Postmodern Historiography: Centres, Margins and Peripheries in the Historical Narrative in turn of the millennium Spanish Conquest Films
Creators: name: Foster, Jason
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2025
Subjects: classificationCode: 470107
subject: Media studies

description: The historical narrative of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas has been presented as a victory by the enlightened, civilised European over the savage, primitive indigenous peoples. Postmodern theory, however, challenged objective, universal histories such as this, allowing for the consideration of new historical positions. This thesis, therefore, forms a postmodern historiographic re-negotiation of the Spanish Conquest by exploring three Conquest films; each presented in an individual case study to demonstrate change and continuity in the Hispanic historiographical debate over the turn of the millennium.

This research analyses film and visual imagery to explore how film shapes Spanish and Latin American historiography. In the digitized age of streaming services, historical TV shows and films are increasingly popular and profitable, thus film histories are becoming more widely produced, disseminated and consumed. Despite this, film histories have not been seen as real histories; thus, not subjected to the same historiographical analyses as written histories. 

The Spanish Conquest has been selected because it allows a comparison of colonialism and neocolonialism due to its historical ties with Spain and its geographic proximity to the United States. Importantly, by the very nature of the imposition of colonial narratives, Latin American narratives are heterogenous and multiple, changing across temporal and geographic spaces, including both authoritative and silenced narratives. 

This thesis, therefore, performs a deconstructive analysis of the creation and imposition of narrative but also the rebirth and revisitation of minimalised or previously silenced narratives. It does this through the lens of Latin American postmodernity because this postmodernity serves, post-Conquest and across the next five centuries, as a counter to the externally created and imposed narratives coming from Spain as ‘mother’ country and former imperial master, coming from various points of US hegemonic practice over the eighteenth and nineteenth century and culminating with Hollywood’s contribution to the continuation of the idea of US hegemony. 

This research conducts historiographical analyses of Spanish Conquest films to explore how Latin American and Hispanic identities have been constructed. It then analyses the change and continuity of this narrative constructions. 

The three selected films are Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Salvador Carrasco’s The Other Conquest (1998) and Icíar Bollaín’s Even The Rain (2010). Each film presents three separate and distinct perspectives on the Spanish Conquest, from re-enforcing the traditional Conquest narrative to the outright questioning of it. This research uses selected postmodern theories and thematic, narrative and semiotic analysis methodologies to demonstrate the subjective nature of history and question ideas of universalities. This allows historiographical analyses of different contextual situations of power and authority over time. 

Screen representations of historical characters influence historical interpretations. In the Latin American context, Conquest historiography centres on historical figures such as Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortés. In postmodern terms, however, these historical characters are only ever simulations. This thesis applies postmodern ideas of simulacra and pastiche to deconstruct the historical authority of these figures. This deconstruction allows alternative historical positions to arise, therefore, this research explores how the examination of multiple voices creates continued incredulity towards present and past metanarratives. The modern commodification of the film aesthetic creates more alternative historical and historiographical positions. Several of these will be explored through a textual analysis of elements of each director’s use of mise-en-scène, dialogue, costume, narrative and symbolism to examine how cinematic semiotics shape film historiography. 

Present filmic and academic historiographical debates in Spain and Latin America are framed around re-negotiation of ideas of Latin and Hispanic nationalism and national identity. The changing landscape of film historiography has led to conservative and progressive historians alike re-examining and contesting Hollywood’s construction of the Spanish Conquest. Thus, this research contributes to this by exploring how postmodern historiographical film analysis contests and re-negotiates how cinema and screen histories influence historiographical interpretations.