Um modo de ver moderno/colonial: natureza, raça e a dimensão visual da colonialidade nos filmes de John Ford (1939 – 1964)

Abstract

Considering vision as a historical and cultural experience, the aim of this thesis is to analyze the characteristics of a specific modern/colonial way of seeing. The proposal is to identify and examine the visual dimension of modernity/coloniality, the coloniality of seeing, and understand how this visual experience is constructed. To do so, cinema is chosen not as a mere support, but as an integral part of the mechanism of coloniality. In order to carry out our analysis, it was examined a group of American Western films directed by John Ford (1894-1973) using film and dialogue analysis methodology along with other groups of images, such as photographs, paintings, and cinema magazines. Western films are mostly stories that romanticize the process of conquest and colonization of what is now the West of the United States. For this thesis, the selected films constitute only a sample of Ford's filmography; they are: “Stagecoach” (1939), “My Darling Clementine” (1946), “Fort Apache” (1948), “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1949), “Rio Grande” (1950), “The Searchers” (1956), “Sergeant Rutledge” (1960), and “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964). Through the choosen films, the analysis addressed categories such as nature, landscape, race, and whiteness, as well as notions of point of view, visuality, and vision — the latter being an important element in the discourse of modern science and important to understand how films participate in the constitution of this modern/colonial way of seeing. In the research, it was identified that this way of seeing is, among other things, anthropocentric and racist/racializing. Furthermore, the work also sought to relate this modern/colonial way of seeing with indigenous perspectives, aiming to propose a decolonial alternative to the coloniality of seeing, not only through the production of new images but also through new experiences of vision and spectatorship.