Paper Example. Native American Filmmaking

The books Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film by Lee Schweninger and Reservation Realism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film by Michelle Raheja praise the fast-growing indigenous film movement in the face of Westernization. The authors' main arguments in the books are that Hollywood and similar ethnographic film productions are the main contributors to the toxic and erroneous representation of the Aboriginal people and their cultural practices. Filmmakers play a massive role in creating visual sovereignty. Visual sovereignty creates self-representations that reflect older stereotypes and connects aesthetic practices. The paper aims to analyze the thesis in the introductions of the two books, the way they support their arguments, and their comparison.

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Schweninger’s Introductory Chapter

In Imagic Moments, Schweninger starts his introductory chapter by suggesting the importance of Native Americans in producing stories and films about cultural traditions and native life. Schweninger emphasizes this point by quoting from the essay of Vizenor titled Ontic Images. He goes further to strengthen his thesis by giving another reference to a scholar called Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Their statements are similar because they advocate for the need to tell their own stories since it is the only powerful imperative form of resistance (Schweninger 2). The introductory chapter gives a framework of his approach to proving that native aboriginal filmmaking techniques are devoted to creating a dialogue or a movement about the misrepresentation of the indigenous culture, which is cast by Western films and has existed for more than a century (Schweninger 4). The Aboriginal people have been forced to endure this form of misrepresentation. The introductory chapter includes some subsections whose argument supports the thesis outlined in his Introduction. The first subsection is "Fourth Cinema," whose case seeks to realize a transparent medium that is not contaminated by the effects of foreign settlements (4). Another noteworthy subsection is "Indigenous Actors," which highlights the price of equipping a film with Native Americans' authenticity as best as possible (Schweninger 7). The last subsection is "Adaptation," which contains film conversions that cannot be beleaguered by reinscribing clear dominance of literature over film (Schweninger 10). Schweninger uses Robert Stam’s film theory to highlight those literary adaptions that feature Native Americans should focus on the particulars that render the medium as supportive of native culture and history as possible. Each subsection in the introductory chapter gives a positive contribution to Schweninger’s thesis. Still, the section with the most persuasive statement is "Talking Back," whose concept exemplifies that Aboriginal films are meant to start a conversation about the misrepresentations formed by Hollywood Western films (10). It is Schweninger’s most critical approach to his thesis in the book.

The Aboriginal people’s main concern regarding the portrayal in Hollywood Western films is based on the fact that they were not included in creating their image (Markowitz. et al.). In the past century, the Aboriginal people did not understand the English language. The dominant anthropologists wrote by white colonialists invented them and explicated native life and culture in a biased way. The texts showcased how outsiders viewed them. According to Elise Marubbio and other film theorists, the best way to deal with historical inaccuracies is by creating something from an authentic perspective that discounts to reality and opposes any falsehoods or misrepresentations (Marubbio and Buffalohead 224). Schweninger supports his theory in the opening chapter of his book by analyzing Victor Masayesva’s 1993 film, Imagining Indians. The film is a direct metaphoric response to the damaging misrepresentation of Native Americans. The film contains a scene where a woman goes to a dentist's appointment. Schweninger uses the stage to prove his argument that native films are talking back (Schweninger 25). An in-depth analysis of this scene establishes the subtleness of Native films trying to start the conversation on falsely misrepresented histories.

Michelle Raheja’s Reservation Realism

Michelle Raheja’s Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film suggest a more nuanced style to her arguments of interpreting the aboriginal people and how they are represented in films. She offers a mixed-use of quotes from other scholars. Her discussion concerning the distorted portrayal of Native Americans in ethnographic Western films becomes overshadowed by so many references. Nevertheless, the arguments are similar, and the scholarly references are of exceptional merit. Raheja’s thesis starts in the preface titled Reel and Real Worlds. Her methodology is laid out briefly in the introduction when she introduces the book and blames the Western films for creating stereotypes that erase the indigenous history of the native people (Raheja x). She quotes Paul Chaat Smith on how films define our self-image (x). The quote leads to the thesis statement, which states that Indigenous people have been hyper-visible in western movies. Still, because of plotlines that perceive the native people as vanishing, they are frequently uncredited (x). The lack of credit renders them invisible in ordinary life.

Raheja supports her thesis by identifying the term “refacing" that stands for the cultural misappropriation and misrepresentation of the native people in films, especially the ones that involve Indians. She explains the locations where movies that feature the Native Americans are set because of their disingenuous nature of depiction in the “Virtual Reservation” subsection (Raheja 219). Raheja then signals the importance of visual sovereignty, which supports her critical approach to the thesis because it incorporates all the facets of native American filmmaking that renders the native people visible by starting a conversation against the stereotypes of Western ethnographic films. The whole fifth chapter of the book involves the theory of visual sovereignty and its response to anthropological representations of Inuit people (Raheja 220). In producing a film representing their people, the Inuit people negated stereotypes and acquired a voice that made them visible because they used visual sovereignty.

In comparing the two scholars, Raheja’s methodology is laid out briefly in her book's preface. Schweninger’s book analyses Gerald Vizenor’s work to establish how the rise in popularity of the Aboriginal films is a direct counter to the victimization and labeling created by Hollywood films on the native American people. However, Raheja uses an overabundance of different scholars' works, including analytical research papers, to investigate the subject of visual sovereignty. It is a concept concerned with visual aesthetics and culture to prove that misrepresentations of the native people in films have rendered them invincible in regular life (Raheja 7).

In conclusion, Lee Shweniger’s approach to proving that Native Americans can fight stereotypes created by Western films shows that the medium of filmmaking and talking back by the Native Americans is essential. It is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease; therefore, the Aboriginal people should voice their concerns so that they can be heard. A recommendation about his analysis is that he should analyze a different perspective that reflects the changing nature of filmmaking. Michelle Raheja’s argument is, at times, aggressive and sounds more personal because her analysis is thorough. One can easily deduce that her case is a form of venting and voicing the frustrations of the Native American people towards the misrepresentation that the Western films depict. A recommendation about her analysis is for her to make a more objective approach to prove her thesis.

Works Cited

Markowitz, Harvey et al. Seeing Red! Hollywood's Pixeled Skins: American Indians And Film. Michigan State University Press, 2013.

Marubbio, Miriam Elise, and Eric L Buffalohead. Native Americans On Film. University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

Raheja, Michelle H. Reservation realism: Redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of Native Americans in film. U of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Schweninger, Lee. Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film. University of Georgia Press, 2013.