ignified with a happy ending. These relations usually ended with the Indian giving up his or her lover at the realization that their two cultures could never live together. This kind of ending only promoted discern towards miscegenation and reiterated the pretense that white civilization and Native culture could never coexist. These popular conventions placing Native Americans in confining, stereotyped roles were so accepted and unchallenged that they became society's only idea of Native culture and thus created an endless cycle of misconceptions and racial slander
             . Besides the obvious forms of degradation visible in the plots of early films and most Westerns, directors also used subtler conventions to depict Native Americans as villainous. One of these conventions was selective cinematography. A master of cinematography conventions was the prominent Western director John Ford. Examples of Ford's heavy cinematography work can be found in his film The Searchers in which Ford uses a slew of conventions to create significant images of both the white hero and the Indian. One of the conventions Ford uses are extreme close-ups. In one of the opening scenes Ford zooms in on Chief Scar fully adorned in war paint and feathers to emphasize his savage and threatening demeanor. Ford also uses a low angle shots like the one of Scar standing over Debbie (the hero's niece,) as she cowers in his shower. Ford uses this low-angle shot to accentuate Debbie's sense of helplessness and extreme fear as she sits opposite to Scar's intimidating presence (Hilger 12). Ford also heightens the suspense of his film by cross-cutting betwee
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