The movie Older Than America is an informational narrative of the treatment of indigenous people in the United States. The fourth cinema is a movement in which people of indigenous backgrounds tell the stories of their people, in a realistic and less Hollywood style. The Movie, Older Than America, is set both in the present and in the recent past, and explores the conflict of identity which plagues many native people. It poses the question; does it wipe the war paint off the lens? My answer to that is yes, it more than scratches the surface of the mistreatment of “Human Beings” by Euro-Americans. The demonization of the Catholic Church, and its duplicity in the abuse of its power over helpless children was the overriding story in this film. In this film the Catholic Church is representative of the United States …show more content…
this was seen in writing at the old school yard and in flashback sequences. Kill the Indian and Save the Man was a concept brought forth by Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the education of Native Americans, it tried to “Americanize” Native Americans, through the education of the young Native Americans by separating them from their parents and placing then into boarding schools. This went on from the late 19th century through the middle of the 20th century. The director/writer of the movie Older Than America, Georgina Lightening, showed the viewer the horrors of this policy. Lightning’s perspective in the movie helps non-native people to better understand the plight of the native experience and this is the purpose of the “fourth cinema”. Barry Barclay states in his article Celebrating the Fourth Cinema. “We learn especially from the overall reaction to our film, how these may differ dramatically between Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences.” The film moved me as a non-Indigenous person and shocked me as a student of history, and this is its
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
During the process of reading this compilation of works, Portrait of America, many different point of views were aired. The opinion or attitude on the subject was too tainted. The authors were very biased to their perception of the "story". This book could have been much more beneficial if the facts would have stayed to the straight and narrow. Only the detrimental facts needed to be applied to these chapters. For a history class, as broad as this, this book opened too many doors that could not be explained in as much detail as would be liked. Many of the authors enjoyed mentioning the most scandalous moments of the people's lives then dropped the fact without much support or follow through as to what happened to cause or end these events. Brief summaries only tease the mind, and with the course load of most students, there is hardly extra time to investigate the matter further in detail. For a class such as History 152, biographies and/or documentary style books are more worth the while of the student. For instance make a list of a selection of novels that could be read for the class, so that every student can then explore in depth what that student thinks is interesting. Although the book was teasing in nature the chapters did flow well and were easy to read. The procession of the chapters had wonderful transition as to not loose the student. While proceeding through this book there were several different reoccurring topics that appeared. This paper will discuss these two reoccurring topics: the civil rights movement and former presidents.
An early scene in George Roy Hill’s film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) shows illustrious bandit Butch Cassidy walking into a bank and observing a series of security upgrades (e.g. an alarm system, a safe, and several different locks). As Butch Cassidy exits the establishment, he asks the security guard, “What happened to the old bank?” The guard responds, “People kept robbing it.” Butch remarks, “Small price to pay for beauty.” Although Butch Cassidy’s disappointed assertion may have been rooted in disappointment for the loss of a heist rather than the loss of architectural merit, it leads one to question: To what extent are cultural attributes lost at the expense of new technology? I will consider this question as I examine the ways in which Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid highlights the
As a result, both films represent Natives Americans under the point of view of non-Native directors. Despite the fact that they made use of the fabricated stereotypes in their illustrations of the indigenous people, their portrayal was revolutionary in its own times. Each of the films add in their own way a new approach to the representation of indigenous people, their stories unfold partly unlike. These differences make one look at the indigenous not only as one dimensional beings but as multifaceted beings, as Dunbar say, “they are just like us.” This is finally a sense of fairness and respect by the non-native populations to the Native Indians.
"The Breakfast Club" begins with an old dramatic standby. You isolate a group of people in a room, you have them talk, and eventually they exchange truths about themselves and come to new understandings. William Saroyan and Eugene O'Neill have been here before, but they used saloons and drunks. "The Breakfast Club" uses a high school library and five teenage kids.
Auteur theory holds that, ‘a director’s films reflect that director’s personal creative vision, as if he/she were the primary author. From the earliest silent films to contemporary times motion pictures have crossed over and both entertained and educated the viewing audience.
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
Alfred Hitchcock’s America is a thorough analysis and clarification of Hitchcock’s depiction, in his films, o...
The American version of history blames the Native people for their ‘savage ' nature, for their failure to adhere to the ‘civilized norms ' of property ownership and individual rights that Christian people hold, and for their ‘brutality ' in defending themselves against the onslaught of non-Indian settlers. The message to Native people is simple: "If only you had been more like us, things might have been different for you.”
In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.
The Indian boarding school movement began in the post-Civil War era after idealistic reformers turned their attention to the matters of Indian people. While before many Americans looked upon the native people with either fear or hatred, the reformers assumed that with the appropriate education and treatment Indians could become just like other citizens. They convinced the leaders of Congress that education could change some of the Indian people into patriotic and productive members of society. One of the first attempts to accomplish this goal was the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt in 1879. Pratt was a leading proponent of the assimilation through education policy. Believing that Indian ways were inferior to whites, he ple...
Marcus Garvey once said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” (Bro). Here, he proclaims the idea that in order to live a culture must be passed down from generation to generation, growing its roots. When two cultures were fighting for dominance in the U.S., the American government developed a plan to eradicate the First Nations’ roots, buying into the philosophy of Captain Richard H. Pratt when he stated that instead of killing all the Natives it would be of more use to “kill the Indian, and save the man” (“Kill”). Between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the United States government used boarding schools to try to assimilate Native Americans into modern American culture; however, these plans only alienated these individuals, uprooting and stripping them of their cultural identity and individuality and forcing them into a dependency upon the U.S.
The movie I decided to analyze for this course was American History X (1998), which stars Edward Norton. Though this movie isn’t widely known, it is one of the more interesting movies I have seen. It’s probably one of the best films that depict the Neo Nazi plague on American culture. The film takes place from the mid to late 1990’s during the Internet boom, and touches on subjects from affirmative action to Rodney King. One of the highlights of this movie that really relates to one of the key aspects of this course is the deterrence of capital punishment. Edward Norton’s portrayal as the grief stricken older brother who turns to racist ideologies and violence to cope with his fathers death, completely disregards the consequences of his actions as he brutally murders someone in front of his family for trying to steal his car. The unstable mentality that he developed after his father’s death really goes hand-to-hand specifically with Isaac Ehrlich’s study of capital punishment and deterrence. Although this movie is entirely fictional, a lot of the central themes (racism, crime punishment, gang pervasiveness, and one’s own vulnerability) are accurate representations of the very problems that essentially afflict us as a society.
Our spirits Don’t Speak English: Indian Boarding school is an 80 minute documentary that details the mental and physical abuse that the Native Americans endured during the Indian Boarding school experience from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. In the beginning going to school for Indian children meant listening to stories told by tribal elders, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and storytellers. These tales past down from generation to generation were metaphors for the life experience and their relationships to plants and animals. Native children from birth were also taught that their appearance is a representation of pure thoughts and spiritual status of an individual.
The film Amistad is based on a true event that occurred in 1839. It is about a mutiny by recently captured slaves, who take over a ship known as La Amistad, and the legal battle that followed regarding their freedom. The movie begins by showing many Africans chained together on the lower deck of La Amistad. They manage to break free and go to the upper deck and attack the sailors, leading a mutiny and taking over the ship. They leave two men alive to guide them back to Africa, but they point them towards the US. When they arrive in the states, the Africans are thought to be runaway slaves, and are imprisoned. The case of their freedom is taken to court, to decide whether the Africans were originally slaves or free men. One lawyer decides to fight for them, and pleads his case that the Africans were never slaves and were indeed free men. The case eventually makes it to the Supreme Court and a translator is eventually found to communicate with the leader of the Africans, and he tells his story. He was one of many illegally captured in Africa, and sold into slavery. When the time comes for the trial, John Quincy Adams pleas for their freedom. After a grueling trial, the slaves are said to be free men, and are to be sent back to their homeland, Africa.