Postcolonial frames in Michael Haneke's Caché

Abstract

This article argues that in Caché, politics, aesthetics and life collapse into one another by setting a dystopic simulacrum from which the spectator becomes emancipated. Caché critiques colonial-racist discourses within the France–Algeria context alongside the society of the spectacle, subverting binary categorisations such as form/content, ethics/aesthetics and diegetic/extradiegetic through staged hyperrealism, self-reflexivity and manipulations. It forces the anaesthetised spectator to confront the postcolonial uncanny in its naked truth. This article presents an original contribution to existing scholarship by linking Caché to the genesis and ongoing legacy of anti-colonial dissent and resistance in the history of Francophone cinema.