Also I will examine the relationships between men and women and how women in general are treated in each film. As the film Tombstone opens the narrator gives a brief yet historical background about Earp and the town Tombstone. Setting the timeframe to 1879 the film narrator explains that because of the economic explosion in the West this spurred the Great Migration. However, it also triggered the violence that infested the city of Tombstone turning it into an “armed camp”. The wave of violence that we see in the film is inaccurately represented according to Richard White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own where he states that “during the peak years of cattle towns, the average number of homicides was only 1.5 a year from each town.” However, the films representation is the opposite since the narrator depicts murder rates higher than modern day Los Angeles or New York and the opening scene is of the film is a gun fight which results in murders including a catholic priest which is caused by the cowboys.
Names like Billy the Kid and Jesse James were legendary in their own time. Billy was born Henry McCarty on November 23, 1859. He was a "cherubic juvenile desperado, who boasted that he had killed twenty-one men, not counting Indians and Mexicans" (Current 505). William H. Bonney, Henry McCarty, William Henry McCarty, and Henry Antrim were all names he used (O'Connor, 1960: 22-23). Known as the second most famous "bad guy" in the folklore of American outlaws (Surge 12-14), he fit in with the men around him who defied the law.
500 NATIONS SUMMARY 500 NATIONS is a powerful DVD. As a class, we viewed volume 5 of the 8 part series. Volume 5 was the story about the America’s original inhabitants, the Indians, who were on this land, living in prosperity for centuries before the Western settlers came. Indians began trading with the white man, and fur trading became lucrative for the Indians. Europeans began to hunt commercially, and animals soon became extinct.
Chapter 1 Chapter 1, entitled Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress depicts the Europeans’ initial encounter with the Arawak Indians of the West Indies . The Arawaks greeted Columbus and his crew with hospitality, but little did they know they would soon be taken advantage of and have their culture virtually destroyed. Columbus’s journal entries about this first meeting indicate his feelings of superiority to the Arawaks, which led to enslavement, murder, and rape. The Arawaks were forced to work in gold mines and were killed at the will of the Europeans. Millions of natives were killed in slavery, war, and, mining.
Even as they grew older they watched films with Cowboys and Indians, with the “bad guys” on trains running the west. Older Westerns were silent and colorless, but told a story. In the present there is sound, color, and still has a story to tell but it can be told in faster fashion than in late 1800’s and early 1900’s. A comparison of old Western movies to new age western movies can be made by exploring characters, settings, and changes in film making
148), the movement staged many protests against prejudiced Indian rights leading up to the siege at Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee was a rebellion of the extension of the White government control, by the Indians. The Whites established a government and military quickly after the colonisation of America that pacified the Indians in order to gain control of resources. This is the natural order of colonisation and with this idea combined with the fact that these Indians were educated (as by decree of the very same government), this caused the uprising against their White oppressors by the Indians, (Bodley, 1999, p.60). It seemed a disaster waiting to happen.
In the poem, the movie on the big screen is showing the classic Hollywood story of white settlers bravely fighting against the savage Native Americans. To me this presents one of the biggest contradictions in American history: white settlers want to create an American identity all their own when the Native Americans were there first and already had their own complex identity formed. Erdrich calls John Wayne’s “disease” the fact that he wants to take over everything he sees, which to me is a reference to white people taking over other races in America and wanting everything for themselves. Also, the fact that there were Native Americans watching the movie and laughing about it says something about the Native American losing his own identity and culture in modern
Ashley Wolford Twain’s Huckleberry Finn: An Accurate Depiction of Race Before Emancipation Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called “racist trash”, banned from schools, and censored. I feel that these claims are false and the actions unnecessary. In 1915, D.W. Griffith released a film, an ode to a family member. It was the top grossing film that year and remained the most popular and profitable film ever made until 1939. People flocked to the nearest movie house to see The Birth of A Nation, the story of the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.
After interviewing individuals living in the 1930’s, Mari Sandoz wrote the biography of Crazy Horse, with vivid details regarding cruelty and the governmental overtaking of the Indians’ homeland. Sandoz writes through the eyes of an Indian, using their language style to capture the essence of the times. Although it was sometimes difficult to follow because of my unfamiliarity with the language, there are great lessons to be gained by following the life of Crazy Horse. The United States government, our government, compromised and prepared treaties with the Indians as they tried to capture their homeland. As the Indians were pushed and confined, they were forced to succumb to the all-mighty government who made promises they did not intend to keep and were solely focused on their own interests.
Over the last century, more than four thousand movies have cast Native Americans as villains or primitive stereotypes {j), with most, if not all of those, being part of the so-called “Western” genre. This has resulted in widespread adoption of these stereotypes in popular culture. As a consequence, studies have demonstrated a distinct lack of self-esteem and self-worth amongst Native American students who are exposed to these stereotypes on a daily basis {k}. In a testimony from a US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing on “Stolen Identities: The Impact of Racist Stereotypes on Indigenous People”, Chaske Spencer, a Native American actor and producer said “When our children are targeted with racist comments and actions, regardless of their race, religion, culture, etc...It impacts them for life; whether they show it or not, their self-worth, their drive and the relationships they create with other people are affected in a myriad of ways. In today’s society, it is almost impossible to escape the influence of stereotypes in media, sports, entertainment and politics.