Indigènes Sparknotes
Indigènes, or the forgotten heroes: Perhaps, the movie that provides a deeper representation of North Africans in the French context is Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes. The movie explores the experience of soldiers from North Africa and other French colonies in the continent. The story focuses exclusively on a group of North African soldiers who are fighting to liberate France from the German occupation during World War Two, but the nature of their patrimony is excruciatingly ambiguous. The characters’ internal agency and external pressures are exposed to the viewers by strategically moving in and out of the melodramatic mode to achieve a variety of effects. One such effect is the emotional engagement of the audience. Indigènes does not only tell the story of these specific infantrymen, but also stands for all those who served to defend France, even though France was colonizing their countries at that time. What is worth noting in this context is that the African soldiers did not stand against France with her German enemy, which is an
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It is perhaps due to the arbitrariness of the colonial system that used these recruits as cogs in a war that is not theirs in the first place. But even here, the decision to join the army and die for France would puncture their whole existence and future. These soldiers vigorously defended the republic and could live under a stark injustice, bad food and unsuitable winter outfits, as well as being berated as insubordinates (O’Riley 280). Equally important, one has to evaluate the way the French army viewed these soldiers. It would stand to reason by looking at the aftermath of war and the lack of recognition to the African recruits that they simply did not matter to France, whether they died or lived was equally the same, because their existence and visibility is extremely different from a French soldier’s and less
It is perhaps due to the arbitrariness of the colonial system that used these recruits as cogs in a war that is not theirs in the first place. But even here, the decision to join the army and die for France would puncture their whole existence and future. These soldiers vigorously defended the republic and could live under a stark injustice, bad food and unsuitable winter outfits, as well as being berated as insubordinates (O’Riley 280). Equally important, one has to evaluate the way the French army viewed these soldiers. It would stand to reason by looking at the aftermath of war and the lack of recognition to the African recruits that they simply did not matter to France, whether they died or lived was equally the same, because their existence and visibility is extremely different from a French soldier’s and less