Film Analysis: Dances With Wolves

Dances with Wolves is a well-intentioned attempt to provide a progressive, new insight into Native Americans and their lives who have long been depicted as savages up until the earliest days of Hollywood film. However, the film nevertheless, pairs progressiveness with subtle and covert expressions of American ideals and affirmed stereotypes that may not negatively portray these people, but may not accurately depict them either.
Despite many problematic dynamics that perpetuate stereotypes of Native Americans or fail to fully and accurately portray them, the audience is provided with a different insight of the actual history regarding Native Americans and white settlers that invoked violence, as the real savages amongst these tribes who resided

170). However, it is not until the last half of the film when the audience is introduced to the misconduct and maltreatment of collective white men, including by the US Army against Natives and those who aided these people, such as John, who were charged and convicted as "traitors,” as John is merely representative of the individualized, good, white man. It is here during the last half of the movie when the setting changes from John and the Indians to John and the white men, where he now is abused, disrespected, and treated as a savage, because of his appearance and accomplices with the Indians. This is a stark contrast from the first two hours of the beginning when John was treated with dignity and kindness by the Indians directly,

The film is only understood through the eyes of John as he is also the narrator. Dances with Wolves centers around a lost white man in order to maintain gender and racial roles that ultimately privilege and provide power to the white man, and therefore this tale is “really about the transformation of the white soldier Lt. John Dunbar into the Lakota warrior Dances with Wolves” (O’Connor & Rollins, 2011, pg. 178). Before John became a member of the Native tribe, he first exercised his privileges as a white man when he saved Stands With A Fist and brought her back to her tribe, after he found her bleeding profusely. However, once he got here, he was shocked at just how rough they handled the woman, versus his tender care, such as when they dragged her by the arm back to their people. This caused John to become hesitant about leaving her with them as he was experiencing a racial phenomenon in which white men often feel the need to save brown women from brown men, because of savage stereotypes of these nonwhite men. Also, it was not until John 's interaction with these Native men that the audience was allowed to recognize their humanity and see them as everything but "savages," unlike the ways past Hollywood films had always depicted them as. John’s presence amongst these people