Robinson Crusoe And The Colonial Context

Robinson Crusoe and the colonial context

To understand the concept of the novel as an allegory of British colonialism, it is useful Many characteristics of the colonial context. These characteristics are related to spatiality, religion, economy and psychology of relationships. The new space not only expands the possession of a new territory, but also that drives entrepreneurship and can produce a very particular type of self-reflection and that is not easy to achieve in "civilized" society (considering this qualifying indirect discriminatory from a perspective from a perspective colonialist superiority). At the religious level, in the novel there is a awakening of the need for divine support, it is a spiritual awake Faith to non-European (1). This is how Crusoe is the founder of a new kingdom that he governs with absolutism and that claims in the name of Christianity and England (Edward Said Cit. In Mcinelly 2). In the film, the Robinson de Buñuel, although this pattern of religious dominance follows at the political-social level, internally presents doubts of the usefulness of religion in that environment, such as when it says that the words of the Bible lack meaning, that the world is a scum, and that "I myself lack purpose" (Buñuel Robinson Crusoe 41:59). In the economic aspect, Mcinelly argues that the novel is a promotion of trade expansion, derived from the advantages of exploiting distant lands based on the good relationship between conquerors and indigenous peoples, from the rescue of Crusoe and the subsequent return to the island «Fulfill Defoe’s Colonial Vision by Connecting The Island to England and the Commercial World Through Trade» (1, 13).

Buñuel’s film, although this part of the story does not cover, addresses the issue of industrial entrepreneurship to produce practical goods and that relates to its individualism. At the level of psychology and social relations, both the novel and the film show an individuality of Crusoe marked by the eagerness of domain, since one of the first things that Crusoe teaches his servant Friday to say is "master", or " I love », telling him that this was the name by which he should go to him (Defoe 174; Buñuel Robinson Crusoe 56:57). These characteristics of British colonialism that are reflected in the novel are put into practice in a process driven by the individuality of Crusoe and his inheritance of an expansionist geopolitical agenda.

Individuality is a concept that is present in the Defoe novel and in the Buñuel movie as an experience that is gradually defined in terms of domain, either about nature or others. In the trajectory of Crusoe’s colonialist experience, at first, he dominates himself and then can master his own destiny. This is the preparation and methodology that allows you to dominate others since having dominion over others a power is acquired where the economic contingencies of life are also dominated (Mcinelly 6). This is how Crusoe is strengthening its domain, and this is also accompanied by its sense of personal importance, since in the most authentic colonial way, it is autonompable with several high positions of authority such as "Lord of the Whole Manor," "King Or EMPEROR OVER THE WHOLE COUNTRY WHICH I HAD POSSSION "(Defoe 109)," Master "(174)," Generalissimo "(224)" Government "(225), and many other prestigious designations of political, economic and military power than some way or another are also collected in the film version.

In conclusion, it can be said that Robinson Crusoe de Buñuel helps appreciate the subjective side of the paranoid product of the adventurer’s loneliness. This vision can be expanded thanks to Brett Mcinelly’s essay, to understand Crusoe’s novel and actions as an extended allegory of British colonialism’s ideas. And as a whole, crossing information from the novel, the film and the essay, a richer vision is configured, where you can see how with the engine of individualism a microcosm of something very inherent to the human condition can be activated, such as the Need to overcome the lack of social interaction, and also, of a microcosm where the British colonial expansion agenda is imposed. All this contributes to having an experience of greater enjoyment and the corresponding greater understanding of a novel that for centuries remains one of the most notable of British fiction.

Buñuel confirms that although there are dreams and hallucinations in the film, it is not a "Robinson‘ A la Buñuel "" since "in general, I get tuned to the main facts of the book" (Buñuel Cit. In Pérez Turrent and Colina 73) and managing to make an adventure movie. But while at the superficial level Robinson Crusoe is a very suitable adventure story for Hollywood’s commercial cinema, Buñuel also knew how to put his cherry in the dessert. Without moving away from the spirit and style of Defoe, he talks in some way with the original and offers his own vision of history, his own visions of the world and society, or as he would like him to even give him a turn of multicultural hope. This Crusoe of Buñuel, which is a symbol of an essentially bourgeois environment and beliefs of the time, initially acts in a totally exploiting, cruel and inhuman way towards Friday, an indigenous, a socially inferior "other". But later he understands that trust and camaraderie are essential for the survival of a man without distinction of races or colors (Edwards 9). Buñuel says that, although at first his Robinson does not trust the "other" of the "savage", "imbued with his superiority, but in the end they reach the great human fraternity … they feel proud again of being men! I hope this intention is noticed »(Buñuel Cit. In Bazin and Doniol – Valcroze).

In summary, it is an adaptation where the originality of its staging lies not in a visual expression of the novel history, but in the virtue of making films taking the basic literary text and making a attentive rereading and a creative interpretation for generate intelligent rewriting. According to Sánchez Noriega, creative geniuses such as Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel «do not resort to literary texts for the inability to create their own, but are creators who use cinema as a means of expression and drink in the sources of literature by the place that this occupies in the history of culture »(66). In its adaptation work there is a recognition of the original author genius and although it is modified or transformed in the final product there is a respect towards the original style of the text. This style loyalty is what Robinson Crusoe de Buñuel has, and that demonstrates a search to "find the cinematographic equivalent of literary writing, which is where the objective of any approach by cinema to a literary text" would have to file a literary text " (Pérez Bowie Loc. 362). Or as Bazin says in his defense of adaptation, that "impure cinema was not the cinema that vampired the other arts, but the one that raised a dialogue with them", that as well as "the word translation by word does not serve anything , and that the translation too free seems condemnable », the dialogue that Buñuel establishes with Defoe through the intertextual time has the seal of the good film adaptation that restores" the essentials of the letter and the spirit "(116) of the original Robinson. But, in addition, it has the Buñueliana quality firm on a trip that begins in the literature and that is expressed in a cinematographic palimpsest that shows that the important thing beyond the origin of things is where we are going to take them.