An American Accented Cinema

AN AMERICAN ACCENTED CINEMA INDIGENOUS-CENTERED ROAD MOVIES An Honors Thesis by Elizabeth Falkenberg An American Accented Cinema: Indigenous-Centered Road Movies By Elizabeth Falkenberg Brown University MCM Track I Honors Thesis Spring 2019 Primary Advisor: Joan Copjec Second Reader: Levi Thompson ABSTRACT Motivated by a desire to assess both the positive and negative cultural legacies of classical Hollywood cinema, this thesis focuses on a genre descendant of the classic western: the road movie. More specifically, inspired and contextualized by Hamid Naficy’s theory of ‘accented cinema,’ it will explore a subgenre of the road movie that features indigenous characters and narratives. Three indigenous-centered road movies – Powwow Highway, Smoke Signals, and Barking Water – help me define a specific type of accented cinema which has emerged in United States. Positioned as cultural and social texts, these films can be considered “accented” by the ways in which they employ accepted modes of production and address the themes of nostalgia, border consciousness, and journeys. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................... i Introduction: A New Accented Cinema ..............................................................................1 1. A Hollywood History of Mythmaking ..................................................................................... 10 Assessing the Popularity of Classical American Cinema The Westward Dream Developing Genre Cinema 2. Genre History Part 1: From the Western ........................................................................18 Constructing an Iconography of the American West Political Legacies of the Western Mainstream Alternatives 3. Genre History Part 2: To the Road Movie ......................................................................31 The Road Between Genres Road Signs and Signifiers Road Movies as Narrative Vehicles 4. Situating The Indigenous-Centered Road Movie ............................................................41 Locating Displacement and Reterritorialization Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals Sterlin Harjo’s Barking Water Powwow Highway Looking Backwards, Driving Forwards 5. Mapping an Imagined Homeland ....................................................................................51 Homeland as Symbolic Landscape Native Reservation as Heterotopia Metaphorizing the Third World 6. Narratives of Journeying ................................................................................................58 Propelled by Masculinity Linear and Circular Narrative Structures 7. Accented Modes of Production .......................................................................................64 Returning from the Oppositional Alternative Routes Collective Indigenous Filmmaking Culture Conclusion ........................................................................................................................72 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................76 Bibliography .....................................................................................................................77 Filmography .....................................................................................................................80 ii INTRODUCTION A NEW ACCENTED CINEMA Thomas Builds-the-Fire: “So, I told you a story. Now it’s your turn.” Suzy Song: “What, do you want the truth or do you want lies?” Thomas Builds-the-Fire: “I want both.”1 Narrative films, as assemblages of sound and image, are dually conveyances of story and objects of production. Narrative cinema’s duality of function produces a double relation to reality; cinema has the capacity to refer to, reproduce, and represent reality, as well as the ability to affect reality. In the above quote from Smoke Signals, the character of Thomas asks to hear both the truth and lies, for stories employ both – as does reality. Simply put, since a narrative film is an artifact in the physical world, its elements of fact and fiction, therefore, have material, real consequences for society. The fictional, indigenous-centered films of Powwow Highway, Smoke Signals, and Barking Water, through their diegetic stories and the politics of their production, embrace cinema’s capacity to produce reality through imaginative intervention. By positioning indigenous characters in the driver’s seat, the films visualize narratives of self-determination for Native American characters. Further, the process of creating each film gave rise to indigenous involvement in the creative and economic processes of filmmaking in America. 1 Smoke Signals. Dir. Chris Eyre (Miramax, 1998). 1 The three films are all indigenous-centered road movies, set in America. Collectively, they provoke the ties between genre and the process of creating and dismantling myth and stereotype. This thesis will explore how these films leave stereotype behind through a nuanced return to the specific genre conventions of the American road movie and western. This project operates with an assumption that there is something novel and different going on in the presentations of these films. The vast majority of indigenous characters throughout Hollywood history have been confined to nineteenth century-set, violent narratives – particularly told through the western genre. Through their exhibition of twenty-first century, modern lives of indigenous people, these indigenous-centered road movies, however, offer a new position for their characters. To begin an exploration of the cinematic conjunction of the indigenous-centered road movie and the classical western, this introduction will start by addressing two categorical terms of interest: indigeneity in contemporary America and Hamid Naficy’s term “accented cinema.”2 First, the former. Indigeneity, in this context, refers to the status of having native or ancestral connections to specific land territory, particularly before colonial intrusion. “Indigenous” is the term most often used in global or transnational contexts to refer to communities with original ties to specific regions. In contemporary America, the category of indigenous is used as an umbrella term for descendants and members of the ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse tribal nations. There are 573 federally-recognized native nations across the continental United States and in Alaska and Hawaii.3 2 Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 10. 3 Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction. National Congress of American Indians. http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes. March 2019. 2 The latter term, “accented cinema” is borrowed from theorist and cultural studies scholar, Hamid Naficy. In his book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Naficy loosely defines “accented cinema” as an aesthetic response to the experience of displacement through exile, migration or diaspora. At the heart of Naficy’s theory of accented films is the idea that they reflect a “double consciousness” that is derived from experiences of displacement.4 This phrase has also been used by American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and Pan-Africanist writer W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. In this text, Du Bois describes the “peculiar sensation” experienced by African Americans as a “double-consciousness” that feels like a “sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.”5 He continues to write that “one ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.” The “double-self” of American and other that Du Bois describes is also applicable to the indigenous experience of Native Americans. This duality is central to layered analysis of indigenous representation in this project. Through connection to Du Bois’ writing, one can see that this speaks to a larger phenomenon of the American experience. To accompany my topical and thematic categories, I would like to also provide clarity for my mindful choices of terminology. Throughout this work, I use the terms “indigenous,” “indigenous-centered,” and “Native American.” The terms “indigenous” and “indigenous-centered” are used most frequently within this work and is done in an effort to remain in line with the terminology of indigenous cinema culture globally. “Indigenous-centered” is borrowed directly from Annette Portillo’s College English 4 Naficy, 22. 5 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. (Global Grey Books eBooks), 4. 3 Association journal article titled “Indigenous-Centered Pedagogies: Strategies for Teaching Native American Literature and Culture.”6 Her essay focuses on developing an appropriate and responsible approach to teaching Native American literature and culture to non-native students. Her methods reflect the decolonial methodologies defined by historian Devon Mihesuah, which heavily emphasizes the power and consequences of naming and nomenclature. When referring to the community histories of native populations in the United States, I use the term “Native American.” It is important to note that personal and community choices for nomenclature vary nationally and that this is not always a preferred term. It is common, actually, for individuals and communities to still use and encourage the use of other terms of general identification

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