Decolonizing Adventure: A Cinematic Road to El Dorado

[@ZackPaslay]

Very glad to have all of this new footage for my José María Luna fancam!! Also, this is incredibly well-made and it's truly fantastic! We stan Media Analyst and Historian José!!!!

[@circleman628]

I rewatched Road to El Dorado the other day, and all I could think was "imagine giving indigenous creators the resources to create a project this visually stunning but without all the misinformation and colonizers." Cause I think the movie stands out for most people because it's genuinely just a very pretty movie, and you don't need to ignore the criticisms to appreciate it. But people also don't need to settle for it, or any adventure genre movie. Black Panther is a good example of how even just giving a little creative control to someone who belongs to the group that is the main subjects of their story is enough to make a better product. There's no good reason to keep that from them. Personally I'd love to even see a fictionalized movie or show that's inspired by these real cultures, one that can teach, entertain, and leave the colonizers out of the narrative. Cause if the goal is to "preserve" or "respect" like the explorers say, then like you said they shouldn't have to be a part of it.

[@anafernandes.mp4]

me: waiting for you to talk about the road to el dorado you: talk me: oh no

[@BotheredBoy]

As someone with Colombian heritage, I always found the legend of El Dorado to be supremely weird. Would love to revisit where my Great-grandma came from someday.

[@alicek5178]

Ahhh yeah I love being confronted with the absolute crap so many childhood favorites pulled. Sending this to my mom 😅

[@linamunar8795]

Jajaja te pasaste con el montaje de viaje hasta Guatavita me encantó ❤

[@willardprenfrew4303]

Caelan Conrad sent me! The Road to El Dorado was always one of my favourite animated movies, along with Atlantis: The Lost Empire... uh oh, I'm realizing the very colonialist adventure pattern of these nostalgic movies from my childhood. Thank you for sharing your knowledge about this!

[@leticiadornelas4555]

it's so funny that i'm a native Portuguese speaker and would never guess that "el dorado" would refer to a man who's covered in gold and now it's so much more obvious!!! anyway, really nice closing thoughts, and hugs from brasil!!

[@quasi8180]

Very inspiring and good to keep in mind as someone whose writing in the adventure genre myself. Trying to steer clear of the white savior trope as much as possible

[@cuckmulligan7602]

imagine if a movie started like The Road to El Dorado but slowly transformed into something like Aguirre but still in that '90s Dreamworks animation style

[@Ohnogoblin]

Loved this video, someone posted a link under an FDsignifier tweet asking people for their favourite video essays from smaller channels. Glad to have found your channel !

[@rukbat3]

I like to attempt Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. Last year, one of their prompts was to read an adventure story by a BIPOC author. I had the WORST time trying to come up with books that met the prompt! It seemed like most people ended up defining "adventure story" in a way that included just about any epic fantasy book, but I really wanted to read a more classic Indana Jones-style adventure. I thought that surely there must be at least a few ones out there that deconstructed the genre in a way that would comment on its colonial roots in interesting ways, but I couldn't find anything like I had in mind, and ultimately that is one of the prompts that I didn't manage to get to.

[@remmieesta4447]

The book Piñata by Leopoldo Gout actually scratched a very similar itch for me! It is more of a horror book than an adventure one, but it takes from an trope that is in both genres, moving a haunted indigenous artifact and waking up the spirit within. I highly reccomend!

[@BurnBluefireK]

Hi Vivian Strange recommended your channel and I love your work. I don't know if manga is in your typical purview, but I think you'd find Golden Kamuy very interesting. Homoerotic journey across Hokkaido that avoids many of the typical trappings of the genre you outlined while still probably not being perfect. It's still penned by a Japanese author but with a lot input from ainu cultural groups and research institutions. All the best!

[@katrinnsy]

This is so good, thorough and really well done! Commenting for the algo this deserves so many more views, hope you keep doing this

[@EezhamDemon]

Brilliant video, José - I didn't know you make video essays! There's so much great stuff in here. This video seems like a natural progression of an Indiana Jones series video I did so I've plugged it there, hopefully gets you more views on this because it deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. Keep going if you have the interest to!

[@gavins.7165]

You are so cute. I love your commentary! I learned a lot from this, so I subscribed. Keep up the good work!

[@maggiecastrofolker992]

Amazing video! Not only calling out and correcting annoying media representation but a great source of Latin American history :)

[@finnChitwood]

cue the wild and uproarious standing ovation of me sitting in a library and watching this

[@TheLeftistCooks]

What a spectacular video. Subscribed and rung the bell, very much hope you continue to create.

[@saffodils]

This is so thorough and thoughtful! I can't believe more people aren't talking about this!

[@gonzalo4722]

Desde chico me gustaban las peliculas de Indiana Jones, y ya estaba al tanto del racismo en el genero de aventura (algo mas en la cuarta pelicula dicen que los habitantes del dorado hablaban maya???) Bacan tu video, nuevo suscriptor.

[@pagodrink]

One of my favorite adventures film in recent memories is Lupin the Third, The Fuma Conspiracy. Lupin the Third is franchise about a gentleman thief called Lupin, (the grandson of the literary character, Arsene Lupin) and the movie is about one of Lupin's friends, Goemon Ishikawa, getting married to a woman called Murasaki Suminawa. However, she is kidnapped by the Fuma Clan, who have been looking for her family treasures for centuries. The movie takes place in Japan, and the reason for all of the mystery and traps for the treasure is cause Suminawa family have a long history of being inventors. Murasaki also tags along with the gang to try to find the treasure before the Fuma Clan. So the movie manages to avoid a lot of bad tropes common in adventure movies, even if Lupin is a thief ( Lupin often steals from people who are more villainous, like secret criminal organization or rich people) Lupin the Third isn't perfect, as it's an older franchise, but I highly recommend checking it out if you like adventure. Castle of Cagliostro is a must for any animation fan.

[@tgs9929]

Magic: The Gathering had El Dorado expy in their Mesoamerican / Age of Piracy inspired fantasy world called Orazca. While not the best rep and full of tropes you find in other media, it does feature as one of the heroes Huatil, a native who looks for Orazca partly as its her peoples lost capital.

[@jjjerzak20]

Damn this is so fucking excellent. 10/10 Great Job I'm gonna tell all my friends about this.

[@darkgm90]

Me encantó, saludos desde aquí de Bogotá

[@tattoo6862]

Happy to have found your channel, talking from Brazil here

[@sunnyscript1224]

Commenting to feed the algorithm. 3 minutes in and it already sounds promising.

[@pasca15qc]

Very cool video! As someone who also grew up with the Tintin books I really appreciate you talking about it too

[@bpblitz]

I'd love to see an update or follow up to this with any more interpretations. Final fantasy xiv released an expansion in July that deals with afventurers talked to find the lost "city of gold"

[@mrsticky005]

In defense of The Temple of Doom The BEST Indiana Jones movie: The 'gross" food that the indigenous are eating are presented in two extremes. The extremely poor in the Indian village and the extremely wealthy in the palace where the Temple of Doom is hidden. The food is only "gross' from a matter of an outsiders perspective such as that of Willie Scott but the more seasoned adventurer Indiana Jones tolerates because as he points out the village is poor and even then they share what little they have. On the other hand the feast at the palace is with the Indian royalty and British eating rather extravagant and weird foods. While the poor are eating "gross" food in order to even survive the rich are eating "gross" food for the sheer spectacle of it. There is a bit of irony there. The movie shows the two extremes as a means of compare and contrast. I am not here to say the movie is above criticism because it's not nor can I speak to what offends other people but it's a favorite movie of mine because it is fun but also because it explores themes of friendship, courage, and compassion as well the doom in which greed inevitably leads to. I also suspect that the British in the movie were secretly involved with the Thugee cult and the child slave labor.

[@lenawalters1866]

I want to see that museum of gold the art in it looks so amazing and gorgeous! The work is so intricate and delicate.

[@radioban]

Very good video but I can't get over you typing the El Dorado director's name as Bilbo and not Bibo

[@hugo.20]

comment !

[@danatrick4868]

Speaking of El Dorado in Media, the Skypiea arc in the manga/anime One Piece does a really interesting path concerning having fun adventures while also criticizing colonialism with the Sky people/Skypians and the Shandia people in two stories. (WARNING; REAL LONG!!!) In the story, the "El Dorado" city and the gold it has are located on the island of the Shandia who sworn themselves to protect the city from explorers and pirates, not for the gold but for a stone block called a Poneglyph that contains information (in a long-lost language only a few can read in) concerning a history long forgotten (or erased) before the creation of the World Government. The Shandians themselves do not care for the gold but they frequently ring the golden bell in the city to tell to their ancestors that they're still here living--this detail is important, remember. However, one day the land mysteriously was shoot up into the sky and the island was immediately invaded by the Sky people--who declared the Shandian's land scared because of its earth-soil (which they are called vearth and provides essential goods that the cloud-lands are barely able to provide) and that no one should live on it. They too, do not care for the gold--they only care for the land. For 400 years, the two groups have been fighting over the land with the Shandians fighting to return home and ring the golden bell and the Sky people fighting for religious/essential goods reasons. Two years before the Straw Hat crew arrived, the leader of the Sky people who is referred to Kami/god after having a failed peace conference with the Shandians finally realized that his forbearers and his people were the the bad guys for driving the Shandians from their homes; however, before he could do anything, he was overthrown by a dude name Enel who immediately rules Skypiea as a dictator and steals all the gold from the city to build this giant ship that would destroy Skypiea and all who live in it. When the Straw Hat crew arrives, the Shandians began their final attack on the Kami's forces for their land and Enel starts his destruction of Skypiea and the Shandian's land, and though some members of the crew and the Shandians initially fight each other due to misinformation/misunderstanding, they immediately fight together against Enel. Luffy defeats Enel but only the Shandian's land was the only thing that survived the onslaught. So, after treating the wounded, both the Shandians and the Sky people put down their arms and celebrated being alive on land. The destruction of their homes by Enel I believe forced the Sky people to understand the harm they did the Shandians, which might helped make amends for the two groups. The only two groups only cared about the gold was Enel's group and the Straw Hat Crew--but the gold itself was only a second priority to them as they were more concerned in exploring Sky Island and later ringing the golden bell. They only stole the gold because they were pirates and they're honest about being criminals, but before they left, the Shandians wanted to give the Crew a huge amount of gold that was greater than the gold they stole. I've mentioned the golden bell a couple of times and I have to explain its signficance. Before they got to the Sky island, the crew reads a fairytale that mentions a city of gold but the person who said that was refered to a liar--Noland the liar. Then they meet the descendant of Noland who tells them that the story was true and had made his family a laughing stock for generations so once he found the island suspected to be part of the Shandian land, he spent his life diving for artifacts. Then later in the arc, we dive into a flashback with Noland and the leader of the Shandians, Kalgura. We find out that Noland was an explorer with a huge background in botanical knowledge who lands on the Shandian's island while they were experiencing a devasting plague and was about to do a human sacrifice to appease their gods' anger only for the giant snake that the girl was being sacrificed to to be killed by Noland. The Shandians capture him and were about to sacrifice him and his crew along with the girl so Noland bargains with them saying that he'll be able to stop the plague as his home country had already experienced the same plague and had already developed the cure from a certain tree. Noland finds the tree but is injured by another fallen tree on the way and is sneered by Kalgura. Noland pleas with him until Kalgura relents due to the desperation and hope. Noland and his crew stop the plague and they and the Shandians get along with each other. As thanks, they show the crew the city of gold and tell them to take the gold as thanks. However, some time later, the Shandians suddenly turn cold and hostile towards Noland's crew when they discovered that they had cut down a tree grove sacred to the Shandians. When Noland and his crew learned the reason for the Shandian's hostility, they explain that the trees were already dead and were the cause of the plague so they had to chop the grove down to prevent it from harming the Shanians more. Then Noland's crew with the understanding that though with good intentions, they had harmed and insulted the Shanians really bad. However, when the Shandians learn of this, they immediately ring the golden bell and Kalgura runs after the departing ship screaming to Noland that he will ring the bell to let his friend know that he is still here. Unfortunately, when Noland tries to return to Shandians with the king of his country, it has been already gone to the sky with Kalgura already killed in battle with the Sky people. Noland is killed and his story is retold as a fairytale ironically. The main aspect that I really like in this flashback is that Noland and his crew doesn't look down on the Shandians and their culture. They don't impose their culture on them and don't see their ignorance of some medical information as a sign of inferiority. They leave the gold once they learned that they violated an important site in Shandian culture. Plus, when the two characters were dying, their last moments were spent caring for each other, and when Noland saw his friend's home disappeared he was concerned with his friend and his people. As stated before, the golden bell is a message to distant people to let them know that they are still here. So, when Luffy defeats Enel and rings the golden bell, he fulfils two promises--the promise between descendants and ancestors and the promise between close friends. Additionally, during the battle of Skypiea with the Straw Hats, the Shandians, and the Enel's forces, es--the newest member of the crew, Robin who is an archelogist who is able to read the Poneglyph, is calmly studying a bunch of ruins when she is attacked by one of Enel's soldiers who doesn't care about destroying the ruins if it means winning. Robin then risks her life trying to make the soldier move away from the ruins. Furthermore, when the crew is running away with the stolen gold, Robin doesn't take any artifacts from the city (besides the gold) as she is just fine with the notes she's made on the journey and the information she got from the Poneglyph. This aspect shows the importance of preserving history and respecting the people. In the end, this arc is basically "Perhaps the real El Dorado is the friends we'd made along the way."

[@Good_Praxis]

Reaching towards the end of the binge ordained by the f the algorithm crew, I feel my creative capabilities to relate my comment to the video dwindling. Thank you for putting in the work, may the eldritch entity we call the algorithm treat you kinder forthcoming

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Really glad YT actually recommended me someone to fill my Lindsey Ellis-shaped hole. I got about a minute into the Walt video & subbed & paged back to go thru the older work before hitting the most recent one, & it's all been impressive so far.

[@quasi8180]

My research what little i did states el dorado if it were real would most likely be in Bogota Columbia could this be right? And through this research i found out about the muisca people i never wouldve known otherwise its a shame there isnt more information

[@turquoisepink8033]

Informative and interesting video, agree with all of it! According to the director of Lost City of Z it was supposed to be about the white racism of past archeologists. Obviously that didn't come across in the film. “I felt that [white racism] was not only subtext but text - that the way to do a revisionist ‘white man in the jungle’ movie was to hit that directly and say in a broad sense, ‘mea culpa,’ because the white Europeans screwed up South America big time. They brought disease to the indigenous people [there], killing off a huge portion of the Indian population.” (quote from director).

[@turquoisepink8033]

I watched Crystal Skull to get a bit more context to the graveyard fight with the Nazca warriors, and I couldn't believe how awful it was. They could have had a cool fighting scene but nobody ends up being killed. Indie could have spoken to them in Nazca language and explained that they were not grave robbing.

[@tehlime]

Commenting to feed the algorithm - this is a fantastic video essay, you deserve more views!

[@carloszelaya3758]

you deserve a lot more views. holy crap.

[@Mortimayo]

This is so incredible and thorough! Love it

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

11/10 cat reveal

[@CookieMonster1390]

So good!! Thank you for this deep dive 👍

[@ggbtvstb]

Obsessed! What an interesting and well researched video~!

[@gneiss9620]

This was amazing. I learned a lot. Thank you!

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Good stuff. I eagerly await El Dorado: Part Chel.

[@ethanuyeda7352]

Wow. This is an incredible video.

[@johnnzboy]

Excellent, very informative and enjoyable.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Harrison Ford must've withered in shame the moment JML preserved his line delivery there.

[@Furore2323]

Fantastic!

[@SingingSealRiana]

A great take on the topic. I have a point of worry when it comes to this discussion though. The insistance for having people of the culture having to be the ones who tell the story and only from an insider perspective is understandable in its intention, but I see the danger of a call for segregation in it. The claim only people of a culture could ever understand and do its people justice kinda devalues empathy and the intent of getting across, that we are all just people and equal in the end. That despite of all differences, there will always be more that we share and that is the truely importent lesson to learn. If we settle for that belive, that everyone only is allowed to talk about their own culture and in incapable of respecting someone even slightly different in upbringing or inheritance we end up discuraging exchange that is sorely needed and encourage belives about how inherintly different and incapable or interacting we are making it easy to asign value to sameness and turning everyone else into an "other" or potentialy less value. Why shoul we bring up empathy for someone we are told we can not possably understand either way? Empathy is a knowlage and training based skill, only with exposior and discoverying commenalities can we learn sympathy for someone who we at first percive as different and media that does not allow for interracial realtionships of any kind under the claim it is always exploitation kills that. I absolutly agree that there should be way more media internationaly available created by all sorts of people and minorities and in case of poc without imigrational history majorities should be able to speak for themselfs, but we should be careful where we draw the line. The youtube channel "the take" hs a lot of vids going into that direction with the moral, that all and any interaction between caucasian and people of color is racist . . . which in itself is increadably racist and counterproductiv. Having a white character offering medical care is not a white savior story, unless it is framed that way. There is no exploitation in an equal exchange, nothing inherintly fetishising in an interracial relationship and nothing wrong with falling in love with another culture. It should always be informed and respectful, but both are only possible through honest exchange. Someone who knowes someone from afganistan is way more sympathetic towords those fleeing the voilance there. Someone who knows native american people is less likely to by into stupid savage stereotyps. While we absolutly need black creators publishing black art, gay people writing gay stories, people who really know what they are talking about getting listened to, we also need stories about people learning to understand eachother and coexist. How those stories are told often really is not as good as it should be, the discussion of such could be more nuanced and explore how to improve those, instead of demonising the concept in generell and saying it is bad no matter what! Do your research, speak with the people you are writing about, treat them with respect but also do not put them onto a pedestral. Combine what makes the narrative appealing to you with the real issues . . . I did read books like those as a child, they are out there! Cultural appropriation is a double edged sword as a concept for there is nothing static about culture, it literaly lives from being shared and always did and always will be changing with the circumstances surrounding it. You can not steal it, the only thing that can truely harm it is forbidding it, destroying everything relevant to it and killing its people . . .

[@anajulia-mi1bf]

your channel is a gift!!

[@erikthepirate8068]

I thought El Dorado was the city of Gold.