Post-Colonialism and Sci-Fi as Pedagogy: Film as a Vehicle for Understanding

Abstract Post-Colonialism has proved to be challenging for students studying the Global South especially in the United States. Books like Edward Said’s Orientalism have proved difficult to read. Bringing in Sci-Fi movies would assist students in their search for understanding. This article hopes to illustrate the Post-Colonial themes in three movies: Soylent Green, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Planet of the Apes. These movies discuss the process of colonisation and decolonisation: invasion, domination, exploitation, self-governance, and then revitalisation. The movie Planet of the Apes shows the process of colonialisation through dehumanisation. For instance, the character Taylor is given the name ‘Bright Eyes’, a name you give to a pet. Here, the colonizer alters the environment, culture, beliefs, and identity of the colonized through a process of dehumanisation. Similarly, in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, humans must join the alien race as a way to advance themselves. This ‘civilization process’ is the justification for colonisation and leads to the destruction of earth’s entire indigenous population by destroying their identity. Lastly, Soylent Green is about the recovery of self, exercising cultural revitalisation through ceremony. Specific scenes that display this is the sharing of a meal using ingredients from a past life as well as Saul’s assisted suicide. Recalling the past in this manner helps to find, and then retain, an identity ostensibly lost to changes in power relations brought on by colonialisation. Thorn, the main character, then exposes the fact that soylent, the main food supply for the poor, is human meat. Hence, revitalisation and resistance are tied together, as working to recover a lost identity is a clear threat to the prevailing Eurocentric order. Thus, bringing in Sci-Fi movies might help facilitate the process of teaching Post-Colonial perspectives.