Humor And Satire In Mary Tallmoutain's Foghorn

Native American culture and history has been used for the enjoyment of audiences over many years in film, literature, television, and other forms of media. Not surprisingly, directors and writers hardly ever portray Native Americans accurately. In the play, “Foghorn” by Hanay Geiogamah, and in Mary Tallmoutain’s poem The Last Wolf, reader scan trace their influence into modern day media, even though almost none of it is accurate. The play, “Foghorn” is a satirical play created to criticize the way Native Americans are portrayed in pop culture. It contains humor and satire in order to allow white audience members to laugh at the pain and suffering they’re seeing without even realizing they might be being criticized. The play features a version of Pocahontas that closely resembles the character portrayed in the Disney version. She is a full woman, instead of a small child, and she is interested in John Smith like in the Disney Movie.

The real Pocahontas was younger, like 14 or 15, and she was married to a different man than John Smith. By making her older and in love with the white man who is stealing her land, Geiogamah is making a point about the Americanized version of Native American history. The white man uses history and culture to make a profit and to spread their own message. This play proves that more often than not, the stories we hear about Native Americans are not true at all. Instead, they are made up versions of what we want to believe; they are mythical American Indians who didn’t exist in the real world centuries ago. In Mary Tallmoutain’s poem, The Last Wolf, she writes about a lone gray wolf, which is an important symbol in Native American culture. Many films and stories today use the wolf as a symbol of Native American culture. In fact, if you go into a shop that sells any kind of Native American decorations, they almost always have some with a wolf on