‘I Came Up Here to Build a Bridge’: Capitalism and the Representation of Military Leadership in Zulu (1964)

Abstract

This article will offer an examination of the link between cultural representations of military authority and capitalist ideology through a textual analysis of the British film Zulu (1964) and its narrative depiction of leadership during the Battle of Rorke’s Drift – the most prominent action of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and one which has accrued a certain mythic status in modern cultural history, becoming, for many, a ‘synonym of British heroism. The central aim will be to interpret how this heroism is explained to the film audience and the political implications of the text’s ability to communicate ‘the ideology of leadership’.