Department of English and American Studies English Language And
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Tomáš Lesa Stereotyped Depictions of Native American Women in Hollywood Film Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Tomáš Lesa Acknowledgement I would like to thank my research supervisor, Mr. Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, first for his lectures, which arouse my interest in this topic, and second for his guidance during the process of my writing. I would also like to thank my family and my girlfriend for their patience. Table of Contents Introduction __________________________________________________________ 2 The Origin and the Definition of the Stereotype _____________________________ 4 Analysis of the Selected Films ___________________________________________ 14 The Silent Era _______________________________________________________ 15 The Golden Age of the Western _________________________________________ 16 The Revisionist Western ______________________________________________ 27 The Modern Western _________________________________________________ 30 Conclusion __________________________________________________________ 38 Appendix ____________________________________________________________ 42 Bibliography _________________________________________________________ 55 English Résumé ______________________________________________________ 60 Czech Résumé _______________________________________________________ 61 Introduction The first European discoverers of and settlers to America did not understand the cultures of various Native American groups and they thought of themselves as being more civilized than Native Americans (see for example The Journal of Christopher Columbus). Because of this superior position and owing to their ignorance and misunderstanding Europeans made many assumptions about Native Americans. Plenty of these assumptions were wrong or inaccurate and thus various stereotypes developed. Generally, when we think of the stereotypes in films and television, there has not been much attention given to Native Americans, as it has been, for example, to African Americans (cf. Sambo tu již nebydlí?). Even though some stereotypes connected with Native Americans have been dealt with and there has been an effort not to perpetuate them (as may be seen in some of the films in this thesis), still the stereotypes concerning Native American women are often ignored and not dealt with sufficiently. Not many people have focused on the stereotype of Native American women being sexually available to white men and so I would like to describe how the stereotype was used in various historical periods in Hollywood, compare these usages and show how it is employed now. To show historical context I am going to browse into history and present when the stereotype appeared and then I am going to analyze the nature of this stereotype. I would like to look into this issue from a more topical view. What I am going to argue is that the situation concerning the stereotype of sexually available Native American women has stayed preserved in many films throughout the history of Hollywood film – from the Silent Era, through the Golden Age of the Western and the Revisionist Western up until the Modern Western. The films I am analyzing in this thesis were chosen to demonstrate the point I am making and they had to meet the condition of having the ability to address masses. This was 2 fulfilled by the fact that overwhelming majority of the films were high-grossing, they were given mass-media attention, some of them became cult films and/or they were directed by star directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Terrence Malick and others. Naturally, they also featured star actors such as Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Dustin Hoffman, Colin Farell and others. Since film is a visual medium, I decided to demonstrate my statements concerning the analyzed films more visually in the picture appendix. In general, perpetuating of any stereotypes is at least uncomfortable, but mostly detrimental and dangerous. There may be negative consequences of perpetuating the stereotype in real life, and it is without doubts that it has a very negative impact on the Native American community. It is, therefore, important not to underestimate the role of mass media and it is necessary not to perpetuate the stereotypes in these media, particularly in film and television. 3 The Origin and the Definition of the Stereotype The stereotype dealt with in this thesis did not appear in the last century and its origin is not related to the invention of film. This stereotype dates back to the arrival of Columbus in America. Before film, there were other art forms, in which the stereotype was either present or at least some of these art forms negatively contributed to the formation of the stereotype. Most frequently, these were written records such as journals, short stories, novels, and articles, or forms of fine art, for example paintings. These works of art often showed Native American women as inferior in comparison with the whites and presented them as women who are lustful and who cannot help themselves from trying to seduce white men on every occasion. The stereotype developed only because all these above mentioned records were very inaccurate or wrong. With the invention of film the stereotype was heavily used in various Hollywood films; they all shared the same genre – the western. Hollywood created various models of how Native American women behave and what their personalities are like, and started to employ these models in films. The roles of Native American women were structured in the way to fit in Hollywood categories. The oldest artwork, that we know of, showing the nature of the Native Americans as seen by whites, is a woodcut called The People and Island Which Have Been Discovered (circa 1505) (see Fig. 1), which shows how supposedly savage the Native Americans are. In this woodcut the author depicts cannibalism and ―open love making‖ (Berkhofer Plate 2). Johann Grüninger depicted an event of killing one of the men of Vespucci‘s crew in an engraving, which was part of the German edition of The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci to Piero Soderini, called Clubbing Member of Vespucci's Crew (1509) (see Fig. 2). The engraving depicts several naked Native American women around a white man. Three of them are standing in front of the white man and they are 4 touching him. It is apparent that the women are smiling at the white man and are quite pleased by his presence; they don‘t have a problem with physical contact. The painting by William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America (1796) (see Fig. 3) shows a Native American woman supporting a white woman, but at the same time she is held on a rope or a leash and it is clearly understood from the picture that the Native American woman is under control by the white woman. You can see that this picture works as a metaphor for expressing the superiority of Europe over America as well as of the whites over Native Americans. The most influential medium before film, however, was the literature. When you take into consideration the available sources from the time of the first contact Europeans made with Native Americans, it is clear that Native Americans and more concretely Native American women were depicted inaccurately, uncomprehendingly and subjectively. This depiction was at the root of the emergence of the stereotype dealt with in this thesis. Robert Berkhofer in his well-known book dealing with the stereotypes connected with Native Americans, The White Man’s Indian, cites Vespucci‘s Mundus Novus, a journal published circa 1503. Vespucci describes Native American women having ―bodies which are tolerably beautiful and cleanly‖, but at the same time the women being ―very libidinous‖. Vespucci also claims about the women that ―when they had the opportunity of copulating with Christians, urged by excessive lust, they defiled and prostituted themselves‖ (Berkhofer 9) thus claiming that Native American women took the first chance they had to have sex with white men and that they couldn‘t have helped themselves, because they were so lustful. Vespucci is not the only man who mentions Native American women at that period of time and in that manner. Deborah Small and Maggie Jaffe created a publication, which is skeptic towards the discovery of America by Europeans in 1492, and this skepticism is nicely 5 illustrated and supported by quotes from various sources. According to Small‘s and Jaffe‘s 1492: What Is It Like to be Discovered? Peter Martyr, Spanish historian of Columbus era, wrote in Decades de Orbe Novo VII (1530) this: ―In accordance with the general Nature of women, who prefer the things of others to things of their own, these women love CHRISTIANS most of all‖ (Small, Jaffe). In another instance ―In his official history, Oviedo tells us about the sexual predilections of the native women of Hispaniola: ‗[They] were restrained with the native men, but they gladly gave themselves to the Christians. Anaceona, in particular, was ‗very indecent in the veneral act with the Christians‘ and ‗the most dissolute woman of her rank or any other to be found in the island‘‖ (Small, Jaffe). You can see how heavily subjective the sources can be, since Las Casas, one of the few people who probably truly cared for the Native Americans, in his Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (1542) contradicts Oviedo‘s depiction of Anaceona, a Native American ruler, by claiming: ―So noble and fine a lady, so gracious to the Christians and long suffering of their insults‖ (Small, Jaffe). Mainly at the time of the first contact of Europeans with Native Americans there was little information about various cultures of Native Americans and so people could depend only on the records such as mentioned above. Even in the following centuries Europeans did not show much interest in cultures of Native Americans and if someone was interested in a specific group of Native Americans, they often failed to understand them.