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A Cultural Renewal: Native Americans in Road Movies Yasemin Gümüş M.A

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A Cultural Renewal: Native Americans in Road Movies Yasemin Gümüş M.A A CULTURAL RENEWAL: NATIVE AMERICANS IN ROAD MOVIES A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND DESIGN AND THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SCIENCES OF BİLKENT UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS By Yasemin Gümüş May, 2008 I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. _____________________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Duncan CHESNEY (Principal Advisor) I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. _________________________________ Assist. Prof. Andreas TRESKE I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. __________________________________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Dilek KAYA MUTLU Approved by the Institute of Fine Art ____________________________________ Prof. Dr. Bülent ÖZGÜÇ, Director of the Institute of Fine Arts ii I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Yasemin Gümüş ________________ iii ABSTRACT A Cultural Renewal: Native Americans in Road Movies Yasemin Gümüş M.A. in Media and Visual Studies Supervisor: Duncan CHESNEY May, 2008 In this thesis, contemporary Native American road films Powwow Highway (Wacks, 1989), Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995), Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998), and Dreamkeeper (Barron, 2003) are studied in terms of their relation to the formal and thematic conventions of the road movie genre. The movies are examined as social reproductions of postmodern mainstream American road picture. The films are analyzed as social texts working as cultural renewals of the texts representing American Indians in the mainstream American cinema as well as they are taken as major contributions to the road genre. In this sense, Native Americans’ use of the road picture’s generic patterns and contemporary tendencies in order to tell their own experiences of the road journey is investigated. Key Words: Native Americans, Western, American Indian Movement, revisionism, road film, landscape, journey. iv ÖZET BİR KÜLTÜREL YENİLİK: YOL FİLMLERİNDE AMERİKAN YERLİLERİ Yasemin Gümüş Medya ve Görsel Çalışmalar Yüksek Lisans Programı Danışman: Duncan CHESNEY Mayıs, 2008 Bu tezde çağdaş Yerli Amerikalı yol filmleri Powwow Highway (Wacks, 1989), Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995), Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998), ve Dreamkeeper (Barron, 2003) yol türünün biçimsel ve tematik gelenekleri çerçevesinde çalışılmaktadır. Bu filmler bir ana akım olarak American yol türünün kültürel açıdan yeniden üretimi olarak ele alınmıştır. Yukarıda sözü edilen filmler Yerli Amerikalıların Amerikan sinemasındaki temsillerine sosyal ve kültürel açıdan yenilik getirmeyi amaçlayan metinler olarak incelendiği gibi filmlerin bir tür olarak yol filmine de büyük bür katkıda bulunduğu gösterilmiştir. Bu bağlamda, Yerli Amerikalıların yol filminin genel ilke ve eğilimlerini kendi yolculuk deneyimlerini anlatmak için nasıl kullandıkları tetkik edilmektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Amerikan Yerlileri, Kovboy filmi, Kızılderili Hareketi, revizyonizm, yol filmi, arazi, yolculuk. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I wish to thank Assist. Prof. Dr. Duncan CHESNEY for his advice and contribution to this project from the begining. He has always been generous with his time, his broad knowledge, and with his own collection of books and films. I am especially greatful to him for his availability whenever I needed his help, his friendship, and his patience with a thesis student who has constantly complained about not having enough time. It might not be the best way to thank him by still making grammar mistakes here, yet this project belongs to him as much as it belongs to me. My special thanks go to Assist. Prof. Andreas TRESKE for his invaluable support and knowledge which he has never denied from me for these last two years. I have learned from him self-discipline, commitment to one’s work, and most importantly confidence in the others. I have been able to catch with deadlines of this thesis because he has showed that he trusted my work. There is still a lot I should learn from him. vi I am grateful to Assist. Prof. Dr. Trevor HOPE from Ankara University for his guidance and worthy insights and criticisms for this project. He has contributed a great deal not only to this thesis, but also to my undergraduate background in Ankara University. Assist. Prof. Dr. Dilek KAYA MUTLU and Ahmet GÜRATA have helped this project profusely; they both have encouraged me in their classes as well as they attended all of my thesis juries and read my work. Dr. Aren Emre KURTGOZU has been one of the people whose academic and personal help I have so often benefited. I have worked with him now for two years, and I know quite well that one can still learn while teaching, both from the students and from great teachers like him. Last but not least, Miss. Sabire ÖZYALÇIN has been helpful as much as anyone in this project. I should thank her for her priceless friendship and her support. Without her help I could have easily put myself into trouble with formal papers and documents. I am also indebted to her for secretly providing me with chocolates and cigarettes at worst times. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE.......................................ii ABSTRACT.............................................iv ÖZET..................................................v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................vi 1. INTRODUCTION...................................1 2. THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT...................9 2.1. The History of Indian Activism............9 2.2. The Representations of American Indians After Civil Rights Movements...................38 3. ROAD MOVIES: IDENTITY AND LANDSCAPE...........58 4. THE POSTMODERN EXAMPLES OF THE GENRE..........90 5. NATIVE AMERICANS IN ROAD MOVIES..............118 6. CONCLUSION...................................162 REFERENCES...........................................170 FILM INDEX...........................................173 viii 1. INTRODUCTION There has been considerable debate on the representation of American Indians in the Hollywood cinema. The arguments vary in terms of the presentations of the Indians on the screen and the questioned motivations behind them. Criticized in the works of Angela Aleiss, Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, and Ward Churchill among others in film studies and cultural studies, the image history of Native Americans is regarded as a history of ‘misrepresentation’. These critics have argued against the fact that from the early years of Hollywood the American Indian has been shown on the screen as the dangerous ‘red skin’ whose existence had to be wiped out from the American frontier. Especially the western genre which has consistently dismissed the native’s image by reducing his visibility into feathers, buckskins, mohawks, and smoke signals has had a crucial role in the one- dimensional representations of the American Indians. It is undeniable that the Western has functioned as the cinematic form in which the image of the Indian appeared and disappeared symbolizing his inevitable 1 vanishing from the history of the American West. The most classical examples of the genre such as Stagecoach (Ford, 1939), The Searchers (Ford, 1956), Two Rode Together (Ford, 1961), or She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949) introduce the American Indian as the bloody villain and justifies his extinction by associating him with savagery, barbarity, and wilderness. And this image has been idenitified with the American Indian so much that even later films like Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950) or Two Rode Together which are thought to have been among the first revisionist films treat the issues of Indian assimilation and white misgecenation in not different ways than the earlier films. However, any suggestions that this kind of ‘misrepresentation’ can be replaced by the American Indian’s reconfigured images which were employed in the Hollywood cinema during the civil rights movements is as problematic as the static representations of the western genre. Kilpatrick and Aleiss comment that the American Indian’s celluloid image had been initially one-dimensional and negative until it was challenged during the 1960s and 70s under the influence of the American Indian Movement. 2 The American Indian Movement was established in Minnesota in 1968. As an activist organization, AIM was basically modelled after the protest movements of the 60s and 70s that took place in the U.S.A. African American civil protests, gay liberation, and women’s movements were influential on the Indian activism which adopted a militant cultural position like the other movements of the time. The members of the American Indian Movement struggled to gain tribal independence and cultural recognition. As a consequence of the methods and models they used to voice their political and cultural demands, their militant protests frequently appeared in visual and print media. Although their relationship with the U.S. government was not legal and the issues raised were never dealt with officially, AIM activists used every opportunity to draw public attention to the Native Americans’ political, social,
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