viewing notes Flashcards
Edison Peep Shows (1894-1903); Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows (1898, 1902, 1910)
summary: two dancing videos of Buffalo Bill actors and one washing video in Bahamas;
connections: Gunning on cinema of attractions and Smith on ethnographic power of cinema of attractions and Charles Hill on images
Young Deer, White Fawn’s Devotion (1910)
summary: directed by Young Deer, starring Red Wing at the age of 14, she thinks her husband is leaving to collect inheritance and stabs herself but daughter think it’s murder and the tribe wants the daughter to kill the father but the mother saves him just in time and they are banished;
connections: while there’s much innovative about his directorial work outside of film, there’s not much to take away as an auteur, since his films are basically staged plays / Marubbio on the Indian maiden princess trapped between two worlds but pure intentions / Rifkin and Morgensen on how she must repudiate her indig traditions and practice settler sexuality in order to become intelligible to settler state
Griffith’s films (Redman’s View 1909; Squaw’s Love 1911)
summaries: attempts to show colonization from Native perspective but forwards Vanishing Indian trope / romantic comedy hijinx where Mabel Normand plays the chief’s daughter pursued by a new groom’s friend but the new wife thinks he’s cheating and the chief is mad about their dating but Mabel swims under their canoes and sinks them;
connections: Kilpatrick (1999) on moving beyond realism in portrayals / Rifkin and Morgensen on settler sexuality, she assimilates into white life by becoming intelligible through monagomous cishet couplehood
Curtis, In the Land of the Headhunters (1914)
summary: oldest feature film and all native cast but blends documentary and melodrama / Native boy is distracted from his spiritual quest by the thought of Native woman Naida but is captured by nasty old Sorcerer dude / family prevails over savagery in the end;
connections: Gunning and Smith / Rifkin and Morgensen
DeMille, The Squaw Man (1914)
summary: first feature film in Hollywood studio sets / chief’s daughter Nat-U-Ritch kills herself after her British husband’s name is restored and their son is going to be sent to Western boarding school;
connections: Marubbio
genre tropes from 1894-1914
the Indian maiden usually dies to restore the settler sexuality, but sometimes she survives / however, she always offers some tactical expertise (preventing a savage ritual, sinking canoes, rescuing from a snowy mountainside, killing the evil cowboy villain)
Carewe, Ramona (1928)
summary: Chickasaw director / an Indian girl is adopted into a white settler family but is in a love triangle between her white brother and the last Native nearby / she chooses Native and their life is faced with hardship after hardship;
connections: Marubbio (torn between two choices) / Butler (makes the wrong choice and is punished by society);
visuals: the trauma of attempting settler sexuality in a Native setting (the red color of colonizers, the memory loss and death, forgetting how to dance)
Laughing Boy (1934)
summary: Indian girl raised by whites is a sex worker and falls in love with Laughing Boy but the other Natives are like no dude / she marries an ugly rich white rancher but is unhappy / tries to start a white life with LB but he says he can’t sleep on a bed it’s too strange / she returns to seduce the drunk rancher and steal his money but LB is confused and comes to town to save her and is amazed by white people stuff like popcorn / LB kills george but she steps in front of the arrow and dies / “I see two ways, I knew too much and too little”;
connections: Marubbio (trapped between two choices)
Vidor/Peck/Gish, Duel in the Sun (1946)
summary: massively edited by the Hays Code review board / “half-breed” Pearl is sent to live with distant white relatives and they try to straighten her out / the two cousins fall in love with her and all three die by shooting each other lol;
connections: Altman on genre history (contract between industry and audience that evolves based on predictability and needs of profit, audience doesn’t want to see interracial marriage but wants to see the solution and has empathy for its victims) and syntactic/semantic (finds other ways to signify the Indian maiden’s trapped between two lives)
genre tropes of Indian maidens after 1910s
they start casting the Indian maiden as mixed-race or mixed-raising to signify the difficulty of choosing between white and Native life / she usually still dies
Broken Arrow (1950)
summary: golden globe for promoting international understanding / Tom discovers that Apaches are humans and not animals / becomes the negotiator between white settlers and Apache protectors / falls in love with Apache woman but she can’t assimilate / he goes native and learns Apache and marries her / the whites hate the marriage and kill her / the chief teaches him to be rational and accept peace / her death is what restores peace;
connections: Marubbio / Butler / Altman
Sirk/Hudson, Taza, Son of Cochise (1954)
summary: Taza is leader of Apache and wants to assimilate and marry his crush Oona, but her father and Taza’s brother want to go to war with settlers / Taza has to kill his brother in order to wear the blue coat and marry Oona / she is the border between assimilation and vanishing, and she survives!;
connections: Rifkin / Morgensen
genre tropes of maidens after 1940s in more explicitly Westerns
whether they live or die, Indian maidens are the symbol of peace between the two cultures
Wayne/Ford/Jeffrey Hunter, The Searchers (1956)
summary: Uncle Ethan a confederate soldier hunts for his niece who was kidnapped and raised by Comanches with his “half-breed” nephew Martin / Ethan wants to murder the niece bc she has been tainted by the Comanche and is unsalvageable / Martin rescues her from Ethan’s bullets / Martin restores the settler family but it’s Ethan the cowboy who can’t enter it;
connections: Rifkin and Morgensen (Martin becomes intelligible to settler state through his protection of the nuclear family by killing the Comanche chief and after repudiating the Comanche squaw he accidentally bought)
symbols: red light is previously associated with colonizers but now associated with Comanches’; Marilyn Monroe’s interview about Jeffrey Hunter as the ultimate man
Elvis, Flaming Star (1960)
summary: Elvis is the son of Kiowa woman and white man and their white town is attacked by Kiowas / he rejects the Kiowa’s invitation but the whites hate him too / he tries to live as Kiowa and transforms into savagery losing himself totally / dies fighting off the Kiowa in the end after his white relatives are killed
