Dances With Wolves And Avatar

Dances with Wolves’ sense of identity is entirely with the Lakota Sioux when he is captured by the U.S. Army, his original people, and is beaten, yet Dances with Wolves refuses to cooperate with them, “I am Dances with Wolves, and I have nothing to say to you. You are not worth talking to.” Dances with Wolves sense of identity is closely related to his mindset.

The theme the two stories share is about growing up. In the story "Brothers are the Same" Temas had to attempt to slay a lion to prove to the Masai

In the year 2009, James Cameron wrote and directed one of the most remarkable films I have ever seen ‘Avatar’. This science-fiction saga has a story line that is engaging and captivating for its audience. Avatar took place on a moon called Pandora. Humans discovered very valuable natural resources on Pandora and did whatever it took to obtain what they needed from Pandora. The people of Pandora are Na’vi’s, a 10 foot tall, blue-skinned humanoid alien group that lived in the rainforest or Pandora. The Humans found a way to interact with the Na’vi’s by artificial yet organic avatars that were controlled with a human mind and conscience. Jake Sully, a paraplegic marine who was given the task to manipulate the Na’vi’s into leaving their home. Sully entered

very big similarity. In my opinion, the movie was better because you could actually see whats going on,

Hollywood has helped create and perpetuate many different stereotypical images of the different races in the world. Those stereotypes still continue to affect the way we think about each other today and many of those stereotypes have been proven to be historically inaccurate. The movie Dances With Wolves, directed by actor Kevin Costner, does an excellent job in attempting to promote a greater acceptance, understanding, and sympathy towards Native American culture, instead of supporting the typical stereotype of Native Americans being nothing but brutal, blood thirsty savages.

Just as John Smith came to the New World to better his life with the riches so follows Jake Sully in search of a way to make enough money to pay for the incredibly expensive surgery needed to allow Jake to walk again. And like John Smith, Jake follows the white-man-assimilates-into-Native-American-Indian-culture narrative. Not only is Jake and his avatar initiated into the tribe, but he quickly becomes the most capable of them. The same parallels could be made with Kevin Costner’s 1990 film Dances with Wolves. And like Costner in Dances with Wolves, Jake chooses to stand with the indigenous population against his own race. This could be described as the "white savior" theme, where a member of the dominant race, often rejected by his own kind, proves to be the best. At one point Colonel Miles Quaritch asks Jake Sully (who are both white men): "How does it feel to betray your own race?" In the end, Jake chooses to permanently change species.

Everyone has a preconceived opinion of how a certain ethnic group is in terms of the way they live, the morals they hold, the way they deal with people different from them, and how they deal with one another. We come to these conclusions by what we have seen in the media, heard from other people, or actually experienced ourselves. Most people would consider these opinions to be stereotypes. Dances with Wolves is a motion picture that deals with and touches on all sides of personal stereotypes we as American and American Indians have about each other. John Dunbar takes us through and allows us to see how it is to come into a situation he was not familiar with and then eventually the

This movie was pleasantly surprising. It was an enjoyable watch and told a story that kept the plot line and details close to the real history of the Sioux Indians’ lives, starting with The Battle at Little Big Horn.

I thought this film was very unique because it shows the true Native American perspective of everyday life, not the usual phony stereotype of Indians such as teepees and bow and arrows. It also showed how much Native Americans are not much different than other cultures. Instead of singling other cultures out or judging people that are different from

Until fairly recently the popular culture of American literature and film did not attempt to study the true representations of Indians in North America. Instead they chose to concentrate on the romanticized/savage version of Native people: which is an idealistic view of a Native with long, beautiful flowing hair riding on a horse obsessed with chanting and praying to the savageness of a rowdy, wild Native causing unnecessary mayhem to the white people. This portrayal of Native people in mass media had led to the stereotyping of Natives, which in turn had ricocheted into real life. Not only do non-natives succumb to these ideals, but Natives do as well.

The Native American culture is something that is cherished by their people. “Perhaps no other group of people has quite the rich and storied culture as those of the Native Americans. They have a history rich in struggle, strife, and triumph (Native American Culture).” Dances with Wolves, directed by Kevin Costner in 1990, is about a white man who becomes interested in the Native American culture and decides to befriend fellow an Indian tribe (Dances with Wolves). The Searchers by John Ford in 1956 is about a white man who is on a journey to find his niece who was kidnapped by an Indian tribe (The Searchers). These films do have a few differences but many similarities. Dances with Wolves and

Filmmakers showed what they felt had already been conventional to their beliefs about Native Americans. In the film The Last of the Mohicans (1920) these two contrasting roles of Native Americans dominate most of the plot. The fiend is Magua, and the “noble” savage is Uncas. These two roles that are shown of Native Americans have some historical ground, but what makes one side good and the other bad? Is it because that is how society wants to see them? And does the director’s representation of the two sides gain them acceptance in American culture? In the history of America, Native American tribes often became associated with similar tribes with similar beliefs. This is true of the two tribes in The Last of the Mohicans. The Huron, who according to the historical events of Fort William Henry are the Iroquois and the Mohicans are historically associated with the Delaware. The Huron in the various versions of The Last of the Mohicans, come to represent the Iroquois who were allied with the French, and were seen as evil in the eyes of the British. The Mohicans, historically come to represent the noble Delaware, who were allied to the British. These tribes get grouped together, the “Huron [became] condensed into the same entity as Maquas, Mingoes and Mohawks and contrasted with the superior virtue of the Delawares and Mohicans” (Clark 122). These tribes were constantly intermixed

In this movie, one may observe the different attitudes that Americans had towards Indians. The Indians were those unconquered people to the west and the almighty brave, Mountain Man went there, “forgetting all the troubles he knew,” and away from civilization. The mountain man is going in search of adventure but as this “adventure” starts he finds that his survival skills are not helping him since he cant even fish and as he is seen by an Indian, who watches him at his attempt to fish, he start respecting them. The view that civilization had given him of the west changes and so does he. Civilization soon becomes just something that exists “down there.”

In the way it is visually astounding is only a bonus, it is perfectly executed and displayed. I feel as if this is a masterpiece because of the way it tackles discrimination, not only from the ‘white side’ view but from the how the Native populace feels toward the invaders. It exposes the tender side of two worlds colliding, such as trying to make peace and attempting to learn both sides of culture. The contrast between the two worlds is shown by Jake Sully constantly moving between both worlds, the audience is eventually more exposed to the Na’vi side just as Jake Sully is. He says “It feels like out there is the real world, and in here is the dream..” James Cameron does beautifully in showing a ‘cliché’ event in a new

Typically referred to as ‘Indians’ in popular culture, Native Americans were traditionally seen in Westerns as the antagonists. The Western genre typically tells the story of the colonisation and discovery of America, which saw the major Hollywood studios revive the interest in the Western. Westerns draw on “historical actuality, a romantic philosophy of nature, and the concept of the […] savage” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3). Westerns often split the “depiction of the Indian, with the cruel and treacherous [Indian] balanced by the faithful [Indian]” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3) which resulted in the portrayals of Native Americans witnessed in films today.