Analysis Of Chris Eyre's 'Smoke Signals'

The title smoke signals refers to an Indian stereotype. In the old days they would send smoke signals in times or distress, as a form of communication. The film smoke took place in the year of 1998. The main characters, who go by the names of Thomas, and Victor grew up on the Coeur D’Alene Reservation.

Family stories are described as being the best and worst memories a person has with their loved ones. These stories are typically retold down through generations. Encylopedia.com states that, “Almost any bit of lore about a family member or experience qualifies as a family story—as long as it is significant and has worked its way into the family canon to be told and retold."

In the movie Smoke Signals the writer Sherman Alexie frequently shows stereotypes of the Native American people and shows the audience why the stereotypes are not true or meaningful. Focusing on the character Thomas, the film portrays him like he would be the stereotypical Indian sitting around the campfire telling stories. I think the film did a good job trying to show that, as he is often telling stories and he is even guided by his dreams making him seem like a spiritual person.

Alexie uses repetition to create a new definition for Native American culture. Throughout the movie Alexie tries break the typical Native American stereotypes. The movie can provide an insightful sense of the lifestyle and emotions of a modern Native American living on the Core d’Alene reservation is like. Without this setting we cannot understand how Thomas and Victor grew up and how it has affected them. Alexie uses repetition to provide a new perspective of Native American culture throughout the film. The dynamic between Victor and Thomas is unusual. Victor is angry and harsh while Thomas is an optimistic storyteller. The pairing of their friendship creates an insightful dialogue on what it is like to be a Native American in the 20th century. The real history of Native Americans has been stereotyped in movie and the more I learn the more you realize their history has been filled with suffering and injustice, the more I feel the truth of the statement, "We pay for the sins of our fathers." Every generation inherits the problems of their parents. Each generation that inherits dysfunctions from their parents have to break free and create a new narrative for themselves like Victor and the way Alexie uses poetry as narrative his film. Smoke Signals is about a new generation of Native Americans coming to terms with a painful past and forgive so that a new generation can move forward.

Soon after, Victor becomes irritated with Thomas telling more of his stories and asks him if he even knows how to be a real Indian. An unsure “I guess not,” is Thomas’ response, to which Victor states that he will just have to teach Thomas how to be one. Victor then explains that an Indian must remain stoic and mean like a warrior to receive any respect from others. Victor’s beliefs on what an Indian should act like probably originate from the knowledge and stories of Indians from the nineteenth century passed down over the years through both written and oral records. Victor sternly deciding to actively follow the example of the tribe’s ancestors was probably made in response to his treatment from and the behavior of his father. Choosing to abide by the beliefs and traditions of his tribes allows Victor to cope with or simply avoid his past by both renewing and strengthening his identity as a member of his tribe’s society. However, soon after telling Thomas of his beliefs, Victor’s “warrior act” fails to elicit any respect from two rude gentlemen who take the two Indians’ bus seats during a

Smoke Signals, released in 1998, is a classic film that provides insight to the lives of Native Americans living on reservations. There are very few films that attempt to portray Native Americans at all, yet alone in a respectful manner. The characters are all played by genuine Native American actors including: Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, and Tantoo Cardinal. Additionally, it is directed by Chris Eyre, another Native American. This film tries to overcome stereotypes of Native Americans that are prevalent in society, and does so in a humorous way. Smoke Signals takes the viewer along on a journey with the two main characters, Victor and Thomas. They leave their reservation in Idaho to travel to Arizona in order to collect Victor’s father’s ashes. This film is a classic because of it’s timeless theme: forgiveness. Smoke Signals portrays the theme of forgiveness by featuring Victor, a character struggling to forgive his late father for being an alcoholic and leaving him as a child; Victor takes Thomas along on a trek to Arizona to retrieve Victor’s father’s ashes.

In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the protagonist foremost values his pride, which leads to his demise. The story starts off with the protagonist taking a detour in the Yukon so that he could survey the trees in the area (he was doing this so that he could send logs down the river to the gold prospecting camp, where he would sell the wood to the prospectors for money). But, the protagonist’s pride blinds him from what could have and should have done to ensure his survival in the Yukon. About halfway through his journey, he accidentally breaks through the ice on the spring and his foot falls into the water. At the temperatures mentioned in the story (seventy below zero), if he did not dry himself properly, it could lead to serious frostbite and/or death. So, he was forced to build a fire, and the “fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had an accident: he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish” (London 8). The man keeps feeding the fire and gets ready to take his (frozen and potentially dangerous) footwear off, and feels content and a sense of satisfaction of disproving the old-timers. But, just as it seemed to be that the fire was stable and strong, snow that was on the branches of the spruce tree he was under fell

Throughout the whole movie, life on the reservation is shown through various stories and flashbacks. The portrayal of life on the reservation is not romanticized, nor is it criticized; life on the reservation is shown truthfully. There were problems then and there still are problems now with alcoholism, broken families, and a sense of abandonment. Alcoholism in communities, like the one portrayed in the film, causes a large ripple through everyone, their family and their tribe. It broke Victor and Thomas’ families, as Victor’s dad ran away due to actions he committed under intoxication and Thomas’ parents died in an accident that involved alcohol. Victor’s dad vanishing brought upon him a sense of abandonment that affected his overall outlook on life at a

Memoirs of war often reflect the positive or negative experiences endured throughout battle. Considered by many to be one of the best memoirs of World War I, Hervey Allen’s “Toward the Flame”, recalls his own experiences of battle. His recollection of events shows that he had a negative image of war and that there was nothing glorious about it. What started out looking like a man’s greatest adventure turned into a shell-shocking reality that war is actually horrible and trying. Allen’s experiences with consistent hunger, mustard gas, and artillery shellings led to his disillusionment with war, and left him with a permanent hatred of battle.

Smoke Signals cannot refer to anything else, but the American Indians. While reading it, the often depicted picture comes alive about a stereotyped indigenous person as sending smoke signals to another person; but then, while watching the film, it turns out that this stereotypical image of them are far from it. In this case, smoke signals refer to the fact, that the film is about American Indian characters, but the viewer should decode what the signal means for them, as it hides different meanings for everybody. This is what makes the story more exciting, the journey helps us find ourselves with the help of Victor, who wants to separate from everything that connects him to his roots at the beginning of the story partly due to his relationship with his father that was not the expected good father- son relationship with good

Smoke Signals is an award-winning movie directed by Chris Eyre, written and co-directed by Native American poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker Sherman Alexie and based on the book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The film reveals the reality of modern Native American life on an Indian reservation using Native American oral tradition storytelling to present insightful interpretation how different and indirect the path to forgiveness works within the movie. Alexie suggests that the importance of authentic cultural filmmaking is best told through the eyes of Native Americans and their acceptance of their given life. Alexie beliefs the storytelling path to forgiveness and acceptance manifests through powerful and humorous

Stereotypes are shown in the story through the binary depictions of Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire. The most important binary that is emphasized by Alexie is the stereotypes that Victor is “bad,”while Thomas is good. Victor is portrayed as the negative views of Indians. “Victor was really drunk and beat up Thomas up for no reason at all” (Alexie). In this situation, Victor is shown as the typical drunk Native American. Other stereotypes that are presented by Victor are that Indians are lazy when he fails to be persistent to try to get more money to get to Phoenix. When Victor beats up Thomas as a teenager, this depicts Victor as the bloody savage. Thomas Builds-the-fire, on the other hand, is portrayed as the more positive view of Native Americans. The romantic portrayals of Native Americans include the idea that they are noble savages. Indians are characterized as gentle and connected to the world. For example, instead of being captured as a bloody savage as Victor, Thomas is seen as the noble savage as he appears to be more connected with the environment and nature. Being connected with the nature and the world shows that Thomas-Builds-the-Fire is is not a selfish person. Also, instead of being viewed as lazy, Thomas Builds-the-Fire appears as diligent. This is because Thomas continued to

The film, Smoke Signals was about an adolescent name Victor and his friend Thomas on a journey to see what happened to Victor’s father. Throughout the movie, Victor has trouble trying to forgive his father for leaving his mother and himself behind. The context behind the movie did a great job in illustrating the culture of Native Americans and threw in some of the common stereotypes that are associated with Native Americans. Some of the stereotypes about Native Americans were domestic violence, them being alcoholics and a scene where one of the female characters, Lucy, says we barter because we’re Indian. The depiction of poverty and struggle in the movie was not as concise because of the difference in living space between Victor’s family and Thomas’s. Victor and his mother live in a decent home. In contrast, Thomas and his grandmother live in a higher standard living space. No one in the film was really struggling to meet ends met like how it is in the real world. If the movie was not focused on Victor and Thomas journey, the story would have taken a different path.

Native Americans are mostly judged by their addictions and the battles they fought. They are not normally judged by the hardships they had to face. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Smoke Signals show that these struggles are real. In his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and his movie, Smoke Signals, Sherman Alexie wrote about the challenges of being a Native American. Diary and Smoke Signals are similar because they both showed many family problems throughout the story lines. Also, they are similar in that the families faced difficulty with alcohol addiction. They differ because in Diary, the main character, Junior, adapts to his new school that has all white students while in Smoke Signals, Victor tries not to interact with anyone outside his race.

One of the metaphors in the film can be found in the near end when Victor’s father tells a story of himself and Victor playing basketball against catholic priests. The game and its players represent a battle of Indians versus Christians and therefore a metaphor for the most of the conflict between the United States and Native Americans. The U.S. government attempted many time in many different ways to assimilate Indians. In government-ran schools, Indian children were not allowed to practice their traditional beliefs and were encouraged and sometimes forced to practice Christian