DIANE ACCARIA ZAVALA


beginning of cinema and the new projects of empire has been too seldomly
explored. And yet, for the people who have been subjected to projects of
imperialism and its representational practices, if we are to commit ourselves
to Fanon's call for a "passionate research" and that which "rehabilitates us
both in regard to ourselves and in regard to others," such a conjuncture can
be anything but ignored.1 According to Shohat and Stam:

 The most prolific film producing countries of the silent period-Britain,
 France, the US, Germany-also "happened" to be among the leading
 imperialist countries, in whose clear interest it was to laud the colonial
 enterprise. The cinema emerged exactly at the point when enthusiasm for
 the imperial project was spreading beyond the elites into the popular strata,
 partly thanks to popular fictions and exhibitions. F or the working classes
 of Europe and Euro-America, photogenic wars in remote parts of the empire
 became diverting entertainments, serving to "neutralize the class struggle
 and transform class solidarity into national and racial solidarity." (100)

 A film such as The Americano is a silent gem that discloses the power
ensued by such a historical accident as that which linked the business of
American empire to motion pictures. The Monroe Doctrine in fifty-nine
minutes of film narrative, its plot follows the cue of countless popular tales
churned up by the Spanish American War. It stages the familiar scenario of
colonial fantasy-the American Adam, lusty but moral, is recruited to venture
into a virginal tropical island-a chaos of intrigue, corruption, and hungry
brown people who clamor for his justice and salvation. What is the reward
for his trouble?-adventure, a good climate, and-of course-a "Spanish
sefiorita" whom he saves from an impending doom worse than death.
Alongside the "sefiorita" come "lesser" rewards such as military and
commercial control of her nation, but only in the last five minutes of the last
reel, as he kisses the lips of one who could not possibly survive without his
good looks and righteous protection. By lending authority to the official
version and mission of colonial power, this small film seems to have
elaborated a representational model for innumerable films to come.
 The Americano, released in 1916, directed by John Emerson and scripted
by his wife, Anita Loos, was made under the supervision of D.W. Griffith, the
famed director of the racially and ideologically charged Birth of a Nation
(1915). The coalition of these particular people in itself seems a fortuitous
accident. Their distinct combination of talents, idiosyncrasies and vision,
will suit the film's representational proficiency and mold its discourse of
colonial domination to perfection. The setting is the 'mythical' Paragonia,


' I am citing Franz Fanon as Stuart Hall cites him in his own call for "passionate
research" to free ourselves of the "regime of representation" in cinema. See Hall
222.