Martin Scorsese’s Silence acts as an Apologist for missionaries.
- In Movie Reviews
- 01:00 PM, Feb 22, 2017
- Gaurav Rana
Martin Scorsese’s long awaited movie ‘Silence’ made its debut in theatres recently. The film has been called a ‘Passion Project’ of Scorsese’s since it has been in development for 28 years. Silence is a religious epic drama set in 17th century. It is based on a historical fiction novel of the same name by Japanese author ShūsakuEndō who was a catholic convert.
Silence is a story of two Portuguese Jesuit priests who travel to Japan to find their missing mentor who renounced his faith. The film is set in the 17th century when Japan was under the rule of Tokugawa shogunate which is also called Edo period.
The Edo period saw economic development and feudal system. In 1630s, Tokugawa Ieyasu,the founder of Tokugawa shogunate, introduced the system of Sakoku which means national isolation. With the inception of Sakoku, foreigner traders were prohibited to enter Japan and Japanese were not allowed to leave the country.Before the introduction of Sakoku, foreigner traders were allowed in the country but Ieyasu grew suspicious of Europeans when the propagation of Christianity started. He ordered the demolition of Churches and Christianity was banned in the country.
After the fall of Edo period, Emperor Meji took over and Christianity was legalized. But the Edo period, which lasted for over 260 years, had a major impact on Japan and its society. A proto-national identity was developed. Modern Japan is a secular state, however, Japan follows strict immigration policy and it continues to protect its culture from foreigners. Japan is largely dominated by Shinzo, which is its native religion, and Buddhism.
When you watch the film, it is observed that a narrative is being constructed to portray indigenous people as savages and as if the people were waiting to be rescued by the white European missionaries. The film ‘Silence’ has a scene depicting a priest who says “Our Lord said to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every living creature”. And Japan has been described as “The moment you set foot in that country, you step into high danger” in the movie. When the two priests stopped onto the shores of Japan, they meet with a large group of villagers and start propagating Christianity.
In an interview to The New York Times, Scorsese told that he wanted to be a missionary and strongly believes in Christian values. So, it suggests that he is sympathetic towards missionaries and it reflects in his film. The content of the film gives an impression that it is okay to impose a western religion on an Eastern indigenous society which practices its native religion. Majority of Eastern nations are pagan societies and because of it, the western missionaries have been trying to spread the Gospel message in the East for centuries. Despite of conversion attempts, the number of converts continues to remain small and the pagan cultures are thriving than ever before.
The fundamental problem with ‘Silence’ is that it is oblivious to the fact that Missionaries have been the driving force behind cultural genocide of natives. Recently, the Catholic Church in Rwanda had issued an “apology” for the role in Rwanda genocide. But the government of Rwanda did not accept the apology and called it “profoundly inadequate”. The government has demanded an apology from Vatican. Similarly, during the colonization of America, the Christian European invaders enslaved Native Americans. They were forcibly converted to Christianity and when they rebelled against the conversions, the millions were systematically massacred. Sadly, the bloodshed of Native Americans has largely been forgotten and their history and culture haven been reduced to museums.
The White American and European missionaries have always engaged in deconstructing native cultures and reducing their Pagan religions to cults. In 2016, The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/10/does-this-religious-cult-run-japan.html) published an article in which the author called Shintoism a cult. The Western media has deliberately built a narrative against Pagan cultures and has been an apologist for missionaries. When natives try to expose missionaries and its hidden agenda or to get rid of them, the Western media label the natives as bigots.
The film ‘Silence’ rather acts as an apologist for missionaries. Will Hollywood ever dare to make a movie on the cultural genocide of native people? The answer is simply no. Hopefully, someday there will be a movie about the genocide of indigenous people at the hands of Christian missionaries and these atrocities need to be comprehensively exposed.
Referencees:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/21/africa/rwanda-catholic-church-apology/
http://www.history.com/topics/meiji-restoration/
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