Think about the portrayal of the American Indian and the portrayal of the whites in The Searchers. Discuss in a hearty paragraph how John Ford cinematically portrays each group. Then think specifically about Ethan and Scar and use your second paragraph to discuss how Ford cinematically portrays each of them specifically. In your last paragraph, discuss how the American Indian has been portrayed in film as you learned in Reel Injun. Feel free to write more than I've asked. This is a huge subject. Extra credit goes to those who comment on a classmates' comment or comments.
DUE: Friday, December 14
The portrayal of the Native Americans and the whites in The Searchers differ greatly. The Native Americans are portrayed as savages, but they are given reason for that behavior (to a certain extent).This is done primarily through the mise-en-scene. They wear very primitive clothing, with feathers on their heads, half-clothed, paint over their body, and they live in tents. They are portrayed as backwards (primitive) savages. They are also shot with LS, in big numbers, and not MS or CU cut-aways. To the cinema they are not people with unique features and personalities like the ‘normal’ folk, they are just ‘Native American’ and nothing more. The whites are viewed as the victims, for the most part (there is a tragic scene that shows the aftermath of a tribe completely massacred), and the civilized people that have to deal with the savages. They are wearing fine clothes and fully dressed, with no paint on them, and no feathers. They are also personalized. They are not a mass, but individuals with a story and life, something that is not done with the Native Americans. Cinema portrays the Native Americans as a group of savages who are all the same, while the whites are the hero and actual people.
ReplyDeleteThere are similarities and differences between the hero and his enemy in this film. Ethan and Scar are both powerful and towering figures. This is portrayed through the use of CUs when they meet each other face to face at Scar’s camp. They are two big forces not to be messed with. They are equally powerful. You take Ethan’s niece; he will hunt you down for years. You kill one of Scar’s sons and he massacres a bunch of white people. Ethan is the ‘ruttin tootin’ cowboy and Scar is the ‘no good Injun’. Ethan is portrayed as a loner, and this is extremely evident in his first shot and the closing shot. Ethan is the only person on the screen, and very small as well. He just wanders through life, alone, because he feels he doesn’t belong anywhere. Scar, on the other hand, is shot amongst his tribe. He is their noble leader and sticks with his people and leads them into battle. They are both powerful and extremely aggressive. Ethan’s aggression is evident in the LA shot of him shooting the eyes of an already dead Injun. Scar’s aggression is evident in the shot with the skulls he has scalped in the foreground. Neither character should be messed with. With Scar, the Cow Boy almost met his match.
I learned a multitude of things about the portrayal of Native Americans by watching Reel Injun. There are so many false conceptions of them that the cinema should feel ashamed (to a certain extent). They are generalized to the Plains’ Indian and they are not even Indian to begin with! There are also many more than the Plains’ and they are portrayed as wearing headbands, which they did not wear. Some things are excusable, because Hollywood is Hollywood, movies are movies, things are never completely accurate, but it affects the averages person’s views of Native Americans into something it is not. They are generally viewed as savages and the bad guy. They were not given a voice and became an object, in a sense. People stopped viewing (possibly never started) them as people. There are other interpretations such as the Hippy Injun, the Warrior Injun, and others. All of these images do not accurately portray them, and these were the only images of Injun’s for a very long time. Their image began to change, for the better, during the 90’s with films such as Smoke Signals, and Dances with Wolves, Little Big Man and others. These films portrayed them as people, with personalities, with them being comical; they did not necessarily live in tribes. They were even modernized in some films such as Smoke Signals. The prejudice is slowly fading and they are portrayed in a much better and more accurate light.
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ReplyDeleteThe stereotype of Native Americans in early American film was that of the evil savage. He was barbaric, simple, and the natural enemy to the white man. Today, however, Native American culture has achieved a sort of fetishism among whites and this fetishism has been represented and catalyzed by such media as Boy Scout camps and the film Dances with Wolves. Now the life of the noble savage and his intimate connection to nature is sought by many average whites looking to escape the fetters of modern society and such. The Native Americans seen in early Westerns-with their horses and feathered headbands-were modeled after the Plains Indians and are not an accurate representation of all Indians everywhere. John Ford and Wayne took a significant part in creating the image of the evil Native.
ReplyDeleteShootout Scene:
The Indians in The Searchers are half-clothed and wear war paint and feathers. They shout a collective war chant which is mocked by Moe-the Indians cannot win against the whites if they can be turned into a joke by the Idiot. The Reverand hands his injured friend a Bible-the whites have God on their side. A long shot reveals the Indians stampede across the water in a single mass. The whites, in contrast, strategically split up and hide behind logs or other obstructions, as shown in a series of medium shots. The whites in high-angle shots are all the more triumphant when they defeat the Indians who are revealed in intimidating low-angle shots. The Indians have little regard for their own lives and continue charging at the whites even when their comrades fall. Although the Indians have rifles, most shots show them with primitive spears in contrast to the white's guns.
The opposition between Wayne and Scar is the central dynamic to this film. Scar exists enigmatically, always appearing in a location just before Wayne arrives, appearing in the film itself rarely, and speaking only near the end. As Wayne steps forward in the shootout scene, he is framed in a level medium close-up shot that underscores his relative “level-headedness.” In an identical manner of framing, Scar appears in the next shot as though in an eye-line match to what Wayne is gazing out at, eyeing his nemesis. Scar is still low-angled here because Wayne must defeat him for the film's conflict to be resolved. Through the shootout, Wayne is shown in eye-level shots while his boy companion is high-angled. Wayne's only weakness is his intense hatred for Native people which is revealed at the end of the scene.
I agree with Jordan in that the representation of Native Americans has become less deleterious in the past few decades but this new kind of fetishism is still a poor way to treat a culture. The novel Century of Dishonor led to an attempt to integrate Natives. In the late twentieth century that attempt was abandoned and tribal life was to be recognized as normal. Now Native culture seems to have an uncertain place within American culture and because of this guilty, awkward impulse to embrace it, Native culture has been turned into a novelty by people who may have as simplistic or unrealistic an understanding of the culture as they would have in the 1940's.
Though director John Ford made attempts to depict Ethan and the other whites as morally flawed, visually the whites of the Searchers are the dominant, more empathetic race. For all the attempts Ford takes to make the Indians more sympathetic (depicting Ethan as a fierce, irrational racist instead of an "easy" hero), the aesthetics of the film set up the Indians as more animal than human. While John Wayne and the other protagonists look like heroes, fully clothed in bright, well-matched colors, and with distinguished facial characteristics brought out in close-ups and low-angle shots, the Indians are depicted more as a pack of animals than movie star heroes. The Indians are almost never depicted in close shots, instead grouped together as faceless red beings in long shots in high-angles. Even the tilt of the characters' heads contributes to their visual representation - while the white protagonists carry themselves with heads held high, with the lighting hitting their features and making them bright on the screen, the Indians have their heads tilted downward, with darkness eclipsing their faces. In the Searchers, there are very few Indian faces to humanize the race.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the depiction of Indians is granted considerable depth with the arrival of Scar. Ironic for a Western (a genre where xenophobia ruled, and the white protagonists always flexed their physical and mental strength over the Native savages), Scar proves to be every bit as strong as Ethan. Scar is the only Indian portrayed in close-up and low-angle (though ironically he is played by a white actor), and his lack of clothes is portrayed as "exotic and erotically charged" (Dagle, Joan. ‘Linear Patterns and Ethnic Encounters in the Ford Western’. John Ford Made Westerns) rather than primitive. Even in his stand-offs with Ethan, Scar is portrayed as powerful and equal - Ethan's mockery of Scar's English is rebutted with Scar's mockery of Ethan's Comanche.
"Reel Injun" tracked the depiction of American Indians in film as Native Americans assimilated more and more into American culture. Director Neil Diamond (ha ha) traced the origins of negative Indian stereotypes to the rise in popularity of the American Western, starting in the 1930s with films like They Died With Their Boots On. As American Indians' roles in films became more and more stereotyped and unflattering, Native Americans started to lose out on the roles as well - instead of hiring Native American actors to portray themselves, many Hollywood pictures of the 40s, 50s, and 60s opted to hire white actors like Chuck Connors, Elvis Presley, and Charles Bronson to portray Native Americans. Around the late 1960s, however, as Hollywood entered a revolutionary period of awakening, depth, and ideological audacity, depiction of Native Americans revolutionized as well; films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest depicted Native Americans in a much more flattering way than the Hollywood fare of yesteryear.
The portrayal of white characters and native characters in this film differ greatly. As per usual in a western film from Hollywood, the whites are the protagonists and the natives are the antagonists. There are attempts in this film to break free from this cliche - the main character, Ethan, is an angry anti-hero who the audience may have difficulty emphasizing with, and the natives are given some humanization, and their culture is even somewhat accepted when Debbie lives with the natives, and Ethan's sidekick, Martin, is revealed to be part Cherokee.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Indians are still antagonized in the film, and their characters are seen mainly as broad generalizations of a real person in this culture. The white characters are still seen as civilized, and the natives are unintelligent savages, as shown by the costume design and mise-en-scene. As well, the Indian characters are seen as very dangerous and powerful. This effect is achieved through their presentation in shots, as large and looming over the landscape.
For many decades, native Americans have been portrayed very negatively in films. They were always seen as savage villains in western films, who were unintelligent and uncivilized. In more recent decades, portrayal has become more positive. Now, natives are seen as gentle, intelligent and very spiritual. Even though this portrayal is much more positive, it still tends to reinforce and create stereotypes about these people.