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Civic Imagination

Sandokan

A man-eating tiger and a fierce looking man face each other. As the tension mounts, a young blonde woman rides in on a horse. Frightened by the sight of a feline beast, her horse rears. The young woman falls off landing right in between the man and the tiger. Compelled by the heightened urgency of the situation, the man draws his dagger as he and the tiger run towards each other, passing each other as they leap into the air. As they land, the tiger collapses and the young woman breathes a sigh of relief. The warrior, who is none other than the legendary Sandokan, killed the tiger in mid-air. Before he escapes into the forest, Sandokan addresses arriving British soldiers and the young woman to proclaim: “I am Sandokan, a prince among my people. I turned pirate to take back from the English what they had taken from me.” He then turns and disappears avoiding capture, thus, ending of a key scene from the Sandokan Italian RAI TV serial, based on Emilio Salgari’s novel from 1896.

The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”

Though Sandokan was a bestseller when it was first published in 1896, the story continues to be popular and has been adapted into an animated film, a theater production and the already mentioned TV series. Analyzing this enduring popularity, Vittorio Frigerio (2008, 42) notes Sandokan’s popularity far exceeds the popularity of the book’s author: “Indeed, a search of the name "Emilio Salgari" on Google gives 98,900 results, whereas...if you try to "Sandokan", the figure indicates is 902,000.” Many of these hits include references to Kabir Bedi’s rendition of this fictional hero.

After beginning his career as a model and stage actor in Bombay, India, Bedi rose to international fame after Sandokan. Thinking back on that moment in his career, Bedi observes Sandokan “opened the door to the world” for him. The metaphor is, in fact, a literal description. After Sandokan, Bedi went on pursue an acting career outside India that included a role in the Bold and Beautiful (1987-) soap opera and a villain role in the James Bond film Octopussy (1983). Though Sandokan was only one of his many roles, Kabir Bedi’s name became synonymous with this role for many Czechs and other Europeans for decades to come.

Contributed by Sangita Shresthova

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Contents of this tag:
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6. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
8. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
9. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
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28. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
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This page references:

Sandokan, The Tiger of Malaysia