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Border War Film Analysis

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The documentary, Border War, produced by Citizen United, documents different people’s narrative on illegal immigration, specifically from Mexico. Although this film primarily focuses on illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, it articulates a dominant and single hegemonic narrative about illegal immigration as a whole. It tells a single common story through a bias lens of the effects of illegal immigration. By being selective with their evidence and editing, this film eliminates and excludes many variables that could be crucial in understanding illegal immigration. In this film, the people selected to be interviewed and documented, for the most part, had negative thoughts and opinions about illegal immigration. Most of the film contains interviews of white males, ranging from the border patrols to congressmen and political officials. These selected few interviewees were all against illegal immigration, and …show more content…

This film keeps secrets, which are, “known and then not told” (Eisenstein 38). This means that there are facts that are excluded solely to target and criminalize illegal immigrants. By keeping these secrets and leaving out information or evidence from the illegal immigrants, it creates misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Just like what Chimamanda Adiche’s Ted Talk on the “Danger of the Single Story,” the single story also known as the hegemonic narrative serves the people in power, which in this case is those in the film that are against illegal immigration (Adiche Ted Talk). The illegal immigrants are unable to deliver their stories because they do not have the power too. In contrast, the border patrols, congressmen, and women that were attacked by illegal immigrants, all of these people had the power to discuss and talk about their views and experience of illegal

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