Poor Propaganda: French Colonial Films of the 1930s

Abstract

This chapter will argue two key related points. It will suggest, first, that it is a mistake to seek uniform propagandist intent across a range of dissimilar texts and artefacts. There seem to be no sound grounds for assuming that forms as diverse as fiction film, advertising or government tracts are part of a coherent and consistent ideological project, even if we can find considerable evidence of overlap and interpenetration between them. It will argue, second, that it is a mistake to treat something we call ‘colonial discourse’ as a self-enclosed and self-sustaining archive. If we accept, as we surely must, that colonialism was not an accidental extra but an integral component of French national identity in the 1930s and beyond, we must surely conclude that discourses engaging with the colonial are inevitably part of a complex intertextual web that reaches well beyond any narrow framing of the colonial proper.¹ These points may seem all too obvious. However, by looking at some key texts on colonial film from about the last decade I hope to show why they none the less need making.