Smoke Signals is one of the most touching films of the 1990’s, based on Sherman Alexie’s short story, This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona. Although it is not a standard Western film, but one can learn much about American Indians’ life as it is a film created and acted by them. The indigenous characters of the film are not represented as the typical Western film’s American Indians, but the story represents indigenous life in a natural way, and gives a contemporary image to the viewer of them as the new generation American Indians, who grew up in Native American boarding schools, speak the English language well, and white people started to convert them into the Christian religion. The well-known stereotypes about their roots and lifestyle appear in a hidden, humorous way with the help of symbols that usually refers to their past; and do not appear in an easy, clear way, as it is hard to understand without any background information about Native Americans. In this paper I would like to search for the symbols of the film, analyse them, and try to understand the historical or even political background of these motifs, which pervades American Indian’s life, and can help us understand their spirituality that is deeply rooted in their culture.
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
Indians have always had their things taken from them by whites. However, the U.S. Government may have gone too far on this one. After being taken from their original lands and put on small reservations, some Indians have been wanting all whites to suffer. These people of the Sioux tribe were called Ghost Dancers. They believed if they did a certain dance, their gods would destroy the U.S. and similar establishments.
The book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a lot of similarities to the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but not so many differences. On, the country the book had Willy Wonka wear a black top hat and a cane. But in the movie they had him wear a tan top hat and a cane. In the book dad had told them about the five golden tickets that are around the world. But in the movie a student from the classroom at school had told them about the five golden tickets that Willy Wonka had sent out.
The Giver and The Maze Runner share some similarities and differences. They both are dystopian societies and are set in the future. But in the Giver, people aren’t trapped in their world; they can get out if they wanted to. In the Maze Runner, people are trapped without consent and it is only through immense hard work, they can get out into the real
Native Americans who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show used the press to make social and political statements as well as communicate their opinions of white society. According to memoirs, some Native Americans accepted to travel with a show that portrayed them stereotypically in order to understand “‘the white man’s beliefs about God’s will, and how they act according to it.”’ Although the only way for this goal to be achieved was through the noble savage stereotype, the performance of the stereotype gave Native Americans some control over the ways in which tourism and religion intersect. The tourist gaze is therefore symbiotic because the tourist gains access to the authenticity he or she desires while the Native Americans gather knowledge to better protect their religion and culture against the encroaching white world. Thus, self-commodification can be utilized as a method to adapt but not necessarily resolve a problematic history of colonialism.
The Holocaust was a horrible part of history which has been written about or movies have been made about it. Night by Elie Wiesel and the movie Schindler’s List tell accounts from this time in history. However, the accounts in the book and movie are different, but do have similarities too. Schindler’s List provides a different point of view than Night does for some elements of the Holocaust.
Such roaming of Los Angeles serves as their exercising their freedom to navigate their terrain, similar to how they did prior to the white men’s colonization of indigenous people’s lands. Ultimately, these twelve Native Americans, even amid being marginalized and deemed the ‘others,’ find solace in these crevices of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. This comfort amid marginalization and racial inequality serves as Mackenzie’s springboard in arguing that, despite the men being alienated from mainstream society due to being Native Americans and the fact that they bear the collective burden of being on the receiving end of marginalization, there is nonetheless a space for them to socialize within Los Angeles. Thus, this film is important to this course as Mackenzie is offering us a lens through which we can view 1960s Los Angeles; this film demonstrates Native Americans’ perseverance and ability to join arms and stay afloat amid the racial inequality and marginalization to which 1960s Los Angeles subjected Indigenous
Once European men stepped foot onto what is now known as North America, the lives of the Native Americans were forever changed. The Indians suffered centuries of torment and ridicule from the settlers in America. Despite the reservations made for the Natives, there are still cultural issues occurring within America. In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the tragic lives of Native Americans in modern society are depicted in a collection of short stories taking place in the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Throughout the collection, a prominent and reoccurring melancholic theme of racism against Native Americans and their struggle to cope with such behavior from their counterpart in this modern day and age is shown.
Spooky things exist to feed off people’s emotions. People normally view these spooky things using a set rules or scale to judge these type of monsters. This is how people are aware of the situations that they are in. In order to escape this situation, people must think about it to themselves. Due to these situations, people of our community watch horror movies in order to simulate the idea of spooky things for the future.
In The Shining the main human body that becomes a source of horror is Jack Torrance. He is a more complicated issue than Regan. In a way, he is already dangerous from the start of the novel. One could argue even before the novel as his violent history such as the breaking of his own child's arm and the beating up of a schoolboy. He seems to be a complicated, human character, neither bad nor good, who struggles with drinking and domestic abuse.
Observing the childhood of the parents of the three novels one can say that Stephen King purports the philosophy of “Children being the reflections of their parents.” In The Shining the fault of the adult is constituted by Jack, his father, his mother, Wendy, her mother and as well partially by a chef, Hallorann. Danny becomes the instrument of the familial and the hotel ghosts, whose shape his personality and leave their mark on him. Jack’s tough childhood is projected through his whole life, his father’s words and nature were gradually stealing into Jack’s mind until he changed into him. His father showed to Jack a bad role model, not only by his lousy upbringing but also by his alcoholism.
The idea came to me when I began browsing the internet again for the first time in what seemed like forever. It had been three years since I had decided to go electronic free, of course with the exception of a flip phone so that I could call in case anything had gone wrong. I searched Google for travel attractions for my upcoming road trip. My mouse made a soft clattering as I scroll down the screen viewing the black beaches beside the Mediterranean ships and the hidden caves inside tropical jungles, the green so vivid that it caused me to nearly fall into the screen itself. One image however stood out to me.
A naïve spectator might be under the impression that both the film adaptation and the novel portray the same story with the same characters, same events, and same literary elements. The only factor that remains constant for both the novel and the film are the persona of the characters and the underlying story of a murderer with a convoluted personality and the desire to live in the life of others. One of the key disparities in both the novel and the film adaptation is the additional background information that Patricia Highsmith provides at the beginning of the novel. Here, we learn of Tom Ripley’s cruel and depressing upbringing. As a child, Tom Ripley’s parent’s died forcing him to live with his aunt who he deplores.
Her favorite books of all time are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Shining, and The Boy In the Striped Pajamas. Alex read To Kill a Mockingbird her 8th grade year. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of those books that everyone needs to read. The book is written by Harper Lee and was published in 1960 It is a great story about a family in Alabama not standing for the racial issues and defending an accused black man of rape. It is a classic book that is written really well and is an overall great story.
