Cinema, Empire and Resistance: A Postcolonial Reading of Hollywood, RRR, and Contemporary Struggles

Cinema, Empire and Resistance: A Postcolonial Reading of Hollywood, RRR, and Contemporary Struggles

Introduction

Cinema is often considered a source of entertainment, but it can also influence the way people understand history, politics, power, and society. Popular films do not simply tell stories; they also decide whose story is important, who becomes a hero, and who is presented as a threat. In this way, cinema can become a cultural tool through which political ideas are made attractive and acceptable. From Hollywood action films that present American power as heroic to Indian blockbusters that transform histories of tribal resistance into spectacular nationalist stories, cinema can participate in the creation of dominant ideas.

This becomes important from a postcolonial perspective because postcolonial studies is concerned with questions of power, representation, colonialism, cultural domination, and the voices of people who have historically been marginalized. The two articles discussed in this blog “Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America's Geopolitical Narrative” and “Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR” help us understand how cinema can reproduce as well as challenge structures of power. The first article examines Hollywood as a form of American soft power, while the second examines how RRR represents tribal resistance against British colonialism.

Article 1: “Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America's Geopolitical Narrative”

Understanding the Article

The article “Heroes or Hegemons?” argues that Hollywood action cinema has an important role in constructing America's geopolitical image. Films such as Rambo and James Bond do not simply provide exciting stories about heroes fighting enemies. They can also create an image of Western power as strong, technologically advanced, morally justified, and necessary for maintaining global order.

One useful concept for understanding this process is Antonio Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony. Hegemony means that powerful groups maintain their dominance not only through force but also by making their ideas appear natural and acceptable to ordinary people. In cinema, this can happen when audiences repeatedly see the same kind of hero, enemy, nation, and moral order. The hero becomes associated with freedom and justice, while the enemy is represented as dangerous, irrational, or backward.

The article therefore describes Hollywood as a kind of “celluloid empire.” The idea is important because empire does not always operate through direct political control. It can also operate through culture, images, entertainment, and the circulation of ideas.

Zero Dark Thirty and American Power

The framework of the article can be applied to Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012). The film dramatizes the American search for Osama bin Laden and presents the CIA investigation through the perspective of Maya, a determined intelligence analyst.

The film is powerful because it makes the audience emotionally participate in Maya’s mission. Her determination, frustration, patience, and eventual success become the central emotional experience of the film. However, a postcolonial reading asks us to look beyond the individual hero and examine the larger political structure behind her mission.

The film gives greater importance to the American perspective than to the experiences of the people living in the places where the American “war on terror” takes place. Pakistani spaces are frequently presented through suspicion, surveillance, violence, and danger. Therefore, the people of the Global South can become part of the background against which the Western protagonist performs her mission.

This creates an important question: Whose story is being told, and whose story is being left outside the frame?

The film also creates a complicated relationship with torture. Torture is shown as part of the intelligence-gathering process, and although the film does not necessarily present it as completely morally acceptable, its position can still make viewers connect torture with the discovery of information. A postcolonial critique therefore asks whether violence carried out by a powerful state receives different treatment from violence committed by those represented as its enemies.

The article’s argument about cultural hegemony becomes visible here. The United States is positioned as the actor that investigates, searches, attacks, and ultimately achieves justice, while the people and spaces outside America are largely positioned as objects of American action. Thus, the film can make American intervention appear natural and necessary.

From Hollywood Empire to Contemporary Resistance

This question of power is not limited to Hollywood. Similar patterns can be seen when governments and dominant institutions represent development projects or political conflicts involving marginalized communities.

The Ken–Betwa River Linking Project is a useful example. The project is presented largely through the language of development, water management, and national progress. However, for Adivasi communities living in affected areas, questions of land, forests, displacement, livelihood, and cultural connection to the environment are equally important. The conflict therefore shows that the word “development” does not have the same meaning for everyone.

Similarly, the Ladakh protests raise questions about political representation, ecological protection, and local autonomy. Ladakh is often represented through its strategic importance and national security, but the people living there also have concerns about their environment, political rights, and future.

The Manipur conflict further demonstrates the problem of reducing complex local histories to a simple law-and-order narrative. Questions of land, identity, citizenship, ethnicity, and political representation cannot be fully understood through a single national framework.

A postcolonial approach therefore asks us to listen to voices that dominant narratives often make invisible.

Article 2: “Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR”

Understanding the Article

The second article focuses on S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR and its representation of two historical figures: Komaram Bheem, associated with Adivasi resistance, and Alluri Sitarama Raju, associated with anti-colonial resistance.

The film creates a fictional friendship between these two historical figures even though they did not actually share such a relationship. This creative decision makes the story emotionally powerful and suitable for a mass audience. However, the article asks us to think about what happens when real histories of marginalized communities are transformed into a large-scale commercial spectacle.

The film clearly opposes British colonialism. The British are shown as violent and oppressive, while the two Indian protagonists become symbols of resistance. In this sense, RRR can be understood as a postcolonial “writing back” to colonial history.

However, the article makes the argument more complicated. It suggests that while RRR challenges British colonial power, it may also reproduce internal hierarchies through its representation of Adivasi resistance.

RRR: Resistance or Appropriation?

One of the most important issues raised by the article is the representation of Komaram Bheem. Bheem is connected with the Adivasi idea of “Jal, Jangal, Zameen”, meaning water, forest, and land. These are not simply physical resources; for many indigenous communities, they are connected with livelihood, identity, culture, and survival.

However, in RRR, Bheem’s resistance becomes part of a larger heroic and mythological narrative. His struggle is presented through spectacular action, emotional friendship, powerful music, and religious imagery.

This creates a contradiction. The film gives Bheem enormous visibility, but at the same time it changes the specific political and cultural context of his resistance.

The article particularly questions the way Adivasi resistance becomes connected with upper-caste Hindu symbolism. According to the article, this can result in the appropriation of subaltern resistance. Instead of allowing Bheem’s resistance to exist within its own Adivasi cultural framework, the film incorporates it into a broader majoritarian narrative.

This is why the film becomes interesting from a postcolonial perspective. It shows that colonialism is not the only form of domination that we need to examine. There can also be inequalities within the nation itself based on caste, class, tribe, language, and cultural authority.

Therefore, we can ask:

Can a film celebrate a marginalized hero while simultaneously changing the meaning of his struggle?

RRR and Contemporary Adivasi Resistance

The issue becomes even more meaningful when we connect RRR with present-day Adivasi struggles.

The Ken–Betwa River Linking Project provides a strong example. The slogan “Jal, Jangal, Zameen”

becomes especially meaningful here because Adivasi communities continue to struggle over land, forests, water, displacement, and their relationship with the environment.

The contrast is important. In RRR, tribal resistance becomes a spectacular cinematic image. In real life, however, Adivasi resistance is often much less glamorous. It may involve protests, marches, public campaigns, community movements, and demands for recognition of rights.

This difference reminds us that cinema can make resistance visible, but it can also simplify it.

A similar issue appears in Ladakh. The demands for statehood and constitutional safeguards are connected with questions of political representation and ecological protection. Yet, when such movements are viewed only through the language of national integration or security, the specific concerns of local communities can become less visible.

Manipur also demonstrates the importance of listening to multiple voices. Its conflict cannot be reduced to a simple story of one group against another. It involves complicated questions of identity, land, political representation, citizenship, and historical tensions. A postcolonial approach encourages us to recognize these differences rather than allowing a single dominant narrative to speak for everyone.

My Reflection: Cinema, Power and the Politics of Representation

After studying these two articles, I understand cinema differently. Earlier, I mainly considered films as stories created for entertainment. However, these articles show that films can also influence how we understand nations, enemies, heroes, history, and resistance.

Zero Dark Thirty and RRR are very different films. One deals with America's “war on terror,” while the other represents Indian resistance against British colonialism. Yet both raise a similar question: Who has the power to tell the story?

In Zero Dark Thirty, American power becomes central to the story, while people in the Global South often remain outside the main emotional perspective. In RRR, colonialism is challenged, but the specific identity and political history of Adivasi resistance can become transformed by the demands of mainstream cinema.

This does not mean that these films have no value. RRR can introduce millions of viewers to figures associated with anti-colonial resistance, and Zero Dark Thirty can encourage audiences to think about terrorism, intelligence, and the “war on terror.” The point is that we should not consume these representations without questioning them.

For me, this is the most important lesson of postcolonial criticism: representation itself is a form of power.

A community can be represented and still not be given control over its own story. A hero can be celebrated while the political meaning of his struggle is changed. A country can present its military intervention as necessary while the experiences of people affected by that intervention remain invisible.

Therefore, postcolonial cinema should not only ask who the hero is. It should also ask who is missing from the frame.

Conclusion

Popular cinema can function as a powerful cultural space where ideas about empire, nationalism, resistance, and identity are created and circulated. The article “Heroes or Hegemons?” helps us understand how Hollywood can support American geopolitical power through popular images of heroism, technology, freedom, and moral authority. Zero Dark Thirty demonstrates how this framework can be applied to post-9/11 cinema.

The article on RRR, meanwhile, shows that even films that challenge colonialism need to be examined critically. RRR gives a spectacular representation of anti-colonial resistance, but its transformation of Adivasi history raises questions about cultural appropriation and internal forms of domination.

The contemporary struggles surrounding the Ken–Betwa project, Ladakh, and Manipur make these questions relevant beyond cinema. They remind us that real resistance is not always spectacular. It is often about land, identity, environment, political rights, and the right of communities to speak for themselves.

Ultimately, postcolonial criticism teaches us to look beyond the surface of popular narratives. Cinema does not simply reflect reality; it selects, reshapes, and presents reality from particular points of view. Therefore, as viewers, we must learn not only to watch films but also to question the power behind the images.

References:

• Ambedkarian Chronicle, The. “The Revolution Will Be Brahminized: RRR and the Reinvention of Empire.” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, 2026.

• Apti Plus Academy. “Ken‑Betwa River Linking Explained : UPSC Current Affairs.” Apti Plus, 2026.

• Barad, Dilip. “Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America’s Geopolitical Narrative.” ResearchGate, 2024, www.researchgate.net/publication/383415195_Heroes_or_Hegemons_The_Celluloid_Empire_of_Rambo_and_Bond_in_America’s_Geopolitical_Narrative .

• Barad, Dilip. “Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR.” Dilip Barad | Teacher Blog, 31 Aug. 2024, blog.dilipbarad.com/2024/08/reimagining-resistance-appropriation-of.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2026.

• Barad, Dilip. “Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR.” ResearchGate, 2024, www.researchgate.net/publication/383603395_Reimagining_Resistance_The_Appropriation_of_Tribal_Heroes_in_Rajamouli’s_RRR .

• Bates, Thomas R. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 36, no. 2, 1975, pp. 351–66. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2708933 . Accessed 26 Aug. 2026.

• Bradshaw, Peter. “Zero Dark Thirty.” The Guardian, 24 Jan. 2013.

• CivilsDaily. “Why Adivasis are resisting the Ken‑Betwa river‑linking project.” CivilsDaily, 18 Aug. 2026.

• Down To Earth. “Here is why Ladakh needs the Sixth Schedule and statehood.” Down To Earth, 26 Mar. 2024.

• Foreign Policy Association. “Thoughts On Zero Dark Thirty.” FPA.org, 10 Feb. 2025.