Colonizer's double vision in camp X-Ray

Abstract

Twenty-first century has been endowed with the appearance of a new art form which is the cinematic language. And by the beginning of the twenty-first century cinematic language has thoroughly pervaded the world and became the best way of conveying new artistic messages. In this respect, a film can be demonstrated like a literary work in the lenses of different critical theories. Likewise, one can explore postcolonial perspectives not only in the literary works but also in different films produced lately. Camp X-Ray, directed by Peter Sattler in 2014, is among the films screened after 9/11 attacks dealing with this issue. It revolves around the story of a group of innocent Muslims who have been arrested and detained accused of implicating in the 9/11 attacks at Guantanamo Bay. This film can be examined from the postcolonial perspective which shows the influence of the colonized on the colonizer. In this research, it is tried to show how a colonizer (a female soldier), who wants to bring the colonized under her own control, is herself soaked into the colonized's world. Thus, "double consciousness" or "double vision", which is a way of perceiving the world divided between the colonizer and the colonized as two antagonistic cultures, can be highlighted in this study. In this case, Homi K. Bhabha's theories of "hybridity" and "ambivalence" are applied to show the impact of the colonized on the colonizer.