Colonial Savage Fantasies: from Skull Island to Deep Space

This essay explores how colonial and racial patterns have shaped the cinematic imagination, especially in science fiction and fantasy. Beginning with a reflection on Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005), it examines how modern films reproduce imperial myths—portraying so-called “savages,” alien civilizations, and futuristic worlds through narratives that normalize domination. From Prometheus and Star Wars to Independence Day, E.T., and Contact, these works often present technologically advanced yet irrational beings whose only function is to threaten humanity and justify conquest. Behind this visual storytelling lies an epistemological system—the Colonial Cosmology—rooted in Hobbesian fear, Darwinian hierarchy, and state-backed mythologies of progress. Agencies like NASA play a central role in this regime, not only controlling what is seen and known, but cultivating belief in cosmic frontiers while silencing other cosmologies. The essay contrasts this narrative machinery with the radical critiques of Kandiaronk, the 17th-century Wendat philosopher, who dismantled Christian doctrines of sin, hierarchy, and coercion in dialogues with Baron de Lahontan. His vision of autonomy, reciprocity, and freedom without domination reveals what is systematically excluded from mainstream cinema. By recovering these suppressed perspectives, the essay calls for a renewed clarity about what cinematic worlds teach us to desire, what they command us to fear, and what visions of humanity and relation they refuse to imagine.

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