Thus, the reason why British Westerns have an unconventional tradition of being sympathetic towards Native Americans is clear. Although directors certainly bring their own personal artistic vision to their projects, mainstream film production is still ultimately governed by commercial interests, as both Nowell-Smith and Neale attest. In order to make a profit at the box-office, movies have to meet the expectations and desires of their viewers, ensuring positive reviews and word of mouth endorsement. With government approval high in the United States during the 1950s, there was very little incentive for production companies to release a movie which challenged the dominant myth of the nation’s founding and its virtuousness, as it is unlikely that audiences would have been open to these ideas. Consequently, during the “Golden …show more content…
influence from the Second World War through to the Cold War, there was evidently more scope for production companies in the United Kingdom to abandon the genre conventions of the pro-American classical Western. This was first demonstrated in 1958 by The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw, a film that reproaches the violent nature of the U.S. and its inability to seek diplomatic solutions for issues related with the country’s original inhabitants. While this storyline may appear to be an allegory for American intervention in Vietnam, it is important to keep in mind that the film was released before the war escalated and, as such, prior to the revisionist Western becoming such an established subgenre in the United States. As this essay has shown, with The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw going on to become a financial success in UK, themes of Native heroism and oppression became standardized for later Westerns such as Captain Apache, Chato’s Land and Charley One-Eye, all of which were created by British production companies, with the latter two also benefiting from British
The overall appeal of the cinema to the masses was particularly evident during the interwar era. Audiences worldwide wanted to watch the variety of films, particularly American produced films, and they always went back. The visibly attractive and glamorous Hollywood movies often depicted the success of the underdog over unjust authority. Values of cash over culture were often a theme in the early American films and societies with restricted social mobility, such as those in Europe, could dream of such a triumph. The working class and unemployed could fantasise about wealth, fame and freedom which America as a country was portrayed as offering.
...cate American entertainment films. But what was the cost to the development of Canada's supposed "cultural identity" and the perogative of the Canadian filmmaker to make a film without mimicking Classic Hollywood style and theme? Toward the mid-1980s, following the demise of the Capital Cost Allowance tax shelter in 1982, the "success" of a Canadian film was determined less by its forecast box office potential. The trend in the late 1970s and the early 1980s towards what Ted Magder calls the "If you can't beat `em join `em" (Magder, 169) relationship with the commercial Hollywood production infrastructure, was met in the mid-1980s by an equally vehement movement, which maintained that the infiltration of American culture and the adoption of their economic or "big-business" approach was precisely the problem with the Canadian film industry, and hence Canadian films.
The American institution has raised countless generations with misconceptions and lies regarding various foreign cultures. During the 1950’s the educational system in America was given the responsibility of teaching children the horrors and injustices they would suffer if the "evil" communist took over the world. Schools taught students that communist wanted to take away music, apple pie, baseball, and anything else that Americans cherished. Students learned that it was best to believe in the righteous of America. The preceding discussion has much in common with the treatment that Native Americans have received from picture books in America.
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
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
Works Cited Jacquelyin Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indian. Native Americans and Film. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
A cinematic experience offers a false projection of the world that people have the desire to indulge in. In Guy Vanderhaeghe’s novel, The Englishman’s Boy, the portrayal of the film as a whole is consistent with Chance’s vision to rewrite the story of the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873 as a mythic history of the settling of the American west. Film has the power to access an aspect of reality somehow absent in other media. One could argue that film brainwashes people and alters reality when it is both projected and screened. Vanderhaeghe’s narrative oscillation and use of common literary techniques often foreshadow his film (Besieged) in many ways.
Western films are the major defining genre of the American film industry, a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring and flexible genres and one of the most characteristically American genres in their mythic origins - they focus on the West - in North America. Western films have also been called the horse opera, the oater (quickly-made, short western films which became as common place as oats for horses), or the cowboy picture. The western film genre has portrayed much about America's past, glorifying the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the West. Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed. But, most western movies ideas derived from characteristics known to the Native Americans and Mexicans way before the American culture knew about it. What you probably know as a good old western American movie originated from a culture knows as vaqueros (cowboys for Spanish). They are many misrepresentations of cultures and races shown throughout movies from as early as 1920's with silent films. Although one could argue that silent film era was more politically correct then now a day films, the movie industry should not have the right of misrepresenting cultures of Mexicans, Indians and there life styles in films known as western films.
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 Artist Analysis Introduction Silent film, a nearly extinct cinema genre, has been brought back to life to live out its final moments in the modern age. This art is the original form of cinema that first used the techniques of cinematography and acting to construct a base platform that made the film industry into the success it is today. The Artist is of the romance genre, as it tells the story of a silent film actor trying to survive the progressing technology with the film industry and the invention of the “Talkies” or films with dialog that can be heard and eventually finding his place in the end. In this film, lighting, soundtracks and character body language are utilized to communicate with the audience, that storytelling through
In the article “The Thematic Paradigm” exerted from his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray provides a description of the two types of heroes depicted in American film: the outlaw hero and the official hero. Although the outlaw hero is more risky and lonely, he cherishes liberty and sovereignty. The official hero on the other hand, generally poses the role of an average ordinary person, claiming an image of a “civilized person.” While the outlaw hero creates an image of a rough-cut person likely to commit a crime, the official hero has a legend perception. In this essay, I will reflect on Ray’s work, along with demonstrating where I observe ideologies and themes.
Firstly if we look at the nostalgic teen films way of viewing events then the perspective of the adult narrator is authoritarian. Looking at aspects of youth and freedom, in fact the link of adolescence with freedom opens up these films. Resistance to controlling authority, the coach, the principal, the family highlights the idea of psychosocial moratorium. Speed discusses how Eric H. Erikson believes that this delay in adult commitment is a vital element of this genre. Thus the teen nostalgia film jumps out of its safe, de-intellectualised, fun box and begins to comment on social issues. Speed also discusses Lawrence Grossberg’s Spatial Orientations which enable us to look at the mall, street corner, even street gangs as adolescents distancing
‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ has been sung at enough pre-k beauty pageants over the past year to cement the idea that The Wizard of Oz, despite it’s age, is not going anywhere anytime soon. Many people love the idea of getting lost in a brightly colored place far away from home, only to realize home is where you belong; however, when the original book of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is examined, reader’s find the raw truths that exist in the world of Oz. In today’s culture The Wizard of Oz is still as relevant as it was hundreds of years ago, but it hasn’t stayed completely the same, and things are changed for the sake of cultural appreciation. The movie is a jolly sing-a-long watch, but like all wonderful
History and films can be observed in many ways. Today, films have an important role to play in these histories. Motion films provide information to show what it was like back then and provided visual information to the ways people lived in the past. Today, films such as “The Truman Show”, shows what life was like back in the late 1900’s. For example, people were obsessed with reality TV, and the clothing was more formal than the way it is today. The technology was much more advanced than what it is thought to really be. Many of us would much rather watch films rather than read about history.
Film was meant to show the traditions and customs of specific cultures to the rest of the world. However, because of Hollywood's need for a large market to sell a movie ...