CONTRADICTIONS OF AMERICAN EMPIRE: POWER AND RESISTANCE IN TURN-OF-THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE

Abstract

Through examining cinematic and photographic representations of the United States and its racial Others during a period of imperial expansionism, I argue that these images appear as a powerful celebration of racial ideologies under American empire, and yet, when the details within these images are studied closely and placed within cultural and historical contexts, these same images can be seen as an even more powerful criticism against and contradiction of the empire itself. While existing scholarship commonly agrees that visual representations of America and its racial Others at the turn of the twentieth century functioned as powerful ideological tools to disseminate an imperialist agenda for public consumption, critical attention to the visual techniques used to shape these ideological messages is severely limited. Through analyzing representations of the Spanish American War in early films, as well as racial representations of Hawai‘i, the Philippines, and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, this dissertation exposes and explores the various filmmaking and photographic techniques used to smooth over these moments of contradiction and curate the racial meanings under expansionist ideologies. I also argue that the use of these filming and photographic techniques highlights and makes visible the constructed-ness of and the incongruities within imperial ideologies. Studying these moments of contradiction allows us to critically situate the logic employed by imperial ideologies and also to unpack the aspects of racial history that are concealed within the logic and narratives used to justify American expansionism.