An Act of Redemption: Conflicting Images of American Indians in Broken Arrow and The Searchers

Year 2018, Issue: 48, 85 - 109, 01.04.2018

Susan Savage Lee

Abstract

The golden age of Hollywood westerns produced a series of iconic images, from carriage caravans migrating westward to the blossoming romances between young American men and women trying to survive an unfamiliar landscape. The Hollywood western also functioned as a space for reproducing racialized stereotypes of Native Americans, in particular the Noble Savage or the Bloodthirsty Savage. The figure of Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick in the ABC television series, is just one of many stereotypical depictions of Native Americans from the 1950s. Each of these components in the 1950s western offered American audiences a visual dichotomy: although some directors still relied upon the pejorative images mentioned above, others like Delmer Daves and John Ford attempted to present a more positive representation of the American Indian. These directors’ efforts created a confused ideological system, one that both accepted and rejected stereotypical depictions of Native Americans. While Daves and Ford rely on stereotypes, they also disrupt these images by condoning an interracial marriage in Broken Arrow 1950 and by presenting a white anti-hero, Ethan Edwards, in The Searchers 1956 .past and, at the same time, make sense of race relations in the present international climate of the Cold War. Although scholars have examined stereotypes of Indians and Native subversion in western film, scholars have not compared the two films using the directors’ reinforcement and subversion of stereotypical images as a racially-based redemptive act. By reading the convoluted representations of Native Americans in Delmer Daves’s Broken Arrow and John Ford’s The Searchers together, the search for a cohesive American national identity in the Cold War era emerges outside of the films

Keywords

The Cold War, The Searchers, Broken Arrow, Racism in the Western

Bir Telafi Girişimi: Broken Arrow ve The Searchers’da Birbirine Ters Düşen Kızılderili İmgeleri

Abstract

Hollywood kovboy filmleri, altın çağında, batıya göç eden karavanlardan Amerikalı genç kadın ve erkeklerin kendilerine yabancı topraklarda hayatta kalmaya çalışırken filizlenen aşk hikayelerine uzanan bir dizi ikonik imge ortaya koymuştur. Bu tür, aynı zamanda, başta soylu vahşi ve kana susamış vahşi olmak üzere, Kızılderilileri betimleyen birçok ırkçı tiplemenin yeniden üretilmesi için zemin oluşturmuştur. ABC’nin televizyon dizisinde Lone Ranger’ın sağ kolu olan Tonto figürü 1950’lerdeki stereotipik Kızılderili betimlemelerinden yalnızca biridir. 1950’lerin kovboy filmlerindeki bu imgeler Amerikan izleyicilerine görsel bir ikilik sunar. Bazı yönetmenler halen yukarıda değinilen aşağılayıcı imgelere bel bağlasalar da, Delmer Daves ve John Ford gibi yönetmenler Kızılderilileri daha olumlu bir şekilde tasvir etmeye çalışmışlardır. Adı geçen yönetmenlerin çabaları Kızılderili stereotiplerini hem kabul eden hem reddeden karmaşık bir ideolojik sistem yaratmıştır. Bu yönetmenler, yarattıkları Kızılderili karakterler stereotiplere dayandığı halde, Broken Arrow’da 1950 ırklararası evliliğe göz yumarak ve The Searchers’da 1956 beyaz bir anti-kahraman olan Ethan Edwards’a yer vererek aynı zamanda bu stereotipleri yıkarlar.Politikacılar kadar Amerikalıların da her gün kimin Amerikalı olup olmadığını tayin etmeye çalıştığı Soğuk Savaş politik ortamında, Daves ve Ford bu sorulara filmlerindeki Kızılderili tasvirleriyle cevap vermeye çalışır. Her iki yönetmen de stereotipik Kızılderili imgelerine bağlı kalırken, aynı zamanda, geçmişte Kızılderililere yapılan muameleyi affettirmek ve Soğuk Savaş’ın uluslararası ikliminde ırklararası ilişkilerin anlaşılmasını sağlamak için, onları yıkmaya çalışır. Eleştirmenler bugüne kadar kovboy filmlerinde görülen Kızılderili stereotiplerini ve onları yıkmaya yönelik girişimleri incelemiş olmalarına rağmen, bahsi geçen iki filmi yönetmenlerinin güçlendirdiği ve baltaladığı stereotipik imgeleri Kızılderililerin hatalı temsilini telafi etmeye yönelik birer eylem olarak değerlendirerek karşılaştırmamışlardır. Soğuk Savaş döneminde birleştirici bir Amerikan milli kimliği oluşturma çabası Delmer Daves’in Broken Arrow’u ve John Ford’un The Searchers’ında görülen karmaşık Kızılderili temsillerinin birlikte okunmasıyla anlaşılabilecektir

Keywords

Soğuk Savaş, The Searchers, Broken Arrow, Kovboy Filmlerinde Irkçılık

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