Smoke Signals
Can a reel Indian, ever be a sign for a real Indian? The question is somewhat specious, since most Caucasians imaged on American film are not signs of real people: the teeth are too white, the noses too sculpted, the bodies too buffed, the hair too perfectly coifed, the repartee too witty. To a certain extent, every movie is a smoke signal of cultural values. For this very reason, then, we should pay attention to cinematic signs generated by Native American culture itself, as in the 1998 film Smoke Signals, the first commercially successful movie written , directed, co-produced, and acted by Indians.With a comparatively modern setting, Smoke Signals is about the signs that represent Indians in contemporary culture. Not only do drumbeats associated with Indian war parties punctuate the score, but televisions in the background of several shots also display Indians on the rampage in old black-and-white Westerns. When one of the protagonists answers his question, "What is the only thing more authentic than Indians on TV?" with "Indians watching Indians on TV", we realize that the film ironizes the very idea of authenticity. The desire for "authentic" movie Indians may simply generate "types" rather than complex
One scene of the film is shot from inside a car that can only run in reverse, so that the camera watches the driver from the backseat as she stares out the rear window to steer the car down the road. Gleefully appropriating the cliches of the "road picture" for the screenplay, screenplay writer Sherman Alexie implies that Indians can escape those other film cliches that leave them broken down at the crossroads of "good Indian" or "bad Indian" portrayals. Through Thomas, Alexie suggests that inertia can be surmounted when we appropriate new stories to live by, like stories of rising from the dead. Smoke Signals ends with a voiceover as the anguished Victor throws his father's ashes into a river. Thomas asks, "How do we forgive our fathers? . Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs? Or in their deaths saying it to them or not saying it? If we forgive our fathers, what is left?"What's left, Alexie implies, is a new story, a story that avoids the traditional signals of civilized white man versus savage Indian, of native victimization versus white mastery, of good Indian versus bad Indian. Look like a warrior, like you just killed a buffalo. " Thomas challenges these signals of authenticity by pointing out that their people were fishermen, not buffalo hunters; "Dances with Salmon" would more accurately describe their origins. In the course of the movie, however, it becomes quite clear that Thomas's tales are eclectic, syncretistic fictions, woven from the threads of personal experience, oral tradition, pure imagination, and whatever else comes to hand. These vehicular metaphors provide an ironic contrast to the central convention of the movie: a road trip taken by two radically different personalities who end up learning from each other. In contrast, Smoke Signals not only gives us flawed characters that elicit our sympathy and admiration but also displays, with affection, the dysfunction of the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho from which they come.
Common topics in this essay:
Smoke Signals,
Fallsapart Winnebago,
Dances Salmon,
Thomas Arnold,
Lester Fallsapart,
Indians TV,
Thomas Builds-the-Fire,
Sherman Alexie,
Indian Stop,
Thomas Alexie,
smoke signals,
forgive fathers,
rising dead,
burning house,
victor thomas,
indians tv,
alexie implies,
real indian,
ashes arnold,
bad indian,
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Acceptance Essays
