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Representations of indigenous people in film
Essay on native american literature
Native american literature
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Visual sovereignty and survivance in Atanarjuat and Smoke Signals are used to challenge the stereotype of “the Imaginary Indian”, yet redfacing is still a common mechanism used in Native American films that catalyzes this trope. Redfacing refers to the beginning of racist Native American stereotypes and drawings. In the case of the film industry, it also describes the bias the white producers, directors, and actors have against hiring real Native Americans to play Native American roles. Because of redfacing, there was an inaccurate display on film of how Native Americans looked in the past, and throughout the years the stereotype has gotten even more demeaning. Redfacing is disrespectful to Native American cultures as they are being misrepresented and Americans are given a false notion about the true sacredness and value behind the Native Americans’ lives. Thankfully, the method of redfacing had not been used in both Atanarjuat and Smoke Signals. Atanarjuat challenges these stereotypes by having an all Inuit cast and filmmaker and the writing, directing, and acting entirely in Inuktitut. Since historical accuracy …show more content…
Even recently, controversial films have been released depicting Native Americans as fake or unrealistic to actual occurrences. The film industry needs to understand that their methods are demoralizing an entire community or culture of people, and they must be fully aware of the history before producing a Native American film. Visual sovereignty and survivance are some of the most important practices that would help films stay within the limits and not cross any lines by targeting Native American people and their culture. It is crucial for Hollywood cinema to continue making films that challenge the previous “Imaginary Indian” topic and tell a story that reveals the truth about Native American
The film “Smoke Signals” tells the tale of how two boys travels to Arizona in order to retrieve one of their father’s ashes. During this journey there are several flashbacks to the boy’s, and father’s, lives. During one of the father’s, Arnold, flashbacks he asks his neighbor what was the worst thing that they had ever done, after their reply he vaguely states that he “broke three hearts, too” (Eyre 1998). At first I saw this to be a plain and simple explanation, breaking somebody’s heart is an awful thing to do to a person. As I looked into who’s hearts he broke, I noticed that Arnold broke four hearts not three. The first three people that I instantly thought of when Arnold stated this quote was: Thomas, Victor, and Arnold’s wife. But, I also think that Arnold broke his own heart along with the other three. Overall, I believe that Arnold acknowledged that he broke Thomas, Victor, and his wife’s heart, but he didn’t realize that in the process he also broke his own heart.
Native American Literature & Film 22 April 2014 Social Injustice in Roundhouse Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation.
Lliu, K., and H. Zhang. "Self- and Counter-Representations of Native Americans: Stereotypical Images of and New Images by Native Americans in Popular Media." Ebscohost. University of Arkansas, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014
These stories have a continued overlapping influence in American Fiction and have remained a part of the American imagination; causing Americans to not trust Native Americans and treat them as they were not human just like African Americans. In conclusion to all these articles, Mary Rowlandson and John Smith set the perception for Native Americans due to their Captivity Narratives.
The film Smoke Signals, screen written by Sherman Alexie, examines the small, ordinary Native American life of a boy that lives on the Coeur d’Alene Indian reservation with family problems. The story is set in 1998 but also has flashbacks throughout the lives of Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor Joseph. Both Victor and Thomas must go on a trip to take care of Victor’s father’s business since he has passed away. Victor and Thomas both must be saved from situations throughout the film. In the film, the theme of salvation preserves both Victor and Thomas from death and conserve Victor from living a life of hatred toward his father and others around him, which allows him to understand why his life is filled with pain due to his father’s actions.
As a film made by Inuit people and for the Inuit community, Atanarjuat provides the audience with a privileged look into the Northern society. Throughout the film, many viewers are exposed to elements of Inuit culture which are unfamiliar. The film’s director, Zacharias Kunuk, faces a paradox because he wants viewers to feel like insiders of Inuit culture, yet the viewers cannot truly understand the cultural traditions that are represented in the film. The majority of the viewers have never lived in an Inuit community and have very little sense of the ideologies that persist in Inuit society. Because Atanarjuat does not aim to be an educational film, it does not explain itself. There are many moments throughout the film which cannot properly be understood by non-Inuit viewers, and, despite his goal of inclusion, Kunuk does not offer any explanation to ease the audience into the culture. In analyzing the film, non-Inuit critics are presented with the challenge of describing First Nations art while being aware of the inherent power imbalances in doing so. Because Atanarjuat acts as a counter reading to the popular myth of the Inuit, the film portrays the Inuit people as they perceive themselves rather than as the larger Canadian society would portray them. This shift away from the centre of society, looking to an underrepresented group, is an example of decentering. Although Kunuk establishes a connection between the Inuit characters in the film and the non-Inuit viewers, he also provides many moments of intentional inaccessibility, reminding the viewers that in this instance, the Inuit are privy to more information than the non-Inuit audience.
Stereotypes dictate a certain group in either a good or bad way, however more than not they give others a false interpretation of a group. They focus on one factor a certain group has and emphasize it drastically to the point that any other aspect of that group becomes lost. Media is one of the largest factors to but on blame for the misinterpretation of groups in society. In Ten Little Indians, there are many stereotypes of Native Americans in the short story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”. The story as a whole brings about stereotypes of how a Native American in general lives and what activities they partake in. By doing so the author, Alexie Sherman, shows that although stereotypes maybe true in certain situations, that stereotype is only
Jacquelyin Kilpatrick , Celluloid Indians. Native Americans and Film. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999
It appears the caricature of Native Americans remains the same as first seen from the first settler’s eyes: savage-like people. Their culture and identity has become marginalized by popular culture. This is most evident in mainstream media. There exists a dearth of Native American presence in the mainstream media. There is a lack of Native American characters in different media mediums.
They brought real Natives to play the Natives on the big screen and eventually movies were created by Natives themselves. Around the same time was the Hippie movement; many people wanted to be like the Natives they saw in the films even though it was not an accurate depiction of the Natives. They liked the 'positive stereotypes' of the Natives in the movies, the family unity and their strength as warriors. In the 1960's the American Indian Movement (AIM) also began and in 1973 The genocide at Wounded Knee occurred. Jim Jarmusch says “That is a genocide that occurred and the [American] culture wanted to perpetrate the idea that [the natives] these people are now mythological, you know, they don’t even really exist, they’re like dinosaurs.” This shows just how much Americans wanted to belittle the Natives, and despite succeeding for a number of years, the New Age of Cinema commenced and movies like Smoke Signals began what some would look at as a Renaissance. The Renaissance explained in Reel Injun discusses the rebirth of the Native American in the Hollywood films, and how the negative stereotypes went away with time. Reel Injun also makes a point to explain how it impacted not only the films but Americans who watched them, and ultimately America as a
The evolution of film technology, has given anthropologists the ability to employ films to present ethnographic data. Although this privilege has contributed immensely to the collection of anthropological knowledge we have today, it has increased the issues with regards to misinterpretation. Both films expose the fact that it is common for an untrained individual to misinterpret the epistemological assumptions made by the films’ authors and that, frequently, a sense of cultural superiority can form. In many cases, anthropological films may authorize uncertainties with regards to the other. Additionally, they may, unintentionally, confirm negative stereotypes or expectations that other media has implanted into the minds of the untrained student. Because of the presence of an incongruity between the filmmaker and the audience, studying the factors that contribute to the contradictions would be advantageous.
Smoke Signals is a movie that was filmed in several locations including the Couer d’Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho. Although the opening scene is set in 1976, the rest of the movie is fast forwarded to 1998. It is listed as a drama film / comedy, centers around life on an Indian reservation, and is rated PG. The film is put out by Miramax and was released on June 26, 1998. This movie is the first feature film written, directed, and co-produced by Native Americans. Producer and Director Chris Eyre is a descendant of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and was “determined to eliminate humiliating stereotypical representations of Native Americans in film and television”. I appreciate the new perspective we get from this move and will
For example, in the local school, stereotypes such as the image of the ‘wild man’ are consolidated by claiming that there was cannibalism among the indigenous people of the northwest coast (Soper-Jones 2009, 20; Robinson 2010, 68f.). Moreover, native people are still considered to be second-class citizens, which is pointed out by Lisamarie’s aunt Trudy, when she has been harassed by some white guys in a car: “[Y]ou’re a mouthy Indian, and everyone thinks we’re born sluts. Those guys would have said you were asking for it and got off scot-free”
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in “Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle over Representation” provide discourses into how not only the marginalized groups have come to their state of powerlessness, but, also, how the institutions perpetuate and audiences receive the information. They state, “That films are only representations does not prevent them from having real effects in the world; racist films can be mobilize the Ku Klux Klan, or prepare the ground for retrograde social policy. Recognizing the inevitability and the inescapability of representation does not mean, as Stuart Hall puts it, that ‘nothing is at stake’”. In essence, a film’s quality of representation can move individuals to ascertain ideas of positive or negative thoughts. In “The Orchestration of Discourse” section, Shohat and Stam find that multivocality plays an integral part in constructing the positive image and “accuracy” for films. This paper will explore how different voices in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre functions as a mirror of the real world and reaches the “mimetic accuracy”.
The representation of race in Hollywood cinema has been a widely discussed topic in film analysis since the medium’s inception. Historically, non-caucasian ethnicities have been underrepresented and/or misrepresented on the silver screen. It was normal for a white actor or actress to adorn themselves in black or yellowface to represent these races and further alienate them into the category of “the other”. This exclusion has been used time and time again as a tool for distinguishing not the race being alienated but those who are doing the alienation. In the following essay I aim to assess this phenomenon specifically in relation to representation of Asians in Hollywood cinema. To support my theory, I will put into conversation both Gina Marchetti’s essay, “White Knights in Hong Kong” and Anne Cheng’s essay, “Beauty and the Ideal Citizenship: Inventing Asian American in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (1961)”. It was when asked to consider the question of national identity projected upon the bodies on screen as written about by Marchetti and Cheng that I came across my own thesis. Through their in depth analysis I was able to code an underlying theme in the historical representation of Asians in cinema. The theme in which Asian identity is derived through strategically situating them as “the other” in order to explain what it truly means to be an American.