The Colonizer’s Heart of Darkness: Tracing Conrad Transmedia

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s 1899 text has inspired critically acclaimed remakes across various media, including radio, theatre, cinematic, and computer games. This paper aims to study three settings based on world history and one from the near future. It uses Heart of Darkness and its adaptations to arrive at a trans-historical, cross-cultural (and therefore more universal) understanding of this ‘darkness’ plaguing the coloniser.  The first is Conrad’s original book and the associated Western colonisation of the Belgian Congo. Next, the paper takes up F.F. Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now (1979) and Western expansionism into Vietnam. Moving to the digital medium, we have Ubisoft’s open-world computer game Far Cry 2 (2008) and Western intervention for Blood Diamonds in Central Africa. Lastly, this study includes Yager Development’s third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line (2012), which is set in the context of continued Western intervention in the name of aid.  The paper focuses mainly on the logic of intervention of the (neo) coloniser. Through a comparative study of the traditional text and its cinematic and digital adaptations, the paper will show how, ironically, at the heart of darkness, the desire to intervene positively, which nonetheless always turns negative. It is only by refusing to intervene that the West avoid falling into neo-colonial/neo-imperial tendencies.