The Film Of The Cage Directed By Coco Fusco And Paula Heredia

Many Indians in the early 19 century where looked as less or lower than the white man mainly because of the concepts of Indian in the early century stating" This concept of a separate Indian/white culture, or a "racial pluralism," was central to the films of American movie pioneer, David Wark (D. W.) Griffith. Angela Aleiss. Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies (Kindle Locations 161-162). Kindle Edition. " Author Angela Alesis in Making the White Man's Indian uses refences, clear writing style, and great author agenda in supporting her topic on how the early 19th century through today did not correctly model what an Indian represented.

Misrepresentation of Natives on screen throughout the 20th century has had an adverse effect on them. Whether it was positive or negative stereotypes, Natives felt the effect of Hollywood and began to lose their self-identity, their honour, and their pride. Reel Injun takes a look at how movies have defined an entire race and also documents the rebirth of the Native identity after decades of destructive Hollywood movies by interviewing notable Native actors, actresses, and activists. By doing so, director Neil Diamond hopes to silence Hollywood stereotypes and get Hollywood to properly represent the Native people.

There is also the struggle within the community in terms of accepting and/or acknowledging video as a legitimate representation of their culture. Although Garcia states that video indigena is “loaded with symbols and codes” and tackles such community-building concepts such as language, intimacy, and family (Wortham 2004: 365), the medium, which has garnered a positive international reputation, struggles with “their limited acceptance in their home community where the apparent self-evident capacity of video indigena to represent culture has been challenged with accusations of personal and fiscal responsibility” (Wortham 2004:

With their contemporary representation of indigenous people and the issues they face today, Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls and Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals are films that try to fracture the stereotypical Indian image that has persisted since the beginning of the Hollywood industry. Written and directed by Native American filmmakers, both stories comment on the condition of indigenous people in and outside the United States by confronting topics on poverty, death, drugs, alcoholism, and parent abandonment. While released almost a decade apart from one another, both cinemas follow the similar stories of their protagonist as they try to deal with these problems by trying to understand themselves and the obstacles in their respective

Although Fusco created a documentary on the live experimentation that Gomez-Pena and she have created to criticize Westerners on how they view and treat “Others” or primitive people, but her editing decisions on “The Couple in the Cage,” may have skewed the viewers the understand her satirical piece without viewer’s own personal opinion or interpretation of the performance. Comparing the live performance and to Fusco’s video, there were properties that the live performances did not have but the video did have. In the video, Fusco purposely placed videos and pictures of freak shows to juxtapose her performance to deliver same ethnocentrism that she experienced in the cage and the freak show performers who also faced the same problem. When the spectators paid to take pictures with Fusco and Gomez-Pena, there was

Native Americans express their voice in films by incorporating their history, culture and traditions for Indigenous purpose. These independent cinema efforts are produced by filmmakers who want to tell a story about their tribes around the world and educate the younger generations. Zacharias Kunuk, filmmaker of Antantarjuat; The Fast Runner and Journals of Knud Rasmussen, “compels non-Inuit spectators to think differently, not only about what constitutes indigenous content in films and more conventional representations of Native Americans in cinematic history, but also about indigenous visual Aesthetics” (Raheji 1168).

Ethnocentrism/pg. 36: the use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors. Ethnocentrism occurs in the documentary multiple times. One specific time is when Perla Sanchez, who is 14 years old fantasizes about her life like most of her other class mates who don’t have to work the fields. She compares her life to theirs and envies them. Perla is faced with the horrible truth that her life is far from being like theirs and that her reality is that of travel, hard work, poverty and a lifestyle she does not wish to continue living. As soon as Perla begins to get close with friends or begins to learn things at a school she is forced to migrate with the rest of her family to where the work is in the fields. It is hard for her to do this time and time again. When Perla is at school she is able to feel somewhat normal and wanted much more by her classmates. It is a way for her to potentially escape her dreadful reality. For a period of time in the day she is able to escape her home life and feel normal. When she returns home, or to the fields to work she is quickly reminded of what she feels she is missing out on in life and that she wishes something better for herself and her family. It is easy for Perla to compare her life to the lives of her classmates at school and feel as if her life is inferior to theirs. This is the basis around

‘Waiting for harry’, filmed in 1980, is about the funeral of Harry’s nephew. The film depicts a traditional aboriginal wedding Prepared by Frank, complete with tension, stress, and togetherness. I will argue that this ethnographic film encompasses the feeling of unity and involvement, pulling the audience into the film through various cinematic techniques. The film overall made me feel engaged and interested in the lives of the tribe members, and the ceremony that they perform for the deceased. The use of narration and subtitles further the sense of inclusion, an idea which was made important by Frank when he stated, “This film is for everyone”. This quote sets the tone of the film and is continuously represented throughout, through interactions between the Anbarra people, the anthropologist, the Northern Australian’s, and the audience.

However, The Daily Show accomplishes this in a staged setting with humorous intent, while The Couple in the Cage does so by showing real reactions and behaviors people have in response to indigenous people.

The use of various camera techniques such as canted frames, low-angled, high-angled and close up shots, as well as camera distance, enhances the struggle between the characters. The use of such techniques not only allows the audience to get an extensive insight into the many different characters, but also helps us understand the relationships between them and how all of these factors contribute to the overarching theme of racism in the film. The use of these camera rapid movements

Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed. However, most western movie ideas derived from characteristics known to the Native Americans and Mexicans way before the American culture knew about it. They are many misrepresentations of cultures and races shown throughout movies from as early as 1920 's with silent films. Although one could argue that silent film era was more politically correct than today’s films, the movie industry still continues at times to misrepresent cultures and their lifestyles in films known as, western films.

With recent controversy over the portrayal of minorities in film and Hollywood’s claimed whitewashing usage in current American film, individuals are starting to question why the continuation of whitewashing and controversial depictions of minorities still persist. It’s unbeknownst to these individuals how this pattern was created by U.S. Film in the 20th century. Film is worthy of study because cinema and all media is a form of communication. Film is a style of art and that art communicates to our society what we want it to. Motion pictures develop cultural norms, enforce societal standards, and because of this it can set ideals that are both good and positive. If film is way of learning and communicating, messages can be lost in translation,

Ethnic drag includes not only cross-racial casting on the stage, and also more generally, the performance of “race” as masquerade. While many of the performances I examine occur in places that are less official than the state- subsidized theater, they are therefore no less ritualized.

“The feeling of being in the cage is unbelievable. It honestly cannot be described in words,” Sean said.

A critical theorist, Homi Bhabha, focuses on the issues of human identity and how it forms differences between cultures. Using these topics as a basis of analysis, we can look at Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation as a visual representation of Bhabha’s theories. By creating a film that is less about dialogue and dependent upon relaying a feeling, she uses the distinction between cultures to elicit the feeling of disconnect. Lost in Translation can be analyzed through the lens of Homi Bhabha by applying his theories on human identity and cultural differences, specifically Coppola’s use of stereotypes, how the cultural differences lead to a sense of class hierarchy, and how the different characters handle the disconnect between Westerners and the Japanese.