Media Images and Representations, Revised Edition

C. Richard King

Description

Explore media coverage of Native Americans in print and television journalism, in films and television, in Native American media outlets, and on the Internet. This eBook also examines use of Native Americans as mascots.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Native American
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• Representations
• Native Americans
• Indigenous
• Images
• Television
• Internet
• Film
• Image
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438194035
• Langue: English

Extrait

Media Images and Representations, Revised Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-9403-5
You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Chapters Indian Representation in Film and Television Media Representation of Indians Indian Mascots Indigenous Media American Indians and the Internet Media Representation of Indian Soldiers Early Indian Filmmakers Media Representations of Indian Gaming Public Opinion of Indian Mascots Contemporary Indian Filmmakers Online Indian Activism
Chapters
Indian Representation in Film and Television

In 1911, in an essay on "Moving Picture Absurdities," W. Stephen Bush reviewed Hollywood's pervasive image of the American Indian in film: The greatest of them all is the Indian. We have him in every variety but one. We have Indians a la Français, "red" men recruited from the Bowery and upper West End Avenue. We have Licensed Indians and Independent Indians-the only kind we lack are the real Indians . . . He is either wholly good, seemingly transplanted from the skies, or else a fiend and an expert scalper in constant practice. . .You cannot escape the moving picture Indian. Recently, I visited five moving picture houses in a Southern tour and five in a city in New England. The Indian was everywhere. 1
The same year, a group of Native Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., to protest cinematic representations. An article in Moving Picture World summarized the grievances expressed about one recent release in which a young Indian graduate of one of the non-reservation schools was the chief figure. He was shunned by the members of his tribe upon his return to them, took to drink, killed a man and fled, but was killed after a long chase. This was denounced as an untrue portrayal of the Indians. 2
These two early snapshots underscore two of the central themes of this entry: American Indians have been ubiquitous in American cinema and almost without exception representations of them in movies and television have been false. Indeed, as many scholars and critics have suggested ever since Bush, on the screen, audiences do not encounter real Indians, but meet the Hollywood Indian, a fictional, stereotypical, and profitable rendering that says more about Euro-American presuppositions and preoccupations than it does about indigenous peoples.
This entry addresses the history and significance of the Hollywood Indian. Specifically, it analyzes the stereotypes and stories through which movies and television have represented Native American cultures and histories, and more importantly, why such inaccurate and hurtful images persist. Following a history of Indians in film, the discussion reviews the major themes and trends of cinematic and televisual representations of indigenous peoples of North America.
Before Film
To fully appreciate the depiction of American Indians, as well as the portrayal of relations with Euro-Americans and mainstream society, it is necessary to review Wild West shows. For nearly a half century, Wild West shows combined historical reenactment, melodrama, elements of indigenous cultures, and proto-rodeo forms, offering interpretations of the American west, Indian/white relations, and American history. From their beginnings in 1883 through their disappearance in the early 1930s, these entertainments both reflected and extended prevailing understandings of the frontier and American Indians.
Wild West Shows
Wild West shows staged renowned battles, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, western conflicts like the attack on the Deadwood Stage, and grand epic narratives, such as "The Drama of Civilization," adding Native American dance, cowboy bands, and athletic events (steer roping and bronco riding) to these more familiar dramatic forms. Wild West shows began to emerge at a pivotal moment in American history: at the end of military campaign against indigenous peoples. In this context, they encouraged Americans to grapple with questions of racial difference and cultural evolution, while prompting nostalgic yearnings for nature, tradition, and indigenous communities destroyed by progress and manifest destiny.
Wild West shows have had a profound impact on American culture. They cemented popular conceptions of the region, connecting it with guns, conflict, the frontier, and the cowboy. Wild West shows, moreover, set the terms in which many Americans would come to know Native Americans. This image stressed wildness and bellicosity, suggesting that indigenous peoples were best understood as historical artifacts, bypassed by progress. At the same time, they rendered Indian/white relations, underscoring not merely a violent clash of cultures, but the just conquest and subjugation of the Native nations of North America. In many respects,Wild West shows shaped the content of the film industry, influencing the characters and narratives of the western for much of the century.
THE EARLY YEARS OF AMERICAN CINEMA
Films featuring Native American themes date to the very beginnings of American cinema, proving to be a popular staple within the entertainment industry. Indeed, former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill in 2003 estimated that two thousand movies and ten thousand television episodes with Indian themes have been produced since the end of the 19th century. 3 In part, the centrality of American Indians to the entertainment industry, particularly in relation to Euro- American society, stems from the malleability of the imagined Indian that could be romanticized or demonized, pitied or pilloried, a figure open to reinterpretation by successive generations of white writers, directors, and audiences. Additionally, Native Americans have played such a fundamental role in movies and television, precisely because the conquest of the continent, and the associated displacement, dispossession, and ethnic violence have proven crucial to the formulation of American history and national identity.
American Indians made their cinematic debut in the 1890s. Perhaps their earliest and most famous appearance was in a series of short films, known as actualities, produced by Thomas Edison in 1894. Not surprisingly, these not only seized on the popularity of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show, but some actually featured the famed scout and entertainer, along with members of his troupe of performers. Others, including Sioux Ghost Dance and Indian War Council , sought to portray recent events. Four years later, Edison again returned to American Indian themes, shooting dances and daily life on location. While the content of these earliest films varied, they have two things in common: first they endeavored to be detailed and authentic portraits of Indian life; and, second, they presented Native Americans through established clichés, namely warriors adorned in "war paint and feathers . . . brandishing tomahawks and scalping knives," which undermined their ethnographic intentions. 4 The work done at Edison's New Jersey studio laid the foundation for subsequent work done in the silent film era.
During the first three decades of the 20th century, as technology became more sophisticated and the industry more accepted, the popularity of Indian-themed films grew. In this period, actualities faded into history, as melodrama and military conflict increasingly dominated the silver screen.
Importantly, in contrast with any era of film history before the present, Native Americans held prominent creative roles in the industry: James Young Deer (Winnebago) made Yaqui Girl and White Fawn's Devotion (1910) before serving in the military during WWI, Edwin Carewe (Cherokee) directed Ramona in 1928, and Molly Spotted Elk (Penobscot) starred in Silent Enemy in 1930. It would be decades before American Indians would attain prominence in the industry again. Of greater immediate and lasting significance, Wild West shows exerted a powerful influence, and not just through the stereotypes and storylines they had made famous. On the one hand, performers, often entire encampments sponsored by individual shows, were featured in many silent films; on the other hand, figures like Buffalo Bill produced important films that laid the foundation for the western. Perhaps most notable was Cody's The Indian Wars (1914); filmed on the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre at the start of WWI, it received the endorsement of the War Department and pitted U.S. soldiers against descendants of the victims of the massacre in a triumphant re-creation. Moreover, emerging talents also made a name for themselves by making Indian-themed films during the silent era. D.W. Griffith, for instance, made Pueblo Legend (1912), Massacre (1912), and the influential Battle at Elderbrush Gulch (1914), which in retrospect looks like a template for later stories of Indian/white conflict on the frontier. Finally, especially after WWI, epic melodramas appeared that dramatized the plight of the American Indian. The Vanishing American (1925) is a classic expression of this sympathetic zeal, a film that critiques the treatment of indigenous people in the reservation system, while lamenting their impending doom.
THE MODERN WESTERN
The end of the silent era did not mark the end of Hollywood's fascination with Indians or Indian themes. In fact, by the early 1940s and through the 1960s, studios and audiences seized on the frontier, particularly conflicts between Native Americans and Euro-Americans to retell American history, rally public sentiments, and comment on important social issues. In television shows like the Lone Ran