The critically acclaimed film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is a story of enlightenment on a metaphysical level, chronicling the story of a 6-year-old girl living in Louisiana bayou community south of the levees, as she struggles to find her place in the universe. However, in its most literal interpretation, this film narrates a colonial struggle, as the inhabitants of the “Bathtub” fight to preserve and maintain their cultural identity and home. Beasts of the Southern Wild offers an interesting interpretation on the widely studied relationship between the colonizer and colonized. It is told through the perspective of a 6 year old girl named Hushpuppy; a viewpoint which maintains the brutal honesty, and logical simplicity of a young child, while genuinely blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. As Post-Colonial critical theory would suggest, the colonizers have an incredibly devastating effect on both the cultural identities, and the natural resources native to the “Bathtub,” resulting in jarring alienation on the part of Hushpuppy, her friends and family, as well as an interesting sense of “imperialist nostalgia” felt by the audience.
The film immediately romanticizes the life that Hushpuppy and her ill father lead in the “Bathtub” as Hushpuppy studies and chases various animals around their property, which resembles a decrepit salvage yard. Hushpuppy’s curiosity and passion is contagious and we as an audience become enthralled in her life. She exclaims, “The Bathtub has more holidays than the whole rest of the world.” This declaration not only continues to glamorize the cultural identity of the “Bathtub,” but also suggests a division between the “rest of the world,” and this abandoned bayou community. The dichotomy between the two communities becomes more apparent as Wink, Hushpuppy’s father, declares, “This water gonna kill us here. We gotta do something ’bout this. I ain’t starvin’ to death while them people go grocery shopping up there.” Explicitly pitting the two worlds against one another. The “Bathtub” is both literally and figuratively isolated from Louisiana, America, and in essence the rest of the world. Wink would otherwise be okay with such isolation, content on continuing a basic lifestyle in the Mississippi River Delta. However, the newly erected levee systems (post Hurricane Katrina) have drastically altered the “Bathtub’s” environment threatening all life. As Hushpuppy explains, “the whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece, the entire universe will get busted,” and the outside world, the colonizers, disrupted the unity of the universe, “busting” everything.
This disruption of colonial life reflects post-colonial critical theory as it highlights the destructive tendencies of “the White Man’s Burden;” Western societies belief that it was their duty to impose their culture on inferior colonized people. Furthermore, Wink’s ultimate plot against the “settler colony” illustrates what post-colonist theorist would define as “anti-colonist resistance,” as Wink declares “Hell yeah, we gonna win,” before he leaves Hushpuppy to blow up the closest levee. Despite Hushpuppy’s teacher, Miss Batheshba’s warnings that, “They gonna smoke us out and stick us in a darn shelter,” in reference to, “so much as pissing” on the levee, Hushpuppy ultimately detonates the bomb, firmly believing that it will restore order in the “Bathtub.” Wink’s plan backfires; Miss Batheshba is right; and, the colonizers come in droves physically forcing the inhabitants of the “Bathtub” into refugee camps. The camps are immediately juxtaposed with the previously romanticized world that was Hushpuppy’s home, as the sickly are lined up against a wall waiting for attendance and slimy processed food is slabbed onto Hushpuppy’s plate compared to the fresh barbecue chicken previously served by Wink. Hushpuppy declares, “It didn’t look like a prison, it looked like a fish tank with no water.” This sentiment speaks directly to the issue post-colonial studies attempts to resolve: the notion that it is dominant western cultures’ role to spread their identities; and the effects such imperialism has on native people and their organic cultures. Colonial relationships have devastating effects on indigenous culture, changing the afflicted to strangers in their homeland or fish out of water. Such destruction is further illustrated as we see Hushpuppy clean and showered, in a daycare class in a little blue dress, as a babysitter forces a hug upon her. The babysitter exclaims, “Hushpuppy, that’s not how nice girls act. Say, “I’m sorry ma’am.” Hey! Say it. Say it or you’re going to corner time.” This unwanted hug acts as a microcosm for the issues raised by imperialism; studied through post-colonial criticism: the hug, a nice gesture in theory, is forced upon Hushpuppy, just as Western society and culture is forced on indigenous, colonized people.
However this film separates itself from other post colonial pieces of literature in that it is presented through the perspective of an extremely proud, intelligent, empathetic young girl, resulting in incredible audience investment into the life of the young Hushpuppy. When Hushpuppy ultimately finds peace in the her life, and her role in the universe, we as an audience are not only humbled by her realization, but more so we are envious of her enlightenment. Hushpuppy declares: “When I relax behind my eyes I see everything that made me flying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard it goes away, but when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I’m a little piece of a big, big universe, and that makes things right.” This envy is driven by Western society’s, assumption that our way of life is best. How could we even consider that a malnourished, impoverished, uneducated, even insane, little girl can reach such enlightenment while we continue to search for inner peace in our modern society? It is this sense of what postcolonial critics would call imperialist nostalgia, that we as an audience are left with following the film, and that drives home the point: it is not where you live, rather how you live that matters most.