Abstract
Abstract The Wachowskis’ and Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas indicates strong potential for an investigation into the advancement of transcultural messages in global cinema because of its conceptual commitment to narrate the story against the backdrop of sexuality, race, gender, and class. By combining critical discourse analysis (Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Power/Knowledge) with literary criticisms of postcolonial works (Hall, Hardt and Negri) and transcultural concepts of culture (Welsch, The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today; Rings, The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema), this paper investigates how far Cloud Atlas promotes transcultural identity constructs. Upon analysis of central themes and prominent characters Cloud Atlas transmits a message that if the aforementioned socio-cultural barriers can be overcome, we can cultivate something akin to a transcultural society. However, linkages to colonial discourse and quintessential cinematic conventions vis-à-vis white individualistic heroism demonstrate that Cloud Atlas’s liberal-humanist worldview is one that can ultimately be branded as compromised by monocultural assumptions of US values and ideals as superior.
Highlights
The Wachowskis’ and Tykwer’s Cloud Atlas indicates strong potential for an investigation into the advancement of transcultural messages in global cinema because of its conceptual commitment to narrate the story against the backdrop of sexuality, race, gender, and class
By combining critical discourse analysis (Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Power/Knowledge) with literary criticisms of postcolonial works (Hall, Hardt and Negri) and transcultural concepts of culture (Welsch, The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today; Rings, The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema), this paper investigates how far Cloud Atlas promotes transcultural identity constructs
Linkages to colonial discourse and quintessential cinematic conventions vis-à-vis white individualistic heroism demonstrate that Cloud Atlas’s liberalhumanist worldview is one that can be branded as compromised by monocultural assumptions of US values and ideals as superior
Summary
In the face of a return to the propagation of monocultural identity constructs in mainstream right-wing media and politics (Torreblanca and Leonard, Ramalingam), cinema has been discussed as a medium that confronts such discourses and critically interrogates nationalistic and racist ideas of Otherness—often encouraging cultural exchange and drawing attention to concepts of shared humanity over difference (Berghahn and Sternberg). Xenophobic, and monocultural perspectives (Belton, Rieder, Geraghty), wider cinema finds itself under relatively less pressure to observe formulaic cliché, deliver a financial profit, and adhere to the demands of studio executives (Elsaesser, King) As a result, such factors on occasion combine to provide a platform for advancing transcultural possibilities and blurring binary discourses of Self and Otherness. Cloud Atlas has been primarily selected for in-depth analysis because of its significant impact as a multimillion-dollar grossing independent feature, which surely allows for relative creative freedom on the part of the directors In this way, it should be comparatively free from the pressures that Hollywood studios place upon filmmakers to perpetuate stereotypical imagery and cultural hierarchies for the purposes of entertainment. It may assist in identifying the potential and limits of independent cinema in breaking with traditional monocultural representations
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