identity and consumption characterizes the association
experienced all over the world within the global capitalist discourse. Since
the last quarter of the twentieth century, identity has also begun to change in
this process in a space where experiences such as communication, culture,
and consumption practices fluidized. The change in the forms of belonging
of individuals in late modern societies indicates that individual identities
have evolved into multiple identities. As mentioned in the previous section,
immigrant policies and the increase in the population of different racial/
ethnic groups change and diversify the ethnic environment in the United
46 Uğur Baloğlu

States. In the ethnic environment, which changes from a nationalist perspec-

tive, there can be a conflict between the dominant identity of the nation-state
and the diversity that occurs with migration. “Throughout America’s his-
tory, religious, cultural, and racial differences have shaped the struggle for
wealth, prestige, and power. . . . The spirit of exclusiveness and anti-foreign
sentiments spread when a rapid influx of immigration coincided with a major
domestic or international crisis” (Citrin, Reingold and Green 1990, 1124).
The nationalist discourse that emerges in times of crisis claims that American
identity or national unity can be preserved in a more conservative framework,
not in a multicultural environment. At this point, as Li and Brewer (2004,
729–737) pointed out, having an American identity is possible by being
born on that land, be patriotic and achieve national identification. So, is that
possible in global economic and cultural policies? As mentioned earlier, the
main problem of the global environment is that the nation-state mechanism
loses power against global markets. In this regard, globalization subjects the
entire conceptual system developed by the nation-state structure to epistemo-
logical fracture. In other words, the change in the meaning maps of concepts
such as power, identity, citizenship, and culture characterize a new process.
Therefore, establishing American identity from a conservative point of view
does not seem possible in the world where transnational actors set the rules.
Since the discourses of globalization confine the area of the dominance of
the nation-state, the domain of the state is limited and delegates its power to
supranational/extremist corporations. This handover process forces all mod-
ern institutions to reshape. In this context, we cannot evaluate the identity,
which has a dynamic/variable structure, as fixed/stable in this new environ-
ment created by the global capitalist discourse. At this point, it is significant
to remember the relationship between consumption and identity. As it is
known, the capitalist economic system focuses on maximizing its profits
rather than meeting human needs. For this reason, transnational film compa-
nies also wish to produce new cultural products on the market every year and
that their products be consumed by the maximum person. In this context, the
production of understandable and simple films in terms of their topics that can
be consumed rapidly in the global market is supported. Simplicity is essential
at this point. Indeed, it facilitates the minimizing of cultural, ethnic, and oth-
ers differences and intersecting commonality for transnational companies that
are trying to reach a large number of viewers at the same time. The recent
rise in the popularity of superhero movies depends on it. It is mandatory to
find the “greatest common divisor” to create a field of discourse in the global
cultural flow where differences between individuals/groups are minimized.
In the new cinematic universe created by superhero movies, partnerships are
established with small connections with other texts and myths.15 It is also a
safe port for producers, as superhero movies consist of known stories. Thus,
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 47

the reproduction of previously filmed narratives known to the audience out-

lines Hollywood’s new narrative style. In the new narrative style of global
Hollywood, superhuman beings are positioned instead of a human. This
allows viewers to relate and be loved more easily in the global market without
allowing the clash of ethnic, cultural, and national values. The words of Avi
Arad, the former president of Marvel, stand up for this (quoted from Bowles
by Hassler-Forest 2012, 8): “These fans love their movies and heroes like no
other. . . . And they’re very savvy with the computers. A word about your
product gets out very quickly. If you can make a good impression here, your
movie has hope.” What Arad says with its cultural product and its speed of
propagation demonstrates that mediascape and technoscape are in a position
to support finanscape. Marvel superheroes, however, are not drawn as ideal-
ized characters like superheroes of the past, but however, projected as flawed,
fun character with problems of harmony with society or misunderstood. The
relationship he/she establishes with the real world is based on this point.
The mass Arad describes as superhero fans symbolizes heterogeneous
integrity in the real world. The concept of transculturalism defines a common
structure where different heterogeneous cultures are mixed and penetrated.
In history, the contacts of different groups, communities, countries, even
empires with each other—war, trade, migration, and so on—form the basis
of cultural interaction. In fact, the people/groups who carry their cultural
values to the geography they go to affect the culture of the place as they are
articulated to the new culture. However, is it possible for cultural values or
cultures to intertwine and create a “global common culture” in the real world?
Transculturalism claims that cultures and cultural indicators are intertwined
in the world, which accelerates in everything following the discourses of glo-
balization. The concept of transculturalism, which Ortiz (1995) put forward
as a result of his studies in Cuba, points out that a new locality has emerged
over time by melting into each other different localities—local cultural indi-
cators. Since this points to a dialectic process, it is based on a logical basis
when taken in the context of locality. However, when we try to tackle this
process from being dialectical to a global/universal context, we put it into
the domination of global capitalist discourse. Thus, the new common cul-
tural structure of existing global capitalist discourse within the framework
of consumption culture- transculturalism- points to “a hegemonic form of
global capitalist discourse” (Baloğlu 2020, 136). In this context, if we adapt
transculturalism to the narrative universe rather than the real context, we can
draw a more realistic framework. Angel Rama’s Writing across Cultures:
Narrative Transculturation in Latin America (2012), we can also consider
the term “transculturalism,” which it rejects the transfer of internal and exter-
nal culture and uses to demonstrate the influence of different texts on Latin
American narratives, for the cinematic universe.
48 Uğur Baloğlu

Superhero movies associated with American national identity for many

years are rapidly becoming a global value from a nationalist perspective
in today’s global world. This demonstrates the journey of national cinema
toward global cinema. In fact, national cinema, in Higbee’s words (1989, 36)
is often used to simply the films produced within a particular nation-state.”
Based on this definition, we can say that Hollywood is also a national cin-
ema. In the meantime, it is significant to remember that the Hollywood film
industry strives to standardize and universalize the mainstream cinema nar-
rative in order to strengthen its dominance in the market. Drawing a portrait
that has lost its national characteristics today, the Hollywood industry tries
to globalize its production, distribution and demonstration network by col-
laborating with transnational companies. According to some critics, this leads
to the gradual loss of the relationship between Hollywood and American
culture (Behlil 2008, 212). However, this view overlooks the relationship
between Hollywood industry and capitalism. The Hollywood industry and
the transnational corporations, which are the dynamo of this industry, do
not produce films independent of the ideology of the capitalist organization.
In fact, industry is a mechanism that places social life and cinema narrative
in a certain political and ideological context and reproduces everyday life.
Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan (1988) argue that cinematic ideology
causes the disappearance of the distinctions between films emerging in dif-
ferent historical periods and the overlook of representation strategies. This
warning from Kellner and Ryan is very essential. Because we should not
evaluate the superhero films, which are increasing in popularity today and
are on the list of the most watched films in the world, according to the his-
torical, political and ideological environment of before 2000. However, it
should be added that today, as in the past, global mass culture is dominated
by the cultural industry. Therefore, global culture is Western-centered and
homogenizing for reasons such as technological superiority, the tendency of
capital to monopolize. However, the homogenization process is still ongoing,
and the West has no purpose in terminating it. Because the homogenization
policy of global mass culture has an all-encompassing American style in
which differences augment with assimilation (Hall 1997, 28). But, it does not
destroy localities, it proceeds to work with them, even put it in an endless
loop. In this context, it can be said that American culture is being tried to be
globalized through transnationalized Hollywood. Today, when these national
discourses are on the rise again, they are made with different representation
and identity politics. If we recall Kellner’s historical periodization, today
(Hollywood) transnational capital pushes the boundaries of cultures with fluid
global information mobility, by crossing them with global cultural discourse
and developing new forms of belonging. It is Marvel’s new maneuver to
design new forms of belonging in a fiction universe rather than the real social
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 49

level. A universe designed at the supra-identity level is very profitable since

it includes the majority.
It is not possible to say that individuals developed a single sense of belong-
ing in the late modern period as in the traditional period. Comprehending that
there will not be a single form of belonging indicates that we can develop
multiple identities as part of a collective structure in different groups, com-
munities and/or universes, rather than individual identities. The common
junction point of global identity in the Marvel universe is revealed by the
new perspective created by Appadurai’s global streaming environment.
People involved in this global new universe can develop a common way of
life by massifying with an invisible bond, but that doesn’t mean that one feels
American or Americanizer, which is what the new colonial form hides behind
the superhero story.16 Thus, the individual can easily connect by joints to both
global and local. Les Essif says that today individuals living in different geog-
raphies have relational identities. It likens the new form of identity, which he
calls a rhizomatic identity, to a root moving on the horizontal and vertical
axis (2009, 101). Addressing identity relationally means involving it in a
process that has never been completed. When ethnic origins are defined as
sub-identities, the identity of the imaginary community created in the MCU
establishes a supra-identity formed by different sub-identities. Sub-identities
defined by ethnic/racial origin do not conflict with the supra-identity, rather
they are formed by their coming together.
So far, twenty-three films have been made in the MCU. The series, which
has multiple films among the highest-grossing films in the world,17 has been
criticized by critics on different topics such as ideology, race, gender, and so
on, although it is so popular with the global audience (Gerard and Poepsel
2019; Lout 2017; Kaunda 2019) Although each of these criticisms has a fair
aspect, it is hard to say that the audience feels the same discomfort when
looking at the intensity of mass consumption. What could be the reason for
this?
First, let us ask this question. Should we follow the fact that the movies
of the MCU are actually not movies but episodes of a series? Marvel movies
are actually a series that is divided into seasons they call “phase,” each of
which actually makes a season finale and usually broadcasts two episodes a
year. Today, within the framework of its transformation in viewing practices,
MCU films are a product of the strings of events that are connected within
the framework of a metanarrative and divided into sub-narratives. Disney’s
move in the MCU universe puts the audience in anticipation that constantly
encourages them to wait for the next episode. This is also related to Raiti’s
individualization, which was formed in the late modern period by the domi-
nance of global capitalist discourse and consumption culture. Likewise, what
Disney does with MCU is to make individuals seek self-awareness and
50 Uğur Baloğlu

personal satisfaction (2007, 165). Besides, the universe created by the MCU’s
superhero movies is not a completely fantastical extension. As in other super-
hero movies, a supra-spatial city is created where reality and fiction intersect
and intertwine. In these cities, people are often reflected in a fine line between
surviving or dying. The principle of simplicity mentioned in the previous
chapter is based on the most basic motivation of man—the survival instinct.
In this context, films that push rationality into the background unify the global
audience on the same feeling. However, MCU’s films are often criticized for
being ideological and for spreading American propaganda. Critics may be
right about this issue. However, based on Crane, MCU films can be inter-
preted in different ways by different audiences in different countries (2014,
374). This demonstrates Disney’s ability to create narrative structures where
different concept map may occur in the global market.
Looking at the overall MCU films, the dominance of heteronormative
discourse can be realized. It is possible to say that the white-racial narra-
tive is centralized in phases 1 and 2. In MCU films, which were observed
to have no protagonist in different races and genders until the middle of
the third phase, Black Panther’s release with the first Black director and
lead actor was welcomed quite positively. Previously, Guardians of the
Galaxy’s contribution to the cinema universe as the first female screen-
writer is significant in terms of breaking and diversifying the patriarchal
view. Toward the end of phase 3, after the Black Panther, it tries to main-
tain diversity in the universe with the first female lead in Ant-Man and the
Wasp and the first female director in Captain Marvel. In the later stages
of the MCU, which is remarkable that the inclusion of race/ethnicity/
gender in the narratives is few, the diversity of the narratives augments
remarkably.
The diversity of superhero movies is very essential when considered
within the framework of the box office success of the movies and the taste of
the global audience. China, which is starting to host more moviegoer day by
day, is the largest market for Hollywood after North America. Considering
that more than 1.45 billion Chinese went to the movies in 2017 (Song 2018,
178), this reveals as an unmissable opportunity for Disney. In this context,
when phase 4’s films are examined, it can be observed that the variety is
increasing. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, starring Asian
actors written by Chinese-American David Callaham, will be the second
ethnic and first Asian superhero film after Black Panther. Disney, which
previously received appreciation of Chinese audiences with Mulan, gives
places to a China-based narrative at the MCU, producing films that touch
on their national culture and history, as well as enriching the universe.18 The
process which began with Black Panther’s box office success and cultural
phenomenon, accelerates markedly in Phase Four. In particular, the racial
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 51

diversity of the superheroes in Eternals and the film’s directing by China’s

Chloé Zhao demonstrates that the MCU is acting in a global cultural context.
The diversity created by Pakistani-American, Korean-American, Mexican-
African-American superheroes at the MCU point out the existence of a
transcultural or a supra-cultural environment. Thus, the MCU establishes a
multiethnic/racial but Western-centered neocolonial cultural domination that
fixes the concepts of representation and identity within its cultural universe,
normalizing its own way of seeing. At this point, the most striking aspect of
the parallelism established between real life and fictional life is the relation-
ship between superheroes and transnational companies and the functions of
companies.
It’s no surprising that the lead in Iron Man, released in 2008, has the tech
giant transnational Stark company. As the film indicates, the company was
founded to produce new weapons for the US military. Iron Man’s constant
affirmation also provides the affirmation of Stark, a transnational company.
The fact that the stories in the MCU are connected to each other through
transnational companies already underlines that capitalist ideology/system is
necessary for the world to survive. It’s also important that Captain America
becomes a superhero thanks to the program and technology of Stark. Because
Captain America emerged with the technology of a transnational company.
In this context, the main starting point of the story in 2008 was structured
with a perspective that legitimizes transnational capitalism, and it indicates
that transculturalism is also a hegemonic form of capitalist ideology in the
fictional universe.
Filmic narratives are significant. Especially in this age when technoscape
is expanding rapidly. As Adorno and Horkheimer point out, today “now there
are audiences trained to identify reality with film; even besides identifying it,
it’s a perception that makes the film real and the real a film” (Acun 2015).
Based on this view, the identity of the audience has fallen into crisis in late
modernity. Today, in the universe of flows, the individual has difficulty
holding traditional concepts such as identity, belonging. Perhaps that is why
audiences from different nations, races, genders, ethnics, geographies are so
pleased with the production of narratives and people from their own cultures/
races, and so on. They consider that is how they can catch the values that they
have lost, that they think have slipped away.
After the success of Black Panther as a cultural phenomenon, will the
MCU universe’s transcultural environment and effort to create supra-identity
with superheroes come through? Will the newly represented audience, such
as viewers organized in different cities to watch Black Panther, create a new
social movement? Otherwise, we will see in the following years, whether the
individual who consumes everything and every innovation will quickly get
bored of such activities and enter into different seeking.
52 Uğur Baloğlu

CONCLUSION

Today, the discourses of globalization, the rapid progress in communication

technologies, the effort to adapt to the digital age, the increasing mobilization
of transportation technologies and the increasing convergence between places
seem to indicate that cultural discourses are hybridizing as if they emphasize
the complexity and move toward a common cultural environment. However,
in theory, these contingencies of rapprochement and intertwining occurring
in the cultural environment are unrealistic in practice to proceed on the same
plane. Especially in recent years, the increasing far-right discourse, the nega-
tive view of multiculturalism and immigration demonstrates that nationality
is reformatting. The negative impact of economic globalization in the cultural
and national context is trying to solve the economic problems experienced
by countries and citizens in these areas. In addition, the relationship between
the globalization of capitalism and the tendency to monopolize the property
structure in communication technologies is forcing the experience of the local
and global at the same time. Because the primary goal of global companies
such as Disney is to dominate the market and maximize profits. For this
reason, creating a transcultural environment through the representation of
different ethnic groups in cinema narratives produced as a representation of
real social life has the potential to facilitate the consumption of the narrative
in different geographies and enable it to be experienced more. Such a move
differs from the heroic narratives of the past, creating a break between the
present and the past. The evolution of white skin hero representations into a
supra-identity world created by various ethnic groups perhaps expresses the
possibleness of transculturalism, perhaps only in the cinematic universe.
Marvel’s cinematic universe creates a representational space parallel to
real social life. This space tries to create a supra-identity similar to the old
nation-state structure, but does so in both a global and local context, bring-
ing together various racial/ethnic/cultural groups in a global cultural context.
Although this indicates a paradoxical situation, in today’s new global fluid
modern world translocation and transnationalism are experienced at the same
time. Thus, the national discourse is made strong and the global discourse is
affirmed. It is closely related to the organization of massive transnational cor-
porations such as Disney, which has representations or agreements in almost
all countries. Because of the new heroic narratives created by supra-identities,
the viewer can feel belonging as long as he finds a part of himself, his own
culture, in the new universe created, if not from the same nation/race, by mas-
sifying on the global plane.
With the new heroic universe model starting with Black Panther, Disney
looks like it will increase its diversity with phase 4 and try to maintain its
hegemony on the global market. The new universe will continue to describe
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 53

the illusion that global capitalist discourse will embrace the entire universe
with heroes of different origins. This indicates that Disney is seeking a
non-Chinese market and trying to enter new markets with a hero who will
represent the national identity of that country. Time will tell whether the
representation of countries such as Pakistan, South Korea and Nigeria with
heroes will make a lucrative return as in China.

NOTES

1. However, this view should be considered without ignoring the economic-

political framework without being isolated from the global capitalist context, as
Dirlik emphasizes. Especially nowadays, when new communication technologies are
spreading to speed, the growth of capital and its transformation into a decentraliza-
tion structure demonstrate that global capital is penetrating the local. This situation
indicates that in the conceptual context, the local is separated from the conventional
one and articulated to the global one. In fact, the “Think globally, act locally” (motto)
view that emerged with the transnationalization of capital clearly explains that cul-
tures homogenized as they disintegrated (Dirlik 1998, 90–93).
2. The protests that took place in many parts of the world after the 2008 economic
crisis provide an opportunity to break the global capitalist domination, according to
Dirlik (1998, 269) mass demonstrations in the People’s Republic of China, where
demonstrations are banned by the state; The Arab Spring, known as the people’s
uprising against authoritarian regimes in North Africa; Anti-austerity movement in
the United Kingdom, Anti-austerity movement in Greece; In Turkey “Gezi Events”;
2020–2021 Indian farmers’ protest and the latest “Black Lives Matter” motto in the
United States where anti-racist protests are rising, the reaction of the people to the
inequalities in the economic, political, social and cultural spheres can be in parallel
with the social movements of the nineteenth century. In fact, the inequalities deep-
ened by financialized global capitalism, the conflict between the logic of the nation-
state and global capital, and the damage caused by all of these in liberal democracy
caused a public reaction.
3. Many thinkers on the subject argue that globalization is a dual or multiple
process. According to Robertson, globalization indicates the particularism of univer-
salization and the universalization of particularism (1992), while at the same time it
is a mixture of homogenization and heterogeneousness (2001); According to Kellner
(1998), globalization takes place at a border in the transition period between the
modern and the postmodern age and expresses both today and tomorrow; Bauman
(1998) claims that the globalization process develops in an unbalanced way, while the
top culture is experiencing the globalization process, other cultures are in the process
of localization and that inequality has spread and become permanent throughout the
world.
4. Especially in the Trump era, the rise of anti-immigrant policies and imple-
mented policies: Restrict legal immigration, the border wall with Mexico, stop immi-
grants from receiving benefits, restrict travel and visas from certain countries, and so
54 Uğur Baloğlu

on. Moreover, the increase of new racist discourse, the Black Lives Matter movement
that emerged after the murder of George Floyd, and finally the use of the definition
of China Virus in most of the Covid-19 discourses, were not welcomed by Chinese
Americans citizens in the country. For more information: https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​balan​​ce​
.co​​m​/don​​ald​-t​​rump-​​immig​​ratio​​n​-imp​​act​-o​​n​​-eco​​nomy-​​41511​​07; https​:/​/ww​​w​.nyt​​imes
.​​com​/2​​020​/0​​3​/23/​​us​/ch​​inese​​-coro​​navir​​us​-ra​​cis​t-​​attac​​ks​.ht​​ml.
5. Another point that should be mentioned here is that the rights gained after the
struggle against the British excluded Blacks, where only whites were included.
6. https​ : /​ / www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant​
-pop​​ul​ati​​on​-ov​​er​-ti​​me.
7. I borrowed this concept from Arif Dirlik.
8. Ethnoscape emphasizes that the world has become mobilized place than in
the past for many reasons. It is the cultural flow created by individuals and/or groups
such as immigrants, tourists, guest workers, and so on. Technoscape is a global field
formed in the world that has been connected by the rapid development of technology
in recent years. Finanscape is a global money transfer that increases with the global
trend of capital and its transnationalization. Mediascape is the environment that
enables the global spread of cultural information flow and increases the frequency
of cultural contacts, especially with digital technologies. Ideoscape is the area where
societies such as the ideology of the state and the counter-ideology of sociopoliti-
cal movements form their political cultures and cultural identities (Appadurai 1990,
296–301).
9. The mixing of different cultural riches of the world is parallel with the speed
of migrants’ displacement and the development of communication technologies.
Examples include a Mexican person doing Hindu dance in the United States, Turks
doing hip-hop in London, or Turkish hot-dog.
10. In the context of global cultural flow, it can be looked at the work titled
Globalization and hybridization in cultural products The cases of Mulan and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which examines that hybridization produces new
forms rather than mere mixing of cultures with each other, through films adapted
from Chinese works within the framework of deculturalization and acculturalization
concepts (Wang and Yeh, 2005).
11. The controversy over Black Panther interprets it as a film affirming national-
ism and conservatism in a neocolonial perspective, although, in reality, the film seems
to symbolize a struggle against colonialism. Thus, it indirectly affirms the neocolo-
nial mentality by pulling it to a point that ignores global racial inequality within a
framework that legitimizes cooperation with Western countries in line with neoliberal
policies.
12. https​:/​/ww​​w​.sta​​tista​​.com/​​stati​​stics​​/1872​​61​/co​​mbine​​d​-mar​​ket​-s​​hare-​​of​-ma​​jor​
-f​​i lm​-s​​tudio​​​s​-in-​​north​​-amer​​ica/.
13. Song notes that the Chinese cinema market has grown in recent years, and
Hollywood—usually the blockbuster films of six major studios—has made deals with
China to make more income. Although the agreements make globalization transna-
tional capital a leader in the film market, various cultural and political challenges are
encountered in the Chinese market. But still, Hollywood movies somehow protect
 New Heroes in Transnational Hollywood 55

their success in the Chinese market. Song, quoted by Brzeski; “38.4% of China’s box
office in 2015 was contributed by Hollywood movies. In 2016, imported foreign films
(with the vast majority being Hollywood movies) accounted for 41.7% of China’s
total box office” (2018, 178).
14. It is not said that there are no rights, freedoms and gains acquired here from
the past to the past. Here, it is not said that there are no rights, freedoms and gains
acquired from the past to the present. However, what is meant to be emphasized here
is that the sovereign and dependent struggle is a dialectical process. In other words,
groups that acquire gains after the struggle in real social life make themselves to
power afterward. As mentioned in Horkheimer and Adorno’s (1997) book, Dialectic
of Enlightenment, enlightenment betrayed its own ideals. Namely, the idea of enlight-
enment, which destroys myths, itself becomes a myth. In this context, the rights and
freedoms gained in practical life after the struggle carried out on theoretical grounds
today are recognized within the limits set by the capitalist system.
15. Edward Said (1978) states that myths contain elements that support the
West-East or Us-Them dilemma and the superiority of the West over the East.
Here, Said’s critique is the cultural domination that the West is trying to establish
with myths of exotic representation over the East. Indeed, this orientalist view pro-
ceeds in transnational Hollywood films, especially superhero movies, even films
by Black, Asian leading actor. However, what is desired to be emphasized here is
the narrativization of the good-bad conflict that exists in almost all cultures from
the past to the past through mythical discourse with superhuman heroes. Thus, a
super-cultural structure consisting of superhuman heroes is established in the new
cinematic universe. In this cultural structure, all elements such as race, ethnicity and
identity are separated in the context of goods and bads, creating a common area of
discourse.
16. A study conducted in the United States regarding this situation found that indi-
viduals do not feel American even though they develop a common lifestyle in real life
(Phinney, Cantu and Kurtz 1997, 180).
17. https​:/​/ww​​w​.box​​offic​​emojo​​.com/​​chart​​/top_​​lifet​​ime​_g​​ross/​​​?area​​=XWW.
18. I’m not saying about Disney being transformed into a modern and American
form for the Disney audience by narrativizes the Chinese story in an American style.
I am acting solely on box office success; as transnational companies focus on.

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 PART II

THE REPRESENTATION OF
OTHERS BEYOND THE BORDERS
 Chapter 3

Strangers at Our Door

A Baumanian Perspective to Children
of Men, Elysium, and Snowpiercer
Gül Yaşartürk

INTRODUCTION

Science fiction, one of the most important genres that has risen in times of
crisis, is regarded in the literature as a genre that expresses today’s concerns
through future societies. Ethnicity and class representations of the science
fiction genre reflect the current problems of Western societies. Science fic-
tion inherits travel writing. Travel writing was a genre of literature inspired
by the existence of yet undiscovered, unknown countries in the world during
the colonial empires. The desire of travelers to explore went in parallel with
the state’s colonization plans. In travel writing, the concept called the other
referred to humans dwelling on unknown lands. Given that there is physically
nothing left today that has not been known or discovered in the geographical
region/world where we live, the answer to the question “Who is the other in
science fiction films?” is quite simple; uninvited guests that we are unwilling
to share our peace and well-being, namely refugees and migrants. Those who
are not “one of us.” People who we know, and yet those we do not want to
live with.
As is stated by Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, the films set in the
future could be regarded to be the least sensitive genre to contemporary social
issues (Ryan and Kellner 2010, 390–91). However, it is also said frequently
that science fiction is of a radical stance when considered in terms of classical
Hollywood narratives. A genre which is supposed to be unrealistic, or at the
furthest distance from the reality of the contemporary world, constitutes the
most suitable ground to represent the functioning of this world with accuracy
due to its narrative features. Forward-looking fantasies can be considered as

63
64 Gül Yaşartürk

a way of implying the present moment. These films break the secret bans of
the realist narratives that dominate Hollywood by employing temporal dis-
placement (Ryan and Kellner 2010, 390–91). A similar financial and political
crisis in the United States over the 1970s was experienced during the 2000s.
The 1970s, which Ryan and Kellner scrutinized, witnessed Vietnam War,
the protest movement of 1968, and the Watergate Scandal (Ryan and Kellner
2010). Ryan and Kellner argued that the given period lasted between 1967
and 1987, which had various political impacts on American culture (Ryan
and Kellner 2010, 19). With the conservatism following the economic and
political crises and Ronald Reagan’s administration, the films mostly offered
representations that tried to compensate these crises and soothe the concerns
of the audience by offering solutions. The 2000s, on the other hand, saw
another rise of conservatism in the United States with the George W. Bush
government. The Bush government shared the same views with Christian
fundamentalists on many issues. Even if there was a resistance to the United
States’ radical shift to the right, “the 9/11 attacks created the opportunity that
conservatives had been waiting for, breaking the last resistance. Due to these
attacks, the US lands’ turning into a war zone became a reality, which had
not gone beyond being a Hollywood fantasy for years” (Topçu 2010, 158).
Following the attack, the Bush administration invaded first Afghanistan and
then Iraq. An economic crisis that began in the United States in 2008 and
affected the whole world occurred. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq
brought about human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo pris-
ons, the strengthening of Islamophobia, and xenophobia. During this period,
the level of the distrust in the administration was higher than in the 1970s; in
the survey conducted by Gallup in 2008, only 26 percent of the US citizens
believed that the country was well governed (Topçu 2010, 159). This rate had
been the lowest since 1972. It is possible to summarize the period, similar to
the 1970s, as the failure of liberalism, the economic and management crisis,
and the rise of conservatism (Topçu 2010, 159).
This crisis led to an increase in the number of examples of disaster and
science fiction films in American Cinema. American science fiction films
released after September 11, 2001, have combined the themes regarding
administration and political crisis as well as masculine leader figures who
manage to survive, as in I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence 2007) and The Road
(John Hillcoat 2009) with ecological concerns, or dealt with only ecological
concerns, as in Mad Max Fury Road (George Miller 2015). District 9 (Neill
Blomkamp 2009) and Arrival (Denis Villeneuve 2016) are two major films
of the sci-fi genre that use alien/creature and invasion themes after September
11, 2001. District 9 deals with discrimination, being the other and a refugee
using aliens who were locked away for three months on a spaceship deployed
in Johannesburg in 1982 and then placed in a fenced camp/ghetto. The reason
 Strangers at Our Door 65

why South African Blomkamp’s film is set in 1982 is, undoubtedly, because
he wanted to refer to the deprivation of many citizenship rights of Blacks
in the Apartheid system between 1948 and 1994. By reversing the prevail-
ing iconography of the sci-fi genre, Blomkamp does not represent aliens as
dangerous invaders; on the contrary, those who are hazardous are humans.
Contrary to Hollywood dominant stereotypes, the protagonist of District 9
is also neither a warrior, nor an entrepreneurial and patriarchal character,
but an anti-hero (Vitrinel 2018, 140). Arrival also shares both of these fea-
tures of District 9. Aliens are peaceful, not dangerous, whereas those who
are dangerous and war-prone are humans. Moreover, Arrival’s protagonist
is a female linguist character, not a warrior, an entrepreneur or patriarchal.
Arrival was released just before Donald Trump’s presidency and deals with
the polarization and otherization that Trump’s discourses created in American
society. However, contrary to Trump’s speeches and policies, the language
team striving to communicate with the aliens in Arrival consists of different
nations and works in harmony. Alien creatures have no hostile purposes; they
are completely peaceful, bringing everyone together. Arrival indicates that
it is easy to be hostile to a stranger and that establishing a dialogue requires
effort and has a unifying and healing power. According to Camilla Eyre and
Joanna McIntyre, “Arrival is about transcending barriers and being immersed
in a new culture to understand a foreign race; however, it does not offer ‘blow
it up’ spectacle and instead presents a speculative exploration of interpersonal
communication between humans and extraterrestrials” (Eyre and McIntyre
2018, 42). Similarly, according to Gemma King, Arrival reconfigures the
monolingual dominance in classical Hollywood narratives (King 2019, 210).
As well as English, Russian and Mandarin are also spoken in the film which
adopts a multicultural approach. However, there are also unspoken languages
which are mentioned. It is implied in the film that the protagonist, Louise,
speaks other languages. The message of the film is that difference is not
about body or color, but about language, culture, and ways of thinking. It is
necessary to communicate through these differences rather than erase them
(King 2019, 210).
As Robert Stam points out, multiculturalism is an assault not on Europe,
but on Eurocentrism, that is, on Europe’s being the unique source of mean-
ing (Stam 2000, 269). The multicultural view criticizes the universalization
of Eurocentric norms; “it refers to the multiple cultures of the world and the
historical relationship between them, including relations of subordination
and domination” (Stam 2000, 270). It argues that the world does not have a
single center but multiple centers that do not have a starting point. According
to the emphasis on polycentrism, “no single community or part of the world,
whatever its economic or political power, is epistemologically privileged”
(Stam 2000, 271). Multiculturalism is different from liberal pluralism. Above
66 Gül Yaşartürk

all, it is not about “sensitivity,” “but about empowering the disempowered.

Polycentric multiculturalism calls for changes not just in images, but in power
relations” (Stam 2000, 271). Studies of race and multiculturalism in the film
theory have been conducted especially by investigating the representations of
races through stereotypes. However, Stam suggests that the analysis of the
character based on stereotypes is not thorough, adding that Eurocentrism in
film can also be conveyed through mise-en-scène and image (Stam 2000, 277).
He states that how much space the representatives of different social groups
occupy in the story, in which shots they are viewed, and whether they are
active in the story are also significant elements in questioning Eurocentrism
(Stam 2000, 277). The films Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón 2006), Elysium
(Neill Blomkamp 2013) and Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho 2013), which were
selected as examples within the scope of the study, are science fiction films set
in a dystopia, which reflect the concerns after September 11, 2001 and do not
use the themes of aliens/creatures and invasion. They were chosen because
they break the dominant narrative patterns of Hollywood by opposing the
other representations and stereotypes of the science fiction genre. Contrary to
what is presented in mainstream science fiction and horror films, it is not sci-
ence and technology in all the given films that give rise to jeopardous or evil
results, for, as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer put it, the reason why
technology and science have gained power and efficiency over contemporary
societies is the fact that those who have the greatest social and economic
superiority are behind the technology and science (Oskay 1994, 185). Which
class has the technological power determines for what purpose and for whom
it will be used. When technology is in the hands of the wealthy minority, as
we have seen especially in Elysium and Snowpiercer, it becomes a dangerous
power used for security and violence, reflecting the fears and concerns of los-
ing what is owned. In addition, multiculturalism is positively emphasized in
the films studied, and refugee and migrant issues are also addressed as well as
ecological problems. While Children of Men, Elysium and Snowpiercer pres-
ent authoritarian governments, referring to Naomi Klein1, in a world where
ecological problems bring in devastating consequences, they also suggest that
the most important distinction between people is class, not races, and there-
fore any poor individual can become a refugee one day.

REFUGEE AS “HOMO SACER” AND

“HUMAN AS WASTE” IN GIORGIO
AGAMBEN AND ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

Zygmunt Bauman suggested that refugees fleeing wars, despotic regimes

or famine today have been knocking on the doors of other peoples since
 Strangers at Our Door 67

the early modern period (Bauman 2016, 14). Long before the migrant and
refugee problems experienced in the twenty-first century, there have been
xenophobic and racist reactions to the mass influx of “strangers” in the United
States since the end of the nineteenth century and in Western Europe since
the 1950s. (Hobsbawm 2000, 157). Yet, xenophobia and racism should be
regarded as a symptom rather than a solution. It is possible to talk about the
existence of economic problems and crises in societies where xenophobia and
racism take place. When faced with any economic or political crisis or crises
in social life, the person who is responsible for them is always someone apart
from “me,” that is, the other. As in Eric Hobsbawm’s prescient words,

We can, and must, blame “them” for all the grievances, uncertainties, and disori-
entations that we feel. But who are “they”? Obviously and by definition, those
who are “not us” (. . .). It would be necessary to invent them if there were no
foreigners with their tricks. (. . .) Foreigners in unhappier countries are, and have
always been, our neighbors; however, the exclusive certainties of belonging to
our people and our country is now undermined by our co-existence with “them.”
(Hobsbawm 2000, 174)

Refugees are strangers to the individuals behind the doors they knock on. The
reason for being a stranger is that they are unpredictable, unlike the people
we interact with daily, and we supposedly know what to expect from. As in
Bauman’s words, we all know that a mass influx of foreigners can destroy
what we value, and this could mean crippling or destroying our way of life
that we are so comfortingly familiar with. We categorize the people we are
accustomed to living together in our neighborhoods, streets or workplaces
as friends or enemies, welcome them, and know how to treat them (Bauman
2016, 14). On the other hand, strangers create a situation in which the sense
of control is lost, causing fear of losing properties and social positions owned.
And indeed, the given fear of loss reminds us how fragile our own positions
and well-being that are achieved through hardship are (Bauman 2016, 20).
Refugees are constantly classified and stigmatized as terrorists in relation to
the security issues, which serves to place them “beyond the moral responsibil-
ity” for the people with whom they live together in the same society (Bauman
2016, 33–35). In this way, they are no longer real people who need compas-
sion and attention. The line drawn between us and them ceases our moral
responsibility toward refugees as the other (Bauman 2016, 68). Refugees are
not only products of globalization but also its symbols. They are the human
waste of the global border, absolute strangers (Bauman 2010, 37–38).
Referring to Giorgio Agamben’s definition of Homines sacri, Bauman
stated that refugees are dehumanized and positioned as redundant people, just
like the people in the camps (Bauman 2016, 70; Evans and Bauman 2016).
68 Gül Yaşartürk

Agamben borrows the term “homo sacer” from Roman law. Homo sacer’s
life is worthless as regards both humanity and divinity. Killing a homo sacer
is not a crime, and therefore it is not punished, nor cannot a homo sacer be
sacrificed with a divine purpose. Deprived of the human and divine values
determined by law, homo sacer’s life is worthless. Killing a homo sacer is
neither a crime nor a disrespect to the sacred, nor is it a sacrifice. (Bauman
2018, 46). Being homo sacer means being placed in the category of people
both ordinary and devoid of religious significance and value (Bauman 2016,
70). Dehumanization means not having human rights. Refugee and migrant
issues cease to be an ethical/moral problem and is put in the security issue
category. It is associated with military attacks and hostility (Bauman 2016,
70). In Agamben terminology, camp refers to Nazi concentration camps.
According to Agamben, the killing of Jews was nothing but the actualization
of the capacity to be killed, one of the inherent attributes of being Jewish
(Agamben 1998, 68). In Agamben terminology, the word “camp” refers
to a concept that is used to describe the places where space, time, and law
that are valid within a certain political order are dissolved/suspended, and
thus bare life emerges (Yardımcı 2012). In the camps, a human being is
defined not by being a human or citizen, but only by biological traits. Man,
deprived of the protection of the law of the social-political order, is stripped
of humanity and left alone with his bare existence, abandoned to the rule of
the sovereign (Yardımcı 2012). Agamben suggested that the people in the
camps were stripped of their political status and simply reduced to bare life
(Agamben 1998, 97). According to him, the most important question about
the camp should be about the legal order and power structure, rather than the
question of how violence can take place. What kind of a legal order makes
genocide possible and decriminalizes it? One can argue that the same legal
issue persists in contemporary refugee camps. On the other side of the clean,
healthy, and visible world are refugees, just like the Jews in Nazi camps. As
in Bauman’s words, on the one hand, there is the clean, healthy, and vis-
ible world, and, on the other, the dark, sick, and invisible world of residual
“wastes” (Bauman 2016, 74). According to him, the term “human waste”
refers to those who are far from our eyes, hearts, and conscience (Bauman
2016, 75). Western societies, which are in pursue of economic progress, crush
cultures that do not have a consumption culture like them. As Bauman argues,
“In such a world, those people who are forced to flee intolerable conditions
are not considered to be ‘bearers of rights,’ even those supposedly considered
inalienable to humanity. Forced to depend for their survival on the people
on whose doors they knock, refugees are in a way thrown outside the realm
of ‘humanity,’ as far as it is meant to confer the rights they aren’t afforded”
(Evans and Bauman 2016). Refugees living in refugee camps are human as
waste. Their identities and abilities in their own countries are now null. As
 Strangers at Our Door 69

Bauman puts it, deprived of the stories that constitute their identity and the
basic comforts provided by identity, they turn into a faceless mass behind the
fences of the camp (Bauman 2018, 93–94). They cannot assimilate into the
new social structure. They can neither return from the place, or the dump,
where they are, nor move further.

CHILDREN OF MEN: WHITE MAN

SAVES HUMAN AS WASTE

Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s film released in 2006, is set in England

in 2027. Like the other two films discussed in this study, it deals with the
ecological crisis, but draws our attention to the issue more than Elysium and
Snowpiercer. The film is based on a conflict in which pregnant women begin
to have miscarriages after the 2008 flu pandemic, becoming completely infer-
tile, and thus no child has been born for eighteen years. An environmental
catastrophe that can be attributed to capitalism and development has caused
infertility. As E. Ann Kaplan states, “Children of Men is a critique of the post–
9/11 Western capitalist response to that tragedy. This critique is visible in the
images heavily oriented to the United Kingdom, the United States, and global
political crises—9/11, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantánamo” (Kaplan 2016, 68).
In the scene where Theo visits Jasper in the introduction of Children of
Men, Theo and Julian are with their baby in a Black and white photograph.
Theo and Julian separate shortly after the death of their son during the flu pan-
demic, and neither of them can recover from his loss. This is how the melo-
dramatic/emotional base of the story is established. Theo’s being kidnapped
by the organization called “the Fishes,” which is led by Julian, and his obtain-
ing the fake transit paper at Julian’s request take place right in the following
part/sequence. Therefore, Children of Men’s protagonist Theo’s savior role is
motivated by the love for a woman, similar to that of Elysium’s protagonist,
Max. The only difference is that Theo has an emotional bond not with Kee,
who is saved, but with Julian, who wants him to be the savior. Another com-
mon feature in the construction of Theo and Max as savior male characters is
the religious mythological connotations. As Sara Ahmed argues, the Biblical
theme is explicit in the scene in which Kee calls Theo to the barn in order to
reveal her pregnant body to him (Ahmed 2010, 185). In the final part of the
film, Kee, who has just given birth, and Theo, who is dying, reach the sea by
boat through the underground sewer and wait for the ship named Tomorrow.
This scene refers to the myth of Moses, and the film reproduces religious
mythology by secularizing it (Kutay 2011, 152–153). Therefore, as Douglas
Kellner points out, although calls attention to growing fascism and the col-
lapse of democracy and civilization, Children of Men has a conservative
70 Gül Yaşartürk

subtext (Kellner 2010, 87). The Human Project and the ship called Tomorrow
comes up to save only Kee and her child, though there are millions of people
living in refugee camps. The film positions childbirth as a key element of
humanity. While transforming Theo from a depressed cynic into a commit-
ted activist, it projects hope on the birth of a child who becomes an object
of religious adoration (Kellner 2010, 87). E. Ann Kaplan also suggested that
Theo’s story depicts despair and cynicism, and Kee’s function is to transform
Theo into a positive and active hero as the genre requires (Kaplan 2016, 74).
When Kee gives Theo’s deceased son’s name to her newborn daughter, Theo
regains his status of paternity before he dies. Theo’s transformation shows
us how much the conventions of hope depend on white man’s becoming a
“father” of both a new being and a new species being (Ahmed 2010, 187).
Referring to Agamben, camps are visible in almost every scene in the film.
Camps are a part of everyday life; people are confined in cages on every corner
in the streets of London and sent to the refugee camps outside the city by buses.
The last forty minutes of the film is set inside one of these camps, Bexhill-on-
Sea. People from various cultures, who speak different languages, live together
in this place. Their most important problem is the poor living conditions they
have rather than their cultural differences. The camp Bexhill-on-Sea is the
perfect example of the twentieth- and twenty-first century Nazi concentration
camps, Warsaw Ghetto, contemporary war zones, as well as political “prisons”
such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. In Bexhill, the soldiers torture, abuse,
and kill migrants no matter which race they are, and crush uprisings with
brutality (Korte 2008, 322). While the state maintains an authoritarian order
reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984 novel with the security forces outside the
camp, it is not possible to talk about any rule or order inside the camp. During
the riot in the camp, the military force of the British state aims to destroy every-
one whether guilty or innocent, and armed or unarmed. As the images clearly
show, the settling people in the camp are not human, but human as waste.
The world represented by Children of Men is not divided into two as
merely the rich and the poor (or, in other words, “citizens” and refugees) as
in Elysium. Theo’s cousin, the secretary of state responsible for arts, leads an
extremely sterile, safe, and comfortable life, contrary to the living conditions
of the people. In Children of Men, class differences are felt strongly among
British citizens in the life outside the camp.

ELYSIUM: HUMAN AS WASTE

TRANSFORMS INTO A SAVIOR

Neil Blomkamp’s film Elysium, which was released in 2013, features

scenes that remind images of the dangerous journeys of the refugees to the
 Strangers at Our Door 71

European continent in boats which have left a mark in our cultural memory.
The refugees trying to reach a European country by sailing on small and
flimsy boats in today’s world are represented in Elysium, which is set in Los
Angeles in 2154, by the impoverished citizens of Earth who aim to go to the
satellite built by people, called Elysium, on a worn-out and illegal spaceship.
At the beginning of the film, while an outside voice tells the audience, “In
the late 21st century, earth was diseased, polluted and vastly overpopulated.
Earth’s wealthiest inhabitants fled the planet to preserve their way of life,”
the view of Earth from space enters the frame, but the only visible part on
Earth is Africa and the Middle East. Europe is completely in the dark; it is
invisible. The earth scenes of the film were shot in the slums and dumps of
Mexico City and the Elysium scenes in the wealthy suburbs of the same city
and Vancouver, which underlines that the established world and its story
are directly related to the present (Mirrlees and Pedersen 2016, 308). In
this sense, Blomkamp’s statement that Elysium is not a science fiction but
about now (Mirrlees and Pedersen 2016, 305) indicates that his film is the
production of an extremely conscious effort. In Elysium, the main indicator
of the inequality between poor people of different races living on Earth and
the rich living in Elysium is the access to health services. While the poor are
devoid of this basic human right, each home in Elysium has a device that
heals all diseases in a short time. In the last scene of the film, the people
living on Earth are provided with access to technology in terms of health
services.
Referring to the definition of Homines sacri, in Elysium, those who are
dehumanized and positioned as redundant people are all the poor who dwell
on Earth and seek to flee to Elysium, as well as protagonist Max De Costa.
In the factory sequence at the beginning of the film, forced by his supervisor
to open the broken door of the section where the robots are burned, Max is
threatened to be sacked if he does not. It is very possible to fire and replace
him with another worker because Max is deprived of the protection of the
social-political order’s law and has been left to the sovereign’s mercy. Max
does what is required to avoid being unemployed and becomes exposed to a
lethal dose of radiation. The system uses, consumes, and throws Max away
like a waste when it is through with him. However, the film somewhat soft-
ens its highly political discourse using Christian mythology. Max turns into
a savior who sacrifices himself for the poor on Earth, accompanied by the
scenes with the nun we see in Max’s childhood memories, stating that Max
is the chosen person. Max sacrifices himself like Jesus (Gibson 2015, 84). He
saves his childhood love Frey, with whom he grew up in the orphanage, and
her daughter with leukemia, whom she raised without a father, all of which
function to make the film’s political discourse harmless with a melodramatic
love story.
72 Gül Yaşartürk

In the film, people who try to flee Earth illegally to Elysium have almost
no rights because they do not benefit from state protection; they do not have
human rights and are regarded as a security threat rather than an ethical prob-
lem. As Bauman points out, their being real people is ignored. (2016, 71). On
the one hand, there is Elysium’s neat, healthy, and visible world; on the other
hand, the dark, sick, and invisible world of residual “wastes” (Bauman 2016,
74). Or, referring to Agamben, they are stripped of all their political status
and completely reduced to bare life; there is pure life against the Elysium rule
(Agamben 2013, 204). It is precisely for this reason that Elysium’s secretary
of defense, Delacourt, orders the military to destroy the shuttle of the refu-
gees, whose fearful faces are shown to the audience, as she sees them as an
illegal problem violating Elysium’s airspace. She speaks of forty-six people
who were killed as “they are destroyed.” The dead are just numbers; they are
no longer human.
Elysium openly criticizes America’s immigration policy. The film is set in
Los Angeles. Moreover, most of the inhabitants of Earth have Latin names.
Elysium’s Black president Patel and female secretary of Defense, Delacourt,
evoke Barack Obama, the president of the United States between 2009 and
2017, and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state during his first term2;
“President Patel, while being on the same side as Delacourt, prefers to main-
tain control with a friendly face, a la Barack Obama” (Galea 2013). While
Nick Recktenwald suggests that Defense Secretary Delacourt is played by
Jodie Foster as a version of Hillary Clinton from a Republican nightmare,
Scott Foundas points out that Blomkamp and Jodie Foster depict the charac-
ter as an evil version of Hillary Clinton (2013). In fact, as Andrew Romano
argued, from Divergent to Hunger Games, it is possible to say that the tra-
dition of making similarities between the villain politician characters and
Hillary Clinton in Hollywood reflects the fear of women (2017).
In Elysium, the immigration policy of the United States is criticized by
displaying that, while the citizens of Earth are deprived of the most basic
human living conditions, particularly access to health services, all the citizens
of Elysium equally have upper class living standards. Moreover, it is also a
remarkable criticism of the US immigration policy that the Elysium admin-
istration sees the citizens of Earth as a security problem, and they do not
see any harm in killing them in order not to share their prosperity. The film,
in the final analysis, determines the problem we live in as the intersection
of social class and racial issues. Both the inhabitants on Earth and those in
Elysium are governed by the corporation Armadyne. In the film, the conflict
is solved by the fact that technology changes hands through the sacrifice of
a working-class male hero. While Elysium says that technology is the most
significant power, it shows concretely that what is evil is not technology, but
the intention of its owner.
 Strangers at Our Door 73

SNOWPIERCER: HUMAN AS WASTE

UNDERSTANDS BEING DECEIVED

Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 film is based on the French graphic novel Le

Transperceneige created by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette and pub-
lished in 1982. The film begins with a news report from 2014; produced by
scientists as a solution to global warming, a gas called CW-7 have been spread
to the upper layer of the atmosphere by seventy-nine countries to reduce
global temperature. However, after the spread of gas, the world freezes, life
disappears, and the world returns to ice age. The last survivors in the world
onboard a train called “the Snowpiercer,” designed by Wilford as a small
replica of life on Earth. While the train circumnavigates on a certain route
without stopping, the life on the train is divided into classes according to the
economic assets of the people and transition between classes is impossible. In
this sense, Snowpiercer shares Children of Men’s theme of the extinction of
humanity due to an environmental catastrophe. Besides, the train named “the
Snowpiercer” has precisely the same features as the life that the wealthy set
up in Elysium. The class distinction is extremely sharp in both films and in
Snowpiercer, it is also possible to see the ruthlessness of Elysium executives
and their reluctance to share the prosperity they have. Similar to Elysium,
technology and science, in Snowpiercer, are each a power enabling humans
to survive, but a small minority holding the economic power use technology
for their own well-being and security.
Ann Kaplan argued that thanks to/due to the miraculous pregnancy of the
character of Kee in Children of Men, the film offers the audience a mes-
sianic future, and that, as a result, Children of Men is a utopian film (2016,
70). Kaplan’s assessment applies to Snowpiercer and the character of Yona.
Seventeen-year-old Yona has the qualities of a clairvoyant. With her sixth
sense, she can see behind the doors and under the ground. It is Yona who,
aside from saving Timmy’s life, senses and discovers that young children are
being exploited in place of machine gears on the train which are out-of-order
and missing. Similar to the survival of Kee and her daughter in Children of
Men, Yona and Timmy survive in Snowpiercer. The film ends with an alle-
gorical scene in which Yona, and Timmy come out of the wreckage of the
train, walk through the snow, and catch a polar bear’s eyes (Andersen and
Nielsen 2018, 621).
In Snowpiercer, humans as waste who want to “migrate” from the back
end of the train to the front end constitute the poorest segment as in Elysium.
The common feature that unites them is that they are the poorest of the train.
While the poor involve different races, the rich we see on the front car of the
train are predominantly whites as in Elysium. The inhabitants on the last car
of the train are human as waste. They lack the facilities owned by the people
74 Gül Yaşartürk

who reside at the front end of the train and are called citizens. They feed on
protein bars made from cockroaches. The way the rear cars are represented
directly resembles the Nazi camps visually. In the first part of the film, the
soldiers looking for a violin player at the request of the front car residents drag
away an old man against his will (by employing violence against his wife).
Similarly, in another scene, they take two little boys away by employing vio-
lence against their mothers and other people after measuring the children with
tape measures under pretense of medical inspection. In the closing part of the
film, we learn that the children are forced to work in the engine room of the
train. Reaching the locomotive and talking to Wilford, the protagonist Curtis
finds out that it is Wilford himself who has started the uprising. As Wilford,
defined by Kaplan as a fascist leader, states, “The population must always be
kept in balance.” He notes, sardonically, that he realized they had to control
the population and could not wait for natural selection; drastic measures were
necessary given the limited space available for the last survivors on Earth,
circling the frozen globe in their class-divided train” (Kaplan 2016, 162). In
order to preserve the resources on the train, it has been necessary to reduce
the population, and of course the ones who are sacrificed for this are humans
as waste on the back end of the train. They are just numbers, not individu-
als. The design of population control over humans as waste also evokes Nazi
concentration camps, referring to Agamben.
The representations of class distinction in the film contain melodramatic
elements, thus having similarities to Hollywood’s representations of the poor
and the rich. Curtis, the leader of the multicultural lower class that is made
up of various ethnicities, is played, as in Elysium, by another blond and blue-
eyed star actor, Chris Evans. Gilliam, the wise old man who mentors Curtis,
is actually a character that collaborates with Wilford, shortly, someone who
betrays the class he belongs to from the very beginning, and this evokes
Hollywood’s dominant/established discourse that the working class is always
doomed to defeat and cannot unite.

CONCLUSION

The main characters of the films Children of Men, Elysium, and Snowpiercer
are played by American and British actors, but the groups to which the
main characters are closely related are of a multicultural nature. The final
part of Children of Men focuses on Theo’s endeavor to save Kee inside the
refugee camp called Bexhill-on-Sea. On the other hand, in Elysium, Frey
and Julio, who surrounds the main character, Max De Costa, as his close
friends are Black and Latin. Julio is the person guiding Max; he is his men-
tor. In Snowpiercer, however, the multicultural structure is not as evident
 Strangers at Our Door 75

as in the other two films. While the Black character Tanya, whom Curtis,
the protagonist, builds a close relationship with, dies at the beginning of the
film, Yona and Yona’s father, Namgoong, are positioned as two-dimensional
characters that help Curtis. Curtis’ insistence on talking to Yona’s father,
Nam, in English without using the translation tool and Nam’s requirement for
it to respond him indicate that Snowpiercer still blesses WASP stereotypes.
Children of Men, Elysium, and Snowpiercer break Hollywood’s WASP domi-
nant character representation through the characters who survive and adopts a
multicultural discourse. In Elysium, Frey and her daughter are Black/Latin; in
Children of Men, Kee is Afro-Caribbean, and in Snowpiercer, Yona is North
Korean, while Timmy is Black.
The films in the study reflect the concerns about post-ecological disasters,
and the life they portray while reflecting these concerns offer a suitable
ground that can be addressed with the descriptions of Bauman’s human as
waste and Agamben’s camp. The Western perspective based on progress
has given way to ecological catastrophes, resulting in the concentration of
economic and technological power in the hands of a small minority, and
therefore of authoritarian governments. However, none of the films represent
technology as dangerous. Thus, they are not technophobic. Children of Men,
Elysium, and Snowpiercer suggest that technology can save human lives
when it is not only in the hands of the minority who does not want to share its
power and prosperity. It is possible to see this particularly in the last scene of
Elysium, in which massive hospital ships land on Earth, and, in Snowpiercer,
in the depiction of the train that hosts exactly the same life on Earth despite
the polar cold. Children of Men depicts a period in which women have
become infertile after a flu pandemic. In Elysium, Earth becomes uninhabit-
able because of global waste, whereas, in Snowpiercer, the world experiences
an ice age. In Children of Men, due to the environmental disaster, the eco-
nomic and social order has deteriorated in all the countries apart from Great
Britain, so a great many refugees come to Great Britain illegally. In Elysium
and Snowpiercer, the most important determinants of being a refugee is the
class distinction and poverty. The world described in these two films is sepa-
rated into two as the world of the poor/humans as waste and the world of the
wealthy/citizens. On the other hand, in Children of Men, not all the citizens
of Great Britain are wealthy. As we see in our protagonist Theo and his friend
Jasper, those who are defined as citizens in Great Britain also include the
poor and the rich.
All the three films reinforce the Hollywood stereotypes by presenting a
male figure saving a young woman and a little child. As in Ahmed’s words,
this shows how much the conventions of hope depend on white man’s becom-
ing a father and sustaining humanity. Children of Men and Elysium shape the
savior/self-sacrificing male narrative around religious references, whereas, in
76 Gül Yaşartürk

Snowpiercer, the discourse of miracle/miraculousness is based on the charac-

ter of Yona, who has the qualities of a clairvoyant.

NOTES

1. Klein argued in the Shock Doctrine that governments may take advantage of
the vulnerability of people during catastrophe periods, resorting to new police state
regulations (Kaplan, 2016, 78).
2. For another article reading the film through Obama era, see Kendrick (2013).

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from Divergent to The Hunger Games.” https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​daily​​beast​​.com/​​holly​​
woods​​-obse​​ssion​​-with​​-hill​​ary​-c​​linto​​n​-lik​​e​-vil​​lains​​-from​​-dive​​rgent​​-​to​-t​​he​-hu​​nger
-​​games​.
Stam, Robert. 2000. Film Theory An İntroduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Topçu, Gürhan. 2010. Hollywood’a Yeniden Bakmak (Looking to Hollywood Over
Again). İstanbul: De Ki Yayınları.
Vitrinel, Ece. 2018. “Uzaylı Olarak ‘Öteki’: Yasak Bölge 9 Filminin Post-kolonyal
Kavramlar ile Okunması” (The ‘Other’ as an Alien: A Postcolonial Reading of the
Movie District 9). SineFlozofi Dergisi 3 (5): 127–44.
Yardımcı, Sibel. 2012. “Kentin Sınırında Toplumsallaşmanın Yeni Metaforu Olarak
Kamp” (Camp as a new Metaphor of Socialization at the Border of the City).
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tafor​​​u​-ola​​rak​-k​​amp​/4​​70.
 Chapter 4

A Universe of Story and Medium

Transforming Narrative,
Representation, and Ideology in Star
Wars Films and Digital Games
Özge Sayılgan

As a story universe Star Wars is expanding in various medium like televi-

sion, cinema, digital games, cartoon, and comic books. As well this universe
is open to be read as a body of production at the center of the mainstream
Hollywood cinema industry and popular culture. In this study Star Wars uni-
verse is discussed through the pattern of the transformation of the narrative
representation from the second half of the 1970s to 2000s, in the context of
transculturalism.
Star Wars is a multicultural universe at the same time: On one side the
resistance of a heterogenic Republic representing the defense of the togeth-
erness of various races of the galaxy and on the other side a homogenic
Empire order as a representation of autocracy. The differentiating discourse
from the first release in 1977 to post-2000 is also open to be analyzed in
the context of the identity and representation politics in Disney, due to the
purchase of Lucas Film to Disney in 2012 and is not independent from the
transforming economic, political, and cultural background of globalization.
The Disneyfication of the universe related to Disney’s self-regeneration in
2000s appears in Star Wars, as a central woman hero character and the repre-
sentation of races with important supporting actors and actresses installed in
other basic character archetypes. But still, the lack of representation of other
genders and disabled people accompany the “whiteness” of the main protago-
nist and antagonist. Additionally, their human race origin still occupies the
central archetypes in the story of a universe of racial diversity. Like Yoda is
the mentor, Asian—Black human representations are allies, but the main hero
and shadow (villain archetype) stay white humans in general.
79
80 Özge Sayılgan

The Star Wars narrative broadens on the flow of archetypal journey of

dramatic characters and scenes which form the whole body. A story universe
based on classical dramatic conflict of Hollywood mainstream narrative cin-
ema with the eternal struggle between the “good” and “evil” which continues
being the reproductive organ of the search for the balance is in question. So,
this expansion functions as a puzzle to be completed but each piece of this big
picture as a dramatic story comes together to form an epic tale beyond com-
pletion. The central dramatic narrative becomes a capital, gains an exchange
value in the market and reproduces new, subordinating conjunctions to
enlarge the story far from the dramatic closure. This endless openness pro-
vides a postmodern narrative style for the sake of capitalist production. The
closing circle of J. Campbell’s “hero’s journey” model, in another word the
circular flow of chaos to be transformed into an order, opens up by spiraling.
The expansion is not limited to the story content but it also comprises
several medium from print to audio-visual and interactive. Especially digital
games as interactive drama calls players to take “role” in the main story and
be a part of the universe. The case of Star Wars digital games, especially the
multiplayer platforms are open to be read also as virtual transcultural spaces
reproducing Star Wars scenes and battles with the participation of subjects
from various nationalities, cultures, ages, and genders.
In contrast with cinema screen, the perspective in digital game space, is
open and depend on multiple choice and the identification with villains and/
or heroes is optional in multiplayer gaming experience, providing a decen-
tralization and ambiguity in identification with characters and the side they
belong. Apparently the “dark side” is more attractive and also the desired
position for the players who are already familiar with the main story and
universe. But the chosen side doesn’t change the process and flow of the
battle, instead the practice of in game consumption has an effect on the
consequences of the competitive gameplay experience. The appearance of
a multicultural participatory culture has the risk to be trapped by consumer
culture and the clash between the sides from different social and economic
classes replaces the original struggle between the “dark side” and “Jedis.”
Another issue to be evaluated is that the toxicity and the racist, sexist, or
homophobic hate speech and discourse in multiplayer games which is moved
to virtual from physical space with all habitus. In spite of the multicultural-
race-gender representation reproduced on film screen, it’s seen that the patri-
archal and toxic behavior is adapted with the rest of the content and EA, as a
developer of Star Wars games declares preventions from toxicity and reveals
“Positive Play Charter,”1 in 2020.
In the scope of this research, departing from J. Campbell’s model “hero’s
journey,” the representation of characters as archetypes in stories of Star
Wars universe is analyzed comparatively focusing on the transformations
 A Universe of Story and Medium 81

before and after 2000s, taking into account the effect of Disneyfication as an
ideological layer.
Besides, character as a dramatic agent becomes avatar in the interactive
narrative environment of digital games. Star Wars games as a crucial dimen-
sion of the universe provide a medium where the central story is reproduced
with the activity of players, but this time the meanings are also open to be
reproduced in a variety of perception of the players within a reinterpretative
process which is called gaming. The players are coming together from the dif-
ferent countries to form a transcultural interactive experience. The story in the
background functions as the myth for their gaming activity and enables the
re-identification and sense of belonging by playing a ritualistic role related to
the myth (story), inside game.
With “hero’s journey,” Campbell has modeled the circular and closing
flow of dramatic structure and has inspired G. Lucas in dramatic construc-
tion of the Star Wars narrative. However, the story transforms into a capital
to put itself on the market again with new generation stories. The circle is
re-opening, the same dramatic conflict is re-constructed for a new generation
and the galaxy is far from to be saved today. But in this process the styles
of representation are transformed considering gender roles, race, ethnicities,
diversity but with an ideological filtering. Firstly, this research aims to clarify
this transformation and the ideology behind, with an analysis of character
archetypes in Star Wars films. In a second level, with an analysis of a mul-
tiplayer mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II (Dierner 2017) as a transcultural
digital space, it is aimed to reach the ways of identification through char-
acters and story world as represented in game. Beyond narrative analysis,
Star Wars: Battlefront II is also open to be discussed in the context of game
mechanics, in game purchase dynamics and the competitive characteristics as
an interactive medium to reach the decentralized and postmodern practicing
of the story in which there is no difference between the hero and the villain
of a receded myth across competition. Star Wars: Battlefront II is analyzed
as a postmodern storytelling medium with concepts like metanarrative, inter-
textuality, pastiche and nostalgy, as the films in comparison with each other,
especially before and after the Disneyfication of the saga.

STAR WARS TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING:

A POSTMODERN UNIVERSE

Digital media and the postmodern appearances of cultural production rede-

fine today the known and existing cultural space and the communicative
practices. Through new communication technologies spreading interaction
and agency, the viewers of modern mass society have been transformed
82 Özge Sayılgan

gradually in users or interactors of digital culture. In his part titled Clone

Story from the book Simulacres et Simulation, Baudrillard mentions the
necessity to revisit Walter Benjamin’s approach to the work of art in the
age of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin (1969) indicates that which
withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of
art. According to Baudrillard, cloning, from a historical approach, is the
last stage of the transformation of a living body into a model and the con-
demnation of individual reduced to an abstract and genetic formula to the
serial reproduction. The original is lost and only a nostalgic and retrospec-
tive history can reconstitute it as authentic (Baudrillard 1981, 149). In the
age of digital reproduction, the most convenient method is the unlimited
re-copiation of things represented algorithmically in digital space and, they
even don’t have/need any original version. As states Baudrillard, from the
age of mechanical industrial production, Benjamin couldn’t foresee con-
temporary deepening of these technologies which allow the generation of
identical beings who never return to the original. The loss of aura is accom-
panied by the disappearance of storyteller and the reduction of experience.
Storyteller’s resource is the experience, as states Benjamin in 1936, and this
art raised to a level of excellence in Middle Ages with the fusion of two
types of knowledge transfer, one of the traveler’s and the other of the arti-
san’s (Benjamin 1995, 78). Toward the end of the century, like storyteller,
story and its components dispersed with the impact of postmodern interven-
tions. Intertextual construction, ambiguity in archetypes, decentralization,
nonclosure in dramatic structure, nostalgy, and the use of pastiche, denial of
causality are also accompanied by and altered with the impact of the rise of
new communication technologies providing new possibilities like transme-
dia storytelling, interactive storytelling, or digital storytelling. This process
of technological development brought up the concept of interactivity and
the construction of co-authorship on text by calling viewer to be a part of
the telling of the story. So audio-visual storytelling medium also expanded
with a new tool of language, interactivity. “Departing from the modernist
cultural tradition grounded in the Enlightenment, norms of industrial soci-
ety, and faith in historical progress, postmodern cinema is characterized by
disjointed narratives, a dark view of the human condition, images of chaos
and random violence, death of the hero, emphasis on technique over content,
and dystopic views of the future” (Boggs and Pollard 2001). Jameson who
describes postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism offers the
concept multinational capital period instead of post-industrialism, as the
third stage of capitalist economy following respectively the market capital-
ism and the monopoly stage or the stage of imperialism (Jameson 1997) and
obviously, multinational practices of story and experience were not inde-
pendent from this process. A part of the contemporary experience mediated
 A Universe of Story and Medium 83

in digital space today meets cultural reproduction of digital travelers and

artisans of information society.

THE HERO’S JOURNEY, THE MONOMYTH

AND THE REPRESENTATION OF MAIN
ARCHETYPES IN STAR WARS

Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s six episodes interview with Bill Moyers,

have been broadcasted on PBS Channel in 1988, a year later Campbell’s
death. The series were recorded in George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, in
California. The creator of Star Wars was also a fan of Campbell’s works and
his approach to the hero’s journey. Campbell’s research includes storytelling
medium like myths, rites, stories, and fairytales with a relation to narrative,
psychoanalytic, cultural, and anthropological levels. From this perspective
Campbell relates myths and dreams: “The myth is the public dream and
the dream is the private myth. If your private myth, your dream, happens to
coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If
it isn’t, you’ve got an adventure in the dark forest ahead of you” (Campbell
and Moyers 1991, 40) and he follows Jung’s archetype theory and the idea
that myths are cultural productions of collective unconscious which is influ-
enced but not exactly dependent to the local culture or to the national identity
because it’s possible to find more similarities than differences in myths, fairy-
tales and rituals of various cultures and from different historical stages. Thus,
myths can also be considered as transcultural products based on the common
life cycle of human beings consisting of birth, marriage, and death which are
the thresholds of natural human life, supported by the society with rites and
symbolized in every culture.
“You’ve got the same body, with the same organs and energies, that Cro-
Magnon man had thirty thousand years ago. Living a human life in New York
City or living a human life in the caves, you go through the same stages of
childhood, coming to sexual maturity, transformation of the dependency of
childhood into the responsibility of manhood or womanhood, marriage, then
failure of the body, gradual loss of its powers, and death. You have the same
body, the same bodily experiences, and so you respond to the same images”
(Campbell and Moyers 1991, 36).
According to Jung, “there exists a second psychic system of a collective,
universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This
collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It con-
sists of preexistent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious
secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents” (Jung
1969, 43).
84 Özge Sayılgan

Borrowing Jung’s character archetypes like persona, shadow, anima, ani-

mus, mentor or trickster, Campbell constructs a model for the flow of the
hero’s journey containing archetypes of plot as main components of myths
and fairytales which are attached each other with thresholds. “The standard
path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the for-
mula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return: which
might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth” (Campbell 2004, 28). Each
of these units are constituted from subsections and the sequential development
is circular. The hero returning to the starting point and his or her journey from
ordinary world to the special world come to an end with the matured, trans-
formed and initiated hero who has turned the chaos into the order.
The monomyth model’s also convenient to analyze conventional plots of
modern mythology created by Hollywood throughout the twentieth century.

Table 4.1 Main Stages and Subsections of Monomyth Model (Campbell 2004)

Initiation/Road of trials
Separation/Departure and victories Return
(1) “The Call to Adventure,” (1) “The Road of Trials,” (1) “Refusal of the
or the signs of the vocation or the dangerous aspect Return,” or the world
of the hero; of the gods; denied;

(2) “Refusal of the Call,” or (2) “The Meeting with (2) “The Magic Flight,”
the folly of the flight from the Goddess” (Magna or the escape of
the god; Mater), or the bliss of Prometheus;
infancy regained;

(3) “Supernatural Aid,” the (3) “Woman as the (3) “Rescue from With-
unsuspected assistance Temptress,” the out”;
that comes to one who realization and agony of
has undertaken his proper Oedipus;
adventure;

(4) “The Crossing of the first (4) “Atonement with the (4) “The Crossing of the
Threshold”; Father”; Return Threshold,” or
the return to the world
of common day;
(5) “The Belly of the Whale,” (5) “Apotheosis”; (5) “Master of the Two
or the passage into the Worlds”;
realm of night.

(6) “The Ultimate Boon.” (6) “Freedom to

Live,” the nature
and function of the
ultimate boon
 A Universe of Story and Medium 85

The Star Wars saga became one of the most important practiced models of
monomyth following the circular journey of the hero who is always accom-
panied by other archetypes to be initiated. Jung describes as main archetypes
of psyche, persona (mask), anima/animus (feminine aspect in man; masculine
aspect in female hero), mentor (guide, wise old man), and shadow (villain).
These are the basic archetypes to form a dramatic flow of a hero’s journey
but are also accompanied by various archetypes like maiden, trickster, shape-
shifter, threshold guardian, allies (sidekick), mother, and eternal child. From
an epic perspective, in the Star Wars saga, shadow is the Empire and the
totalitarian authority against the Resistance defending the Republic which
also representing the multinational democratic system to govern the galaxy
in its multitude of race and culture. But in dramatic level, the Star Wars saga
hero is Luke Skywalker and the story is his journey of adventures. Like many
other heroes, Skywalker is not alone, to be initiated into the world of adven-
ture from the ordinary world, he needs a call which will first be refused and
with the help and the orientation of his mentor, he will be on the road of trials.
“The two important heroes of Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker and his
son Luke Skywalker, have to face the Shadow both as an external force of
evil and as a part of their characters. In Star Wars universe, evil is represented
by the Dark Side of the Force” (Botha 2006, 25). The external shadow as
represented by Darth Vader is an extension of the hero’s inner shadow, the
dark side of his soul.
“In Star Wars films, the Guide is represented in its positive aspect most
clearly by Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, and in its negative
manifestation by Chancellor/Emperor 2:6” (Botha 2006, 46). The mentor
(the guide) is always ready to show the right way and to guide the hero,
but he/she never takes the hero’s place to face the villain. He/she knows
the road of trials, is aware of the dangers inside, but it’s the hero who has
to fight against his/her outer or inner enemies. “According to Jung, the
archetype of the Guide can only intervene when “all props and crutches are
broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of secu-
rity” (Botha 2006, 48). Guide’s mission in the Star Wars saga is to make
hero to learn how to use his force and to train him as Jedi to get him ready
against the shadow.
After the purchase of Lucas Film to Disney, in 2012, in Star Wars: The
Force Awakens (2015), the hero is now a woman Jedi, Rey and her guide is
Han Solo who is not actually a Jedi or Jedi master. Differentiated from the
original trilogy, Disney’s contribution is revealed by placing a woman char-
acter, a heroine, into the hero archetype and make a person of color, Finn, her
ally/sidekick. Finn is also a former clone from the Stormtroopers who left to
serve the Dark side and toward the end of the film Star Wars: Force Awakens,
he uses a Jedi sword while fighting against the shadow. “As a character
86 Özge Sayılgan

played by a person of color, Finn is Disney’s way of adding diversity, or

‘spice,’ to the film without really acknowledging his background as a person
of color in the context of the film” (Dochnahl 2008, 11).
And the villain/shadow, Kylo Ren, shows his face and he is not completely
“dark” anymore. He is represented as human, a white man (not as another
race of the human world or the galaxy). In original trilogy of the series, main
woman character, Princess Leia, was in the maiden archetype and even if
she was a warrior and the commander of the Resistance, she needed to be
saved by men. But with the Disneyfied Star Wars, he is the antagonist of a
heroine as the protagonist. According to Bostan and Kırel (2018, 8); Disney’s
princess narratives representations can be analyzed in three periods: The clas-
sical period (1937–1959) of beautiful and domestic princess conflicts with
ugly witch women; the transition period (1989–1998) of princess who tries
to push the limits in various ways ant the postmodern period (2009–) which
has started with the animation film The Princess and The Frog (Clements and
Musker 2009) and represents main women characters as free subjects.

The period between 1967 and 1989 was a virtual wasteland in the production of
children’s animated film, but that long dry spell came to an abrupt halt in 1989
with the release of The Little Mermaid, which announced the beginning of a
new string of successful films that ran through the 1990s, resurrecting numer-
ous motifs (including sexist and racist ones) from the 1950s in a clear nostalgia
play. (. . .) Further, given the tendency in the Disney universe to make nostalgia
a quest for authenticity, this phenomenon implies that the earlier films are sym-
bolically regarded as authentic classics, while the later films are postmodern
pastiches of the earlier classic films. In this way, the new wave of Disney films
that began with The Little Mermaid can be regarded as a key instance of post-
modern culture as described by the important theorist Fredric Jameson, who
sees nostalgia as a key mode of such culture and regards pastiche as its principal
technique. (Booker 2009, 37)

Star Wars is another cultural product of Disney’s postmodern period and as

Vommaro states: “The Star Wars saga has already been associated to the prac-
tices of nostalgic pastiche and postmodern parody, by authors such as Fredric
Jameson and Linda Hutcheon. Jameson affirms that Star Wars are a pastiche of
the Saturday afternoon serials that became famous between the 1930s and 1950s
not as a metaphor of the past, but as a metonymy, focusing on an aspect, a frag-
ment of that past.” (Vommaro 2015, 64)

The Disneyfication process of classical fairytales, especially on the gender

roles of main woman characters as heroines in Disney films has been dis-
cussed as an ideological layer before the purchase of Lucas Film to Disney.
 A Universe of Story and Medium 87

Another aspect of this ideology is on the layer of class which contains

another naturalization of distinction existing in society through classical
fairytales. The term Disneyfication is defined as “the transformation (as of
something real or unsettling) into carefully controlled and safe entertainment
or an environment with similar qualities the Disneyfication of a downtown”
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary). But Booker (2009) uses the term to express
Disney’s ideological layer applied to classical fairytale adaptations. From
the princess who has transformed in to a frog (2009) to independent princess
sisters of Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013) and Frozen II (Buck and Lee 2019),
Disney’s approach to adapt fairytales and classical circular heroic journey
has shadowed its effect on the classical structure and gender representations
of Star Wars saga.
The social and political transformation process, especially of woman rights
and gender roles from 1970s to 2000s has also a natural effect but this period
is also determined by many philosophers and cultural theoreticians as the
postmodern age. Disney’s adaptations which are not independent from the
sociopolitical and ideological background of the time when they have been
shot, aim to appeal to the target audience and the renovation in gender roles
of heroines is related to the new woman generation’s expectations. “Indeed,
Amy M. Davis, in her recent book Good Girls and Wicked Witches (2007),
has argued that Disney’s films have been perhaps the single most powerful
force in determining expectations about feminine behavior in American soci-
ety as a whole since the 1930s” (Booker 2009, 3).

In other words, Disney films carry on the tradition of telling these stories in
ways which are relevant to their audiences: the stories went from being con-
structed for oral presentation, to being altered to make them suitable for print,
then transformed to make them suitable for filming. Concurrently to changing
them so as to fit the constraints of each new medium, each new teller has also
re-formed and re-shaped elements of the stories to fit both the medium they were
using and the audience they were targeting. (Davis 2011, 13)

But for Bostan and Kırel (2018, 13); Disney’s postmodern princess nar-
ratives are the multilayered texts aiming to catch a large audience instead
of being rebellious texts in spite of the created new narratives going over
the weak sides of the classical stories. For example, Moana (Clements and
Musker 2016) as a representation of a powerful, independent and the war-
rior heroine, reproduces also the inequality and the hegemony of chosen
elite ideology. And Moana still needs a guidance of a male character in
her journey and even if she is the chosen one, she has constructed with
the ideology of Disney rewarding depending woman. For the case of Star
Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams 2015), unlike Luke Skywalker, in the
88 Özge Sayılgan

original trilogy, Rey is accompanied by Finn, a male character represented

as a person of color.
But the ally of a woman and a man of color as protagonists in Star Wars:
The Force Awakens encountered a fan backlash against diversity in gender
and race of the main archetype representations, as Harrison highlights (2015,
1–2). As the first attempt to Disneyfication of the Star Wars universe, Star
Wars: The Force Awakens begins with the two distinct characters, Rey and
Finn, two protagonists who have their own personal heroic journey to inter-
sect and finally arrive to the final battle against the antagonist, Kylo Ren.
Disney’s contribution provides a scene of a former clone slave (represented
as a man of color) fighting against his former lord, a Jedi and a chosen one of
a privileged class and race (as represented by a white man) and the creation
of a powerful and young woman as the new generation heroine who will be
able to defeat the antagonist.
“The first major character of colour in the franchise was Lando Calrissian,
played by a black actor Billy Dee Williams in The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi. (. . .) As a flirtatious gambler and swindler who double-
crosses his white friends, and with dandified and ostentatious costuming
(. . .).” Lando was reduced to a racial stereotype (Harrison 2019, 4). The
first person of color representation from human species in the Star Wars
saga, has placed in shapeshifter archetype symbolizing indecisive characters
about whom we can not be sure if he/she is reliable or not. In the Star Wars:
The Force Awakens, the man of color is described as a trustworthy ally of
the heroine and acts as a second protagonist/hero who has own journey to
be completed. Toward the end of the film, he fights against Kylo Ren. The
former slave clone and the powerful and well-trained main antagonist’s battle
ends up with Finn’s defeat just before Rey’s arrival.
The Star Wars story universe has always been a multicultural and multi-
species space to represent various archetypes. The galaxy is home for over
20 million sentient species (Star Wars Fandom) and a few of them are repre-
sented in main archetypes of film series. Yoda, as an important mentor figure
and a Jedi master and Chewbacca, as a powerful and loyal ally are represented
as alien figures, but most of the important archetypes in stories are occupied
by the human race. Dramatic structure is actually based on the defense of
political representation of this multitude to reconstruct the Republic defeated
by the First Order to build a military dictatorship. Siths and Dark Jedis are
the central villain and some of them are represented as other species like
Supreme Leader Snoke who is strand-cast humanoid male, an artificial
genetic construct. His master Darth Sidious, the Emperor and the Dark Lord
of the Sith is a male human and his apprentice Kylo Ren is also a white male
human antagonist. Darth Sidious apprentices are various in the sense of race
but all of them male and powerful characters, like Anakin Skywalker who
 A Universe of Story and Medium 89

transforms in Darth Vader or Darth Maul who is from Dathomirian Zabraks

with red skin. But the shadow archetypes of human race are represented by
white male characters throughout saga.
The Star Wars universe is known with the multitude of races, specifies, and
the dramatic structure is based on the endless struggle between the good and
evil represented by different political and ideological sides in contrast with
each other. The “good” side is represented by the multitude and the solidarity
of multicultural specifies of the galaxy and defends democracy in the face of
totalitarian authority of the Galactic Empire. Siths/Dark Jedis and Jedis, as
two faces of the Force and in Star Wars films they are represented in main
archetypes of the story and as various types of specifies. But while the evil is
represented as humanoid creatures and as humans; good side is represented
mostly as human beings. The human representation of main archetypes of
the stories are transforming in the sense of variation of gender and race with
Disneyfication effect applied on the original story, like the previous fairytale
adaptations of Disney in 2000s. But the ideology of the hegemony of a ruling
class is open to be read in the chosen/elite class of Jedi’s and their replace-
ment in the hero/heroine and mentor archetypes, especially with white man
and woman representations in films, in spite of the content of the story which
has a focus on the glorification of the Resistance as rebels against a fascist
power of a dictatorship.
Thus, the levels of representation of the transcultural space created in the
Star Wars universe seems to be changed as adapted to the political back-
ground and the target audience’s expectations of the age they have been shot,
but multicultural space narrated in story is open to be criticized in the layer
of representation of main characters who carry the story. The saga, in 2000s
compromising with the audience in some perspective, continues to reproduce
the existing inequalities ideologically in class, gender, and race.

DIGITAL TRANSCULTURALISM, WITHERING

NARRATIVES, NOSTALGY, AND THE STORY AS
CAPITAL IN STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT II

Such machines are indeed machines of reproduction rather than of production,

and they make very different demands on our capacity for aesthetic representa-
tion (. . .).” (Jameson 1997, 35)

The Star Wars universe is not limited to films and Star Wars games provide a
transmedia storytelling medium to expand the story universe. Jenkins stated
that “Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of
a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for
90 Özge Sayılgan

the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.

Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of
the story” (Jenkins 2007). Series like The Mandalorian (Favreau 2019) and
animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Filoni 2021), digital games like
Star Wars: Battlefront (Gewirtz 2004), and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker
Saga (McLoughlin 2021), immersive virtual entertainment experiences,
books and comics are the units of the story universe targeting a large audience
and interactors. Unlike films and books, games provide an interactive experi-
ence and agency, ability to take action in story world. As an example, to be
discussed in the scope of this research, the digital game Star Wars: Battlefront
II (Dierner 2017), a singular unit of aforementioned transmedia storytelling
medium consists of various subsections from singular to multiplayer game-
play modes which make possible the transcultural practice of the story.

Transculturality is, in the first place, a consequence of the inner differentiation

and complexity of modern cultures. These encompass—as I explained before—
a number of ways of life and cultures, which also interpenetrate or emerge
from one another. (b). The old homogenizing and separatist idea of cultures
has furthermore been surpassed through cultures’ external networking. Cultures
today are extremely interconnected and entangled with each other. Lifestyles no
longer end at the borders of national cultures, but go beyond these, are found in
the same way in other cultures. (Welsch 1999, 197)

Star Wars: Battlefront II’s total number of accounts is 17.700.000 as of

November 19, 2019, 13.500.000 players (76%) have earned at least one
trophy and the players from all around the world participate in multiplayer
modes to fight together (Gamstat 2020). This experience reminds the rites
related to myth contents as described by Campbell (1991). Star Wars games
can be described as the ritualistic reproduction of the mythical story of the
saga by the agency of players already familiar with Star Wars story universe
and culture. The game experience in multiplayer modes cross all exist-
ing national borders. According to Welsch; “Cultures today are in general
characterized by hybridization. For every culture, all other cultures have
tendentially come to be inner-content or satellites. This applies on the levels
of population, merchandise and information. (. . .) finally, the global network-
ing of communications technology makes all kinds of information identically
available from every point in space” (Welsch 1999, 198).

Culture begins with an imagining of the world about us; these imaginings
are represented in some way. That is, they are formed in discourse, language,
symbols, signs, and texts— all concepts applied to meaning systems. These
imaginings and meanings, however, can never be fixed or solidified, but remain
 A Universe of Story and Medium 91

assemblages that can be dismantled through time, space, and human action.
(Lewis 2002, 22)

Lewis constructs a definition for the term culture, with an aim to reach to the
definition of transculturalism:

Culture is an assemblage of imaginings and meanings that may be consonant,

disjunctive, overlapping, contentious, continuous, or discontinuous. These
assemblages may operate through a wide variety of human social groupings and
social practices. In contemporary culture these experiences of imagining and
meaning-making are intensified through the proliferation of mass media images
and information. (2002, 23–24)

Culture without being a stable and separatable phenomenon from the sur-
rounding effects of other’s culture, is more open and fluid in contemporary
society of information. Transcultural experience expanding on social media
and through Internet has only another aspect in online gaming practice of
everyday culture throughout the world and is more fluid than ever with the
help of the technology that makes this possible. Beyond games and films, Star
Wars as a universe of transmedia storytelling produces a transcultural space
of common meaning production through interactivity. Star Wars transmedia
storytelling medium, calls readers/viewers/interactors to making of meanings
and positions them in a more active and indecisive place to give them a limited
role to make meaningful connection between distinct media and to participate
in its construction via gaming experience as a ritualistic act around the myths
of the universe. Jenkins explains the effect of the expansion of the universe
as: “This logic of world-building, of extension, expansion, extraction, shapes
all the other elements that would emerge around the Star Wars constellation.
Each new extension of the Star Wars text adds potentially more depth or
appreciation of the world depicted on screen” (Jenkins 2018,19). Connecting
different stories and characters’ journey’s between various media provides a
common culture based on meaning production as highlighted by Hall:

It is the shared cultural “space” in which the production of meaning through

language— that is, representation—takes place. The receiver of messages and
meanings is not a passive screen on which the original meaning is accurately
and transparently projected. (. . .) Speaker and hearer or writer and reader are
active participants in a process which—since they often exchange roles—is
always double-sided, always interactive. (Hall 1997, 10)

Through language, not limited to oral language but expanded with the
language of audio, visual representation and of interactivity, players from
92 Özge Sayılgan

various national, ethnic, or sexual identities can come together under the
same roof of the story and dance around the same fire, the game. This is how
we can describe the medium, especially the multiplayer modes of the game,
as a form reproducing transcultural environment altered by transmedia story-
telling and with a postmodern cultural background.
The game player’s existence renders the story medium to an open world
of decisions to be taken when confronted with film medium. Star Wars:
Battlefront II is an important example of the ambiguity in identification
because the villains and the heroes are equal beings in game space and they
are open to the players as avatars. Decentralization of the dramatic struggle
and the freedom to identification with the dark side differs the medium from
films and series based on the dualist dramatic struggle between good and evil.
The denial and/or the suspension of the Star Wars story universe which has
a function of a metanarrative in gameplay process demonstrates the post-
modern aspect of this medium. Especially the multimedia mode of the game
is an open battleground for thousands of players from all around the world
who share the same will to experience Star Wars universe and to be a part of
the story expanding and/or filling the blanks between previous stories. Each
medium reproduces the relation between various texts of the main structure,
so the intertextuality is another aspect of the postmodern narrative of the
saga.
This makes possible the common experience of players from different
backgrounds, nationalities and speaking different languages, who are coming
together around the same fire every night to practice the same myth’s rituals.
According to Tecimer who describes cinema as modern mythology, “ritus is
the first form of drama” (2006, 44). And (2016, 308) explains that ritual is a
whole stereotypical manners and customs and mythos is the transformation of
ritual into words. Drama is the coalescence of both and includes both of them.
Mythos is a method of verbal symbols; ritual is a method of objects and acts
as symbols. As an initial form of drama, tragedy has rooted in Ancient Greek
Dionysus rituals and is described by Aristotle in his Poetics: “A tragedy is [by
definition] a mimesis not of people but of their actions and life” (1972, 98).
Aristotle defines the rules and the qualities of tragedy with an aesthetical
approach, as he underlines the importance of the sense of completeness:

Now, we have settled that a tragedy is a mimesis of a complete, that is, of a

whole action, “whole” here implying some amplitude (there can be a whole
without amplitude). By “whole” I mean “with a beginning, a middle, and an
end.” By “beginning” [in this context] I mean “that which is not necessarily
the consequent of something else, but has some state or happening naturally
consequent on it,” by “end” “a state that is the necessary or usual consequent of
something else, but has itself no such consequent,” by “middle” “that which is
 A Universe of Story and Medium 93

consequent and has consequents.” Well-ordered plots, then, will exhibit these
characteristics, and will not begin or end just anywhere. (Aristotle 1972, 100)

He accepts the plot as a dialectic process of development constructed by

pieces adjoined with causality relation. This brings to mind the flow of hero’s
journey as described and modeled by Campbell. The journey is a whole circle
with a beginning, middle, and end. Each of the pieces are archetypes of plot
causing the next one.
In the Star Wars story universe, the circle has no end, not because it doesn’t
have a closure for each hero, but each time the journey begins again with
another hero or heroine, the circle opens up by spiraling. The original story is
now a capital giving birth to new baby stories to be connected somehow. For
example, the Campaign mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II, is told the story
of a new protagonist, Iden Versio, a female human commander of Inferno
Squad serving for the Empire. Created for the game, her story connects to
and expands the whole. The universe’s endless expansion has also a nostalgic
relation of its each part with the original trilogy.

Nostalgia films restructure the whole issue of pastiche and project it onto a col-
lective and social level, where the desperate attempt to appropriate a missing
past is now refracted through the iron law of fashion change and the emergent
ideology of the generation (. . .) it being understood that the nostalgia film was
never a matter of some old-fashioned “representation” of historical content, but
instead approached the “past” through stylistic connotation, conveying “past-
ness” by the glossy qualities of the image. (Jameson 1997, 24)

“(…) other characteristic postmodern product I have called nostalgia film,

in which the tone and style of a whole epoch becomes, in effect, the central
character, the actant and the “world historical individual” in its own right”
(Jameson 1997, 248). Jameson’s nostalgy concept is the driving force for the
collaborative battle occurring in digital space of the multiplayer game, and
provides a ritualistic transcultural practice of gaming around the core story.
Each additive story is a pastiche of the original one and reproduces and fur-
bishes the closed circle of the first hero: the journey of Luke Skywalker. It’s
a remake of the original hero’s journey with new heroes and heroines who
have their own circular journey. But these productions have another function
to expand the story universe.

The word remake is, however, anachronistic to the degree to which our aware-
ness of the preexistence of other versions (previous films of the novel as well as
the novel itself) is now a constitutive and essential part of the film’s structure:
we are now, in other words, in “intertextuality” as a deliberate, built-in feature
94 Özge Sayılgan

of the aesthetic effect and as the operator of a new connotation of “pastness” and
pseudohistorical depth, in which the history of aesthetic styles displaces “real”
history. (Jameson 1997, 25)

Harvey brings on agenda Benjamin’s approach to the work of art in the age
of mechanical reproduction which represents always something new. “The
consequences that Benjamin foresaw have been emphasized many times over
by the advances in electronic reproduction and the capacity to store images,
torn out of their actual contexts in space and time, for instantaneous use and
retrieval on a mass basis” (Harvey 1992, 347).
As Harvey (1992, 348–349), remembers in his chapter “The work of art
in an age of electronic reproduction and image banks,” for Benjamin cinema
has opened a new window in the middle of the coldness of modern everyday
life:

Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our
railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly.
Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the
tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we
calmly and adventurously go traveling. (Benjamin 2007, 236)

But late-capitalist culture of the age of electronic reproduction and image

banks, installed the workplace and the streets in the same electronic box
with cinema. Now the computerized medium comprises the offices and the
taverns; follows and collects the digital traces we left behind. Interactive sto-
rytelling is not independent from this transformation, reproduces the story as
the capital and constructs subjects as digital workers providing information
and participating in game economy.

Digital labour covers a broad range of labour working under different condi-
tions, including slave miners working in African conflict mines, smelters, hard-
ware assemblers, software engineers, digital media content producers, eWaste
workers, or users of commercial digital media Given the complex, networked
and transnational reality of labour required for the existence and usage of digi-
tal media, a concept of digital labour is needed that can reflect these realities.
(Fuchs 2015, 47)

Like many massive multiplayer online games, Star Wars: Battlefront II has its
own inner economy beyond being a cultural product in the market. A game
critic Faulkner, in 2017, the year when the game has been released for the first
time, wrote that the multiplayer mode of the game is broken at fundamental
level, even it provides an attraction with a great gameplay:
 A Universe of Story and Medium 95

The entire progression of multiplayer is tied to these loot boxes, and the Star
Cards held within. You use Star Cards to give your heroes, soldiers, and ships
stat boosts or different abilities. (. . .) Some of the franchise’s favorite characters
are locked behind a paywall as well. To unlock Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader
and a few other of the franchise’s best characters you have to cough up credits.
This means you get to choose to either unlock heroes or buy loot boxes with
your credits. (Faulkner 2017)

According to Reiner, another digital game critic, who describes Star Wars:
Battlefront II as surrounded by dark side just because the game is playing
mind tricks on gamers to spend more money to become stronger, points out
humorously the pay-to-win system:

Sirens roar ominously within the mangled remains of a Rebel frigate, warning
all to escape. The clanking of hurried footsteps echoes through the halls before
being replaced by a series of ghastly screams, loud enough to drown out the
alarm. A door slides open to reveal the glow of a red lightsaber backed by the
silhouette of Darth Vader. I fire my blaster, and he nonchalantly takes a shot to
the chest. He raises his hand and I levitate with it, my throat closing as I inch
upward. This spectacle of power is impressive, but as my life fades away, the
only thing I can think is “How much did that player spend to unlock the third
level of Punishing Grip?” (Reiner 2017)

The multiplayer game mode in Star Wars: Battlefront II, has been criticized
for its pay-to-win method, evoking a struggle between the ones who pay and
who pay not, to increase in-game purchase throughout the gameplay. The
inequal situation between the players transforms the dramatic struggle exist-
ing between the heroes and the villains into the struggle between the clients
who pay more and less. Indeed, to choose a hero or a villain from the original
story universe have equal effects in gameplay, in the sense of narrative devel-
opment. This is another aspect of the suspension the original and nostalgic
metanarrative and replace it with a decentralized, endless and transcultural
ritualistic activity.
The story, hang on the wall, framed and admired with the sense of nostalgy,
reproduces a cultural activity space and uses the content as capital. “Over
the past two decades, however, audiences have found themselves viewing
films that increasingly portray quite different sorts of characters that fit the
syndrome of the “postmodern hero” (…) where a new kind of hero is show-
cased—one who never quite achieves victory but ends up mired somewhere
along Campbell’s “road of trials”” (Pollard 2000). In the example of Star
Wars, the nonclosure is not limited to the films, the circular journey of film
heroes and heroines opens up spiralizing in games. Further, the archetypes
96 Özge Sayılgan

are reduced to their abilities in game, their narrative function suspended is a

nostalgic background picture.
In 2020, EA takes into account gamers’ critics and demands by adding
some additional free content to compromise with them. One of the most
attractive sides of Star Wars: Battlefront II game was playing the villains for
some fans and the company has increased this possibility in updates. A critic
from 2020 underlines the situation:

The game had a pay-to-play formula that hindered progression. Thankfully, the
developers of Star Wars: Battlefront II turned the game around with additional
free content, more heroes and villains, and plenty of dark side characters to
make you feel like you were at home on Korriban. The starfighter battles are
some of the best we’ve ever seen, and they allow you to pilot spaceships as dark
side villains. (Robbins 2020)

Thus, the cultural logic of the late-capitalist age, in order not to contradict the
gamers installing the Star Wars universe in a nostalgic layer, still protects the
economic-political relations by hiding them behind representation styles of
narrative through interactivity. Because the interactivity is the basic unit of
digital language, like an actor or actress who has a dialogue inside film, to be
interacted in an immersive medium for a character makes him/her an avatar
who is able to take action and open to direct identification.
In neo-Aristotelian approach to game analysis from the perspective of
narratology in game studies, Mateas’ (2001) descriptive model underlines
an effective concept, user action, added to dramatic character, the last step
of dramatic latter to reach the plot (story). In a film, character is the agent
who carries the audience in the story via identification, but in a game, he or
she needs user’s actions to move forward, to make choice and take action;
namely the agency of the gamer. Agency is underlined by Mateas as one of
the three aesthetical categories of interactive drama described by Murray
(1997) with immersion and transformation. “The more realized the immer-
sive environment, the more active we want to be within it. When the thing
we do tangible results, we experience the second characteristic delight of
electronic environments- the sense of agency. Agency is the satisfying power
to make meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”
(Murray 1997, 126).
Departing from this point, in digital games as interactive dramatic envi-
ronments, representation is not limited to audio-visual appearances but it
comprises also interaction of characters. If a character is interactive, that
means he/she is highlighted and has the ability to move and change the story
universe. Agency through interaction connects subjects to the character, pro-
vides identification and turn the audience into the interactors (users, gamers,
 A Universe of Story and Medium 97

game players). In a traditional interactive storytelling medium, identification

in game is provided to determine a hero or a heroine open to interaction and
install the villain(s) in general, in noninteractive representations controlled by
the game software. This kind of role distribution evokes a struggle between
the gamer and the machine, represented by digital representations as charac-
ters. In multiplayer modes of various games where gamers play against other
gamers, computer provides a space for struggle and controls the flow. To
construct “hero” and “villain” as interacted beings, weakens semantically the
challenge between antagonist and protagonist. For each player, protagonist
is a momentary process of a digital body called avatar. Additionally, in the
Campaign mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II, the identification process begins
with a villain, Iden Versio who serves the dark side.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has focused on the transforming narratives, representation, and

ideology in late-capitalist cultural space through the Star Wars saga, espe-
cially including the comparison of before and after Disneyfied productions
to found the transforming ideological layer through representation of main
archetypes: hero/heroine, mentor, and villain. As a multicultural space, the
Star Wars universe transforms gender roles and the cultural multitude of rep-
resentations following the age’s and the contemporary audience’s demands,
but reproducing the chosen elite strategy, it protects ideologically the ruling
class hegemony in spite of the content constructed around the defense of
democracy and pluralism against totalitarianism. Indeed, the representation
of the main archetypes excludes various specifies, constructs villains as more
white, powerful, human men and as male humanoid creatures of the galaxy.
With the effect of Disneyfication, the gender and race multitude in human
representations comes to the fore, but the heroine is accompanied by a man
of color as a second protagonist, unlike the first white male hero of the trilogy
who goes on journey alone.
This chapter includes the interactive medium of Star Wars transmedia sto-
rytelling universe by focusing on the digital game Star Wars: Battlefront II
released in 2017 by EA DICE. The game offers various modes of gameplay.
The Campaign mode focused on the adventure of a protagonist from the
dark side articulated to the main story expands the transmedia experience
and the multiplayer mode, as the most attractive part of the text, evokes a
digital transcultural experience environment for thousands of gamers who
share the same nostalgic sense for the saga. So, each text produced for the
Star Wars story universe, can be considered as pastiches of the originals, as
described by Jameson (1997) as a postmodern technique for nostalgy. The
98 Özge Sayılgan

texts have also intertextual relationship between each other. The Star Wars
universe expands the transcultural experience with the help of transmedia
storytelling. As described by Welsch (1999), transculturality already exist-
ing in societies has found new channels to exchange cultural experiences,
language and myths in the digital age. The Star Wars story universe is one
of the most comprehensive examples of this kind of storytelling due to
the iconic reproduction for over forty years witnessing social, economic,
technological, and ideological transformations. Interactive narrative as a
postmodern experience in digital space altered by transcultural practice in
massive multiplayer gaming activity is open to be described as a story capi-
tal giving birth to the new storytelling texts varying in medium and style.
Particularly, the multiplayer mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II, adapted to
late-capitalist economy and culture, rewards in game consumption instead
of “user’s action” and agency. Thus, Campbell’s closing circle of hero’s
journey never ends because it’s not profitable enough. While each newborn
text reproduces the nostalgy of Skywalker’s heroic journey, in multiplayer
mode of the game, story with dramatic conflict and powerful protagonist
and antagonists is reduced to be replaced by a never-ending spiral of the
repeated storylines.

NOTE

1. “Positive Play Charter,” Electronic Arts, https​:/​/ww​​w​.ea.​​com​/c​​ommit​​ments

​​/posi​​tive-​​play/​​​chart​​er, February 28, 2021.

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Lash, 194–213. London: Sage.
 PART III

IMMIGRANT DIRECTORS AND

MIGRATION AS A COUNTER-
GEOGRAPHY PRACTICE
 Chapter 5

Boundary-Crossing and
Genre-Bending in the Films
of Guillermo del Toro
Jane Hanley

This chapter analyses interstices between monstrosity and transnational cul-

ture in the work of perhaps the most renowned director working through this
articulation: Guillermo del Toro. His films always challenge the boundaries
between times, between life and death, as well as the human boundaries—
between groups, between the self, and the monstrous other—we build and
defend out of fear. His most popular work, which travels both narratively and
literally through Hollywood/blockbuster global mechanisms, resists complete
absorption into normative paradigms through its insistent porosity, destabi-
lization of control and relational monstrous cartographies which resist geo-
graphical containment. Uncontainability defines both aesthetic and subject
matter. Domination is undone in reversals between bravado and humility, and
above all, by acceptance of, love toward, and becoming our monstrous oth-
ers. The mechanisms of popular cultural production for global audiences may
privilege recycling of the familiar, flattening of idiosyncrasy in favor of trans-
latability, and dehistoricized visual spectacle. However, the insistent presence
of death as companion to life, the uncanny making of strange familiar and
familiar strange, and a culturally eclectic fantastical sensibility, changes the
transnational life of del Toro’s films from purely market-oriented translatabil-
ity into something that itself actually articulates an ethics of crossing.

INTRODUCTION

When we think about migration and cinema, we often assume the nation as a
category, both geospatial and as a meaningful mode of ordering people. The
migrant, therefore, becomes a figure interpreted in relation to that geospatial
103
104 Jane Hanley

and social ordering. This chapter argues for Guillermo del Toro as a migrant
director for a sense of migration that does not depend on either nations
or other bounded categories to take on meaning. The kinds of projects he
takes on and the direction that he lends to them contribute to the erosion
of normative paradigms. This chapter examines continuities in Hollywood
film projects directed by Guillermo del Toro from Mimic (1997) through
to the multi Academy Award-winning The Shape of Water (2017).1 This
sequence of films marks del Toro’s effective straddling of popular genre
films, industry favor, and sufficient cultural authority to provoke high-brow
critical attention—though this last was initially largely on the strength of his
Spanish-language films, most notably Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).2 This chapter
does not attempt to analyze in depth this category-spanning cinematic trajec-
tory. Rather, continuities in the representation of the transgression of diverse
boundaries are identified to support the argument that the Hollywood films
directed by Guillermo del Toro articulate an ethics of crossing that posits
a contemporary global experience and transcultural framework defined by
porosity, monstrosity, and uncontainability. It becomes, therefore, a cinema
that constructs fantastical worlds. In the established tradition of the fantastic,
the operation of these worlds undermines the illusions of control and the
constructedness of the categories by which we shore up political and iden-
titarian projects around, for example, nation and ethnicity, but even human
exceptionalism itself and dangerous persistence of orientations that divorce
the social from the material (mind from body, human community from envi-
ronment, political cartography from material place).

TRANSNATIONAL SCREENS AND

HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

The commercial context of Guillermo del Toro’s Hollywood projects—

which I am restricting for the purposes of this volume to predominantly
English-language films made through US production companies—drives
a degree of conceptual condensation in the premise and, particularly, the
marketing campaign surrounding the films themselves. This is mainly a
question of audience. In terms of creation, I agree with Daniel Chávez that
the Hollywood-other distinction is artificial and del Toro’s artistic project
(not only Spanish-language films but also television, books, and even art
collection) can be productively considered as a whole (Chávez 2011, 372).
As Barry Keith Grant succinctly states, genre as a concept is premised on
familiarity (Grant 2007, 1). While I align with most film scholars in resisting
strict definitions of genre, it does provide one site for interpreting the indus-
trial pressures on getting commercial films made, as well as the subsequent
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 105

framing for their circulation and reception. Genre also provides an angle for
investigating changes to cultural expectations and filmmaking practices, as
well as a critical vocabulary for interpreting the ways in which individual cin-
ematic artefacts intervene to further revise them. Throughout Hollywood his-
tory, genres have allowed the possibility of authorial sensibility, or in Grant’s
words, provided “a frame within which auteurs can animate the elements of
genre to their own purpose” (Grant 2007, 58). By starting from a discussion
of genre, we can immediately perceive some of the narrative and aesthetic
properties which inform Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic project, since all his
films are some configurations of horror-fantasy-science fiction, with addi-
tional strong components of intertextuality, adaptation, and pastiche drawing
heavily on a range of cinematic, literary, and other cultural references. Blade
II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) are also
adaptations of comic book properties, and in the case of Blade II and Hellboy
II, sequels. Visual and narrative referentiality and adaptation of established
cultural “properties” are hallmarks of twenty-first century Hollywood. It has
become the norm for mainstream commercial cinema, especially in horror,
fantasy and action/science fiction genres, which have displaced other genres
as the primary output of large-scale Hollywood production.
Directors and their collaborators on film projects do not determine the cul-
tural impact or audience interpretation of films. However, filmmakers do have
a major role in imaginatively shaping and reshaping the cinematic narratives
that emerge out of particular contexts of cultural production (Hollywood,
for the purposes of this volume). This is significant, because Hollywood is
the source of the content shared by the most diverse communities of viewers
across the world, since it still dominates screens in most countries (Grant 2007,
102). Global Hollywood has resulted in a degree of convergence between
content and production; transnational corporations and media conglomer-
ates, long the money behind the industry, now preferentially target a market
understood to be substantially non-anglophone and outside the United States.3
Commercial genre cinema viably—even necessarily—incorporates compo-
nents that may even actively resist comprehension by traditional anglophone
US audiences. Nor is the creation of global communities of viewers unidirec-
tional. As stated above, audiences make meaning, and reconfiguring for local
sensibilities as well as localized modes of reception can create a flow back
into Hollywood production. The mobility of filmmakers themselves reflects
this transnational cultural economy. As Grant writes, “Often directors who
exhibit a flair for genre filmmaking [. . .] are lured to Hollywood and absorbed
into the American film industry” (Grant 2007, 105). Absorbed, however, does
not mean assimilated. They change it by being there. This aligns with Luisela
Alvaray’s interpretation of the transnational through contact zones and reci-
procities, however, inevitably uneven—a more useful critical framework than
106 Jane Hanley

conceiving the global as totalizing, or the absorption of diverse film crew as

thoroughly conforming (Alvaray 2013, 67).
What kind of migrant figure is Guillermo del Toro, then, once “absorbed”
into Hollywood? Peter Hutchings suggests he remains a “perpetual outsider
who imitates more or less successfully but who is also an awkward, troubling
presence” (Hutchings 2014, 96). Pacific Rim (2013) is the most obvious
example of the ways in which transnational Hollywood is always already
creating in relation to transnational audiences, which impacts on-screen rep-
resentation. Hutchings describes “the giant robots dependent on the support
of a racially and ethnically mixed group of human beings who can interact
very effectively across national differences” (Hutchings 2014, 95–96). It is
not just multiethnic cast, but every aspect of Pacific Rim that is already trans-
national—indeed, more global than American, with an aesthetic primarily
drawn from Japanese visual codes (though the actual Tokyo sequences, like
the rest, were filmed in Toronto), and a narrative that explicitly emphasizes
the futility and undesirability of territorial boundaries. Porosity, while it sup-
plies the threat in Pacific Rim, also supplies the only possible resolution, both
personal and in terms of the planetary stakes the film posits.
While Hollywood has always been a transnational enterprise, according
to Charles Acland recent decades have seen acceleration in this respect, with
“the movement of sites of production and the seeking out of markets further
afield. So highly developed are the changes that they challenge the very
‘Americanness’ of Hollywood,” creating a degree of deracination from its
symbolic origin as a cultural industry (Acland 2003, 10). The logics of com-
mercial filmmaking respond to similar pressures of other transnational indus-
tries, toward cheaper labor and cheaper locations far from California. Acland
argues that analysis of Hollywood allows the exposure of “some recent his-
torical traces that have formed an episteme of popular entertainment and the
global audience” (Acland 2003, 13). Images from and of elsewhere become
fleetingly present in highly diverse locations and moments. The episteme is
an entry point for interrogating the circulation of different kinds of ideas,
some of which shift shared understandings about foundations of our concep-
tualization of the world through nations, mobility, borders, and difference.
The interplay between global Hollywood and local sites of production and
reception is a dynamic cinematic exchange, not a relationship of simple deri-
vation. It creates what Alvaray calls “in-between effects” (Alvaray 2013, 68).
Del Toro projects, I argue, are consistently oriented toward in-betweenness.
They dwell in the contradictions between boundedness—like the imaginative
borders we invent for in-group identities—and the necessity to tolerate and
embrace boundary-crossing, and even to become the monstrous figure of the
boundary crosser. If there is a thread through his work, it is porosity and the
illusory nature of territorial control. The territory is rarely national—though
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 107

works like Hellboy and The Shape of Water do play with the symbolism and
cultural narratives of nationalist ideologies through their antagonists—but
rather unpick the assumptions that shore up the very concepts of categoriza-
tion and division as organizing principles.
In terms of Hollywood as context of production and articulating transna-
tional cinema in relation to a directorial figure as somehow “migrant,” in the
complex interplay of the national and the transnational it is reductive and even
nonsensical to argue that the transnational is, in and of itself, anti-nationalist.
The political dimensions of art depend on the specific interplays of creators,
texts and audiences, and these are, in the case of Hollywood film, simulta-
neously globalized and localized. In the case of the reception of Guillermo
del Toro, for example, there is a thread of perceiving emigration as betrayal
to the reception of his work in Mexico itself, exemplified in the ambivalent
memification in reaction to his public assertion of his own Mexicanness.4
Migration to Hollywood is sometimes represented as a dilution of the strength
of a domestic film industry—though as already argued above, the relationship
between global Hollywood and the reception and adaptation of Hollywood
genres is more complex than that. In terms of Hollywood as a production
context, and despite some ambivalence in his reception in Mexico described
by Chávez, del Toro’s success matters on a practical level (Chávez 2011,
375). Maryann Erigha’s analysis of Hollywood directors quantifies inequality
behind the camera, with Latinx directors entrusted with fewer than 2 percent
of Hollywood films in the first decade of the twenty-first century—with such
directors more likely to be born outside the United States than US born Latinx
filmmakers, suggesting that del Toro (and Cuarón and González Iñárritu),
prolific in this period, are statistically as well as culturally significant (Erigha
2016, 61). Indeed, Jonathan Risner has traced the way Guillermo del Toro—
and Hollywood horror networks—have facilitated transnational acceleration
in careers of other Latin American directors, for Guillermo del Toro through
the case study of Andrés Muschietti in particular (Risner 2015, 7). Diverse
crew are vital in an industry heavily based on relationships and connections.
The successful navigation of Hollywood contexts creates a precedent and a
network that can gradually shift Hollywood as a generative culture.
The preceding brief exploration of Hollywood transnational production
posits this context as a structural condition that shapes aspects of form,
distribution and reception, while also enabling—though not guarantee-
ing—potential mechanisms to introduce destabilization and subversion of
normative spatial and ontological boundaries. The following sections of this
chapter articulate some of destabilizations and subversions most perceptible
as through lines in the aesthetic trajectory of Guillermo del Toro. This is not
an auteurist interpretation as such. In line with the above discussion of global
Hollywood as a condition of production, taking part of a director’s oeuvre
108 Jane Hanley

as an object of study should not elide the fundamentally multiple nature of

authorship of cinematic works. A director becomes another condition of pro-
duction, with their track record, name recognition, relationships, and habitual
collaborators, as well as their professional as well as artistic choices major
factors in how films get made, and what kinds of films result. Along the lines
Stephen Neale’s commentary on genre studies, it offers an avenue of con-
vergence between critical interpretation and cinematic production, a way of
qualifying auteur studies to bring director-based criticism into dialogue with
film industry practices and the economics of culture. The director, like the
genre, is part of the context of creation and reception of films and therefore of
the kinds of meanings we heterogenous transnational audience members can
make out of a global shared culture. This chapter, therefore, does not neces-
sarily argue for Guillermo del Toro as an audiovisual philosopher presenting
a coherent thesis on contemporary life, but rather takes his Hollywood films
as representing certain mobilities and intercultural leakages within mass
transnational popular culture, in a context of production in which his own
positioning and aesthetic and narrative preoccupations allow him to operate.

LIVING/DEAD

The first way in which Guillermo de Toro projects articulate crossing is

through the insistent presence of death as a companion to life. Fantasy hor-
ror is the foremost genre convergence in this sequence of films. As Barry
Langford describes, “the experience of limits, and the transgression of lim-
its, is central to the horror film [. . .] pre-eminently the boundaries of life
and death” (Langford 2005, 158). The fear of death is the most primal of
fears. However, as Langford also articulates, the transgression of the bor-
der of life and death in horror films, while usually attached to fear, is not
always presented as fearful but can gain its resonance through other reactive
responses—horror depends on emotional engagement, but readily blends dif-
ferent kinds of affective charge linked to embodied feelings.
The exploration of both mortality and the perils of extraordinary interven-
tions in its denial are very evident already from Mimic (and earlier in del
Toro’s career, but for the purposes of this chapter we are looking at how these
themes emerge in English-language Hollywood genre films). While Mimic is
a more conventional creature feature than other films discussed here, and one
which was famously plagued by conflict resulting in an end product satisfac-
tory to no one, it does presage the kinds of slippages in the positioning of
death (and, as we shall see, the positioning of monstrosity) that characterize
more successful works that followed. The monstrous threat is created by
the marginally sympathetic human characters themselves, as a product of a
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 109

genetic manipulation to create an insect predator that would eliminate another

disease-carrying insect. In addition to being a classic parable of colonialism,
this premise marks human fear as the source of death, something which is
reinforced in multiple ways. It assumes a semi-humanoid form (hence the
film’s title) as a defense because humans are its most threatening potential
predators. The monster attacks primarily those who are most afraid of it, and
leaves others who are unafraid. Mimic does not go as far as other del Toro
films in making the monster the hero—or at least making it victorious over
humankind, as was originally intended and as we see play out in the paral-
lel narrative of del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain book and televi-
sion series, hewing more closely to a conventionally palatable horror final
survivor(s) narrative instead. This survival partly reassures audiences in their
denial of death and their allegiance to (human) life, though there remains an
ambiguity to the final confrontations that distances viewers from the human
lives in which we are supposed to be invested.
Blade II and Hellboy both explicitly deal with the impulse to immor-
tality, a classic science fiction theme prevalent in the genre at least since
Frankenstein, as a form of ontological violence which suppresses and harms
more functional negotiations of the presence of death. The denial of death is
a source of corruption. Pacific Rim toys with some of the same ambivalence
about the desirability of the survival of humanity that was incipient in Mimic,
while similarly retaining some of the palatable predictability probably essen-
tial for the size of its budget. It is also bookended by major character deaths
in the opening and closing scenes, and, because of the focus on the subjec-
tive but shared nature of experience in the film’s telepathy-memory-bodily
transcendence concept of the drift, is full of the kinds of ghosts who dwell in
our memories and suggest the way emotion and our self-constructions mean
death is far from final (Hanley 2016, 34–50). These memory-ghosts blur
temporalities and mean death continues to be embodied in the living, and in
their capacity to act in relation to their material environment. In The Shape of
Water death is a blurred border, with a similar ambiguity and inconclusive-
ness to that shown in El laberinto del fauno [Pan’s Labyrinth]. Death is not
finitude, but only another invented border. The humans who presume to take
control of death just as they attempt to take control of life—through anthro-
pocentric domination and systematic gendered, racial and ideologically-
inflected violence—erode their own ability to adapt and transform, qualities
essential in the hybridizing ethos of these films.
Crimson Peak, an explicit ghost story which plays with generic templates
from Gothic horror, features the most explicit transgression of life and death,
since the dead have agency and the worlds of the living and the dead are one.
From Crimson Peak we can extrapolate that the attempt to obliterate death is
also an act of obliteration of the past, and the repressed past always returns
110 Jane Hanley

(Hanley 2018, 101–113). Elsewhere I have argued that Crimson Peak’s most
marked genre-bending is that its ghosts are forces for vitality and open a
communion with past violence; death is part of life, whereas denial of death
becomes death (Hanley 2018). It is not unique in its transformation of ghosts
from source of terror to source of understanding and reconciliation (the
dynamic even has parallels with del Toro’s own 2001 El espinazo del diablo
[The Devil’s Backbone]). However, what is less common is the way that it
does not conflate ghosts with the past, but also connects them to the future.
Life depends on death, and the dead remain present with the living through
how we orient ourselves to the world and the kinds of futures we try to shape.

FAMILIAR/STRANGE

The love/death/liberation connection in The Shape of Water and making the

dead a source of reinvigoration in Crimson Peak provide a useful transition
to discussing how del Toro’s films often play with making monstrous others
familiar, while defamiliarizing more normative figures. There are several
dimensions of otherness that are mobilized and undermined throughout. The
most obvious of these is monstrosity, as increasing intimacy with the strange-
ness of the monster is reinforced by destabilizations of presumed sexual and
racial norms. Just as the representation of death and haunting is interlinked
with the rearticulation and subversion of narrative and aesthetic conventions
of horror, the treatment of monstrosity also brings together genre-blurring
aspects of the conventional narrative and aesthetic domains of the speculative
and fantastic. Drawing on Vivian Sobchack, Langford suggests that tradi-
tional genre boundaries support greater intimacy and individuality in horror,
whereas science fiction addresses the public sphere and collective anxieties,
but that this division like other genre markers is “increasingly unreliable”
(Langford 2005, 164). Laurence Davies has termed del Toro’s output in par-
ticular “gleefully impure” (Davies 2011, 88). Though closely aligned with
genre films, which as described above are in some ways the predominant
output of global Hollywood production, and thus positioning their director
very effectively to sustain influence in the current cultural economy, the films
consistently mingle very broad and eclectic influences and refuse straight-
forward genre classification. They take dramatic techniques from a range of
genres—sports films in Pacific Rim with its teams of jaeger operators and
the central relationship between the ambitious rookie and the burned-out vet-
eran, hints of social melodrama and bildungsroman layered over the explicit
literary intertexts of the suffocating Gothic romance of Crimson Peak, Cold
War thrillers in The Shape of Water, to name just a few elements of fusion.
Persistent throughout, however, is the use of genre-bending aesthetics and
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 111

narrative to bend boundaries between how we understand what is familiar and

what we perceive to be strange or other. In the conservative tradition of genre
films, the positioning of the monster emphasized “re-suppression, contain-
ment and restoration of the status quo ante through the violent elimination of
deviance and disturbance” (Langford 2005, 159). However, more ambivalent
and progressive examples and monster films begin to rearticulate the status
quo itself as the site of monstrosity, a transition which is certainly very clear
in The Shape of Water.
The Shape of Water, as signaled above, brings audiences into the most
direct intimacy with the monstrous other of all del Toro’s Hollywood films.
Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army are also predicated on sympathiz-
ing with a monster and showing the broad rejection of the monster as itself the
site of monstrosity, however, the more intensively human behavioral qualities
underpinning and making digestible for broad audiences the protagonism of
Hellboy himself has a different valence to the protagonism of Sally Hawkins’
Eliza, and her identification with and desire for the amphibian. Eliza is plainly
human, but a humanity that is predicated on total openness to experience and
to going beyond recognition of difference to active desire. Thus, the monster
is not brought closer to us, more human than the human characters, as is the
case of Hellboy, but we, via Eliza, must bring ourselves closer to the monster.
The Amphibian does not, in this instance, become less strange; those who are
open to the other must embrace their active acceptance of and even prefer-
ence for strangeness, and familiarize themselves with monsters by leaving
their own supposedly unmonstrous selves behind. When the reflexive abjura-
tion of the monstrous is replaced by monstrous desire, according to Langford,
fantastical genres are most in touch with our own repressed desire to smash
norms and break moral conditioning (Langford 2005, 167).
As a creature film with a singular creature, The Shape of Water is easy to
read in these terms, and the ethical orientation is very clear. In several other
films, monstrous positioning is more mobile, and species boundaries and
allegiances more contested. Tony Vinci has argued comprehensively and, in
more detail, than I can cover here that Hellboy II destabilizes Hellboy’s out-
sider position established in the first Hellboy film as itself corrupt, because it
remains ethically aligned with “anthropocentric models of the human” (Vinci
2012, 1042). Where Hellboy posits denial of death as antithetical to ethical
humanity (as well as critiquing fascist impulses to purity), Hellboy II suggests
that human-centered dwelling in the world is near-hopelessly entangled with
the domination of nature and oppression of the more-than-human world, a
domination and oppression with which Hellboy himself is complicit. Hellboy
II presents us with other monsters, particularly through the figure of the fairy
prince Nuada, the encounter with whom provokes Hellboy to enter “realm
of the trans‐anthropocentrically human: an undefined and open territory that
112 Jane Hanley

includes space for harsh cultural critique as well as critical idealism” (Vinci
2012, 1056). Here we see that empathy with the excluded other, the audience
position in Hellboy, is revealed as politically insufficient. Tolerance or even
active promotion of diversity is an inadequate response to the legacies of
colonial violence (territorial treaties with the fairies have been systematically
violated, an obvious parable for colonialism) and the depredations of global
capitalism. Something much more radical is required, to upend comfortable
assumptions that ethics can be enacted within the existing parameters of indi-
vidual encounter without sacrifices to the beneficiaries of those long histories
of violence.
From these brief examples, it is clear that del Toro’s films challenge limits
put around what it means to be human and alive and question our assumptions
about the nature of reality, and the ways we artificially shore up our (sup-
posedly) collective humanity by defining the nonhuman and the nonliving
as others. By implication, the same flawed and corrupting othering strategies
function to relegate transgressive or disruptive human others to a lesser or
subhuman status. In this kind of framework, any biological meaning attrib-
uted to race beyond its mobilization as another invented otherness is spurious.
However, that does not mean the works are as clearly progressive on specific
questions of race as they are in undermining the boundaries of othering as a
broad practice. Racial and ethnic diversity are rarely an explicit focus, but
various films deal with questions of race both by implication and through
on-screen representation.
Pacific Rim is a nearly archetypal example of a global Hollywood pan-
ethnic cast with cartoonish markers of ethnic identity and relatively little indi-
vidual specificity. As Hudson writes of on-screen representation, “Hollywood
films do not represent the world; Hollywood films represent power structures
of globalization. Hollywood diversity, then, is not real equality any more
than vampires, races, and nations are real (biological) entities” (Hudson 2008,
149). What is more interesting about Pacific Rim is the way it moves beyond
a celebratory narrative positing shared humanity through a necessity for one
world united against the invasive kaiju (the monsters invading through the
oceans). The most significant two relationships in the film are interracial,
between Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako and Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh and between
Mako and Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost. More than that simple evaluation
of straightforward on-screen representation, however, the film posits that no
individual human—or category of human—is a complete entity. Experience
is always relational, and humans only become closer to whole and achieve
transformative change by merging not only with each other but with the world
that surrounds us (the ocean is a significant character), with technology (the
pilots become cyborgs with their jaegers), and with the external nonhuman
other as well—the kaiju themselves. Del Toro’s films are not consistently
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 113

notably progressive with regards to either explicit critiques of racial inequal-

ity or centering specific experiences of people of color, though some have ele-
ments of both. However, the constant deconstruction of categories of identity
and challenging of the boundaries of both territories and perceived reality
work to destabilize the possibility of self-other distinctions of all kinds.
Hollywood genre films historically centered heteronormative white male
protagonists and featured sexual and racial others in subordinate roles. The
shift in Hollywood production to assume global audiences from the begin-
ning has created an economic incentive that, alongside cultural changes
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, slightly shifts default
assumptions for on-screen representation (though white male representation
remains disproportionately high), though how this cultural and racial diver-
sity functions is highly variable and variegated by audience. Pacific Rim is a
significant example in this respect, since it was substantially more successful
with international markets, particularly in East Asia and notably China, than
with US domestic audiences (Mendelson 2013). Dale Hudson argues that a
lack of specificity and an assumption of a white norm are two maneuvers that
allow on-screen multiculturalism to ultimately serve to reinforce a US nation-
alist agenda, including the myth of “openness to anyone” (Hudson 2008,
132). Pacific Rim, as a mecha and kaiju film, is also a love letter to Japanese
audiovisual cultures with specific cultural resonances and roots, though it
may not always escape orientalist notes of Asian chic which Jane Chi Hyun
Park has critiqued in dehistoricized cinematic representations of Asianness,
particularly in the scenes of futuristic urban environments (Park 2010, ix–x).
Pacific Rim also mobilizes the queer transgressions of white masculine loci
of control that Park (drawing on Chun and Nakamura) has identified as a
modality of technofuturist immersion, without as much relegation of “Asia”
to facilitator or secondary nexus of this queering as might normally be present
in Hollywood pseudo-Asian future dystopias.
Hudson has critiqued Blade II, del Toro’s only other film to feature a per-
son of color in the lead role (I argue that it is Kikuchi’s Mako who has the
hero’s journey in Pacific Rim despite Raleigh being the focus of the opening
sequence). Hudson suggests that while del Toro’s films may be overtly anti-
racist, Blade “becomes a ‘positive image’ of a negative stereotype through
a complex process of emptying race of its historical meaning: his black skin
matches his black leather costume, a significant change from the Afrocentric
attire of the character in the comics upon which the films are based” (Hudson
2008, 148). Laura Podalsky, on the other hand, has argued that the explicit
anti-fascist and anti-racist arcs in Blade II, along with its powerful position-
ing of a fundamentally hybrid figure at its center still “encourage spectators
to assume the perspective of the ‘other’” (Podalsky 2014, 100). Furthermore,
like Hellboy II and even Mimic, while the threat of the invasive horde (with
114 Jane Hanley

its obvious parallels with the metaphors of anti-migrant discourse) underpins

the horror aesthetic of the films, our allegiances are unstable and the desirabil-
ity of survival—or at least, survival of anything stable and pure, symbolic of
white supremacy—is not sustained. Porosity, hybridity, and the deconstruc-
tion of perceived certainties are the only viable options.

CONCLUSION: AN ETHICS OF CROSSING

Though it is perceived as a global juggernaut and one of the most widely

shared cultural referents for diverse and dispersed audiences, Hollywood
is not a totalizing entity but rather a mutable culture, and one with a highly
variable material geography and contingent groups of transnational teams
producing, marketing, and distributing films. In that context, this chapter
has explored through lines in the Hollywood films of Guillermo del Toro,
analyzing intersections between directorial sensibility and the slippery nature
of genre to suggest that the transnational dimensions of such works are not
only oriented toward translatability for global markets but actually articulate
an ethics of crossing, an ethics that is transcultural by implication in the case
that it makes for porosity and hybridity as not only inevitable but desirable.
Genre is a useful angle for framing this persistent hybridity, since the study
of genre has shifted to emphasize “textual diversity and contradiction,” with
horror in particular as “polymorphic, elusive” and “carnivalesque” as its
monsters (Langford 2005, 159–160). Phenomena, tendencies, and individual
texts that emerge out of Hollywood do provide an avenue for understand-
ing part of the visual and narrative cultures that circulate transnationally
and provide some of the shared referents for contemporary globalization.
Acland queries “the interpretive and critical limits to charting the effectiv-
ity of popular and institutional knowledge given the blurred boundaries
between national and international life” (Acland 2003, 15). The iterative but
creative dimensions of popular genres articulate aspects of a popular culture
for a global audience. The persistent call to favor crossing and blending over
order and purity that we can identify as a recurrent theme in the Hollywood
filmography of Guillermo del Toro does not, ultimately, resolve into a reap-
propriative mechanism that can disrupt the capitalist structures of commercial
transnational film circulation. However, part of the argument presented in this
chapter is that the product of the pressures of commercial viability—genre,
familiarity, transnational translatability—also makes possible genre slippage,
defamiliarization, and intimate strangeness. To collapse limits between cat-
egories emphasizes the limits of comprehension of what we understand to
be reality, and therefore whether domination is ever sustainable or is always
self-destructive.
 Boundary-Crossing and Genre-Bending in the Films 115

NOTES

1. The chapter touches on brief examples from Mimic (1997), Blade II (2002),
Hellboy (2004), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Crimson
Peak (2015), and The Shape of Water (2017).
2. Distinctions between transnational arthouse and transnational commercial film-
making are largely artificial, at least as a marker of value or innovation, since both
operate in relation to concrete markets, distribution networks and genre demands.
3. A foundational discussion of this topic can be found in Miller et al. Global
Hollywood (London: British Film Institute, 2001); updated and expanded with a
more specific exploration of key non-US markets and production sites, in Miller et al.
Global Hollywood 2 (London: British Film Institute, 2004), On the increasing impact
of foreign markets in driving production of polymorphic and polysemic Hollywood
texts see Mingant, Nolwenn, “A New Hollywood Genre: The Global-Local Film,” in
Global Media, Culture and Identity: Theory, Cases, and Approaches. Ed. R. Chopra
and R. Gajjala (London/New York: Routledge, 2011), 148. On the topic of distri-
bution and export markets in particular, Scott, Allen J. 2004 “Hollywood and the
World: The Geography of Motion-Picture Distribution and Marketing,” Review of
International Political Economy 11(1): 33–61.
4. Social media users picked up his phrasing, some unironically in relation to vari-
ous cultural phenomena associated with Mexicanness, while others created absurd
juxtapositions to signal the reductiveness of attributing qualities to national origins.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acland, Charles R. 2003. Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture.
Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Alvaray, Luisela. 2013. “Hybridity and Genre in Transnational Latin American
Cinemas.” Transnational Cinemas 4, no. 1: 67–87.
Chávez, Daniel. 2011. “De faunos hispánicos y monstruos en inglés: la imaginación
orgánica en el cine de Guillermo del Toro.” In Tendencias del cine iberoamericano
en el nuevo milenio. Argentina, Brasil, España y México, edited by Juan Carlos
Varga, 371–407. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.
Davies, Laurence. 2011. “Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos, or the Pleasures of Impurity.”
In Gothic Science Fiction 1980-2010, edited by Sara Wasson and Emily Alder.
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Erigha, Maryann. 2016. “Black, Asian and Latino Directors in Hollywood.” In Race
and Contention in Twenty-First Century Media, edited by Jason Smith and Bhoomi
Thakore, 59–69. New York: Routledge.
Grant, Barry Keith. 2007. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. London and
New York: Wallflower Press.
Hanley, Jane. 2016. “Rinko Kikuchi in Space: Transnational Mexican Directors’
Global Gaze.” TransMissions: The Journal of Film and Media Studies 1, no.
2: 34–50.
116 Jane Hanley

Hanley, Jane. 2018. “Global Ghosts: Latin American Directors’ Transnational

Histories.” New Cinemas 16, no. 2: 101–113.
Hudson, Dale. 2008. “Vampires of Color and the Performance of Multicultural
Whiteness.” In The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema, edited by Daniel Bernardi, 127–156. London: Routledge.
Hutchings, Peter. 2014. “Adapt or Die: Mimicry and Evolution in Guillermo del
Toro’s English-Language Films.” In The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo
del Toro, edited by Ann Davies, Deborah Shaw and Dolores Tierney. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Langford, Barry. 2005. Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Mendelson, Scott. 2013. “‘Pacific Rim’ And More Domestic ‘Flops’ That Became
Global Hits.” Forbes​.c​om September 2. https​:/​/ww​​w​.for​​bes​.c​​om​/si​​tes​/s​​cottm​​endel​​
son​/2​​013​/0​​9​/02/​​pacif​​i c​-ri​​m​-and​​-more​​-dome​​stic-​​flops​​-that​​-beca​​me​-gl​​o​bal-​​hits
/​​?sh​=7​​f8301​​dd7c1​​8.
Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria and Richard Maxwell. 2001. Global
Hollywood. London: British Film Institute.
Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell and Ting Wang. 2004.
Global Hollywood 2. London: British Film Institute.
Mingant, Nolwenn. 2011. “A New Hollywood Genre: The Global-Local Film.” In
Global Media, Culture and Identity: Theory, Cases, and Approaches, edited by
Rohit Chopra and Radhika Gajjala. London and New York: Routledge.
Neale, Stephen. 2002. Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: British Film
Institute.
Park, Jane Chi Hyun. 2010. Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Podalsky, Laura. 2014. “Of Monstrous Masses and Hybrid Heroes: Del Toro’s
English-Language Films.” In The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro,
edited by Ann Davies, Deborah Shaw and Dolores Tierney. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Risner, Jonathan. 2015. “Un trabajo compartido. Las colaboraciones transna-
cionales de directores latinoamericanos.” HeLix-Dossiers zur romanischen
Literaturwissenschaft 7: 111–131.
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Distribution and Marketing.” Review of International Political Economy 11, no.
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 Chapter 6

Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea

”Ressentıment,” Myths, and Gender
Özlem Oğuzhan

Medea, as a mythological demigod, a psychiatric syndrome, and a narrative

from tragedy to the cinema, is still audible in different contexts, in a very
wide geography of our day. After its setting on the stage by Euripides and
Seneca, this mythological story not only symbolized the antihero but has also
become an indispensable theme for the visual arts. Hence, there are many
works of art with its subject or a character developed in the line of Medea.
Since Euripides, the most significant quality describing Medea is being the
murderer of her own children in reaction to her husband Jason’s infidelity.
But, what was it before Euripides?
Medea, rooted in the Anatolian cult of the curing and healing goddesses,
has been transformed through her transcultural immigration in favor of the
patriarchal structure to be recognized with the concept of resentment. The
identity and roles have been borne by her as a result of not only open space to
discuss the narrated changes but also the place and the value of the woman in
cultural history. This study will firstly discuss the transformation of Medea in
terms of the concept of “ressentiment,” as the Anatolian healing goddess cult
turned to the cult of the witch in approaching Athens over time. Subsequently,
in the light of this conceptual opening, the films Medea (1988) and Antichrist
(2009) by Lars von Trier will be compared and analyzed. In this book which
focuses on Hollywood cinema, discussing Trier might seem to be pointless
at a glance but on the contrary, this attitude assumes something significant.
Today, neither tragedy nor an alternative cinema could be discussed out of the
line that is drawn by Hollywood cinema. It is the dominant, so it determines
the alternative. Consequently, this chapter can be grasped as a trial of think-
ing on Hollywood cinema through its roots and opponent.1
Multiple adaptations of both the character and the story of Medea have
been the subject of cinema films. Other noteworthy productions making

117
118 Özlem Oğuzhan

impressions on the cinema history, such as Passolini’s Medea (1969) or

David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014) will make up the topic of another study.
The two films on Medea, shot by the same director in different settings in
his different periods, were the most important reason for selecting Lars von
Trier. Also, being one of the directors narrating Medea with an original style
and, similarly to Euripides and Seneca, giving the opportunity to analyze a
woman’s story as seen through the eyes of a man, are the two factors for
choosing these two films.

BEFORE MEDEA

Although the common mood of resentment is seen as a personal negative

reaction, it has collective significance especially with respect to its conse-
quences. Therefore, those reading on resentment should take it into consider-
ation under the umbrella of broader concepts of class, culture or gender. The
concept gained importance with Nietzsche, who chose to use it in French:
“Ressentiment” in reference to the internal world of the Christians flaring up
in response to the measures, imposed by religious institutions, that suppress
natural tendencies. The problem has its source in value judgments. Nietzsche
sees ressentiment as the response to the wound created by the spiritual void
between the desired object and the inability to reach it. Thus, it is a process
determined by the exchanges between the internal and the external world
of the individual, with “that which is personal” evoking the “collective”
and vice versa. Nietzsche differentiates the “noble human” and the “weak
human” on the basis of the severity of ressentiment. Ressentiment flares up
and is spent in noble individuals who also handle their interaction with their
misfortunes or enemies with internal healing methods, which points to their
strong and flexible structure. Whereas resentment is not self-poisoning in
noble humans, the reverse is true with weak humans. Individuals harboring
resentment are distant from righteousness and candidness. They do not for-
get, but remain silent and wait. Therefore, they are identified with craftiness
(Nietzsche 2011, 31–32).
Max Scheler, having borrowed the resentment concept from Nietzsche,
recommends ignoring Christian values to penetrate more deeply the experi-
ence of resentment. In his work “Ressentiment,” he defines it as the “self-
poisoning of the mind,” where “getting poisoned” is doubtless also inherited
from Nietzsche. In his own words: “Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the
mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental
attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects
which, as such, are normal components of human nature” (2004, 7). The
desire for revenge prepares the basis of ressentiment. It is preceded by an
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 119

attack or injury followed by the impulse of revenge, which can reveal itself
as a rage or anger reaction or it may be restricted and delayed for a later time,
the reason being inadequacy (2004, 7–8). If the act of revenge is completed
and the aim of harming the enemy is realized the individual would be freed
of ressentiment, which otherwise would persist due to inadequacy, weak-
ness, and fear (2004, 9). Scheler also talks about ressentiment in segrega-
tionist populations societies with inequality. He describes the Caste system.
Wherever the fate of injury is experienced, revenge turns to ressentiment
(2004, 11). He claims this to be rather feeble in societies having equality on
a political, social, and class basis. According to Scheler females are more
resentful in being relatively weaker in the role of the genders in society and
having to compete with other females for the male gender. The relationships
and the cultural accumulation describing the female are very similar. The
furies or the Erinys, as the underworld deities, are capable of revenge in the
matriarchal system. Scheler gives Eumenides2 in the tragedy by Aiskhylos as
an example and draws attention to Apollo and Athena as the deities of the
masculine civilization. He also refers to witchcraft in relation to the female
gender, which does not have a male counterpart (2004, 21). In summary, the
concept of resentment, in relation to poison and the female gender, shows
itself in Medea as the most powerful character of the transformation in the
healing goddess cult. However, the inheritance of Anatolia prior to Medea
should be glanced at. From Göbeklitepe to Çatalhöyük and the Hittites, there
are examples of “Mother Goddess” and “Father God.” Mother Goddess fig-
ures, used directly or by abstraction in different periods, point to the power of
the female. According to the letters that entered Anatolia through trading with
the Assyrians, the position of the woman in governing and worship weakened
as the Hittites gradually replaced the local communities in the 2000s BC
(Aydıngün 2020, 63).
Looking through a wider perspective, the woman’s position and the power
of her word in the society were gradually reduced with the first agricultural
revolution in the Neolithic period. Male-dominated societal structure was
strengthened with the increasing frequency of conflicts and war. However,
the status of motherhood, which was refused by Medea and is much criticized
today when used to define the female, was preserved in that period (Konyar
2020, 243). The female identity and the status of Medea is not associated
with her being a mother. However, in ancient Greece, as the continuation
of Anatolia and especially Ionia, males and females had been more strictly
differentiated with respect to nearly all aspects of living, such that, women
were concerned with domestic affairs while men were outside and active in
public life. Marriages were arranged within families by seeking economical
equivalence. In the open public sphere of the agora, there were the market-
ing women, as was the mother of Euripides, and there were “heteria” as
120 Özlem Oğuzhan

female prostitutes trained in music, dancing, and poetry to accompany men

in feasts and celebrations. Some heterias also worked in the temples dedi-
cated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, the most famous being the temple in
Corinthos (Darga 2020, 275–281).
The setting is not any different especially in Greek mythology, which when
read in relation to male-female differentiation, can be rewritten on “harass-
ment,” “compromise,” and “violation.” When the problems related to mythol-
ogy, resentment, and women are put together, the first name to be recalled
would doubtlessly be that of Medusa, the mortal female Gorgon with a head
of hair consisting of serpents, whose beauty, when noticed by Poseidon, trig-
gered a chain of calamities. After violation by Poseidon in the very temple
of Athena, his wife, Athena deprived Medusa of her beauty and changed her
hair to serpents, cursed her glance and banished her. Finally, she appointed
Perseus to kill Medusa, who avoided her eyes by means of seeing her on a
mirror and severed her head and used it against his enemies. Some sources
claim that even Athena took advantage of this severed head.3 The serpent, on
the other hand, maintained its existence as the symbol of the devil, starting
with the scene of banishment from the Garden of Eden. However, in mythol-
ogy, the serpent is seen as the symbol of sorcery, endless life, and cures, or
in other words, as a deity. In the epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known myth,
the plant of eternal life is snatched by the serpent. In Greek mythology, the
serpent is wound on the staffs of two prominent deities, one being the cadu-
ceus, the staff of the messenger deity Hermes, which creates a fire or achieves
arbitration, and the other belonging to Asklepios, the deity of health and
medicine. Conversion of the serpent on the staff of Hermes to Medusa’s curse
is attributable to the difference observed between man and woman by the
Greeks. The serpent lives under the ground, and is renewed by shedding its
skin. Swallowing its food as a whole is symbolic of returning to uterus. The
serpent’s most important characteristic in relation to Medea is rebirth with
the poison it produces. Medea takes her revenge with poison, gets into the
vehicle driven by the snakes, and flies. Here the deadliness is also immortal in
its relation to the underground. Hence, the serpent associated with power and
everlasting life, and with the devil after banishment from the Garden of Eden,
is defined in terms of poison and evil: One of the Lilith’s daughters, Medusa.
Another myth or legend to be considered in relation to Medea is that of
Shahmaran (the shah of serpents), the mature and exemplary queen of ser-
pents believed to have lived under the ground with serpents in southeastern
Anatolia and still maintaining her image with a serpent’s body below the
waistline and her identity as a healer and protector of the entire of Anatolia.
Shahmaran is also the name of the spirit that passes from mother to daughter,
thus carrying the character to the cultural arena. The legend is about Jamsab’s
acquaintance with Shahmaran who loves and trains him when abandoned
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 121

by his friends in a well, and being allowed to leave the cave only to see his
mother. The legend goes that the sultan of Tarsus becomes ill and can only
be cured by eating the flesh of Shahmaran. The sultan’s wazir recognizes the
relationship of Jamsab with Shahmaran from the scales stuck on his back,
when he is made to betray Shahmaran. When caught, she advises, before
being killed, her head to be given to the sultan, her body to the wazir and
her tail to be consumed by Jamsab. The sultan recovers, the wazir dies and
Jamsab gains eternal life as a healer despite facing the fate of accounting to
his conscience. Shahmaran, knowing of the outcome of releasing him from
her cave, is attributed the statement: “Had you not come here after a betrayal?
Then your path is determined by evil, since once initiated, betrayal persists
in human life by changing its garbs” (Uyar 2020, 109). This legend symbol-
izes the character of the goddess queen who is elevated on the strength of
healing powers and the feelings of fidelity. The word sacrifice is a role cut in
language and action by the man mostly for the woman.
In the many versions of Medea, next to the displays of being the victim and
the perpetrator, the latest added unforgivable quality, which surpasses all oth-
ers, is being “the murderer of her children.” Other mythological female char-
acters associated with this quality are Lillith and Lamia. Lillith in Hebrew
mythology denied the supremacy imposed by Adam in the Garden of Eden
and allied with the devil. She is remembered for having sacrificed her own

Figure 6.1 Source: Şahmeran “Henüz Bitmedi,” (Özçiçek Tatar, 2021).

122 Özlem Oğuzhan

offspring as well as molesting the newborn babies. Another character turning

to a child murderer is Lamia, the daughter of Poseidon and lover of Zeus,
whose children were abducted and killed by Hera. She went mad tearing off
her eyes and was transformed by Zeus to a monster who hunted children and
devoured them in her cave (Ercan 2013).

MEDEA

Medea, instead of being a minor character in her husband Jason’s race for
the Golden Fleece and his attempts to gain the Corinthian throne, turned out
to be the main character as a victim and murderer. As in the case of Lilith,
she turned the events to her bad fate. Being a sorceress, a demigoddess and
princess of the Colchis kingdom, she could contact superhuman powers and
use her sorcery. The deity writers such as Euripides and Seneca must have
been so incensed by her that they have cursed her by testing her with her
children as her last defense. Despite weaving the story against Medea, they
are widely recognized with the use of the story in stage arts, which never-
theless, is not a reason to overlook their approach to morality. For example,
Euripides has created the word “αἰσχροποιός,” meaning “doer of disgraceful
deeds” to be able to describe Medea, which caused the audience of the very
first staging to heckle Euripides without effect on the progress of the play
(Euripides 2020, 63).
In order to strengthen the plot, he intervened with the legend and despite
the different causes of death of Jason’s children cited in various sources,
he had the children murdered by their mother and to emphasize the leading
lady’s mercilessness he also blamed her for Jason’s murder of her sibling
(Euripides 2002, vii). Jason’s journey from the kingdom of Colchis on the
northeastern coast of the Blacksea to his own birthplace of Corinth in the
west, represents in a way, the passage from the matriarchal to the patriar-
chal social structure, from barbarian populations to a town predominated by
trade. Thus, Medea is culturally at the threshold by time and location and
not as a Greek but as a barbarian and not as a human but as a demigoddess.
At the start of the story, Jason’s father the king is killed by his stepbrother
Pelias. Jason is taken away by his mother to save his life and returns for
his right to the throne when he comes of age. His uncle the king puts the
condition of bringing the Golden Fleece.4 When reaching Colchis, Jason,
and the Argonauts realize that they could not obtain the Golden Fleece by
themselves. When about to give up, they are helped by Aphrodite and Eros
by causing Medea to fall in love with Jason. She is so blinded by love that
she takes her brother and cuts him to pieces and throws them on the way
to the ship so as to delay her father’s pursuit. When leaving Colchis behind
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 123

the two are bonded with a mutual oath of loyalty. As with every myth, there
are many versions of the whole story and the patterns of opening between
the substories. The short summary presented here is based on multiple ver-
sions. During the return to Corinth, there are dragons, threatening waves,
and similar hazards which are avoided through the presence of Medea.
Jason cannot gain his right to the throne after arriving home, and gets
banished from the city. Having become sufficiently powerless Jason has
reached the right basis for ressentiment. After approximately ten years of
happy married life with two growing sons, Jason gains the favours of King
Creon who wishes him to marry his daughter. With the start of the marriage
preparations, the king goes to Medea and asks her to leave the country.
Seeing that begging does not achieve much, she asks for one day before
leaving. Suffering deeply by the experience of betrayal she makes plans.
During their meeting for the last time, Jason, using the craftiness fed by his
feelings of resentment, is unable to convince Medea that he acted for the
benefit of their family. She sends her sons to give a wedding gift to the new
bride who with her father the king gets burned alive and dies. When reach-
ing home, Jason sees that Medea, having killed their two sons, is ascending
into the sky in the carriage pulled by serpents, sent by the gods. Medea has
thus severed her husband’s links with sovereignty, leaving him under the
gigantic trauma of castration.
The popularity of this mythological story is due to have been interpreted
and written as a tragedy. Considering the life of Euripides and the develop-
ment of the story, Jason’s story is in fact an example to the resentment of
unobtainable power. Medea, on the other hand, has attained the goal of her
resentment and has risen to the sky as a demigoddess in her chariot pulled
by serpents. In other versions, she boards a ship bound for another land. This
is a type of reversed “theos apo mēkhanēs”5 with Euripides having reflected
the imbalance in his liaison with women to the play, presenting them in the
context of a story shaped with his own prejudices. He has taken away the last
holiness of the woman with his fear of getting castrated. This is probably the
type of conversion approved by the moral standards of the society he lived
in. Medea, on the other hand, destroys motherhood, the only quality left from
the matriarchal system and approved by the masculine world, despite being
an action with a self destructive outcome, in order to avenge her husbands
disloyalty. Whatever the ending turned out to be, the survival of her sons as
mortals would not have been possible in the new place. When interpreting
the story, the murder of her sons has been added to give her a different end
and significance. This may not be the negative notions of Euripides about
women after the ending of his own two marriages on grounds of disloyalty.
The real basis ensuring the validity of this outcome is the role and the status
of womanhood in the Greek city societies. Her obedience to the rules of a
124 Özlem Oğuzhan

Greek city-state, where she had arrived as an alien and was living as an out-
cast demigoddess, could not be expected.

The time has come and passing friends, for what I have planned to do. I am part-
ing from these lands immediately after killing my children, because if I am late,
their deaths will be in harder hands. They have to die and it will be the mother
who, having given given birth to them, will end their lives. Come my heart take
your weapon. Why are you doubting the performance of this unavoidable mur-
der? Come my poor hand, seize the sword and pass through this bitter turning
point of your life. (Euripides 2020, 46)

In Seneca’s Medea, the serpent, poison, woman, and power are juxtaposed.
The golden fleece is guarded by the serpent. “Pelias orders Jason to bring the
golden fleece without wasting any time. This godly fleece is the magic fleece
of Chrysomallus, the ram with golden wings from the lineage of Poseidon. It
is in Colchis in the grove of Ares, hung from the branch of an oak tree and
under the observation of a serpent who does not blink an eye night or day.”
In Seneca’s version, too, Medea will ascend into the sky in a chariot pulled
by serpents. “So, you are begging for mercy. Here is the mercy for you. Oh, it
is a pity I have nothing else to sacrifice for you. Lift your tearful eyes up you
Jason the infidel. Don’t you recognize your wife? I always escape like this.
A path has already opened in the sky. Two serpents are extending their scaly
necks to the yoke. Take your sons now as their father. I will ride my carriage
and get into the winds” (Seneca 2007, 153).
Wolf, writing about Medea and changing her story in a manner of question-
ing her accountability with his own different interpretations shows the stance
of his book against gender discrimination with the words:

Here it is! This is point wanted to be arrived at. They want those who come later
to recall me as a child murderer. But, what is that on the face of the savagery
they will turn and look at? Because we do not improve. What is left to me but
to curse them? Curses be on all of us. Especially on you Athamas! Creon!
Agameda! Presbon! May an insufferable life and a miserable death find you. I,
Medea, curse you.! What will happen to me? Is there a world or a century that
will let me sleep? There is no one to ask. This is the reply. (Wolf 2000, 206)

AFTER MEDEA

The Medea of Euripides, with the novel narrative techniques it has brought
to the history of theatre, has created an interesting play, subject or visual
world for all periods. The art of picturing based on the antique Greek theatre
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 125

has also maintained an interest in this play. The Medeas interpreted and
pictured by great artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are seen
to follow the lines of Euripides. Some of the noteworthy paintings on the
themes of Medea are by J. M. William Turner’s “Vision of Medea” (1828),
Eugene Delacroix’s “Medea about to Kill Her Children” (1838), Gustave
Moreau’s “Jason and Medea” (1865), the portraits by Frederick Sansdys
(1868), Evelyn De Morgan (1889), Alphonse Mucha (1898) and J. W.
Waterhouse (1907).
Medea, having been pursued in visual arts apart from picture and stage arts,
will be discussed in this section of the study in terms of the two films, Medea
and The Antichrist, directed by Lars von Trier. Whereas Medea is the direct
adaptation of the myth to the televison, Antichrist is the adaptation of Medea
to the current in a film. These films are evaluated here on the “original screen
play” basis. Considering the director’s filmography, it can be said that not
going back to a subject already processed and “wanting to put a stone in the
shoe” of the audience with every film are his characteristics. This is how he
defines his cinema when it is compared with the traditional structure. He has
the theme but not the structure of tragedy in his cinema. However, an impos-
sible was realized by producing The Antichrist after Medea, when woman-
hood and the topic of resentment were reinterpreted, which can be attributed
to cyclic thinking by von Trier. Both films begin with the ending.
The Antichrist is an adaptation of Medea to the current century and takes
place in our day. It is about the transformation of a woman writing a thesis
about witchcraft and the dark powers of women in the Middle Ages while
going through the bitter experience of recently losing a child. The film had
surprised and disturbed or entertained the followers of Lars von Trier. First,
one should consider the 1969 film on Medea directed by Pasolini in central
Anatolia when Maria Callas as Medea did not even hum a song and local
tunes were used instead. Given the simpleness of the film combined with the
time-place harmony achieved by Pasolini, a masterpiece was produced. On
the other hand, Lars von Trier’s is a low budget film and has the effects of
Pasolini’s Medea as all films made after it.
The film starts with Medea lying down eyes closed at the seashore. The
warblings of a nightingale are heard when Medea sighs as if recalling a pain
and grasps the wet sands trying to suppress it. The sea has called her in.
Suddenly she rises up in the sea and takes a deep breath. A boat is approach-
ing. When she asks what they are doing, the man in the boat says that they
have come for a prophecy and asks her if she wants to tell them anything
about Jason and herself. Medea asks for a promise to be accepted as an immi-
grant on their land. The face of the man appears saying that it could be done.
Slowly the ship exits from the scene and the camera enters the sea. This is
somewhat the prophecy in the film. Medea has foreseen the events, the time
126 Özlem Oğuzhan

of the nightingale is done and the director has disclosed to the audience the
ending of the film.
A text appears on the screen, more or less saying: Jason builds a ship
named Argo, and goes to Colchis for the golden fleece. The beautiful and
knowledgeable Medea gives him her love. But later this love turns to hate
because Jason betrays Medea and his two sons. They go to Corinth as two
“others.” Medea leaves her homeland and Jason leaves Medea. The film
opens again. Princess Glauce, Jason’s bride-to-be, is giggling with her
attendants. While one laughs, the other cries. The king declares that he will
give his daughter to Jason for the management of the successes and the new
wealth, which is applauded by those around him. Jason faces the bride-to-be
and touches the face of the princess leaving a black smear although having
just washed his hands and face. There is no doubt that he will also drag her to
disaster. Neither the king nor his daughter wishes to see Medea in their city
during the wedding as she is dangerous. Jason is repeatedly seen with dogs.
When the voice of Medea is heard saying “I want revenge” a dog’s shadow
is present. It can be said that the dogs represent the Erinys and that justice is
coming.
While Medea is collecting seeds in the marshes, the king and his men
approach and ask her to leave the land. When she asks “Do you fear me King
Creon?” The king affirms and blames her of having knowledge of the devil.
He tries to follow Medea in the misty surrounds of the marshes with manifest
unease. His worries are for his daughter as Medea says “Your daughter’s
fate is your choice.” Walking with difficulty the king says that her stay is
not possible and that his daughter’s safety has priority. The background is
enriched with withered trees and branches after Medea has picked the seeds.
The tree symbolizes the connection between now and the future and between
the sky, the earth, and the underground as the “axis mundi.” This important
symbol of paganism is shown to have dried of and shriveled in the film. Two
children hung by a rope from a dried up tree, shown on the billboards of the
film, is a scene from the film. While Jason pursues the throne to be the father
of the community, the tree has dried up in his garden. Medea is ready as
Jason arrives with his dogs, with the scene implying that justice is working.
Jason says. “I married her to help you” and adds “Your pride is your shame.”
Medea replies “And your pride is your victory Jason,” knowing he will be
defeated. First Jason and then Medea meet the king, or the man in the boat at
the beginning of the film. Their sons are present. The king says that the sage
he consulted for not begetting sons advised him to see Medea, who is to leave
the land in the kings’ boat the next day. Here the director shows how loving
the relationship of Medea and her children is.
The film, adapted from the stage play approach, appears to run in front
of background decorations prepared for each scene, but with the camera
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 127

techniques of von Trier, a film with very powerful visual language results.
Especially the two scenes with the deep sea extending in the background,
where Medea and her sons are met by Jason coming out of the palace, are
visual feasts. As seen from the palace, these scenes, also imply how minor the
scale of their life problems is. Medea mentions her anxiety about the future
of her sons and asks them to be presented to the princess together with her
gift which is poisoned. The princess who puts on the poisoned crown dies.
Her death agony is represented by a white horse dying on the shore sands.
Medea, goes through a memory tunnel as she hauls her two sons on a make-
shift structure, just like Jesus carrying his own cross, to the moors where she
intends to kill them.
Apart from showing Medea in a bad light, similarly to Euripides or the
others, Jason is put in a more dangerous mood. Not being able to obtain the
power he has desired, his feelings of ressentiment have been augmented and
blinded his eyes, Medea’s revenge has taken effect at the cost of exhausting
herself and she has departed from the town, where Jason has become “the
other” searched for by everyone after the death of the king and his daughter.
He is seen in the moors where his sons are hung from the dried up tree. While
crops are swaying and caressing Jason, Medea releases, as never seen before
in the film, her hair in the wind like the swaying crops. She is on the boat that
is seen at the beginning of the film. Male resentment and poison have once
again come together in the woman’s justice.
The Antichrist, the other film of von Trier is dedicated to Andrei
Tarkovsky. It is about the difficulty of being a woman or related to the nature
of the woman in the masculine world. The film consists of five chapters, with
titles appearing as they start, like showing the scenario to the audience. In the
prologue chapter, two heavy scenes are shown to occur at the same time in the
same house. The background music is the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga mia dura
sorte,” from the opera Rinaldo composed by George Frederic Handel. While
the parents are making love in the bathroom, a little child trying to catch a
snow flake falls from the window and dies. Here the theme of “cleansing” is
visually dominant, everything is black and white. While the machine washes
the snow white laundry, the litle innocent child seeking the white snow is
lying dead in it. Before falling down, he throws on the floor the statuettes
of three beggars with “grief, pain, and despair” written at their bases. These
three feelings are also the titles of the chapters that make up the main body
of the film; and are symbolized, respectively, by the deer, the fox and the
raven, reminiscent of the Erinys and Eumenides, and the dogs in the earlier
film Medea.
Apart from the little child named Nick, who leaves the film in “nick” of
time, the adult parent characters of the film are nameless such that they are
referred to as “She” and “He.” When lovemaking ends, the machine stops
128 Özlem Oğuzhan

and the child dies. The first chapter, “Grief” starts with the funeral walk in
the graveyard. He is crying, and She passes out and falls down when follow-
ing him with a frozen facial expression. Entering the hospital room with blue
flowers in his hand, He asks his wife how she is. The blue colour, represent-
ing holiness and physical space, gives clues about the couple’s relationship.
He is more concerned about the treatment given in the psychiatry clinic rather
than the state of his wife. As a psychologist, He compares himself with the
doctor. She remarks “you are not the doctor.” While He promises to under-
take her treatment, saying that he loves her and knows her better than anyone
else, the camera zooms on the withered discolored blue flowers and actually
gets in the vase.
Treatment of She starts at home and without drugs. When He is present
as the therapist, the attacks of crying are accompanied with questioning the
past and reckoning. She says that He was always distant from her and their
son. He responds with questions as if he were the third person representing
the cool and clever one. She asserts that she had not drawn his attention
previously, but that he is paying attention now that she is his patient. While
He is concerned with what is clever, She is equally concerned with emotions
and states that he had become different after the demise of the child and that
there could be a clever therapist’s reply to that as well. As the therapist He
thinks that facing her would explain her fears and probably make her better.
When asked what she fears, She, after hesitating for a while, responds as “the
forest.” He is surprised. She wants to go to Eden, to the beginning of every-
thing which may bring about relief from the feelings of guilt. They board the
train and therapy starts before arriving at Eden. She imagines herself in Eden
and passes over a bridge, which is a classical scene for von Triers, and talks
about the deer and the fox. There is a withered and broken tree at their desti-
nation, very similar to the tree Medea had hanged her children and castrated
Jason when he was talking about the benefit of his act. He advises her to lie
down on the green before going to the hut and She does this with Hamlet’s
Ophelia in her imagination. She is lost in the green. While He says that she
can overcome what her mind makes up, She is obviously feeling very differ-
ently. They take a taxi and then walk up the steep hill with their back packs
to arrive at the hut.
In the second chapter, “Pain,” She has difficulty when meeting the bridge
she had imagined. The threshold has been passed. As they approach the hut,
She sees the deer, the nest of the fox and the dried up tree she had imagined.
Although seeing these, her mind refuses to believe in their reality. In his
sleep, He almost suffers anxiety when clearing the snails stuck on his hand
hanging from the window. This makes the audience query who actually fears
nature, the forest and Eden. He is to draw a fear pyramid for her the third
corner being Eden. The problem here could be reasoned through a cycle. Half
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 129

of this turn is the contradiction between phusis and logos, at the foundation
of human history as the separation of nature and culture. The other half is
the consecutiveness of which, “mythos” and “logos,” depending on reason-
ing. So, it could be assumed that in this movie phusis/nature is the land of
mythos. The male, in trying to legitimize the patriarchal structure defines the
female as the “one behind him,” or the “one who lacks.” Therefore the male
concerns are the mind and the sun, while the female concerns are emotions
and the moon, in other words, concerns with the external versus the internal,
respectively. When distanced from the town, science and making statements
with certainty by arriving in nature, the circumstances start to change. He
is now in the area of the female. She, fearing that nature will seize her, had
given up to complete her thesis.
The problem is that He cannot “hear” her. Typical of modern medicine, he
is concerned not with the patient but the illness. While trying to explain the
emotional episodes and the possibilities he discovers by fear and the mind,
He is never aware of hurting her or even of her existence. When He starts by
saying “Nature is Satan’s church,” She initially opposes but when repeated,
the story begins to change. The second spot in the fear pyramid is the devil’s.
After waking up in the morning, appearing to have improved with her grief
subdued, She starts walking around the hut in a manic pace. The chapter ends
with the words “Chaos reigns” uttered by the self devouring fox.
In the third chapter, “Despair,” He finds steps and goes up to the attic
to look for the unfinished thesis. The place is full of pictures of massacred
women. Also, there is a book depicting the three beggars as a constellation.
While looking at them, two trees close to the house fall down. She is almost
exhausted while He is still after details of therapeutics. They start conversing.
He asks whether She believed in the books that she used for her thesis. Later
He also notices in photographs that, on grounds of an insignificant detail also
appearing in the Autopsy report of their child, She always made the child
wear his shoes the wrong way round. He rises and goes to the store room and
writes “Me” at the tip of the fear pyramid. She tries to castrate him with fear
of being abandoned, then ties an iron rod to his knee and makes it impossible
for him to walk. He tries to escape despite the iron rod by groveling when She
chases him. He attempts to hide in the fox’s nest and tries to kill the occupy-
ing raven lest he gives him away; but, She has already found him.
The three beggars are the theme of the fourth chapter. He and She appear to
have made up, and She says, while helping him crawl home, “When the three
beggars arrive, one must die.” Thus, She has castrated herself as well. When
lying on the floor, He says “There isn’t such a constellation.” At that very
time, the director reminds the audience with the next view of the snow, rest-
ing by the window that their child fell from, to resemble the stars in heaven.
This is immediately followed by the reminders of the statuettes of the three
130 Özlem Oğuzhan

beggars. Hence the deer, the fox and the raven have arrived now in the house.
Some one has to die. Of course She dies. By not defending but letting herself
to be killed. He burns her dead body at dawn break, just like a painting by
Hieronymus Bosch, He is shown walking in the forest with a staff in his hand
and the surrounds full of dead women.
The fifth chapter is the epilogue. Looking for something to eat in the for-
est, He with his staff in his hand sees the three beggars again when he looks
back. He realizes that he would not be able to confront what was coming.
The women/sisters/furies were fast approaching him from the bottom of the
hill.
At this instant Handel is heard again, “Lascia ch’io pianga”:6

Let me weep over

My cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!
And that I long,
And that I long for freedom!
Let me weep over
My cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!”
“The duel in fringes
These images
Of my sufferings
I pray for mercy.
For my sufferances.
I pray for mercy.”

CONCLUSION

In this study, the story of Medea (and other female characters with similar
stories), which was transported from Anatolia to ancient Greece and repro-
duced as a tragedy, was discussed. In ancient Greece and its tragedy, various
elements of ressentiment are attributed to women and their social positions
to ensure patriarchal legitimacy. Yet ressentiment, which is a state of unre-
alized hatred or revenge, is not about femininity but about masculinity in
Medea. In other words, in tragedy woman is not the subject but the object of
ressentiment.
There is no cinema that is not associated with Hollywood cinema on this
planet. Can we mention a director in the history of cinema who has not dealt
with Hollywood? No, because the dominant determines the identity of the
alternative, like men did to Medea. Whether it’s the side or the opposite,
 Medea and Lars von Trier’s Medea 131

mainstream or alternative, the boundaries of cinema is set only by the frame-

work that Hollywood draws. Of course its opponents too.
In a book on Hollywood cinema, choosing to compare two films of a
director who is against Hollywood might actually seem pointless. However,
Lars von Trier, who stands out with his opposing attitude, was chosen for
a specific purpose. Trier has adapted this tragedy twice. In both of these
adaptations, he used the tragedy elements mentioned in Aristotle’s Poetics.
Differently, in Antichrist he adapted the story to the present day. So, in order
to read Trier, one must travel from tragedy to Hollywood, from Aristotle to
Christan Metz. Trier’s beginning to these films from the end, differentiating
the editing, shooting scales, etc. connect the films to the mainstream with all
their contrasts. Thus, beginning to think about cinema is firstly comprehend-
ing the basic concepts and theories of mainstream cinema.
In conclusion, there is nothing to be afraid of in Trier’s movies because
he takes off his ressentiment through his movies, just like Medea did in her
story. The main ones to be afraid of are those who understand these narra-
tives but have neither a method nor even an effort to talk about their own
stories.
To my sisters . . .

NOTES

1. Lars von Trier is one of the creators of “Dogme 95 Manifesto.” http:​/​/www​​

.dogm​​e95​.d​​k​/the​​-vow-​​of​-ch​​​astit​​y/.
2. The Erinys also known as the Furies, were three female underworld deities of
vengeance in ancient Greek religion. They are described in different sources with
different appearances and functions, as having a dog’s head, snakes for hair and the
wings of a bat. They are concerned with Alekto or unceasing anger, Megaera or jeal-
ousy, Tisiphone or murder. Singly or together, they represent justice. They manage
the organized run of the universe and provide justice.
3. On October 2020, a statue of Medusa with her severed head in her hand was
started to be exhibited in front of the New York County Courthouse. Reversing the
representation of Medusa in art history and presenting her as the perpetrator created
much debate not only in the arts but also the fields of law, history and other social
sciences. The head in this statue made by Luciano Garbati should be seen as not only
Perseus but essentially as Poseidon and Athena. For relevant illustrations: https​:/​/
on​​edio.​​com​/h​​aber/​​posei​​don​-t​​arafi​​ndan-​​tecav​​uze​-u​​gradi​​gi​-ye​​tmezm​​is​-gi​​bi​-ca​​navar​​a​
-don​​ustur​​ulup-​​oldur​​ulen-​​med​us​​a​-nin​​-hika​​yesi-​​93368​​3. Accessed February 10, 2022.
4. In this myth, the golden fleece symbolizes the tool of supernatural power. The
counterpower for the golden fleece in real life is linked with material power or wealth.
The Aegian peasants were known to have laid their fleece in certain areas of riverbeds
to collect the gold particles entangled in the fleece after a period of time.
132 Özlem Oğuzhan

5. Deus ex machina is when a god is brought down to the stage by a crane in the
theater. Medea, on the other hands, ascends into the sky in a chariot pulled by ser-
pents. Therefore, this has been described as a “reverse(d) theos apo mēkhanēs.”
6. Handel, Frederic G. “Lascia Ch’io Pianga from Rinaldo.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antichrist. 2009. Directed by Lars von Trier. Zentropa Entertaintments.

Aydıngün, Şengül, G. 2020. “Mucizenin Kaynağı, Bereketli, Her şeye Hâkim.” In
Anadolu’da Kadın On Bin Yıldır Eş, Anne, Tüccar, Kraliçe, edited by Münibe
Darga, 43–67. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi.
Darga, Münibe. 2020. “Yunan/Helen Uygarlığında Kadın.” In Anadolu’da Kadın On
Bin Yıldır Eş, Anne, Tüccar, Kraliçe, edited by Münibe Darga, 275–283. İstanbul:
Yapı Kredi.
Ercan, Akyıldız, Cemile. 2013. “Mitolojide Çocuk Katili Kadınlar: Lilith Lamia
Medea.” Journal of World of Turks 5(1). https​:/​/ww​​w​.die​​weltd​​ertue​​rken.​​org​/i​​ndex.​​
php​/Z​​fWT​/a​​rticl​​e​/vie​​w​/453​​​/akyi​​ldiz_​​ercan​. Accessed February 22, 2021.
Euripides. 2020. Medea. Translated by Ari Çokona. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası
Kültür Yayınları.
Friedrich Nietzsche. 2004. Ahlakın Soy kütüğü Bir Polemik. Translated by Zeynep
Alangoya, İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınları.
Konyar Erkan. 2020. “Demir Çağ’ında Anadolu Kadını: Urartu, Frig ve Lidya.” In
Anadolu’da Kadın On Bin Yıldır Eş, Anne, Tüccar, Kraliçe, edited by Münibe
Darga, 241–267. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
Medea. 1988. Directed by Lars von Trier. Danmarks Radio.
Scheller, Max. 2004. Hınç. Translated by Abdullah Yılmaz. İstanbul: Kanat Kitap.
Seneca. 2007. Medea. Translated by Çiğdem Dürüşken. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası
Kültür Yayınları.
Syndulla, Hera. 2020. “Poseidon Tarafından Tecavüze Uğradığı Yetmezmiş
Gibi Canavara Dönüştürülüp Öldürülen Medusa’nın Hikâyesi.” https​:/​/on​​edio
.​​com​/h​​aber/​​posei​​don​-t​​arafi​​ndan-​​tecav​​uze​-u​​gradi​​gi​-ye​​tmezm​​is​-gi​​bi​-ca​​navar​​a​
-don​​ustur​​ulup-​​oldur​​ulen-​​med​us​​a​-nin​​-hika​​yesi-​​93368​​3. Accesed February 10,
2021.
Uyar, Tomris. 2020. Ödeşmeler ve Şahmeran Hikâyesi. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi
Yayınları.
Wolf, Christa. 2000. Medeia Sesler. Translated by Turgay Kurultay, İstanbul: Telos
Yayınları.
 Chapter 7

Transnational Images in
Iñárritu Cinema
Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

INTRODUCTION

As national borders became transitive and transboundary mobility becomes

apparent, geographically fixed culture was replaced by a collective and global
culture. The national emphasis turned into transnational as hybrid identities
find their correspondence in global culture. The American-centered view,
which differs from the Western-centered view that sees cultural diversity
and local cultures as a threat with a one-sided cultural flow, was eliminated
by making the differences pronounced. While national difference increased
within the logic of international politics, thinking within and beyond the
nation was left behind and cosmopolitanism was used as a smooth transi-
tion. After this point, a symbiotic relationship was established between the
culture left behind and the host culture. Boundaries lost their constancy with
this symbiotic relationship. Flexible geographies allowed the spread of a
multicenter and rhizomatic culture. Cinema, which built local, national, and
universal relations, allowed cultural practices to acquire a collective quality
through heterogeneous and hybrid image production. The US-Mexico border,
one of the most frequently used references of cinema, especially in the con-
texts of immigration, working conditions, and cultural mobility, and stories
carried beyond this border are important in reproducing national cinema with
a global film aesthetic.
Alejandro González Iñárritu, who reconstructed the cross border and
transnational imagery in the Hollywood industry, is one of the directors who
brought migrant flows to the big screen. One of the reasons for this study is
the effort to reveal these migrant flows. For this reason, the study focuses on
the ways in which other cultures are seen in the North American perspective
and establish a relationship between local and global. In order to interpret

133
134 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

transnational images in Hollywood cinema, this study places the following

films of Iñárritu at its focus: Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Babel
(2006), Biutiful (2010), Birdman (2014), and The Revenant (2015). The direc-
tor’s movie Flesh and Sand (Carne y arena, 2017) was not included in the
research, both because it is a short film produced as a virtual realism project
featuring digital techniques and because the film does not have distribution in
the country in which we live in Turkey. The hermeneutic method was used in
the study to interpret the codes of Iñárritu’s films/narratives produced beyond
the border-related to Mexican culture and ideology, which are considered the
Third World (Worsley 1964) and to discuss whether a transnational narrative
structure is possible.

THE CULTURE INDUSTRY RECONSTRUCTED

BY NEOLIBERALISM

One of the most important issues in the globalization debate is neoliberalism.

As part of this concept, which allows the movement of capital, Western and
industrialized countries remove national economic borders and impose eco-
nomic integration reforms on underdeveloped or developing countries. With
the global economic crisis in the 1970s, production was shifted from the cen-
ter to the environment, ensuring the growth of competitiveness in national,
regional, and global dimensions. Some economic, social, and political
structural reforms were introduced with neoliberal policies in which the flex-
ibility formula was highlighted. Latin America has been the geography most
affected by neoliberal policies, where the rhetoric of “rational individuals”
and “free markets” were active. Many countries in this region experienced
financial, political, and social crises (Harvey 2003, 62). Individuals who
wanted to move away from political and economic instability mobilized the
migration process with the effect of their use as cheap labor. Production and
employment regimes shaped by neoliberal policies in geography where both
internal and external migration were concentrated led to the establishment
of new multinational factories in border regions and the increase of informal
employment. In this geography, where land reform was not yet fully imple-
mented and industrial production was preferred over agricultural production,
the gap between classes increased. Neoliberal policies, inequality in income
distribution and rapidly increasing poverty have sharpened the classification
in Mexico every day. This informality, which began in the industrial area of
Tijuana, expanded to smuggling, money laundering, sex trafficking, gang
wars, and organ trafficking (Longmire and Longmire 2008, 37). This change
in social structure reflected on the streets of Mexico has become the themes
most often used by Hollywood films.
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 135

For individuals who wanted to become consumers of the global market, the
“uniform human” model was presented through newspapers and television,
especially Hollywood-based films. The production of Hollywood cinema as
a dream factory was about promoting its own cultural values and creating a
monoculture. In creating this culture, it positioned those who did not have
the characteristics it has determined as “the other.” The sector also placed
immigrants at the bottom of the representation hierarchy at this point. The
fact that this geography, which existed with the transformation of a heteroge-
neous mass of immigrants into a nation, created an anti-immigrant political
and social climate in the film industry, also created a handicap for those who
came from different continents, especially Latin Americans.
The national values of Latin American society differed with the influence
of neoliberalism and globalization. Local forms of expression have acquired
a neo-popular character with globalized cultural values. This differentiation
and change worked on the cultural industry. The expression of cinema was
also shaped by a combination of local and global values. It can be said that
factors such as North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) binding
conditions, the inadequate New Wave flow initiatives created in Mexico, and
the relocation of Mexican directors to America or the UK as of the 2000s
were effective in combining these values.
The Mexican government began to revise its policies toward the Arts in
the 1990s as democracy strengthened and political power changed. For the
creation of the national heritage, resources were transferred from different
funds to film production. But the fact that a fairly small proportion of the
funds were provided by the government, and the rest had a hybrid feature,
made the Hollywood aesthetic stand out in film productions (Maclaird 2016,
35). On the other hand, Mexico signed the NAFTA to step into the First
World economy. With the entry into force of the NAFTA in 1994, a competi-
tive environment was created.1 After NAFTA, employment models, wages,
labor law, and environmental standards gained a flexible feature, especially
between North America and Mexico. There were negative reviews as well
as positive reviews about NAFTA. It has been claimed to be a poorly con-
ceived free trade agreement, affecting the US auto and textile industries,
Canada’s manufacturing sector, and Mexico’s agriculture-based areas and
small businesses. The negative criticism was exacerbated by the Zapatista
uprising, political and economic crises in Mexico (Ramirez 2003, 864). In
fact, thanks to NAFTA, Mexico has become the focus of international inves-
tors. In NAFTA, the evaluation of cultural products as commodities led to the
transformation of audiovisual products into a quality that will also be bought
and sold within the framework of this agreement. Audiovisual policies
determined by the current political options have further deepened the areas
of liberalization, cooperation, and demarcation between the three countries.
136 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

As part of the model of film production and distribution in Mexico, there

was an increase in film production with the adoption of several protection-
ist measures. Together with the joint productions, national cinemas gained
a transnational quality and were brought together with international audi-
ences. Using the standard Hollywood aesthetic, the representation policies
and discourses contained in these co-produced narratives were melted and
masked in mass culture formed according to the values of globalization. The
style and ideology of Hollywood films, which had hegemony in the world
market, provided institutional standardization. Codes that controlled, directed
and mono-typed the audience’s perspective formed dominant representation
and narrative forms (Hansen 2009, 79). The messages presented under the
name universal values were based on the character or hero saving America
First and then the world. Stuart Hall describes the structure of Hollywood
ideology that dominates other cultures as follows. “Global mass culture is
West-centric and always speaks English. Popular music, popular movies,
in short, almost everything popular is in English. The second feature of this
culture is its ‘unique homogenization’ style, that is, it wants to absorb the
differences and place them within a larger, all-encompassing frame which is
actually an American-style understanding” (Hall 2008, 49). With this state-
ment, Hall focuses on how Hollywood ideology masks cultures and identities
that are outside of their values within the framework of monoculture. When
Hollywood cinema is considered, it is seen that the stance and ideology of
the US government are also effective in shaping the monoculture. Especially
after September 11, propaganda and representation policies made over certain
identities reveal this relationship. Most of the messages given determine how
and what the audience/mass/society/individual will think and also ensure
their control. In doing so, the messages are presented in a simple language
that everyone understands in order to mobilize and stereotype the audience.
According to Bauman ideological messages about the hierarchy of mobil-
ity in a world where everyone is a traveler was also stuck in the monocultural
rules of Hollywood cinema (Bauman 2006, 100). US-based cinema is trans-
formed into a psychological warfare institution by producing clichés about
the “tourist” and “terrorist” paradox after 9/11. It can be said that this ideol-
ogy is trying to be legitimized by forming representation structures in which
everyone who is not white or western is positioned as a “terrorist” by using
the cinema industry. The positioning of “terrorist” and “the other” built on
the basis of a Muslim identity both changed shape and moved one step fur-
ther politically with Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the Mexican
border during the period when he won the elections. Not only Muslim iden-
tity, but Latin American identity was now seen as a threat. Trump declared
a “national emergency” on February 15, 2019, and sent more than 10,000
troops to San Diego, turning this positioning into concrete steps. At the same
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 137

time, he did not neglect to make moves toward the construction of a steel
wall from the funds he created with the national emergency declaration. The
transformation of the iron bars separating the two countries into iron walls
brought to mind the walls of the Cold War era. It is seen that Trump tries
to transform America into geography where social acceptance of Mexican
immigrants is limited with the discriminatory policy he has produced and to
give a symbolic meaning to the border. The opinion of Iñárritu, a director
who produces multicultural and hybrid narratives about the Mexican diaspora
in the Hollywood industry, regarding the propaganda to build a Mexican wall
is as follows:

I think it’s part of the rhetoric that is part of this time we’re living in. The mass
media, politicians, every tweet . . . they write things that are fiction as if it was
the fact. What filmmakers do is fiction, and we say it is, but there is enough
truthfulness that you feel the truth. The truth you are seeing in the news is
misleading and manipulating and inventing so many things about people whose
greatest need is just to survive. The people who are coming, they are the needi-
est and most vulnerable. To say these people are a threat and they are danger-
ous, it’s just very unfortunate. That’s what I was saying about the end of the
world and the end of the species. While the ice caps are melting, and everything
is going down, to be hating people at this moment . . . how can you have that
amount of rage toward the poor? Maybe there’s a way to get back to our coun-
try, with ideas and stories, and with creativity. (Fleming 2019)

Trump’s national emergency plan and the wall project planned to be built
on the Mexican border were canceled after he lost his seat to Biden with the
elections in 2020. With the changing president, it can be said that the per-
spective toward immigration policies and transnational discourses has lost its
nationalist militarist character.
Another structure that overcomes the time-space constraint and changes
the economic and cultural functioning, as well as politics, is Hollywood.
With the restructuring of studios and the taking over of transnational com-
panies, it is seen that Hollywood has become globalized and absorbs the
differences by integrating the images that it has positioned as “the other”
in history into its own representation system. Monolithic discourses, in
which Hollywood ideology is produced with a center-periphery hierarchy,
allows this ideology to be decentralized by opening up space for diver-
sity and resistance. Although this process is evaluated within the context
of economy and politics, it should not be forgotten that hybrid identities
gained meaning in global culture and thus transnational flexible identity
structure increased.
138 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

MEXICAN REPRESENTATION IN HOLLYWOOD

CINEMA FROM YESTERDAY TO TODAY:
OR ARE MEXICANS DISCOVERING
HOLLYWOOD AESTHETICS?

In Hollywood narratives, Mexico is shown as an escape from the US judicial

system, the geography that criminals will first choose when they want to leave
the state, or as the focus of social inequality, political, and social conflicts. In
other words, the classic Hollywood aesthetic deals with Mexico and Mexican
representation in the context of issues of informal immigration and exclusion
from the global economy.
When looking at the US exploitation of Mexican cinema, we can have
a look at the assessments of the Mexican cinema historian Aurelio de Los
Reyes. De Los Reyes points out that Mexican documentary filmmaking
between 1910 and 1913 was more advanced than North America. Films
inspired by the Mexican events include stories that glorify the supremacy of
the white hero caught among the bandit, gun smuggler, revolutionary, violent,
irresponsible, and treacherous Latins. These films, which reveal the popu-
list effect of the American dream and its distorted Latin perspective, have
increased with the greater participation of the United States in the Mexican
market (quoted in Chanan 2008, 488). Mexicans protested the realities dis-
torted by Hollywood with the following statement they sent to the newspaper
in 1917: “We do not accept this brutality and reactionism that has made it a
habit to promote Mexicans with fake films.” Mexican cinema tried to resist
American ideology by establishing a Hollywood-like studio system (Armes
1987, 44). However, Hollywood cinema, which dominated the entire market
after World War I, imported films to Third World countries and created a
new communication style with them. Classical narrative cinema represented
by Hollywood began to spread all over the world, excluding alternative film
practices and forms of expression. In this context, Latin America became the
region with the highest market share in Hollywood (Armes 1987, 47).
The point of view used by Hollywood since the silent cinema era has
focused on “stereotyping” and “the other.” Hollywood has produced rep-
resentation policies aimed at ruling and exploiting people rather than
embracing different cultures amicably. By including thematic issues such
as human rights violations, colonial fantasy, economic colonization, and
injustice conditions, a relationship was established between political and
visual regimes, and national identity was built. In this regard; the movies The
Greaser’s Gauntlet (1908), The Girl and Greaser (1913), Broncho Billy and
the Grease (1914), Guns and Greaser (1918) tell the stories of discriminated
Mexicans. In these films, Mexican characters are men with mustaches wear-
ing wide fedora hats, short jackets, and embroidered pants. These men create
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 139

themselves through acts of violence, namely robbery, assault, kidnapping,

and killing (Pettit 1980, 130). America’s exploitation of the Mexicans contin-
ues until the production of ranchoras, revenchas, and comedies in the sound
film era (Higginbotham 2005, 279).
Mexican cinema, which uses classic genre features and a Hollywood aes-
thetic with a star system, produced stories aimed at national culture. With
economic resources, technical facilities, and a network of film production
and distribution, it has become a very important industry for Latin American
society. On the other hand, in the narratives of the movies of Luis Valdez
such as I am Joaquín (1969), Alambrista (1977), La Bamba (1987), Born in
East L.A (1987), El Norte, (1984), The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1983), Mi
Familia/My Family (1994), Lone Star (1996), and La Misma Luna (2007)
problems related to intercourse, cultural hybridity, and cultural identity,
together with racist and ethnocentric exclusion effects, have been symboli-
cally produced without slowing down (Heide 2013, 95). Andrew Wood states
that although these productions have decreased, similar effects can be seen in
recent films. Wood also states that in the films the Mexican (Gore Verbinski,
2001) and Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), the representation continued in
a structure that produces old clichés in the form of North American tourists
and Mexican parody. According to Wood, an exotic connection is created
between this country, which has been represented as the source of corruption
from the past, and the audience. Wood states that with this Mexican portrayal,
the views of the American audience are reinforced and the Mexican reality
is recreated on the movie plane (Wood 2001, 756–760). At this point, one of
the most distinctive features of American cultural imperialism can be sought
in the relationship between Hollywood cinema and the “other” phenomenon
created by it. Since the World War I, American-based cinema, which has
imposed its superiority in the film industry on other countries with its film
genre, style, and representation policies, had to look warmly at the transfor-
mation of genres and the intersection of global and local. Walter Mignolo
sees this intersection area as a political message created within the parameters
and logic of the global economy and the free global capital (Mignolo 2001,
157). However, in addition to the free global capital parameters, the effects of
digitalization, the fluid nature of identities, the symbolic meaning of borders,
and the disappearance of the time-space perception and postmodernism have
been quite evident in the realization of this change.
David Harvey defines postmodernism in terms of time and space compres-
sion. Geographical mobility that develops with digital networks destroys
the phenomenon of cultural identity. Global consumption culture eliminates
borders and enables a cosmopolitan or hybrid political structure to become
functional. Today cinema positions cultural identities that will be approved
or contested by different representation policies within or outside the nation.
140 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

Cinema associates the relationship between controlled and protected bound-

aries in its narratives with the contexts in which the protagonist is excluded or
accepted by society. In this way, films that focus on conditions of difference,
otherness, and injustice using local and regional images offer a perspective on
cultural contrasts or mergers. Especially in Hollywood cinema, transnational
production networks diversify within the framework of the production, dis-
tribution, and display conditions for these images. In addition to the increase
in Mexican films, the increase in the number of Mexican directors—del Toro,
Cuarón, and Iñárritu—working in the United States, dominated by global
culture, is also noteworthy. The success of Latin American and Mexican
films in the United States is associated with their use of a transnational movie
language that reflects regional and national experiences of postmodernity and
neoliberal globalization (Smith 2003, 269). Hollywood’s transnational lan-
guage of cinema is undoubtedly directly linked to the process of using global
resources in filmmaking as expressed by David Denby and not being able to
afford to offend other groups of the worldwide audience. Denby states that
Hollywood’s desire to be profit-oriented creates a holding aesthetic, forming
narratives that stand out from the strong character and narrative structure
every day (Denby 2012). Hollywood cinema, which Denby associates with
the desire to be profit-oriented, on the one hand, creates repetitive narratives,
and on the other hand, replaces the exotic bond it has established with the
audience through the representation of the “other” or “stranger” so far with
cultural mosaic. Solid and rigid stereotyping gave way to hybrid characters.
On the other hand, criticizing this hybridization structure, John Waldron
attributed the loss of the cultural texture that directors should have in their
films to the pressure caused by the impact of globalization and NAFTA.
Waldron says: “[. . .] recent directors like del Toro, Cuarón, and Iñárritu,
seem to lose more of their own unique voice as they make the move from
Mexico to Hollywood, from the periphery to the center” (Waldron 2004, 13).
Considering the evaluations of both Smith and Waldron, it can be said that
Iñárritu presented transnational cinema examples and used them by combin-
ing national cinema and global cinema aesthetics. The director created the
mosaic structure expressed by Yun-Hua Chen, especially with the techniques
such as close up, extreme long angle, continuous narration, and long-shot/
plan sequence that make up his cinematography. Chen defined Iñárritu as
a mosaic auteur in his work titled “Mosaic Space and Mosaic Auteurs: On
the Cinema of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Atom Egoyan, Hou Hsiao-Hsien
and Michael Haneke” Chen restricted the definition of auteur to mosaic terri-
tory and mosaic space. According to him, various geographical and cultural
configurations of the mosaic are used. These configurations become mosaic
with the collision of local and global. In this case, Iñárritu has enabled the
Mexican market to be redefined with the identity structures that it has formed
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 141

by feeding on a multicultural source, and by using the international film pro-

duction network, he had the opportunity to move across the continents in the
global market (Chen 2016, 51).
Chen states that Iñárritu’s broad socioeconomic, geopolitical, and contem-
porary space use, especially in Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, provided
a very broad argument for determining this mosaic structure (Chen 2016, 51).
Yun-Hua Chen discusses Iñárritu’s 21 Grams (the USA, 2003), Amores
Perros (Mexico, 2000) and Babel (France/USA/Mexico, 2006), in which she
demonstrates the idea of “horizontal mosaic . . . which compiles contempo-
rary spaces from a wide socioeconomic and geopolitical range” (Chen 2016,
51). In other words, the horizontal mosaic is focused on juxtaposing narra-
tive spaces, allowing closer examination of relations between the local and
the global. Particular attention is given to the way in which various, initially
unrelated narrative threads come together, smoothing the striated spheres and
transforming them, thus allowing the characters to “transcend the boundaries
of mosaic pieces” (Chen 2016, 84). In this way, Chen validates Iñárritu as
a mosaic auteur and his works as mosaic filmmaking, exposing connections
between the transnational contents of the narratives and the transnational
context of the films’ production.
Looking at the venues used in Iñárritu’s films within the framework of
Chen’s statements, it is seen that Mexico (Mexico City, Tijuana), United
States (New York, Manhattan, Broadway, North Dakota), Spain, Japan, and
Morocco have been used. Considering the linguistic diversity, it can be said
that French, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Berber, and Pavni, and especially
Spanish and English were used.2 The use of different settings, myths, stories
of multiple characters, and language in films can be considered as a meta-
phorical expression of the multicultural global world. Referring to differ-
ent components in his narratives, the director presents to the audience the
practices of people who have different characteristics but are surrounded by
noncommunication in the same culture. The director conveys the miscommu-
nication phenomenon in the subtext of each film by using these multicultural
codes as a reference.

CINEMATOGRAPHIC TRACES OF TRANSNATIONAL

CODES: EL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

When we look at the studies on Iñárritu, del Toro, and Cuarón (Three
Amigos) so far, it is seen that different evaluations have been made regard-
ing the Mexican New Wave, which is used to express the rebirth of Mexican
cinema, such as transnational cinema or Mexican cinema in its golden
age. Most of these reviews focus on a new cinematographic language
142 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

departing from Hollywood cinema, or the notion that Mexico has taken over
Hollywood. However, when interpreting Iñárritu’s cinematography, the main
idea to focus on is whether he created a cinematic language that combines
his own local cultural values using Hollywood aesthetics. Because Iñárritu’s
transnational cinema language created a structure that can be named as “El
Hollywood.” In this section where Iñárritu’s intersecting and differentiating
aspects with Hollywood aesthetics will be discussed, it may be meaningful to
start with expressing what is meant by transnational cinema.
Transnationalism, which consists of the intersection of global and local,
refers to the global forces that connect international institutions and people,
according to Ezra and Rowden (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 1). The ideas or
products produced, introduced, and circulated by geographical, cultural, and
economic boundaries are permeable. Transnational cinema, where this per-
meability becomes visible, affects global economies, audience mindfulness,
and cinema literacy. Instead of using homogenizing myths of national iden-
tity, transnational cinema enables them to dissolve in cultural diversity and
acquire a mosaic appearance. Transnational cinema, which can be considered
as an alternative to the duality of national cinema and Hollywood hegemony,
can be said to heterogenize the representation policies in cinema by making
the identity phenomenon stateless.
Deborah Shaw and Amy Sara Carroll on the other hand emphasize the dif-
ficulty of defining transnational and transnational cinema. Shaw and Carroll
point out that an economic-political relationship exists between the growth
of international co-productions and transnational aesthetics (Shaw 2003;
Carroll 2012). The authors state that there is an inseparable link between the
aesthetics formed after NAFTA and profit-oriented cinema just like Denby’s
point of view in order to define transnationalism regardless of geography.
Mexico’s indigenous film industry has entered a new era, especially in the
late 2000s, with government incentives, educational centers, and private
investments becoming easily accessible. However, it is not enough to explain
this new period only within the framework of fast and convenient access to
economic resources. The artistic background and different thematic elements
of the films, which are formed independent of the classical narrative structure,
are also effective in gaining a transnational identity. Unlike Carroll; Shaw
focuses on Iñárritu’s cinematography as well as production contexts and mar-
ket access. According to Shaw, Iñárritu was separated from other Mexican
directors by using “an international film language,” and he created a universal
form with local content using national allegories (Shaw 2003, 180). Juan
Poblete names Iñárritu cinema as the MTV style in which a complex narra-
tive style is adopted. Stating that Hollywood cinema, a global ally of Latin
American cinema, uses postmodern ways of seeing and visual construction
techniques, Poblete says that the Mexican narrative, which is fed by national
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 143

sensitivity and local cultural values, is the new populist language of the film
industry and provides a path to reach international audiences (Poblete 2004,
221–223).
If we continue from the framework that Poblete and Shaw define as an
international film language; What are the intersections and divergences
between Iñárritu cinema and Hollywood cinema? What is the main feature
that makes this cinema transnational? It may make sense to find answers to
these questions.
Classic Hollywood cinema has a character-centered structure. In this struc-
ture, which is based on the identification of the audience, the character has
a journey to complete. Looking at the general of Iñárritu cinema, it is seen
that two different character structures were used in two different periods. The
director preferred narrative heterogeneity in which several stories are com-
bined in the same narrative series and the use of multiple characters close to
the collective protagonist or anti-protagonist in the films Amores Perros, 21
Grams, Babel (The Trilogy of Life), which can be called the first period. Here,
the audience identifies with everyone because there are no heroes or enemies.
When looking at the cinematographic structure of Amores Perros, it is seen
that the nonlinear postmodern narrative techniques used in Pulp Fiction
(Quentin Tarantino, 1994) and Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993) were used.
In this narrative structure, different perspectives are combined with music
and dialogue, enabling all three heroes to come into contact with each other
during repeated collision moments in the car accident (Heide 2013, 98). In
the film, which tells the stories of Octavio, Valeria, Daniel El Chivo, and
focuses on different social classes and their living spaces, the United States
is not geography to choose for living. The car accident metaphor is used to
dramatize the birth of class conflict in cities where global relations are woven.
The director took one step closer to Hollywood aesthetics in the language
of transnational cinema by focusing on the single hero and his inner turmoil
in the films Biutiful, Birdman, and Revenant, which can be called the second
period. In Iñárritu movies, class and cultural differences for the characters
are most visible in the context of the economic, physical, psychological, and
sexual violence themes. In films, violence is used on two levels, basic events
involving the character’s actions or side events. The element of violence that
is committed at these two levels can be interpreted as the traces of the direc-
tor’s “cultural pessimism” point of view. In line with these traces, although
Iñárritu creates his film style over a “social-realistic” structure, the characters
in his films cannot be connected to each other except for their actions due
to the class and cultural differences they have (Borden et al. 2011, 430). In
other words, the actions of the characters do not produce the expected results,
but they are chaotically linked in unpredictable ways. This causes a chain of
events to occur and the characters to be positioned within this chain. Different
144 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

stories that seem independent from each other in the films are tightly handled
at the action level. On the other hand, to put it apart from an orientalist point
of view, Iñárritu’s relationship with “violence” also expresses the bond he
has established with his own cultural dynamics, although he benefits from
Hollywood aesthetics. The link mentioned here is completely different from
the conceptualization of accented cinema concerning Hamid Naficy. Naficy
states that return to home/homeland or cultural return and travel or relocation
always go hand in hand. According to him, the relationship established with
home and motherland is an imaginary relationship that is always roman-
ticized. There is a great connection with nostalgia or loss beyond national
ties on this journey where the destination is unknown (Naficy 2001, 229).
However, Iñárritu did not establish the concept of transnational cinema
through the phenomenon of violence. But he provided a quality that would
reverse the phenomenon of violence produced by Hollywood domination
until now. In the cultural structure of Latin America, where political trans-
formations are experienced, violence is an ideological phenomenon that is
at least as intensely observed as social instability, guilt, and identity crisis.
These phenomena, which form the cultural map of Mexico at a national
and transnational scale, are used as new ways of establishing relations with
global markets. Unlike Hollywood cinema using Mexico or Latin America as
a commodity, new stories have been constructed outside of the reductionist
narrative of the United Status with the allegories used for local culture. At
this point, the director, who bent the Hollywood dream with the phenomenon
of violence, created a perspective that he associates with the phenomenon
of violence and death in his movies composed of transnational image rep-
ertoires. It can even be said that this point of view was reproduced with the
killers, murdered, wounded, funerals, and types of violence in his movies,
which he associated with the festival alternative to Halloween3 named as the
Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos).4
When we look at the relationship of films with Mexican culture, it can be
said that it is not a coincidence that they refer to Mexican religious icons
(The Virgin of Guadalupe) and use symbolic expressions for the Mexican
diaspora (Tijuana). This structure, which constitutes the intertextual feature
of the film, makes the narrative multilayered and at the same time allows the
use of transnational image structure. It can be stated that a similar structure in
Iñárritu movies was realized concerning myths. With this intertextual feature,
movies differ from the classic narrative structure of Hollywood cinema but at
the same time approach this cinema by including the surreal image repertoire
of Hollywood cinema in their narratives. In movies like Amores Perros (Abel
and Cain, Achilles, Icarus), 21 Grams (Abel and Cain, Achilles), Babel (Abel
and Cain), Biutiful (Abel and Cain), Birdman (Icarus), and The Revenant
(Achilles), Iñárritu stratifies the narrative structure by associating with the
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 145

mythical structure. However, in Hollywood cinema, the classical narrative

structure is formed by Vogler’s Hero’s Journey stages, and these stages do
not include intertextual references. In the classic narrative structure where
the hero’s journey does not have mythological traces, the characters have a
certain motivation, and the journey/story/narrative consisting of introduction,
development, and conclusion parts finish with a closed-end. However, it can
be said that an open-ended structure is used in Iñárritu’s films, especially in
Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, while on the other hand, in his other
films, a double meaning is created in the mind of the audience with metaphor-
ical images. Again, in the context of Hero’s Journey, the loss of limbs of the
characters in Iñárritu movies—Amores Perros (the amputation of Valeria’s
foot), Babel (the gangrene of Susan Jones’ arm), Biutiful (Uxbal’s being
prostate cancer), Birdman (Riggan Thomson’s being shot in the nose), The
Revenant (Hugh Glass’s broken foot and injured body); it can be expressed
the power structure was destroyed and psychoanalytic references were made
with the metaphor of castration, thus breaking Hollywood’s masculine, white,
heterosexual perspective. A similar breakdown is achieved with the strong
female character in the narratives, although Iñárritu’s movies are male-hero-
oriented. Unlike the classic Hollywood narrative, the female characters in
these films are not dependent and powerless. According to the developmental
nature of the stories, even if women portray the bottom-hitting character—
Amores Perros (Valeria and Sasana), 21 Grams (Cristina William), Babel
(Susan Jones), Birdman (Sylvia and Samantha), The Revenant (Hugh
Glass’s wife)—they never cease to fight and resist. Even in secondary roles,
this structure shows that the director is separated from the conservative
Hollywood narrative in a gender context.
Schneider also focuses on the narrative structure while evaluating Iñárritu’s
relationship with Hollywood cinema. According to him, the similarities
between Batman and Birdman are inevitable. Schneider primarily emphasizes
that Michael Keaton’s character in the movie Birdman, who played in the
movies Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), is parallel to the charac-
ter structure in other films. Schneider attributes this to Hollywood’s love of
comebacks (Schneider 2015, 950). Based on Schneider’s descriptions, it can
be said that Iñárritu refers to both the Batman movie and the Marvel Universe
by associating the characters in a way.
Evaluating the reflections of the transnational language in the films,
Claudia Schaefer evaluates the structures that will reveal the emotions.
Schaefer talks about the traces of the sensory extremism principle of
Hollywood aesthetics in Iñárritu’s film language. It emphasizes that
pathos, which will especially reveal the melodramatic effect, is presented
to the audience with the actions of the character. According to Schaefer,
Hollywood uses the principles of emotion-based extremes such as nausea,
146 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

sweating, tremors, and flying in horror, porn, and action genres, allowing
the audience to undergo an emotional influence (Schaefer 2003, 85). Thus,
the audience gets caught up in the chain of events surrounded by emotional
strategies rather than textual strategies. A similar practice is applied in the
scenes of a car chase and drug use in Amores Perros, 21 Gram, and Babel,
which Iñárritu created with fragmented and parallel narration. With the tech-
nique applied in these scenes, an intensity of passion, loss, and compassion
is provided to the audience.
Iñárritu, who produced two different transnational cinematographic lan-
guages in two different periods, does not place identity and cultural repre-
sentations in a hegemonic center. He enables the visibility of transnational
images that are suppressed with a polyphonic and multi-centered narrative
language. He reconstructs the experiences of individuals who have been cat-
egorized as Third World citizens to date using Hollywood aesthetics.

CONCLUSION

Cinema has created a universe where globalization and common meanings

and the imaginary world intersect. Transnational economic connections and
colonial fantasies have been replaced by the construction of hybrid cultural
structures. National identities have gained a flexible quality and turned
into a hybrid form. Even though extreme racist and conservative political
discourses (Trump’s Mexican wall discourse) from time to time have a con-
creting effect, this concreting effect has been replaced by evaporation and a
fluid-structure within the conjectural structure. Cinema has been influenced
by the intersection of legal and cultural boundaries covered by all these politi-
cal paradigms. The story, content, and representation structure have gained
a cosmopolitan character. The slippery capital structure, cultural globaliza-
tion, the increase of Mexican films in the US and European markets, and the
inclusion of Mexican directors in the Hollywood industry have been very
effective in redefining the rules of the dominant Hollywood cinema. With the
cyclical effect created by these different phenomena, Hollywood cinema has
accelerated the production of transnational images. Identities in films were
not formed by ethnic hierarchy. In other words, the ethnic background of
identities has not been brought to the attention of the audience anymore. Now
we can talk about a double-sided interaction and transformation. Hollywood
has increased the number of hybrid narratives with the variety of images of
directors from different cultures. Thus, Hollywood’s national identity has
been moved to a transnational dimension. The approach of the Academy
Awards, which many authors considered as national cinema awards, to the
transnational cinema language has also been effective in this change.
 Transnational Images in Iñárritu Cinema 147

Alejandro González Iñárritu, one of the Mexican directors who quickly

climbed his name in American popular culture, won the Academy Award
for Best Director, Academy Award for Best Film, Academy Award for Best
Original Screenplay (popularly known as the Oscar award), Critics Week
Grand Prize, Best Director Award and Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Cannes
Film Festival and reached audiences (arthouse and national box office) that
could be positioned differently from each other and conveyed the message
of local and global cultural mediation. However, the point that should not
be ignored is that the director has received academy awards with his films
Birdman and The Revenant, which belong to his second period in which
he created a transnational cinema language using Hollywood aesthetics, on
the other hand, he received the Cannes awards with his first-period movies
Amores Perros and Babel. Hollywood has once again revealed its dominant
ideology by giving the Oscar it organized to reward its national cinema to a
transnational cinema (El Hollywood) movie (s).
On the other hand, the traces of the transnational language that Iñárritu
emphasizes in his cinematography can be sought in his communication
with different cultural identities and geographies and transferring his own
experiences for a long time. The director presents the different types of
migration such as refugee and asylum movements, the economic, political,
sociocultural, and demographic structure of migration with a perspective
in which people are at the center. At the same time, while colonial cultures
and hybrid or immigrant identities gain visibility in the director’s films, it
is seen that the standardized representation and meaning forms of the clas-
sical narrative structure have gained a new quality. Mediating between the
culture left behind and the host culture, these stories create the dream that
there can be an identity structure independent of contradictions. The direc-
tor, who reveals the circulation of universal cultural identities in the world
through cinematographic representation mechanisms, depicts how different
identities are subjected to injustice and illegal events by colonialist coun-
tries. In other words, the director does not position the polyphonic identities
he incorporates into the film narrative in a hierarchical structure, allow-
ing boundaries to disappear before the eyes of the audience. At this point,
known and visible facts in social life are reinterpreted with a transnational
perspective in Iñárritu’s films. The director, by associating the elements of
his own culture with Hollywood aesthetics, informed the audience about the
representation models of the masses that have been positioned as “the other”
until today and encouraged them to think, evaluate and analyze these repre-
sentation models. On the other hand, contrary to Hollywood ideology, the
director criticizes the globalized capitalist culture in his films, as stated by
Smith (Smith 2003, 279). He questions cooperation with unfair and repres-
sive national and global structures in the capitalist economy and discusses
148 Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu

whether cultures/identities can resist the capitalist economy. As a result,

it can be expressed that, as much as Iñárritu has transformed Hollywood
cinema, the Hollywood industry was also changed by being fed by many
different phenomena.

NOTES

1. In 2017, at the request of Donald Trump, the North American Free Trade
Agreement began to be renegotiated, and a new agreement called the USA-Mexico-
Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed between the three countries after hard
negotiations that lasted about 1.5 years. This new agreement is defined as NAFTA 2.0.
2. Information about movie venues and language was obtained using IMDB data.
3. Halloween is a celebration of Pagan and Christian origin. The night of October
31 is a holiday that expresses the practice of collecting candy and money by children
wearing scary clothes.
4. Mexican Day of the Dead is based on Mayan culture 3,000 years ago. It is
believed that the spirits of the adults come to visit during this holiday, which covers
the dates between October 31 and November 2. Traditional costumes, music, dance,
parades, and remembrance of the dead are held at the altars.

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 Index

Adorno, Theodor W. 51, 55, 66 consumption culture, 34, 41, 47, 68, 139;
Africa, 9, 39, 71, 94 Bocock, Robert, 45; Disney, 12–14,
Agamben, 66, 68, 72, 74 17, 42–43, 49–50, 52–53, 55n18;
aliens, 20, 64–65 Marvel Studios, 43; Ritzer, George,
American identity, 5, 33, 46, 136; 43; Robertson, Roland, 40, 53n3
Crevecoeur, 33–34, 41; De Rossi, creature, 5, 20, 64, 108, 111
Cristina, 34; melting pot, 1, 33–34; Crimson Peak, 109–10, 115n1
salad bowl, 33–34 Crouching Tiger, 12, 19, 23, 26n3
Anatolia, 6, 119–20, 125, 130;
Çatalhöyük, 119; Göbeklitepe, 119; Davies, Laurence, 110
Shahmaran (the shah of serpents), Davis, Amy M., 87
120–21 Delacroix, Eugene, 125
anime, 24 Detective Chinatown 2, 24
Antichrist, 117, 125, 127, 131 digital game, 80, 90, 95, 97; LEGO Star
Avengers: Infinity War, 24 Wars: The Skywalker Saga, 90; Star
Wars: Battlefront II, 5, 81, 89–90,
Benjamin, Walter, 82, 94 92–98
BlacKkKlansman, 9 disneyfication (the), 5, 79, 81, 86–89, 97
Dying to Survive, 24
Callas, Maria, 125
carnivalesque, 114 Emperor and the Assassin (the), 20
Caro, Niki, 12
Cast system, 119 film industry, 4, 16, 35, 48, 105, 107–8,
Chao, Rosalind, 12 135, 139, 142–43; China, 9–25,
comics and movies; Blade II, 105, 109, 26n4, 44, 50, 53, 53n2, 54n4, 54n13,
113, 115n1; Hellboy, 105, 107, 109, 113; Disney, 12–14, 17, 42, 43,
111–13, 115n1; Hellboy II: The 49–50, 52–53, 55n18, 79, 85–89;
Golden Army, 105, 111, 115n1 Hollywood, 1, 3–8, 9–21, 23–25, 33,

151
152 Index

35, 37, 39–44, 47–48, 50, 54n13, 84; Pulp Fiction, 143; Schafer,
55n15, 63–66, 72, 75, 79–80, 84, Claudia, 145; Schneider, Steven,
103–15, 117, 130–31, 133–48 Jay, 145; Short Cuts, 143; Vogler,
Fincher, David, 118 Christopher, 145
Frozen, 87 Hollywood studios, 9, 25; Universal, 9,
Frozen II, 87 17, 22, 42; Warner Bros., 9, 15, 17,
22, 26n5, 26n6, 42
genre studies, 108; Hogan, Chuck, 109; homini sacri, 66, 68. See also homo
Langford, Barry, 108, 110–11 sacer
globalization, 1–2, 24, 34–40, 43–47, homo sacer, 66–69
52, 53n3, 54n10, 54n13, 67, 79, 112, Horkheimer, Max, 51, 55n14, 66
114, 134–36, 140, 146; Giddens, House of Flying Daggers, 19, 26n3
Anthony, 34, 40; glocalization, human waste, 67–68
1, 40; Huntington, Samuel, 45; Hutcheon, Linda, 86
interculturality, 2, 36, 44–45; Hutchings, Peter, 106
multiculturalism, 2–3, 36, 40, 44, 52,
65–66, 113; transculturalism, 2–3, 5, identity, 35–37, 44–45, 48–49, 55n15,
45, 47, 51–52, 79, 89, 91 69, 79, 112–13, 117, 120, 130, 136,
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 10, 25, 138–42, 144, 146–47; Essif, Les, 49;
26n8 Kellner, Douglas, 48, 53n3, 63–64,
Gone Girl, 118 69; rhizomatic identity, 49; Ryan,
Grant, Barry Keith, 104 Michael, 48, 63–64
Greek mythological characters; international film studios:
Aiskhylos, 119; Aphrodite, 120, NBCUniversal, 12; Perfect World
122; Apollo, 119; Athena, 119–20; Pictures, 12
Calduceus, 120; Dionysus, 92; Islamophobia, 5, 13, 64; Afghanistan,
Eros, 122; Hermes, 120; Lamia, 64; Guantánamo, 64, 69–70; Iraq,
121–22; Medusa, 120, 131n3; other 64, 69; Kaplan, Ann, 69–70, 73–74;
mythological female characters Middle East, 71; September, 11, 3,
Lillith, 121; Poseidon, 120, 122, 124, 64, 66, 136
131n3 Inarritu movies, 143–45; Amores
Perros, 6, 134, 141–47; Babel, 6,
habitus, 80 134, 141, 143–47; Birdman, 6, 134,
hallyu, 25 143–45, 147; Biutiful, 6, 134, 143–
Hawkins, Sally, 111 45; Flesh and Sand, 134; Revenant
Hello Mr. Billionaire, 24 (the), 6, 134, 144–45, 147; 21;
Here We Go Again, 12 Grams, 6, 134, 141–45
Hero, 19–20
Hollywood aesthetics, 138, 142–47; Jameson, Frederic, 82, 86, 97
Campbell, Joseph, 5, 80–81, 83–84, Jung’s character archetypes, 84; anima,
90, 93, 95, 98; Hero’s Journey, 5, 84–85; animus, 84–85; mentor, 74,
80–81, 83–85, 93, 98, 113, 145; 79, 84–85, 88–89, 97; persona, 84–
Hero’s Journey stage, 145; Hudson, 85; shadow, 79, 84–86, 89; trickster,
Dale, 113; monomyth model’s (the), 84–85
 Index 153

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, 24 monster, 17–20, 24, 109–22

monster films, 9, 21, 111; Godzilla,
K-Pop, 25 9–10, 17–21, 25, 26n3, 26n8; The
Kaiju, 20–24, 112–13 Great Wall, 9, 14, 18–23, 25; Pacific
King Kong, 20 Rim, 9, 17–18, 21–23, 25, 106,
Kung Fu Hustle, 16, 19 109–10, 112–13, 115n1; Pacific Rim
Uprising, 9
Lee, Ang, 12 Moreau, Gustave, 125
Lee, Jason Scott, 12 Mulan, 12–15, 21, 25, 50, 54n10
Lee, Spike, 9
Li, Gong, 12 national identity, 10, 39, 48, 53, 83,
Li, Jet, 12 138, 142, 146
neoliberalism, 134–35; Harvey, David,
Ma, Tzi, 12 94, 139; Latin America, 38, 47, 134,
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, 12 138, 144; Mexican border, 136–37;
Mandalorian (the), 90 NAFTA, 135, 140, 142, 148n1;
Mann, Michael, 15 postmodernism, 82, 139
MCU, 4, 35, 43–44, 49–51; Ant-Man, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 118
50; Appadurai, Arjun, 2, 4, 35, 40, Nolan, Christopher, 15
44; Arad, Avi, 47; Batman, 15, 17,
145; Batman Returns, 145; Black Operation Red Sea, 24
Panther, 23, 42, 44, 50–53, 54n11; Orwell George, 70
Captain Marvel, 50; global cultural
flow, 34–35, 39, 42, 44, 46, 50n11; Pan’s Labyrinth, 104, 109
Iron Man, 51; Legend of the Ten Pei-Pei, Cheng, 12
Rings (the), 44, 50; supra-identity, 4, Pian, wuxia, 19, 26n3
35, 43, 49, 51–52; superheroes, 44, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, 10, 25,
47, 51–52; Wasp (the), 50. See also 26n8
Marvel Cinematic Universe polymorphic, 114
Marvel Cinematic Universe, 4, 35 postmodern storytelling, 81;
Medea, 6, 117–28, 130–31, 132n5 intertextuality, 81, 92–93, 105;
Metz, Christan, 131 metanarrative, 49, 81, 92, 95;
Mexican culture, 6, 134, 144; Mexican nostalgia, 86, 93, 144; pastiche,
Day of the Dead, 144, 148n4; 81–82, 86, 93, 105
Mexican diaspora, 137, 144;
Mexican religious icons, 144 Rampage, 24
Mexican representation, 138; De los, representation policy and ideology:
Aurelia, 138; El-hollywood, 141–42, Althusser, Louis, 41; Fanon, Franz,
147; Mexican (the), 139; Mexican 37; foreign, 9, 13, 16, 43, 46, 55, 65,
cinema, 138–39, 141; Mexican 115n3; Hall, Stuart, 37, 41, 91, 136;
New Wave, 141; ranchoras, 139; Miglono, Walter, 139; new global
revenchas, 139; Traffic, 139; Valdez, colonialism, 41; other (the), 140;
Luis,139 outside (from), 139; Podalsky, Laura,
Mimic, 104, 108–9, 114 113; stereotyping, 42, 44, 138, 140;
Moana, 87 Wood, Andrew, 139
154 Index

Robinson, Jackie, 15 transnational cinema, 3, 11–12, 18,

20, 107, 140–44, 146–47; accented
science fiction, 5, 23, 63–64, 66, 71, cinema, 144; Carroll, Amy Sara,
105, 109–10; Arrival, 5, 64–65; 142; Chen, Yua-hua, 140–41; China,
Blomkamp, Neil, 65, 72; Children of 9–11, 13, 16–25, 44, 50–51, 53,
Men, 5, 66, 69–70, 73–75; District 53n2, 54n4, 54n13, 113; Denby,
9, 5; Dystopia, 5, 66; Elysium, 5, 63, David, 140, 142; East Asia, 17,
66, 69–75; Eyre, Camilla, 65; I am 113; Hong Kong, 12, 16–17, 21–23;
Legend, 64; Joon-ho, Bong, 66, 73; Maryann, Erigha, 107; Mexican, 142,
King, Gemma, 65; Mad Max Fury 144, 146–47; mosaic auteur, 140–41;
Road, 64; McIntyre, Joanna, 65; mosaic space, 140; Naficy, Hamid,
Road (the), 64; Snowpiercer, 5, 63, 144; Poblete, Juan, 142–43; Shaw,
66, 69, 73–76; travel writing, 63 Deborah, 142–43; Waldron, John,
Scheler, Max, 118–19 140
Shape of Water(the), 104, 107, 109–11,
115n1 US immigration policy, 72; Biden,
Skyscraper, 23 137; Clinton, Hillary, 72; cultural
Snyder, Zack, 15 pessimism, 143; Declaration of
Sobchack, Vivian, 110 independence (the), 36; euro-
Squad, 93 modernity, 38; euro-american
Star Wars, 5, 17, 26n4, 79–83, 85–98; colonial form, 37; Gitlin, Todd, 38,
Battlefront, 81, 90; The Force 42; great migration, 36; immigrant,
Awakens, 85, 87–88 3–5, 34, 38, 45, 125, 147; Mexican
Wall, 137, 146; migrant crisis, 38;
three amigos, 141; Cuarón, Alfonso, 66, Obama, Barack, 72; refugee, 5, 64,
69, 107, 140–41; del Toro Guillermo, 66–68, 70, 74–75, 147; Trump,
6, 21–22, 103–4, 106–9, 114, 140– Donald, 53n4, 148n1
41; Iñárritu, González Alejandro, 6,
107, 133, 134, 137, 140–48 Vinci, Tony, 111
transnational capital, 10, 35, 48, 54n13; Von Trier Lars, 117–18, 125, 131
China Film Co., 16; Hjort, Mette,
11, 14, 19, 24; Huayi Brothers, 16; Wen, Jiang, 12
Iordanova, Dina, 10–11; Legendary
Entertainment, 4, 9, 15; Orange Sky Yen, Donnie, 12
Golden Harvest, 16; Wanda, 4, 17,
22, 25 Zhao, Chloé, 51
 About the Authors

Uğur Baloğlu is an assistant professor in the School of Applied Sciences at

Istanbul Gelisim University. He received his BEd from Marmara University
and BA from Maltepe University. He completed his MA in 2012 in the field
of Comminication Design at Istanbul Kultur University. He completed his
PhD in Radio Television Cinema at Istanbul University in 2017. His research
interests include media, communication, and cultural studies. He is the co-
editor of Kültürötesi İmgeler: Ulusötesi Avrupa Sinemasında Göç, Sürgün,
Kimlik ve Aksan Tartışmaları trans. (Transcultural Images: Debates on
Migration, Exile, Identity, and Accent in Transnational European Cinema).

Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu is an associate professor in in the School of Applied

Sciences at Istanbul Gelisim University. She completed her bachelor’s
degree at Ankara University, Faculty of Language and History Geography,
Department of Anthropology in 2006. In 2008, she graduated from METU,
Department of Media and Cultural Studies. In 2010, she completed her
second master’s degree in Ankara University, Institute of Social Sciences,
Department of Journalism on “Projections of the Coup in Cinema: September
12 Films from the Culture of Remembering to the Culture of Forgetting.” In
2015, she prepared her doctoral thesis called “Nationalization of Womanism
in Turkish Cinema (1946–1960 period)” at Istanbul University, Department
of Radio, Television, and Cinema. Between 2007 and 2014, she worked
as an assistant director and copywriter/screenwriter for various production
companies. Yıldız Derya Birincioğlu, who currently holds the Department
of Television Journalism and Programming at Istanbul Gelisim University,
has articles written on cinema, national and international papers, and book
chapters. She is the author of Ulusal Aynayı Oluşturan Kadınsılık Sırları
trans. (The Womanization of the Nation in Turkish Cinema). She is also

155
156 About the Authors

coeditor of Türk Sinemasında Auteurlar trans. (Auteurs in Turkish Cinema:

Genres and Directors in Genre Cinema after 2000) and Kültürötesi İmgeler:
Ulusötesi Avrupa Sinemasında Göç, Sürgün, Kimlik ve Aksan Tartışmaları
trans. (Transnational Image: Migration, Exile, Identity, and Accent Debates
in Transnational European Cinema). She works in the fields of gender, cul-
tural studies, migration, identity, and cinema sociology.

Jane Hanley is a senior lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at

Macquarie University, Sydney. She investigates topics related to mobility
and past and present popular culture in Spain and Mexico within research
areas including travel history, transnational cultural production, and gender in
popular culture. Her current research project is on the functions and represen-
tations of mobility and the effects of transnational cultures in contemporary
transnational cinema.

Özlem Oğuzhan (Prof. Dr.) was born in 1977, in Istanbul. She studied in the
fields of sociology, communication sciences, cinema and painting. As a com-
munication sociologist, Oğuzhan, who specializes in visual culture, is work-
ing at the Visual Communication Design Department of Istanbul Medeniyet
University. She is also the curator of an online art gallery, named “.artimu.”

Steven Rawle is an associate professor in Media Production at York St John

University. He has published numerous book chapters and journal articles
about East Asian cult movies and their global circulation, including the trans-
nationalism of the kaiju eiga. In addition, he is the author of Transnational
Cinema: An Introduction (2018) and Performance in the Cinema of Hal
Hartley (2011), and coeditor of Partners in Suspense: Critical Essays on
Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock (2016). His writing has appeared
in Film Criticism, The Journal of Japanese & Korean Cinema, Asian
Cinema, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, and The Conversation.

Özge Sayılgan is an assistant professor at Visual Communication Design

Department, Istanbul Medeniyet University Faculty of Fine Arts, Sayılgan’s
academic interest comprises of film, animation, and digital game theory. She
has reseached digital games from narratolgical approach and is interested in
gamer experiences from the cultural studies perspective. Sayılgan’s research
and production area has been formed by the interest in the relations between
various and hybrid storytelling medium emerging within digital age and
around new subjectivites in new media.

Gül Yaşartürk is an associate professor at the Department of Radio,

Television & Film, Faculty of Communication, Akdeniz University Antalya
 About the Authors 157

Turkey since 2001, her reviews has appeared in periodicals and newspapers.
She received her PhD degree from Dokuz Eylul University Instıtute of Fine
Arts on “Identity Representations in Turkish Cinema” in 2010. A part of
her PhD thesis was published with the title “Greeks in Turkish Cinema.”
She edited a book about other arts and cinema, with the title And Cinema.
She prepared biographical book about a Turkish film director Ümit Ünal;
Chiaroscuros: Umit Unal. She was a short-term researcher at the Department
of Sociology at Lancaster University in 2014 and at the University of
Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities in 2019. Her subjects of interests are gen-
der, queer theory, motherhood, film criticism, and Turkish Cinema. She is
currently member of Turkish Film Critics Association (SİYAD).