Daughters fight the empire : cinematic allegory, family breakdown, and the empire-settler colony relationship

Abstract

'Settler' post-colonial theory attributes an importance to the study of white settler cultures struggling to assert their identity from within the double bind of confronting past and present relationships with the indigenous population and with the Imperium, or Empire centre. In the cinemas of several English-speaking commonwealth nations, the persistent theme of family breakdown functions as an allegory for this struggle. Assuming a textual and thematic focus this thesis interrogates five films that individually and comparatively image international relations of power from the perspective of the dominant European settler culture. The film texts are assembled with a view to their imaging collective anxieties through the use of analogous allegorical referents. Ultimately the study both underlines the necessity of a comparative reading of world cinema and illuminates the strength of film as an accomplished medium of representing post-colonial and post­ imperial struggle.