Soft Power of Hollywood: Colonization of Mediascapes and Ideoscapes in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Cinema, as a product of human-machine entanglemententanglement, represents a powerful medium that has generated insightful psycho-social, cultural, and globalglobal transformations. These human-made narratives, mediated through the technological apparatus of cinema, have reshaped perceptions, influenced ideologies, and contributed to the reconfiguration of societal and cultural landscapes in unprecedented ways. Through its capacity to simulate and disseminate powerful worldviews, cinema plays a critical role in the production of knowledge and the shaping of global consciousness. In The Reluctant FundamentalistHamidThe Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), Mohsin HamidHamid explores the far-reaching influence of Hollywood’s soft power in shaping global ideologies and perceptions, particularly through the lens of cinema. This chapter employs Arjun AppaduraiAppadurai’s concepts of ‘mediascapes’ and ‘ideoscapes’ as its theoretical framework to analyse how Hollywood’s cultural hegemony operates as a form of neocolonialism, colonizing the minds of individuals from the Global South. By critically analysing the mediascapes and ideoscapes of the main protagonist (Changez), the chapter investigates the entanglements between media technologies and human agency, illustrating how Hollywood’s seductive charm constructs idealized, simulacral visions of the American way of life. These visions reshape the ideoscapes of nonwestern human beings, compelling them to internalize distorted, utopian images of the West. By analysing these dynamics, the chapter highlights how characters become ‘unconscious cyborgs’ (Short 2005), whose worldviews are mediated through Hollywood’s ideological apparatus. This section of the book argues that cinema technology perpetuates a form of mental colonization, reinforcing neocolonialneocolonial power structures and sustaining Western dominance across socio-political spheres. The diffractive analysis of The Reluctant FundamentalistHamidThe Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a critical commentary on the ideological colonization facilitated by Hollywood, revealing the complex intersections of media, power, and global inequality.