Brown Cowboys on Film: Race, Heteronormativity and Settler Colonialism

BROWN COWBOYS ON FILM: RACE, HETERONORMATIVITY AND SETTLER COLONIALISM BEENASH JAFRI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN GENDER, FEMINIST & WOMEN’S STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO JULY 2014 © Beenash Jafri, 2014 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes minority-produced westerns as examples of settler cinemas. Though they are produced by subjects at the margins of settler society, I argue that settler colonialism is, nonetheless, a significant cultural context shaping these films. The dissertation intervenes into existing film studies scholarship, which has tended to frame settler colonialism as the historical context structuring the racial oppression of Native Americans, rather than as a constitutive feature of all forms of racial subjugation. As a result, the connections and investments of other racialized subjects within the dynamics of settler colonialism have received limited attention. Drawing on queer, race and Native American/Indigenous studies, the dissertation develops and deploys an intersectional framework for examining film that illuminates the fraught relationship between racialized minorities, Indigenous peoples and settler colonialism. To make its argument, the dissertation examines three sets of films: black westerns, South Asian diaspora films, and Jackie Chan’s martial arts westerns. In each chapter, I consider how existing film scholarship has read these respective films before offering an alternative interpretation that draws attention to their settler colonial contexts. For example, black westerns have been interpreted in terms of anti-racist historical revisionism; South Asian diasporic films have been analyzed in terms of their liminal position between Hollywood and Bollywood film industries; and Jackie Chan’s western parodies have been interpreted in terms of postmodern mimicry. My own analysis suggests that settler colonialism is exercised through cultural fantasies – which I term heterocolonialities – such as those of property ownership, heterosexual romance, family and “settling down”. I demonstrate that representations of the racialized cowboy in the minority-produced western play an ambiguous function in relation to ongoing colonialism. On the one hand, these representations normalize colonial violence when the heteronormative fantasies underpinning the western genre are left intact. On the other hand, representations of the racialized cowboy pose challenges to colonial violence by drawing attention to the discourses of race and whiteness informing the western genre. This ambiguity highlights the complex ways in which racialized minorities negotiate their position in settler societies, simultaneously challenging and supporting the logics of colonial power. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Behind this dissertation is a team of mentors and supporters without whom the project could not have come to fruition. Thank you first and foremost to my supervisor, Dr. Bobby Noble, who pushed me from start to finish in tough, challenging and meaningful ways. My thanks also to Dr. Sheila Cavanagh, whose precise, thorough and thoughtful feedback allowed me to clarify the arguments and methods of the dissertation; and to Dr. Mitchell, to whom I owe much of my knowledge of film and cultural criticism. During my defense, I was lucky to have three more scholars engage with my work. Drs. Eve Haque and Carmela Murdocca posed critical questions that I’m still chewing on; my external examiner, Dr. Andrea Smith, gifted me with thought provoking comments that that will stay with me as I continue to develop and refine this work. The academy is often an isolating and lonely space, and I am grateful to have been able to develop ideas and work through arguments in conversation with others. Drs. Enakshi Dua, Andil Gosine, Celia Haig-Brown, Bonita Lawrence, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa and Radhika Mongia provided invaluable support at various stages of my graduate school career. Thank you to the Postcolonial Writing Workshop – Alejandro Campos Garcia, Ian Hussey, Zahir Kolia, Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, Vanessa Rosa, Nashwa Salem and Salimah Vaiya – for providing a nurturing intellectual space in which to develop my dissertation proposal. To the Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies Reading Group – Shaista Patel, Jen Preston, Fenn Elan Stewart, Nishant Upadhyay and Shaira Vaidasaria – I appreciate your help working through revisions at a time when I felt unsure of how to move forward. I am also grateful to members of the Spaces of Contestation Workshop, including Dr. Anna Agathangelou, Elena Chou, John Greyson, Emily H. Merson and Vicky Moufawad-Paul, for their feedback on Chapter Two. Audience members at the 2011 Canadian Association of Cultural Studies Conference; 2012 Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference; 2013 Association of Asian American Studies Conference; 2013 Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference; and the 2014 International Studies Association Conference provided thought provoking questions and commentary on various aspects of my dissertation research. Finally, Dr. Patrick Wolfe and two anonymous reviewers for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal issue on “The Settler Colonial Complex,” provided encouraging feedback on sections of Chapters One and Four. Thank you to my parents, Amir Saulat and Rehana Jafri, who have always been supportive of my pursuit of a non-lucrative liberal arts education; to my sisters, Gul Joya and Amen Jehan, who are kindred spirits; and to my extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, in Toronto and beyond, for their care and affection. For many moments of laughter, excellent food and engaging conversation, I thank Pauline Hwang, Nadia Kanani, Laura J. Kwak, Shihoko Nakagawa, Emily Rosser, Preethy Sivakumar, Sheela Subramanian, Gein Wong and Elleni Centime Zeleke. Finally, my gratitude to Hsuan Hsu for expanding my heart and mind, for making me smile, and for being lovingly present with me, even when far away. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………… ……..........iii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………….....iv Chapter One: Introduction: Brown Cowboys on Film……………………………………………..1 Chapter Two: Interpreting the Diasporic Western..........................................................................25 Chapter Three: Indigenizing African-American Identities in the “Black Western”…………….. 49 Chapter Four: Failed Masculinities, Liberal Multiculturalism and Settler Colonialism in Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Films ………………………………………………………………..................95 Chapter Five: “There Are No Pakistani Cowboys!” South Asian Diasporic Films, Queer Failure and Settler Colonialism.................................................................................................................123 Conclusion: Racialized Subjects, Settler Colonialism and Film..................................................162 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..………...167 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION BROWN COWBOYS ON FILM I recently stumbled across a photograph of my father and uncle, circa the 1970s, wearing plaid shirts, blue jeans and cowboy hats, posing for the camera with defiant faces. I imagine that this photograph was the result of my father and uncle’s love of the western genre, Clint Eastwood, and the Italian westerns (referred to colloquially as “spaghetti westerns”), such as Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, which were in vogue at the time and popular in Pakistan, where they were growing up. Years after that photograph was taken, at a costume party with my cousins whom I was visiting in the early 90s, I chose to dress up as a cowboy. This story is certainly not unique; friends and colleagues have similarly shared other stories about dressing-up as cowboy when they were younger. In each case, “playing cowboy” could have been associated with a range of distinct meanings, intentions and pleasures; from the excitement of playing the part of a heroic figure, to the thrill of embodying a tough-guy masculinity. In his 1997 film, Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas, which is a profile of, and conversation with, Iroquois artist-photographer Jeff Thomas, Ali Kazimi reflects on similar experiences. Growing up in India, his primary reference point for Indigenous peoples in North America was Hollywood westerns; when he immigrated to Canada, he was eager to encounter these imaginary Indians face-to-face, only to discover a severe disjunct between reality and fiction. The stories recounted above raise two related, important questions: what does the figure of the cowboy – and, specifically, the figure of the racialized cowboy – do? How 2 do we analyze a figure symbolically central to settler colonial cultures, when their constitutive whiteness is replaced by brown skins and histories1? Settler colonialism refers to the set of material and discursive practices through which the colonial violence against Indigenous inhabitants becomes erased, while settlers are indigenized. Much has been said about white settlers’ representations of Indigeneity, nation and colonialism; scholars have argued that these representations have enabled the circulation of mythologies of the settler nation, while containing the threat posed by ongoing Indigenous resistance to colonialism (e.g. Aleiss; Huhndorf; Kilpatrick). However, it is relatively recently that intellectual inquiry has focused on diasporic

Load more