Dances With Wolves, directed by Kevin Costner, and The Searchers, directed by John Ford, looks into the fabric of this country's past. The media has created a false image of the relationship between Native Americans and White men to suppress the cruel and unfortunate reality. Both directors wanted to contradict these stereotypes, but due to the time period the films were created, only one film was successful. Unlike The Searchers, Dancing With Wolves presents a truly realistic representation of Native Americans. Both Dances With Wolves and The Searchers protagonists, Dunbar and Ethan, embark on a journey and evolve in different ways. The purpose of Dunbar’s journey is to find who he is. For Ethan, it is to rescue his nieces who he feels had been kidnapped and turned into something abnormal and inhuman by Native “savages." Unlike Ethan, Dunbar is always self-reflective; his engagement with the Natives does not involve some false epiphany, as is commonly the case in movies in which a white man realizes the worth of other cultures. Along Dunbar’s journey, he transforms spiritually. The Searchers anti-hero, Ethan, mixes his anger, guilt, and bigoted views together to fuel his desire to be a savior. Ethan’s character is redeemed, at the end, but does not change completely. Yet, Ethan is so twisted leading to that point that one could easily argue whether it’s right to root for him in the first place. Both Dances With Wolves and The Searchers share the theme between good versus bad. In Costner’s film, he emphasizes the idea that there is no right or wrong side, only right or wrong actions. The heroes in this film are the Natives, who save Dunbar from the Whites. Unlike Costner, Ford represents Native Americans as savages. The Searche... ... middle of paper ... ...tive Americans in the media can be retraced back to outdated Western films. These films had the recurring theme of Cowboys versus Indians. Native Americans have been portrayed as thieving, violent, lazy, hostile, uncivilized savages. The White man thought the Natives undeserved of the lands, when in fact their contributions to their environment changed and enriched our world. Unlike The Searchers, Dances With Wolves captured Native Americans in a realistic way. Dances With Wolves contradicts the stereotypes Westerns, like The Searchers, built. The belief that all life is related is seen in Dances With Wolves. The earth is just one giant, wondrous, living organism, and every living thing on this planet is connected to the life force. We are all the same, and we must honor and respect each other, and ourselves whether human, creatures and plants, or things.
In the film Dances with Wolves, the settlers view the Indians as primitive and uncivilized creatures. Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, needs a change of pace so he decides to go to the "furthest outpost." Upon arriving at his post, he gradually realizes that the Indians are just as scared of him as he is of them. Soon Dunbar identifies with their way of life and in the end has to choose to live either as a settler or as an Indian.
It seems that in the 21st century and even during the colonizing of America, the interpretation of Native Americans is and had been that they were savages and live a barbaric lifestyle. That they had no order or way of life. When presented with the topic of Native Americans and Colonists in the New World, it is easy to assume warfare and bloodshed amongst the two parties. That the Colonists were constantly in mini battles with the Native Americans. It is also easy to assume that the land in the New World was unsettling to the eyes. This is due to records from the colonist times, calling the lands “wild” or “wildlands”. In Robbie Ethridge’s book Creek Country, she tries to debunk these interpretations mentioned above. She does so by using an
The aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid The Howling Wolf image shows the culture, the location of the meeting and how the outcome would affect many people of Native American culture. The John Taylor image shows two cultures uniting together, and the image shows a developing relationship between two cultures. In John Taylor’s image in the center of the meeting there is a flourishing tree, but behind this flourishing tree is another tree that is lifeless. These trees display the past relationship between Native Americans and the United States government and the future of this relationship.
of the wolves and finds that they are more than the savage and merciless hunters
“Film is more than the instrument of a representation; it is also the object of representation. It is not a reflection or a refraction of the ‘real’; instead, it is like a photograph of the mirrored reflection of a painted image.” (Kilpatrick) Although films have found a place in society for about a century, the labels they possess, such as stereotypes which Natives American are recognized for, have their roots from many centuries ago (Kilpatrick). The Searchers, a movie directed by John Ford and starred by John Wayne, tells the story of a veteran of the American Civil War and how after his return home he would go after the maligned Indians who killed his family and kidnapped his younger niece. After struggling for five years to recover his niece back, who is now a young woman, she is rescued by his own hands. Likewise, Dances with Wolves is a Western film directed and starred by Kevin Costner. It is also situated during the American Civil War and tells the story of a soldier named John Dunbar that after a suicide attempt; he involuntarily leads Union troops to a triumph. Then, by his request he is sent to a remote outpost in the Indian frontier “before it’s gone”. There, the contact with the natives is eminent and thus it shows how through those contacts this soldier is transformed into another Indian that belongs with the Sioux to tribe and who is now called Dances With Wolves. While both John Ford and Kevin Costner emphasize a desire to apologize to the indigenous people, they use similar themes such as stereotypes, miscegenation, and the way characters are depicted; conversely, these two movies are different by the way the themes are developed within each film.
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.
Robert Altman created a film which Pauline Kael called "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie -- a fleeting, almost diaphanous vision of what frontier life might have been." The film certainly feels different from most Westerns, featuring the distinctively different music of Leonard Cohen and a washed-out style of cinematography which Altman claimed "was trying to get the feeling of antiquity, like the photographs of the time." The cinematography is starkly different from the vibrant colours of The Searchers (John Ford 1956) or Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks 1959...
The film Dances With Wolves, attempts to change our stereotypical view of Native Americans, as savage and uncivilized people, by allowing us to see life from their perspective, helping us to realize that many of their experiences are not all that different from our own. The main setting of the film is the Great Western Plains of North Dakota. John Dunbar comes to discover the west before it is completely destroyed through settlement and what he actually finds is a group of people that he comes to understand and love, for all of the qualities that he finds within their individual lives. The Sioux soon become a part of John Dunbar's experience not only in the west, but in his life as well. Through his eyes, the viewers begin to see that these Native Americans are not what they are expected to be, but instead are civilized and are companions that can have strong relationships.
America: land of the free and home of the brave. Stretching from coast to coast, it’s a nation that claims liberty and justice for all – but what really makes America so great? Is it the astonishing skyline of New York City, a skyline that exemplifies all that we’ve accomplished? Is it the abundance of popular culture and fame produced in the shiny, dream-making city of Hollywood? Maybe it’s the way our ancestors victoriously conquered the fertile, prosperous land that once belonged to the now seemingly forgotten indigenous people.
In 1991, the movie Dances with Wolves was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven of them, one of them being Best Picture of the Year. This was originally a novel by Michael Blake in 1986 but became a movie in 1990 and was directed and produced by Kevin Costner and Jim Wilson. The main characters were Lieutenant John Dunbar (Kevin Costner), Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell), and Kicking Bird (Graham Greene). This movie was set in 1864 and told the story of a soldier named John Dunbar, who chose to live on a military post after almost ending his life in battle. He lived near the Sioux tribe, who was not welcoming of him at first because he was a US soldier. They soon accepted him as time went on and realized he wasn’t like the stereotypical
The movie Dances with Wolves was a real good movie and I enjoyed watching it. It showed how life was back in the time of the Civil War. The movie also showed how Indians lived and how they respect everything except the white men.
In the Native American myths “The Coyote,” “The Buffalo and the Corn,” and “The First False Face” there are many similarity. One good similarity is that they all are confusing. They are folk tales, but come one these stories are on a new level of craziness. These stories are not suppose to be realistic I know, but they have no logic what so ever. Another one is that they all have native Americans. These are Native American myths so this would have been obvious but it’s a similarity. They
The first contacts between North American Indians and Europeans were probably a great deal more like those depicted in "Black Robe" than like the stirring adventures in "Dances with Wolves." Both sides were no doubt motivated much more by matters of religious belief and personal destiny than by a desire to get to know one another.
The movie starts by showing the Indians as “bad” when Johnson finds a note of another mountain man who has “savagely” been killed by the Indians. This view changes as the movie points out tribes instead of Indians as just one group. Some of the tribes are shown dangerous and not to be messed with while others are friendly, still each tribe treats Johnson as “outsider.” Indians are not portrayed as greater than “...
The film starts with an elder Norman fishing in the “Big Blackfoot” river. Written by Mark Isham (who won the Academy Award for his work on River), the score is soft and sad. The camera focuses on the elder Norman’s aged hands, tying a fly to his fishing line, and he lyrically describes his past through voiceover (Spoken by Redford himself). These devices tell the viewer that Maclean’s past is something to be longed for, something great and not fully understood that has been lost forever.