From Green Book to The Upside: The Identity Contradictions of the Colonizing Subjects

Abstract

The Green Book and the American version of The Upside both tell the story of a pair of sincere friendships between two individuals from different classes and races. The development of the two friendships and the conflicts that arise in this process reveal the inner contradictions of the colonizing subjects. This paper will use Homi Bhabha’s theory of binary opposition, the other and mimicry and Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power to analyze the two protagonists as the colonizing subjects in the two films, their cognitive and attitudinal changes that occurred after their first met the highly mimetic colonized, and their transformation into the “other” within the “other” as the plot develops and with the help of the two “magical blacks” companions. At the same time, their self-contradictory discourse and the confusion of their own identity recognition make the power relationship between the two pairs of protagonists change and the boundary between superior and subordinate becomes blurred, which ultimately breaks the employment relationship and forms their close friendships.