Peter Emanuel

ENG181

Project 2 Final Draft

March 23,

2016
Smoky Signals
Believe it or not, renowned Native American poet and author
Sherman Alexie also has written film screenplay and story. In 1998,
Chris Eyre, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, directed
Smoke Signals, which Alexie also did the screenplay and story for. In
writing about the effect of Smoke Signals (1998), the first film to be
directed and acted by only Native Americans, James H. Cox argues in
his chapter of Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays that this
was the film that combated the exoticism and stereotyping set forth by
the films before it. Alexie also instituted strategies to combat exoticism
and stereotyping in Flight and An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian. The question is whether Alexie achieves his goal. Although
Alexie can convey positive images of the Spokane to the audience,
they arent strong enough to accomplish as much as Cox says they do.
In other words, many of his arguments do not apply on a larger scale
or to a general public.
Much of Coxs logic revolves around talking about films other
than Smoke Signals first, proving that these films portray Indians in an
exotic and stereotypical manner, then proving that Smoke Signals does
not present these same images. In The Searchers (1956), one of the

earlier films Cox discusses, protagonist Ethan Edwards comes back to

his home in Texas after the Civil War to find much of his extended
family killed. Members of the Comanche Tribe have abducted his niece
and it is up to Ethan to find them. Alexie knows that the Indians in this
film are made out to be villains and obviously disagrees with this
portrayal, but for those watching
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who do not have as good of a background as Alexie, the film could
definitely cause Indian hating among non-Natives and self-loathing
among Natives(Cox 77). Again, in Dances With Wolves (1990),
another film taking place in the Civil War era, there is extreme tension
between Native Americans (in this case, the Lakota Tribe) and
Americans. It is possible that Costner ended the film without the major
battle that should have taken place due to budget constraints.
However, whether Costner intended to cut this potential scene or not is
irrelevant to the outcome, and Cox does not seem to want to give
Costner the benefit of the doubt here. Not showing the violence
against the Lakotas supports the argument that the film puts
Americans in a position of the hero and Indians in a position of the
villain. Cox states that Alexie knows that even though these films
werent real, they still are able to leave a stain on a certain culture
anyway, so in the making of Smoke Signals, Alexie wanted to direct
each scene knowing many, many critics would be watching. Alexie

assumed that those watching Smoke Signals would be influenced on

how they view Indians after the fact, which may not have been the
case in other films. Alexie is able to give Indians a down-to-earth status
by depicting his main characters, Arnold and Thomas, as individuals
before tribesmen. Instead of explicitly acting stereotypically, Cox notes
that Alexie references stereotypical behavior (for example, the
infamous powwow) in a more subtle manner to give his characters a
more human feel. Instead of actually performing in a powwow, Victor
is pounding a powwow rhythm on the seat(Alexie 66)(Cox 82). If
white people dont constantly reference their traditions as if we are
always thinking about them, why should Indians? We are all
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equally caring and human, yet equally violent and savage; Cox asserts
that this notion is apparent in Alexies film while absent in the other
aforementioned films.
Some, but not all, of Alexies anti-stereotyping strategies
transcend film and make their way into Alexies later works, even
almost a decade later. Coxs overarching claim seems to be that
Alexies film combats conventional Hollywood images of and
narratives about Indians by avoiding depictionsthat are frequently
exoticized, romanticized, misrepresented, or otherwise exploited(Cox
75). In addition, we see Alexie take the same route in An Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, where Junior avoids acting

stereotypical to the kids at Reardan by hiding his poverty and family

history of alcohol problems. Similarly, the actors in Smoke Signals do
not wear their traditional clothing at any point, which subconsciously
makes them appear less stereotypical and exotic. Again, Alexie makes
the characters appear more down-to-earth since they dont seem to
care about their traditional clothing in the way that one would expect
given the portrayal of Indians in other films, just like how I dont put
much thought into specific, traditional white clothing to wear
throughout the day either. Another aspect of the characters in Smoke
Signals that screams Alexie, Cox points out, is that they care deeply
about other Indians, even if they have just met(Cox 83). It is
interesting to point out that we see this exact same point outside the
film in Flight, which Cox does not mention here. Zits, in the chapter
where he becomes Gus, he has instant empathy for Bow Boy, a young
Indian boy that he, along with Small Saint, one of his comrades, help
rescue from the fray. Although Gus doesnt know Bow Boy, Zitss
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caring deeply for his own empowers him to take control of Gus and
abandon his unit, one of the worst things any soldier can do(Flight
100) to save this boy. Associating with a community or connecting on a
more local level as opposed to is a fairly straightforward step to
combating generalizations. We see Junior leave his community, the rez,
in An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and as a result he

questions where his identity lies. When talking to Gordy, Junior admits
that hes internalized the fact that hes red on the outside and white
on the inside(An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 132). All
Junior did was leave his reservation, but now he feels as though he has
lost his ties to the entire race. Clearly the importance of living on a
reservation in a tight-knit community outweighs the importance of
connecting with an entire race of people (which really just isnt
possible), which seems to be a major message in Smoke Signals.
Even so, there are notions Cox derives from the film to prove his
point that do not necessarily do him justice. In his essay, Cox decides
to include a comment Alexie made in the introduction to the Smoke
Signals screenplay, where Alexie states, I truly believed, that every
movie was actually a documentary(Cox 76). The point Cox goes on to
make is that Alexie no longer thinks this, due to the fact that he is able
to avoid treating Smoke Signals as a documentary. However, Flight has
Zitss take control over certain characters in documentary-esque
scenes in history. While Alexie may be attempting to say that Zits is
out to make these events look less like a documentary by controlling
the characters fates, the fact that Zits needs to go into history to
repent in the first place puts Indians in a position that is foreign from
the
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here and now, as if to say that there is no modern-day mode of

rehabilitation for people like Zits. Counterproductively, this element of
Flight may actually contribute to more of a sense of Indian exoticism
rather than less, which does not help Coxs argument that Alexie
completely avoids putting Indians in the past. Furthermore, the
narrative structure of the film being circular, rather than linear(Cox
88) doesnt necessarily help to cure stereotyping either. Zitss
adventures in Flight constantly deal with the cyclical pattern of life,
death, and rebirth as to make the point that this concept is very Native
American (and not very white). The fact that the film is circular, then,
makes Indians look more exotic and isolated as a people when
compared to whites. Alexies two works also depict a shaky relationship
between son and father, while the reliance on a beneficial father figure
is a key point Cox presents as to how Thomas focuses his stories(Cox
89). In Thomass case though, Arnold (to whom he is not related) is the
father figure, which implies that Thomas did not look up to his real
father. The fact that all three of these characters did not respect their
biological fathers serves to compound on the stereotype that Indians
have dysfunctional families. Coming from a nourishing family, myself
and those like me would see this as another point of difference, which
would contribute more to exoticism of Indians. However, I can see how
others would see this as a point of similarity, which may or may not be
the type of audience Alexie was trying to hone in on with Smoke

Signals. That being said, Coxs argument rests upon the assumption
that all the film viewers came from backgrounds where they

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experienced relatively more hardship, but in reality only portion of
people and not all of his readers will resonate with this.
One of the lines that Cox quotes from Smoke Signals that
seemed to summarize the statement Alexie was trying to make about
the Spokane is when Victor wants Thomas to look like you just got
back from killing buffalo(Cox 81) but Thomas replies by saying that
our tribe never hunted buffalo. We were fishermen(Cox 81). Perhaps
Alexie is making a comment on how one cannot generalize Indians and
how one must look to tribal affiliation to get a real sense of the culture.
In this case, the Spokane are different from the typical image of the
Indian in that they are fishermen, which isnt as exciting as the image
of the quiet, noble bow-on-horseback plains hunter we see in many
modern films and video games. The question then rises: do the
stereotypes that are apparently shot down in Alexies works actually
match up with reality? In my experience, the Indians are definitely still
victims of being placed in the past. At my camp we had an annual
tradition based off the Native Americans who once inhabited the area
where we would burn the ashes of the closing campfire of the previous
summer in the first campfire of the new summer. Coincidentally, Cox

points out that an ash-burning tradition like this took place in Smoke
Signals. It is the continuation of traditions like these that could
potentially provoke negative attitudes towards Indians that place them
in the past, especially since storytelling can have a major psychological
impact on young kids. On the other hand, the inherent value that
tradition, myth, and history hold is definitely a factor to be considered
though. Even so, Alexie is
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certainly not done striving for equality and respect for Native
Americans and will continue to work hard to achieve his goal.

WorksCited
Cox,JamesH."ThisIsWhatItMeanstoSayReservationCinema:Making
CinematicIndiansinSmokeSignals."ShermanAlexie:ACollectionof
CriticalEssays.Ed.JeffBerglundandJanRoush.SaltLakeCity,UT:Uof
Utah,2010.7494.Print.
Alexie,Sherman.Flight.NewYork:BlackCat,2007.Print.
Alexie,Sherman.TheAbsolutelyTrueDiaryofaPartTimeIndian.NewYork:Little,
Brown,2007.Print.