History at the end of the world: decolonial revisionism in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok

Abstract

ABSTRACT From 19th-century novels to contemporary computer-animated adventure films, popular media culture provides no shortage of representations that subserve colonialist attitudes and perspectives. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) provides a rare decolonial fantasy, which is especially surprising given that it does so through the veneer of the big-budget superhero film. Registering a deep concern with public memory, the film spotlights and challenges the various uses of public memory in the maintenance of colonial legitimation. In doing so, Thor: Ragnarok offers an incisive and uncompromising indictment of colonization and colonialism, one that ends not with a call for reform but with the end of the world.