This blog is part of a thinking activity assigned by Dr. And professor Dilip Barad sir, in the Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. The activity invites us to engage with postcolonial perspectives on popular cinema and to critically examine how films represent issues of power, nationalism, resistance, hegemony, and the struggles of marginalized communities.
Article:1
Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America's Geopolitical Narrative
Introduction: Cinema as an Engine of Statecraft and Ideology
Cinema is rarely a passive medium for simple entertainment; it serves as a potent engine for projecting national ideology, shaping global political mindsets, and rationalizing state power on the international stage. Far beyond its classification as commercial escapism, popular film operates as a central pillar of soft power—the ability to affect others and obtain preferred outcomes through attraction, persuasion, and agenda-setting rather than coercion or military force. In his comprehensive analysis, Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America's Geopolitical Narrative, Dr. Dilip Barad examines how mainstream Hollywood action franchises, specifically Rambo and James Bond, have historically operated as soft-power extensions of Western foreign policy. Utilizing Hollywood’s expansive global distribution apparatus, these cinematic properties did not merely reflect the shifting political tides of their respective eras; they actively constructed narratives, reshaped historical memory, and moralized geopolitical interventions. From the proxy conflicts of the Cold War to the post-Soviet transition, the "War on Drugs," and the modern era of information control, these franchises systematically conditioned global audiences to view the United States and its Western allies as the default guardians of global order, freedom, and democracy.
The Rambo Franchise — Rewriting Military Defeat and Justifying Intervention
The Rambo film series, centered around Sylvester Stallone’s portrayal of disillusioned Vietnam veteran John Rambo, represents one of the most explicit examples of popular cinema reframing military history to align with evolving foreign policy objectives. Through its key installments during the 1980s, the franchise served as an instrument for psychological reconciliation, historical revisionism, and geopolitical moralizing.
The trauma of the Vietnam War left a profound scar on the American collective psyche throughout the 1970s, as the war was widely viewed as a foreign policy disaster marked by moral ambiguity, domestic anti-war protests, and an unprecedented military defeat. However, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) radically altered this cultural memory. The film constructs a revisionist narrative where John Rambo returns to Vietnam on a covert mission to locate American Prisoners of War, converting a historical defeat into an arena for individual valor and moral triumph. The core villainy of the film is divided between foreign enemies and treacherous American bureaucrats who betray the frontline soldier, effectively absolving the foot soldier of systemic war atrocities and framing American military personnel as heroic victims of government incompetence rather than agents of imperial overreach. By depicting Rambo single-handedly defeating foreign forces, the film offered domestic and international viewers a fictionalized sense of psychological closure and moral vindication, preparing the public mindset for an assertive American foreign policy in the late Cold War era.
As the Reagan administration accelerated its anti-communist campaign throughout the late 1980s, U.S. foreign policy focused heavily on supporting anti-Soviet insurgents worldwide through the Reagan Doctrine. Rambo III (1988) directly mirrored this geopolitical imperative by sending its protagonist into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. In the film, Rambo travels to Afghanistan to rescue his former commander and subsequently allies himself with the local Mujahideen fighters battling the Red Army. This narrative directly validated Washington’s real-world covert operations, which funneled weaponry and aid to Afghan rebels. The film establishes a stark moral binary where Soviet forces are depicted as ruthless oppressors targeting civilians, whereas the Mujahideen are framed as noble, freedom-loving tribal warriors. Consequently, Rambo’s intervention frames the United States not as an imperial meddler, but as an indispensable global savior fighting alongside oppressed populations to destroy totalitarian communism.
The James Bond Franchise — Guarding the Western Hegemonic Order
While the character of James Bond is an icon of British popular culture originating from Ian Fleming’s novels, the film adaptation series has consistently aligned with broader Western, Anglo-American, and capitalist geopolitical priorities. Bond operates as the ultimate civilized agent of the state, preserving global equilibrium against ideological and transnational threats across changing political eras.
Released in the final years of the Cold War, The Living Daylights (1987) explicitly intersected with the same geopolitical terrain as Rambo III. The narrative centers on a rogue Soviet general attempting to orchestrate a global conflict for personal enrichment and political gain, leading Bond to Afghanistan where he joins forces with local Mujahideen insurgents to defeat Soviet forces. By placing a British operative in parallel alignment with American foreign policy in Central Asia, the film reinforced a unified Anglo-American narrative that framed Western intelligence apparatuses as essential defenders of international stability against Soviet expansionism.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the traditional ideological enemy of Western cinema began to dissolve, causing Licence to Kill (1989) to mark a decisive shift toward post-Cold War security concerns. The film pivots its focus to a powerful Latin American drug lord who operates with near-sovereign immunity, a plotline that directly paralleled the George H.W. Bush administration's heavy focus on international narcotics cartels and military interventions in Latin America. By portraying Western operatives dismantling vast transnational criminal syndicates that corrupt local governments, the film legitimate Western police and intelligence actions across foreign borders in the name of global security.
As globalization accelerated in the late 1990s, the battleground of geopolitics shifted from physical military dominance to information warfare and media control. In Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), the antagonist is a global media mogul who attempts to manufacture a war between the United Kingdom and China to secure exclusive broadcast rights. The film accurately anticipated modern anxieties regarding disinformation, fake news, and narrative control, while crucially positioning Western intelligence as the sole force capable of preserving objective truth and preventing manufactured geopolitical crises. Through this framing, the narrative subtly argues that Western media and democratic institutions are the rightful stewards of global information flows.
The Four Pillars of Hollywood’s Soft Power Engine
Dr. Dilip Barad’s analysis isolates four distinct structural mechanisms through which popular action cinema translates narrative storytelling into geopolitical influence, forming a self-reinforcing engine of cultural hegemony.
First, ideological framing establishes a cognitive framework through which audiences interpret real-world conflicts. By consistently placing American or Western protagonists at the moral center of every narrative, these films normalize the assumption that Western powers possess an intrinsic right and moral obligation to intervene in global affairs, while non-Western nations and populations are frequently reduced to passive victims awaiting rescue or hostile threats requiring containment.
Second, cultural hegemony operates through Hollywood’s dominance over global theatrical networks, streaming platforms, and home entertainment distribution to seamlessly export Western value systems worldwide. By saturating international media markets, Hollywood normalizes individualistic, capitalist, and pro-Western perspectives, making them appear as the accepted, universal common sense to diverse global audiences.
Third, economic influence creates a financial feedback loop where box-office revenues generated from international distribution reinforce the dominance of major American studios. This financial power allows Hollywood to invest in unrivaled production values, visual effects, and marketing campaigns, effectively crowding out indigenous film industries and maintaining market supremacy.
Fourth, institutional legitimacy reinforces state infrastructure by routinely showcasing the military, intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies as technologically advanced, hyper-competent, and morally justified in their actions. Even when corruption or incompetence is introduced, it is framed as an isolated flaw within an otherwise noble system, building subconscious faith in Western institutional capability and global authority.
The Critique — The Risk of Replicating Hegemonic Storytelling
In the final dimension of his work, Dr. Barad connects the soft-power strategies of Hollywood to contemporary international media debates, engaging directly with critiques raised by global media commentators like Palki Sharma in her Gravitas Plus series. Sharma and other media analysts have frequently argued that emerging economic powers, such as India, should strategically harness their domestic film industries to project soft power, alter global perceptions, and promote their national interests in a manner akin to Hollywood.
While acknowledging the validity of building national soft power, Dr. Barad introduces a critical caveat regarding the wholesale adoption of Hollywood’s playbook. He questions whether other film industries should simply replicate this hegemonic approach, warning that portraying oneself as the default global hero risks reinforcing a rigid, one-sided narrative that marginalizes alternate perspectives. Simply replacing an American or British savior with an Indian or other national equivalent does not disrupt the underlying mechanics of imperial storytelling. Instead, it merely creates a localized version of hegemonic propaganda, reducing complex geopolitical realities into simplistic, binary narratives of national righteousness versus foreign villainy.
Furthermore, when cinema prioritizes state-sponsored soft-power projection, it often erases internal contradictions, domestic struggles, and minority viewpoints in favor of a sanitized image of state strength. Dr. Barad argues that the true opportunity for emerging global cinema lies not in building new cinematic empires that emulate Hollywood's dominant style, but in deconstructing these frameworks. Authentic cultural influence is achieved when film industries provide nuanced, multi-faceted, and inclusive narratives that reflect the authentic complexities of a multipolar world.
Conclusion: Beyond Celluloid Hegemony
Dr. Dilip Barad’s analysis of the Rambo and James Bond franchises exposes how popular action blockbusters have served as vital components of America’s cultural empire. By blending high-octane spectacle with specific ideological agendas, Hollywood transformed cinema into a global soft-power delivery system that successfully reframed military failures, validated covert foreign operations, and normalized Western political and economic dominance across generations.
However, as global media landscapes shift toward multipolarity, the primary challenge for emerging film industries in the Global South is to avoid repeating the mistakes of Hollywood's past. Building an authentic cultural presence on the world stage requires more than constructing new nationalist heroes or replacing one empire's propaganda with another. True cinematic art achieves its highest value when it moves beyond state-centric self-glorification, opting instead to challenge dominant power structures, embrace narrative complexity, and foster a genuinely diverse global dialogue.
Article 2
Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli's RRR
Introduction
In his article "Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli's RRR", Dilip Barad critically analyzes S.S. Rajamouli’s global blockbuster RRR. Barad interrogates how the film appropriates two distinct historical figures—Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem—and transforms their localized, anti-imperialist, and eco-centric resistance into a homogenizing mainstream nationalist spectacle. Historically, Raju mobilized indigenous communities against the British 1882 Madras Forest Act, while Bheem led an armed uprising against the Nizam of Hyderabad, coining the iconic rally cry "Jal, Jangal, Zameen" (Water, Forest, Land) to assert Adivasi sovereignty over their ancestral territories. Barad argues that RRR flattens these nuanced, indigenous struggles for environmental justice and land rights, co-opting them into a hyper-nationalist framework that obscures ongoing state-sponsored displacement and climate degradation.
This blog expands upon Barad's postcolonial critique by examining how mainstream cinema aestheticizes indigenous resistance while stripping it of its radical ecological foundation, linking filmic appropriation to real-world subaltern struggles such as the Ken-Betwa River Link project, the Ladakh climate protests, and the systemic crises in Manipur.
The Aestheticization of Resistance and Eco-Postcolonialism
Postcolonial theory, when intersected with ecocriticism, demands that we look beyond anti-colonial liberation as merely replacing a foreign oppressor with a domestic nation-state. It asks: Who inherits the land, and does the postcolonial state replicate colonial practices of extraction?
In RRR, Komaram Bheem is depicted as a noble savage innocent, wild, and physically formidable, yet politically naive until educated by the upper-caste, elite figure of Raju. Bheem’s historical fight was specifically anchored in protecting his community's ecosystem from state encroachment. By subsuming Bheem’s Jal, Jangal, Zameen under Raju’s hyper-masculine, pan-Indian nationalist crusade, the film performs what Gayatri Spivak terms "epistemic violence." The indigenous hero’s radical environmental consciousness is silenced; his struggle is validated only when translated into the dominant aesthetic and political idiom of mainstream nationalism.
This narrative move is not unique to RRR. Consider James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). While overtly framed as a critique of imperial resource extraction, Avatar centers a "white savior" who leads the indigenous Na'vi to victory. The native people's deep, ecological connection to their land is positioned as passive and helpless until organized by an outsider. Much like RRR, Avatar aestheticizes the spectacle of resistance while reducing subaltern agency to a cinematic backdrop. The actual political demands of indigenous sovereignty control over resources, legal land rights, and autonomy are displaced by romanticized, heroic mythologies.
From Screen to Ground: Subaltern Realities in Modern India
The danger of flattening historical tribal resistance into mere national pride is that it obscures how the postcolonial nation-state often acts as an extractive empire against its own internal margins. As Annie Zaidi observes in Known Turf, displacement is not merely physical relocation; it is the total eradication of a ecosystem, identity, and survival.
The disconnect between cinematic reimagining and contemporary subaltern realities is evident across multiple ongoing struggles:
The Ken-Betwa River Linking Project: Touted as a national development marvel, the project threatens to submerge over 6,000 hectares of forest land in the Panna Tiger Reserve, displacing thousands of tribal families. The state’s appropriation of natural resources mirrors colonial-era land grabs, reducing the Adivasi relation to Jal and Jangal to collateral damage for industrial expansion.
The Ladakh Protests: Led by figures like Sonam Wangchuk, the people of Ladakh have been protesting for Sixth Schedule status to safeguard their fragile Himalayan ecology and tribal culture from unregulated industrialization and corporate exploitation. Here, indigenous climate resistance directly confronts state-driven developmentalism—a dynamic completely absent from mainstream nationalist cinema.
The Manipur Conflict: Beyond ethnic clashes, the unrest in Manipur is deeply tied to land rights, forest preservation laws, and corporate interests seeking mineral and resource extraction in tribal hill areas. The subaltern body continues to be the site where state territoriality and indigenous land sovereignty violently collide.
When films like RRR co-opt heroes of Jal, Jangal, Zameen to celebrate the state, they sanitize the very ideologies that subaltern communities use to resist state-led environmental destruction today.
Broader Implications for Global Postcolonial Thought
In today’s globalized world, the crisis of climate change cannot be separated from postcolonial struggles. The global South bears the brunt of environmental degradation caused by historical colonialism and modern neo-liberal capitalism. Indigenous communities remain the frontline guardians of the planet's remaining biodiversity.
When popular culture rewrites indigenous history to serve nationalist narratives, it performs a double disenfranchisement:
It erases the historical specificity of tribal movements that fought both foreign and domestic oppressors.
It deprives contemporary climate justice movements of historical frameworks that link environmental defense directly to indigenous sovereignty.
Postcolonial critique must therefore remain vigilant against sanitized, state-sanctioned representations of subaltern heroes. Reimagining resistance should not mean neutralizing its radical potential.
Conclusion
Dilip Barad’s critique of RRR serves as a crucial reminder that cinema is a key arena of ideological contestation. By replacing Komaram Bheem’s eco-centric struggle for Jal, Jangal, Zameen with a homogenized nationalist epic, RRR offers a cinematic spectacle that celebrates freedom while ignoring the ongoing colonization of tribal lands and ecosystems. As we face unprecedented global ecological crises, postcolonial thought must center subaltern ecological wisdom. True liberation requires honoring the subaltern not as a sanitized symbol of national pride, but as an active defender of the earth against all forms of extractive tyranny.
Reference:
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, 1971.
“Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America’s Geopolitical Narrative.” ResearchGate, 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383415195_Heroes_or_Hegemons_The_Celluloid_Empire_of_Rambo_and_Bond_in_America's_Geopolitical_Narrative.
Rambo: First Blood Part II. Directed by George P. Cosmatos, TriStar Pictures, 1985.
“Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR.” ResearchGate, 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383603395_Reimagining_Resistance_The_Appropriation_of_Tribal_Heroes_in_Rajamouli's_RRR.
RRR. Directed by S. S. Rajamouli, performances by N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Ajay Devgn, and Alia Bhatt, DVV Entertainment, 2022.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 271–313.
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