In a gripping scene from Ben-Hur (1959), a Jewish prince, Judah of the house of Hur (Charlton Heston), clings to the desk of the Roman tribune, Messala (Stephen Boyd). Messala stands over Judah, unaffected. Soldiers rip Judah away to take him to an unjust punishment, a colonial subject condemned at the hands of a corrupt and ambitious Roman official. Judah looks up into his oppressor's face, praying that Messala lives until he returns to confront him. Messala, a former friend of Judah’s, coldly replies, “Return?” This single word captures the Roman figure's callousness at the violence he perpetuates, as well as his comfortable certainty in the structures that support his power and protect him from Judah's revenge. As an audience, we cheer this revenge and empathize with the just anger at Rome's oppressive power. This scene vividly captures the film's post-colonial sentiment, stirring empathy with the plight of the tyrannized and their yearning for justice. The scene also carries a shadow of the danger of this revenge, as Judah first manifests the hatred that will lead him to participate in the very structures of power and hatred that motivate and sustain Messala.

Judah's anger in this scene demands the sympathy of the audience. We applaud the strong and valiant resolve in his voice, the struggle against the overwhelming power that is represented by a Roman tribune ruining innocent lives, and the anger that sustains Judah in his struggle against this power. More troubling for us as an audience, however, are the ramifications of Judah's struggle on his own character and his own loved ones. His hate sustains him, but it also cuts him off from all that he seeks to protect and preserve. The empathy induced by the film for Judah's struggle against unjust imperial power should be understood in the context of the historical period of decolonization in which the film was made. Behind this post-colonial struggle, however, we can also detect a warning, as Judah's character threatens to become the very thing he sets out to destroy. In this chapter, I argue that William Wyler's Ben-Hur articulates the anti-imperial sentiment of a post-colonial historical period, but also raises questions about how to oppose unjust force without dangerously embracing the violence of exploitative structures of power.