On Racism, Erasure, and ‘Pan’

Even less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn. … There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy…

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This guest post by Danika Kimball previously appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


Hollywood has a history of recreating the same stories over and over again. I mean, in recent years audiences have seen remakes of Carrie, Cinderella, and about 18 Spiderman films (18 too many, in my opinion). So it came as no surprise when Warner Brothers announced that they would be making a new version of Peter Pan, entitled PanEven less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.

Raise your hand if you’re sick of it.

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Director Joe Wright reportedly intended the film to be “very international and multi-racial,” but if the characters we’ve seen in this adaptation of Pan are indicative, he very well means “whiter than bleached snow.” Really, if he wanted the film to stand out from the rest of the Peter Pan films, he might have made it a point to create a non-racist one, as it would be the first of its kind to do so. I mean let’s not forget the disgusting racism present in the beloved 1953 Disney classic.

But fear not!

The studio apparently did an exhaustive search in finding the right girl to play the role of Tiger Lily, auditioning both Lupita Nyong’o and Adele Exarchopoulos before choosing Mara for the part. Though both of these actresses are phenomenally talented, name-checking starlets born in Kenya and France respectively hardly counts as an “exhaustive search,” especially when you cast a conventionally attractive white woman in the role at the end of the day.

Though certainly not the first film to completely screw up its casting choices (ahem — Stonewall, Aloha, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Native whitewashing is particularly problematic. Fashion editors, photographers, and designers frequently appropriate Native culture, sport red face, and hypersexualize women. Though women are sexualized overall in entertainment mediums, the objectification of Native women presents a whole new set of problems. While one in four women is the victim of sexual abuse on average, that number more than doubles for Native women.

Furthermore, when was the last time you saw a film featuring Native Americans that didn’t use a harmful stereotype like “the violent savage,” “magical Native American,” or one who is drunk in a casino? Why are sports teams still using Native American caricatures as their mascots, despite overwhelming public dissent? How is Columbus Day still a thing? Why do we call celebrities our spirit animals?

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To the naysayers that argue that Warner Brothers couldn’t find a good Native actress to fulfill the role, please allow me to call bullshit.

2002’s Whale Rider cast an unknown actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who went on to receive a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Similarly, Quevenzhané Wallis was cast as an unknown talent in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. That year she became the youngest actress to receive a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.

Laverne Cox and Peter Dinklage are both testaments to the fact that casting great actors in roles that they authentically embody pays off in the long run. How inappropriate (not to mention ridiculously offensive) would it have been for HBO to continue the practice of “shrinking an actor” in order to depict the role of Tyrion Lannister? Consider the backlash that both Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne, and most recently Elle Fanning have received for being cast as trans characters, rather than trans actors who could authentically play those parts.

Why on earth is Warner Brothers so hesitant to adopt a more progressive and culturally sensitive casting choice? What more do Hollywood executives need? Casting marginalized actors is not an impossible task, and their hesitation to embrace diversity on screen has real-life consequences.

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The film Miss Representation touches on this idea. Adopting the mantra of Marie Wilson, director of The White House Project — “You can’t be what you can’t see” — the film argues that media representation is important. Without visible role models to look to, young people, especially girls and people of color, will be dissuaded from joining certain fields. Marginalized groups continue to be underrepresented in STEM, politics, leadership, and law enforcement, fields that are currently oversaturated with white men.

This opinion is shared by those who it most severely affects. A recent graduate from Arizona State University, Edilh Gallardo, shared her experiences in pursuing an education with her alma mater, emphasizing that pursuing higher education as a minority can be difficult because “a lot of our children don’t realize the opportunity is there.”

Her sentiments are part of the reason why representation in television film matters so much. If the only representations you see of your race or gender on TV are terrorists, criminals, and savages, rather than doctors, lawyers, or leaders, it might be difficult for you to imagine yourself in those positions later on in life.

There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy because they are allowed to say, “We’re just giving the people what they want.” It’s clear in films like Pan, Tonto, and Aloha that Hollywood has no qualms with telling the stories of women or minorities. They have no problem with disenfranchised characters, but it has become apparent in recent casting choices that Hollywood is not ready for disenfranchised actors. This kind of transgression is irresponsible at best, and damaging to our cultural fabric at worst. So for the sake of actors, films, and the future of the industry, I hope eventually someone will start listening.


Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on Twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

The Problems with Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’

In ‘Pocahontas,’ Disney missed an important opportunity to represent Indigenous women in a relatable, empowering way, and instead focused on commodifying their culture for mass-market appeal. … Pocahontas’ life only became a story worth telling when a white man became involved. She only became a princess when a white man recognized her as royalty. She only became the center of a Disney movie because white men realized they could profit off of her myth.

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This guest post written by Shannon Rose appears as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


For as long as I can remember, my brother who has autism and I have loved Disney movies, and they have given us a real way to connect and bond with each other over the years. Disney has had such a positive impact on my life and my relationship with my brother that it is difficult to look back and see how problematic the films are, especially with regards to Indigenous women. However, I have realized that it’s important to step back from our own attachments and examine the harm Disney has done by perpetuating damaging stereotypes. This, in turn, will help us fight for better representation in future animated films that will positively impact the next generation of Disney movie fans. In Pocahontas, Disney missed an important opportunity to represent Indigenous women in a relatable, empowering way, and instead focused on commodifying their culture for mass-market appeal.

Pocahontas is an animated romantic musical drama about a young Native American woman in the 17th century who falls in love with a colonizing European, John Smith, and saves his life, bringing temporary peace between the colonizers and the Indigenous people. I always assumed it was an overly embellished rendition of history, but it is actually a heavily romanticized version of John Smith’s account of the events. This is problematic because there is a long, fraught history of European storytelling that involves a colonizing white man being saved by an Indigenous woman, who then falls in love with him and becomes a Christian, which is suspiciously similar to Pocahontas’ tale. The Powhatan Nation criticized Pocahontas for perpetuating the trope of “the ‘good Indian,’ one who saved the life of a white man.” White men have been fascinated with “civilizing” gorgeous Indigenous women, and John Smith’s story is only one of the many that have been perpetuated. Knowing this changes the context of the film. It’s no longer a story of a woman who falls in love with a seemingly unattainable man, but rather the delusions of a white colonizer who dreams of a beautiful Indigenous woman wanting to give up her life among “savages” to become a proper “civilized” European, aiding him in his desire to spread white civilization and power across the world.

Disney sells the film as having a female protagonist, but since the source material originated from a white man’s point of view, she lacks the agency to guide the story. Pocahontas is immediately “othered” as a mystical creature deeply in touch with nature, and not a complex human being. She communicates with animals, she can leap from great heights, she asks advice from a tree, and the wind leads her along her journey. All of these magical touches create distance between her and the audience. More importantly, it creates distance between Native Americans and how they are represented on-screen. When Disney made Pocahontas and her culture otherworldly, they erased the humanity of Indigenous people.

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The audience is introduced to John Smith as an English man who has traveled all over the world, and has proudly killed many Indigenous people in order to spread his idea of “civilization.” “You can’t fight Indians without John Smith!” a fellow shipmate says. “That’s right, I’m not about to let you guys have all the fun!” Smith elatedly responds. Here is a man who has never hesitated to kill Indigenous people before, but when he finds Pocahontas at the end of the barrel of his gun, he suddenly has a change of heart. He doesn’t stop because she’s a woman; he stops because she is stunning. Her body is worth more to him alive than dead.

Another magical element that does more harm than good is the way Pocahontas immediately learns how to speak English, to the shock and delight of both her animal friends and Smith. Off the hook, Smith now has no need to learn her language because Pocahontas adjusts herself to accommodate his needs. The language barrier that exists between cultures has always required give and take from both sides; it makes us better communicators and strengthens our ability to understand each other in a deeper, more meaningful way. By forgoing that struggle, the white colonizer is accommodated and their white supremacist beliefs are sustained.

Part of the problem with Pocahontas is how it teaches young Indigenous girls that their worth is dependent on the men in their lives. To be seen as a princess, as royalty, they must be willing to risk their lives to defend white men and turn away from their own culture. While Pocahontas is portrayed as a heroine, did she ever have a choice? Would her story ever have been told if she had let Smith die, if she had chosen her family over him? She would have been erased from history, as far too many Indigenous women have been. Pocahontas’ life only became a story worth telling when a white man became involved. She only became a princess when a white man recognized her as royalty. She only became the center of a Disney movie because white men realized they could profit off of her myth.

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Disney exacerbated the erroneous long-held belief that Indigenous women welcomed Europeans and their culture to America, erasing the history of racism, colonialism, and genocide against Indigenous peoples. Disney went one step further, however, and commodified Native Americans and their culture in ways we have not been able to recover from. In early 1995, months before the movie was released, Disney spent millions marketing the film. Pocahontas Barbie dolls, Payless Shoes moccasins, and Halloween costumes can still be found today, twenty years later, giving white girls permission to appropriate Native American culture and treat race and culture as costumes. Because Disney made Pocahontas an American “Princess,” many non-Native people assumed her as one of their own. Thus, we now can claim a shared American heritage, and not have to think twice before appropriating her culture. Many of us have long struggled with our place in the U.S.’s violent and troubled history but Disney single-handedly made cultural appropriation “okay” for an entire generation of children in order to sell merchandise.

It is hard to accept that something we love is deeply flawed because their flaws reflect back on us. It’s much easier to brush those criticisms off and push it to the back of your mind. It’s important to know, though, that you can love something that is flawed (I’ve been singing “Just Around the River Bend” for a week now) and still push Disney and other filmmakers to not make the same mistakes again.

We need to amplify stories of Indigenous women, and give them the support they need to tell those stories and make them be heard to a larger audience. Indigenous women need to be writers and directors, not props in white people’s stories to make us feel better about colonizing their home. The true story of Pocahontas, where she was kidnapped and used as propaganda by the Virginia Company and whose real name was Matoaka, is tragic and should embarrass us non-Native people. It was never Disney material, but there are stories about Indigenous women out there that are. Disney just needs to look beyond source material created by white men.


Shannon Rose is a writer and director living in Los Angeles. She has her MFA in Film & Television from USC School of Cinematic Arts, and she is passionate about creating opportunities in film for diverse voices. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @femmefocale.

‘Kumu Hina’: Documentary on a Native Hawaiian Māhū (Transgender) Woman and Teaching the True Meaning of Aloha

‘Kumu Hina’ is a portrait of one activist working to preserve Native rights, culture, and dignity in a time when Native Sovereignty is being made more visible by events like the efforts of Water Protectors to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu draws a direct and explicit link between honoring her māhū identity and helping her people preserve their culture. Like the māhū of generations past, Wong-Kalu has taken on the responsibility of sharing sacred knowledge with the next generation. She wants to share with her students the true meaning of aloha which, to her, means giving them unconditional acceptance and respect.

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This guest post written by Gabrielle Amato-Bailey appears as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


Kumu Hina is a 2014 documentary directed by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, which follows Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a māhū (transgender) Native Hawaiian school teacher, through a year in her life. The documentary begins by introducing Halau Lokahi, the public charter school where Wong-Kalu teaches hula. This school is “dedicated to native Hawaiian culture, language, and history… subjects long prohibited in Hawai’i’s Americanized education system.” This is followed by a brief animated introduction during which Wong-Kalu, through voiceover, introduces viewers to the Hawaiian concept of māhū: “those born ‘in the middle’” “who embrace both feminine and masculine traits that are embodied within each and every one of us.”

Wong-Kalu explains that in pre-colonial Hawai’i, māhū people held honored positions in society as healers, keepers of sacred wisdom, and teachers. It is clear that Wong-Kalu sees honoring her own māhū identity and preserving Hawaiian culture as deeply intertwined. In her introduction, she clearly ties respect for māhū to the body of Hawaiian traditions. Western missionaries condemned māhū individuals at the same time they forbade hula and other cultural expressions. This queer identity is part of traditional Hawaiian culture; the identity cannot be claimed without connecting with the Hawaiian heritage, and that heritage cannot be fully honored without respecting the gender identity. Wong-Kalu recalls that in her youth she was often made fun of for being too feminine, but found refuge in her cultural identity. The strength that she drew from connecting with her heritage led her to her purpose to “spread the true meaning of aloha.” Connecting with her Hawaiian heritage gave her the strength to be true to her gender identity, and being true to her gender identity seems to have led her to the traditional role of a māhū as a teacher. The documentary really illustrates this close connection by weaving together stories of Wong-Kalu’s personal and professional life. We follow her as she prepares her students for their end of year hula recital, and as she begins married life with her husband, Hema Kalu.

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Wong-Kalu is the hula teacher at Halau Lokahi, and it is she who teaches students of all ages the traditional songs and dances of Hawai’i. The documentary focuses particularly on her high school age boys as they struggle to fully commit to their performance. Early on, we see Wong-Kalu demonstrate the chant to her students and how they imitate her very timidly, seemingly afraid to look silly. She demonstrates again, first telling them, “There’s nothing wahine about my voice.” Although Wong-Kalu later discusses her concerns about how her identity may impact her social life, she uses her māhū identity and gender fluidity to serve her students.

There is another reason that the documentary focuses on this particular group of students. A middle school student, Ho’onani Kamai, who is also a māhū person, has asked if she can be part of the high school boy’s performance. Wong-Kalu is originally hesitant to allow it because of possible backlash from parents, but considers it her job to nurture her students, not force them into gender identities or gender roles. Her presence ends up being to the benefit of the male students because Kamai is fully committed to the performance. Wong-Kalu describes her to the other students as someone who embodies Ku, or male energy. Wong-Kalu even plays to adolescent male pride, asking her male students if they’ll let themselves be outdone by a younger female student. In an interview, Kamai suggests that the high school boys struggle partly because they’re afraid to look foolish and partly because they think they don’t have to try very hard.

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Kamai’s dedication and commitment pay off when, at the end of year recital, she is the one to lead the high school boys’ chant. Towards the end of the documentary, we see this group of students meeting again after their performance, and the boys all praise and thank Kamai for being a leader and teacher.

Throughout Wong-Kalu and Kamai’s journey together working on this performance piece, the documentary reveals to us how these two māhū individuals are received by their community. Other students at Halau Lokahi are quite comfortable with the māhū identity. Kamai is accepted by her peers and has friends, and the documentary even shows some of her classmates explaining what it means when someone is māhū. This broad acceptance from the students is obviously the result of the environment of respect and cultural pride that the school staff fosters in their students. During morning assembly, Principal Laara Allbrett reminds the students the importance of respecting their teachers by giving their full effort to their lessons, especially because her generation and those before were prevented from learning about their heritage as a colonized people. This sentiment is echoed by Kamai’s mother, for whom it is very important to see her children get the type of education she could not have, and she is comfortable with Kamai expressing her māhū identity. It is evident that Wong-Kalu’s philosophy that respecting the māhū identity is part of respecting and expressing traditional Hawaiian culture is shared by her community.

The final word on Wong-Kalu’s mentorship of Kamai comes before the end of year recital. Wong-Kalu takes her student aside and lets her know that as long as she’s in this supportive environment, she can express her māhū identity freely, but that this might not be the case everywhere. Wong-Kalu cautions Kamai that as a child she may have to go along with other’s expectations. She explains that, as an adult and someone who is confident in her identity, she doesn’t move for anyone at this point in her life, and that Kamai will also reach that point in her own life.

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Running parallel to this story of the mentoring relationship is the story of Wong-Kalu’s relationship with her husband, Hema Kalu. Kalu is a Tongan man from Fiji, and the documentary picks up when his visa has finally come through and he can move to the U.S. Wong-Kalu describes her husband as a “full-on bush man,” and Kalu says of his life in Fiji that he was “poor but free.” In contrast to Wong-Kalu’s experience of Hawaiian tradition being supportive of the māhū identiy, Kalu describes Fiji as more conservative. He admits that at first he was hesitant to get involved with a māhū person because he was afraid of how his friends would perceive him. Wong-Kalu also expresses anxieties about “passing” (a controversial and problematic term to many trans women as it implies that there is a specific way women should look and behave, although for many trans people it is “rooted in a desire for safety“) for Kalu’s friends. They are both very protective of one another in the face of possible discrimination.

Conflict arises in the relationship between Wong-Kalu and Kalu for the same reasons as in any other relationship: expectations. On the one hand, Kalu seems to still have fairly traditional gender expectations for his marriage. He is extremely jealous and doesn’t want his wife to have any male friends. On the other hand, he struggles to adapt to more urbanized life in Hawai’i, and Wong-Kalu becomes extremely frustrated with him because of the time it takes him to adjust. Part of the conflict also seems to come from their age difference. Kalu is in his early 20s, while Wong-Kalu reaches her 40th birthday during the filming of the documentary. Some of Kalu’s behavior comes off as deeply immature and selfish. When Wong-Kalu invites him to attend her students’ mid-year concert, he takes a call on his cell during the performance and then rushes to leave to spend time with his friends. He also calls and interrupts Wong-Kalu several times during one of her classes. Kalu doesn’t seem to understand how important his wife’s work is to her.

Wong-Kalu discusses her concerns about being in a relationship at all, and whether she as a māhū person is maybe willing to put up with more conflict or disrespect in order to not be alone. At the same time, there is an obvious affection between her and Kalu. Towards the end of the documentary, he presents her with a birthday cake and gifts, singing “Happy Birthday.” Wong-Kalu expresses that, however things might turn out for her marriage, she is grateful to live in a place that allows her to be herself and love who she loves.

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Kumu Hina is a portrait of one activist working to preserve Native rights, culture, and dignity in a time when Native Sovereignty is being made more visible by events like the efforts of Water Protectors to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Wong-Kalu is a cultural advocate, a teacher, and the chairperson of the Oahu Burial Council. She draws a direct and explicit link between honoring her māhū identity and helping her people preserve their culture. Like the māhū of generations past, Wong-Kalu has taken on the responsibility of sharing sacred knowledge with the next generation. She wants to share with her students the true meaning of aloha which, to her, means giving them unconditional acceptance and respect.


Gabrielle Amato-Bailey is just starting out as a freelance writer. In between paying gigs she writes about feminism, pop culture, and social justice.

‘The Cherokee Word for Water’: The Wilma Mankiller Story

Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985 after working with volunteers from the small rural community of Bell, Oklahoma to bring water to the town. ‘The Cherokee Word for Water’ is the story of this extraordinary woman and leader whose activism on behalf of her community continues to resonate across the Cherokee Nation today.

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This post written by staff writer Amanda Morris originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


“Long before the United States existed, the Cherokee people had a society based on democratic principles,” a male voice says at the opening of The Cherokee Word for Water. A man in a cowboy hat walks toward the camera alongside a river, trees bare of their leaves, the landscape dominant. Later, we learn that this man is the real Charlie Soap (Wilma Mankiller’s husband and the film’s co-director). The voice continues, “They were guided by the spirit of balance between the self and community, elders and youth, men and women. One Cherokee community was reminded of that balance in the early 1980s.” The image transitions to a closer view of the river carrying a soft layer of mist above her surface, the sun gently touching the tops of the distant trees. The next statement from the voiceover is in the Cherokee language and subtitles read, “The Cherokee word for water is,” beckoning viewers to listen.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985 after working with volunteers from the small rural community of Bell, Oklahoma to bring water to the town. The Cherokee Word for Water is the story of this extraordinary woman and leader whose activism on behalf of her community continues to resonate across the Cherokee Nation today.

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“If there is no water, many communities begin to scatter, fall apart. That’s what was happening by the 1970s,” the voiceover continues as the visual shifts to broken down equipment, abandoned wood frame homes, and the faces of enduring elders. Viewers are introduced to a vision of real people surviving years of broken treaties, neglect, and empty promises; people trying to survive in the face of a serious problem: no water. The narrator continues, “Then something happened that no one expected. It started with the return of one Cherokee woman, Wilma Mankiller.”

Kimberly Guerrero plays Mankiller in the film and after the narrator’s introduction of the community’s problem, we see Wilma (Guerrero) driving a brown station wagon loaded with suitcases and clothing, smiling at her sleeping children in the front seat. She is headed home to Cherokee territory in Oklahoma.

As she settles into her original home community, Wilma suffers the same transitional pains that any woman might face upon moving home: difficulty finding a job, an oldest daughter who doesn’t want to be there, and bureaucratic red tape that stalls the simplest tasks. However, she also suffers a terrible head-on collision that breaks her body apart, after which she has time to heal, think, and plan. Wilma’s friend, George Adair (Roger Vann) stops by with a box of chocolate and she asks for his help. “Let me go talk to the water,” he says, and the scene shifts to his ceremony by a spring in the woods. When he returns to Wilma, he holds her hands and announces, “You gonna be alright.”

Three months later, as Wilma and Charlie Soap (Moses Brings Plenty) begin to visit Bell to gather support for the waterline project, they are greeted with friendly, but aloof, skepticism. Just saying that the tribe wants to help isn’t enough for the Cherokee residents of Bell, who are used to being lied to and let down by government authorities. When words fail them, Wilma sets out to show the community that she is serious about helping them. She and Charlie start by fixing Mae Canoe’s (Cindy Soap) roof, changing out the screen door of another’s home, and other tasks around the community. It is clear that in this locale, actions speak much louder than words, especially for people who are painfully familiar with broken promises. Even after some people in the community begin to open their homes and minds to Wilma and Charlie, Mae’s daughter Elizabeth (Jamie Loy) scolds Wilma, “You might get my mom to believe your fancy talk, but you ain’t foolin’ me. … Keep your dreams to yourself, lady.”

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The film features many quiet moment of contemplation, sometimes near water and sometimes indoors, as when we see Wilma writing in her journal after her encounter with Elizabeth. We hear Guerrero’s voiceover say, “Trust. Like with Mae’s daughter. We need hers, but she needs to see we can make things better, together.”

Once the community learns to trust Wilma and seems to be getting on-board, her determination to succeed with the Bell waterline project runs into opposition from tribal politicians. Chief Ross Swimmer (Darryl Tonemah) calls Wilma into his office to alert her that her project is getting a lot of attention, that the idea of “poor Cherokees pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” is a story that the media will love. She assumes this is good news. “You and Charlie making progress out there can be seen as a threat,” Chief Swimmer says, crossing his arms across his chest, sending a strong defensive body language message that reflects a practical concern of all politicians: potential new voters who may oppose the status quo. Wilma and Charlie have many obstacles to overcome including intense and personal political pressure from tribal leaders who don’t want the project to succeed, but Wilma remains adamant in her response to the Chief, “This project will not fail.”

The Cherokee Word for Water has captured the attention of Gloria Steinem, who said, “The Cherokee Word for Water is a very rare story because it is about the empowerment of people who have been made to feel they have no power.”

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Furthermore, in a background video for the film, Kimberly Guerrero said, “It’s a woman’s story, it’s Wilma’s story, and it’s about how a woman goes about unifying a community.” And that unification begins with truth. Charlie warns Wilma once the community commits to voluntarily digging 18 miles of waterline through rocky terrain without a firm budget yet in place, “Wilma, around here, when you say something, it better be true.”

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The determination of one woman to make a difference for her people against political pressure, bureaucratic red tape, and community skepticism comes to life in The Cherokee Word for Water, and serves as a necessary reminder that sovereign Indigenous nations remain a vibrant part of this land with strength, passion, stories, and experiences of their own.

For those of you interested in activism, this film was funded through The Wilma Mankiller Foundation with profits going back to the foundation “to support economic development and education throughout Indian Country,” according to the official website. The Cherokee Word for Water would make a wonderful addition to any course or community workshop in women’s studies, Indigenous studies, American studies, or politics, as it “demonstrates the positive attributes of modern Native communities and provides positive role models for Native youth in the mainstream media.”

Note: Chief Mankiller walked on in 2010, but her Foundation, spirit, and works live on.


Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

Tanya Tagaq Voices Inuit Womanhood in ‘Nanook of the North’

Director Robert Flaherty not only framed Inuit womanhood according to his fantasies of casual sensuality, but according to Euro-American patriarchal fantasy. His portrait of Inuit life is neatly divided between the woman’s role, limited to cleaning igloos and nursing infants, apparently immune to the frustrations of Euro-American women in that role, and the man’s role, leading the band, educating older children, and hunting.

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This post written by staff writer Brigit McCone originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


Nanook of the North is an iconic 1922 drama that recreates traditional Inuit lifeways through the representative struggles of Nanook (“Polar Bear,” played by Allakariallak), his wife Nyla (“The Smiling One,” played by Maggie Nujarluktuk), another woman identified only as “Cunayou,” Nanook’s young son “Allee,” and baby “Rainbow.” However, we are shown older boys, described as “some of Nanook’s children,” eating sea-biscuits and lard at the trading post, adding to the film’s casual, hand-waving vagueness about Nanook’s family relationships. Male helpers pop up for group hunts, as though from nowhere, but Nanook’s family is never placed in a wider community context. Despite describing Nanook as band leader, he is never depicted leading, and is frequently infantilized by director Robert Flaherty. By framing his drama as “documentary,” Flaherty converts Allakariallak and Nujarluktuk from active collaborators into passive subjects.

Flaherty erased the fact that both Maggie Nujarluktuk and, reportedly, the woman playing Cunayou, were his own wives (or “mistresses,” from Flaherty’s cultural perspective). The “morning” scene, in which Nanook, his two women and his son awake naked inside the igloo, therefore closely resembles Flaherty’s own polyamorous living arrangement, exoticized into a symptom of Nanook’s cultural Otherness. The domestic warmth that Flaherty captured in Nanook of the North, through his access to both women, is key to his “documentary’s” charm, but his pretended objectivity converts this intensely personal intimacy into an image of the women’s indiscriminate availability to outsiders. Maggie Nujarluktuk smiles self-consciously and playfully flirts with the camera, because the camera is being operated by her husband, but that husband disowns her smiles and essentializes them as a permanent characteristic of “Nyla the smiling one.”

In her thesis, “Neither Indian Princesses Nor Squaw Drudges,” Janice Acoose examines the pervasive stereotype of the “loose squaw” in literature about Indigenous women, which constructs the Indigenous woman as a disposable sexual convenience. Flaherty’s own concept of Inuit disposability was demonstrated when he abandoned Nujarluktuk after filming, who then bore him a son, Josephie, that he never saw, acknowledged, or materially supported. This adds sinister resonance to Nanook of the North‘s description of Nyla’s baby Rainbow as “her young husky,” jokingly implying that Inuit women view their own children as equivalent to animals. In Acoose’s view, “loose squaw” images “foster cultural attitudes that legitimize rape and other similar kinds of violence against Indigenous women,” whose disappearances often go uninvestigated in Canada, particularly if they are also sex workers.

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Josephie Flaherty’s family was caught up in the “High Arctic Relocation,” the forced transfer of a community of Inuit to the High Arctic, as “human flagpoles” to support Canada’s territorial claim to the Northwest Passage. It was masterminded by the Department of Northern Affairs, who wished to remove the Inuit from white civilization to free them from “a toxic culture of dependence.” In other words, like Nanook of the North, the “High Arctic Relocation” was an artificially staged, Euro-American vision of uncorrupted Inuit innocence. It is impossible to draw a neat line between Flaherty’s fictional vision and the Department of Northern Affairs’ imposed reality; each was inspired by a toxic culture, not of dependence but of colonial entitlement and the romanticizing of “noble savages”; the Department’s resident romantics may even have been directly inspired by Nanook of the North. The High Arctic Exiles were denied material support from the Canadian government, though that same government intervened to prevent them from hunting on its designated “wildlife preserve.” The Inuit, identified by numbered tags, were taken from a community with a school and nursing station, and transported on a boat with infectious tuberculosis patients. Tuberculosis was also the disease that had previously claimed the life of Flaherty’s star, Allakariallak, a fact that Flaherty covered up by telling audiences that “Nanook” had “starved to death” while hunting deer, yet again erasing Euro-American influence. Several of the High Arctic Exiles’ children were taken from their parents for medical treatment and “misplaced for several years” by bureaucrats, a chilling indifference that echoes Flaherty’s casual attitude to Nanook’s fluctuating number of “young huskies.” For his monument symbolizing victims of the “Relocation,” Inuk sculptor Looty Pijamini chose a life-size Inuk woman and child, carved from a block of granite tinted red like blood.

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Her international recording career has made “Inuk punk” Tanya Tagaq into one of the most recognizable cultural ambassadors of the Inuit people. Tagaq’s own mother hailed from Nanook of the North‘s Quebec location before falling victim to the High Arctic “relocation,” informing Tagaq’s complex response to the film’s mixture of colonial ideology and preserved history. In 2012, the Toronto International Film Festival commissioned Tagaq to provide an original soundtrack to the film, drawing from the Inuit art of throat-singing, katajjaq. Discussing the film, Tagaq spotlights Flaherty’s staged scene of Nanook biting a gramophone record, as though unaware of what it is. “Inuit are running the cameras a lot of the time,” Tagaq laughs. Watching this scene closely is revealing. As the gramophone starts up, neither Nanook nor Nyla appears surprised by it, while Nyla rocks her baby to the music. There is an awkward jump cut, Nyla has been removed from the shot, and Nanook is laughing and biting the record. In such scenes, Allakariallak demonstrates the comic ability which gives the film its charm, but is harnessed to create a demeaning image of Inuit childishness, which Flaherty frames as generally representative of “the fearless, lovable, happy-go-lucky Eskimo,” rather than individually representative of the talented comedian, Allakariallak. However, Tanya Tagaq’s soundtrack rejects Flaherty’s impulse to isolate, essentialize, and fossilize Inuit culture into artificial purity. As a confident inheritor of her own culture, she engages with the musical traditions of other nations, harnessing non-Native technology and instruments to enrich her evolving practice of katajjaq.

When the show came to the 2014 Dublin Fringe Festival, I eagerly checked it out, having experienced the masculine tradition of Tuvan khöömei throat-singing in Siberia. Unlike khöömei, katajjaq evolved as a female tradition. Two women, facing each other, would improvise rhythmic motifs, the loser being the first to laugh or run out of breath. These throat-singing games tended to last between one and three minutes. Tagaq’s live performance to Nanook of the North lasts over an hour, an extraordinarily demanding tour-de-force of physical strength and passion.

Katajjaq blends mood, rhythm and the imitation of natural sounds, from wind to howling dogs to crying birds, weaving them into a spiritual whole. By blending the sounds of the natural world with the mind’s vibrations, katajjaq reflects the worldview of animism, the traditional Inuit conception that all objects and beings are endowed with spirit. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Christian missionaries banned throat-singing as a demonic and sexual act. Certainly, Tagaq’s version of katajjaq is strikingly sexual. Her hyperventilations build in intensity and peak with shrieking cries, inducing ecstatic trance. Where “Nyla the smiling one” was crafted as a submissive image of availability, the throat-singer powerfully (perhaps threateningly) voices her own desire. Nina Segalowitz, a survivor of coerced adoption and forced assimilation, found katajjaq an empowering tool for reconnecting to her heritage. Her story recalls the Australian Aboriginal experience of forced assimilation portrayed in Rabbit Proof Fence: “My father thought he was signing hospital admission forms. The next day, he came to take me back, but I was gone. They told him that he had signed release papers and couldn’t get me back.” Evie Mark, raised Inuk but with a white father, also describes the craving for something that will make your identity stronger as a major motivator for katajjaq revival, indicating its importance to national self-esteem. Placed against the imagery of Nanook of the North, katajjaq collapses the distance between spectator and subject, dismantling the subject’s perceived quaintness and giving voice to Inuit experience and perception, from the shrieking killing of a walrus to the grunting effort of igloo construction.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV-YQSQ1_FE”]

Tanya Tagaq’s reclaiming of Nanook of the North, with music that fuses tradition and modernity, may be compared with the work of A Tribe Called Red, a collective of First Nations DJs who have collaborated with Tagaq, that remix traditional chanting and drumming with electronica, dubstep, and spoken word, rejecting the impulse to isolate, essentialize, and fossilize. A Tribe Called Red’s visuals (start two minutes in) remix stereotypes of “Red Indians” from pop culture, with witty juxtapositions that subvert their original associations and assert A Tribe Called Red’s authorship. Genocidal policies of forced assimilation, from prohibitions by Christian missionaries to coerced adoptions and residential schools (whose painful legacy is depicted in Cree director Georgina Lightning’s Older Than America, among other Indigenous filmmakers), interrupt the line of cultural transmission in oral cultures, so that the imperial culture’s anthropological records can become the only source of preserved heritage. In reframing a colonial record of Inuit life into an expression of Inuit experience, Tagaq’s voicing of Nanook of the North can be compared to the art of Jane Ash Poitras (Cree), which reframes anthropological photographs by symbolically visualizing the subject’s own perspective. One of her Inuit artworks, “In My Parka You Will Find My Spirit,” offers multiple symbolic frames for her young Inuk subject. First, he is surrounded with the syllabic writing of his own language, inuktitut, whose flowing edges are contained by a rigid frame bearing the imposed Euro-American label “Copper Eskimo.” The outer frame is looped with blood, suggesting interior flesh, while the Arctic exterior, with ghostly inukshuk, is placed inside this flesh, the body experiencing the environment rather than the environment defining the body. On the lower left, an elder represents connection to cultural tradition through role models, an experience stolen from the victims (and survivors) of Canada’s policy of coerced adoption, as recently as the 1960s and 1970s.

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Robert Flaherty not only framed Inuit womanhood according to his fantasies of casual sensuality, but according to Euro-American patriarchal fantasy. His portrait of Inuit life is neatly divided between the woman’s role, limited to cleaning igloos and nursing infants, apparently immune to the frustrations of Euro-American women in that role, and the man’s role, leading the band, educating older children, and hunting. In reality, Inuit women were hunters, including polar bear hunters, and played strong roles as educators and storytellers, while today’s Inuit women are also lawyers, government ministers, and activists.

Nanook of the North established the Inuk man as the sole icon of Inuit life. It was followed by 1934’s Wedding of Palo, a portrait of Greenland Inuit by Danish filmmakers, in which the Inuk woman is a love object fought over by two rivals. Though brilliantly filmed, and preserving authentic Inuit traditions, the film reinforces perceptions of Indigenous women as natural spoils of war, submissively accepting their role as the victor’s rightful property. The Inuit-made Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) does portray the frustration of its heroine, Atuat, at being promised to villain Oki rather than her beloved Atanarjuat. Nevertheless, the story centers Atanarjuat’s experiences, and it is he must find a way to marry the heroine. The short film Kajutaijuq, co-written and produced by Nyla Innuksuk, also centers a male hunter but, hopefully, the rise of promising female filmmakers like Innuksuk will lead to more representations of Inuit women’s perspectives in future. In the meantime, Tanya Tagaq’s voicing of Nanook of the North is a powerful start.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4kOIzMqso0″]


Brigit McCone is still decolonizing her mind. She writes and directs short films, radio dramas, and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and telling people to check out the carvings of Susan Point.

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

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This post written by staff writer Amanda Morris originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is re-posted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Native people are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wRv8vTpxo”]

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, “Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Nevermind the problem of reducing actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miriam’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “Indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.

In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPc4SuoJWE”]

The 1979 Broadway production featured Maria Pogee, an Argentine-American dancer and choreographer, in the Tiger Lily role, and the 1990 version featured Holly Irwin in the role. The characterization on-stage remained “Native American,” but still, the actors playing Tiger Lily were non-Native. No self-respecting Native woman actor would WANT to play a racist fantasy stereotype of her own culture, and that is where Pan‘s studio, director, and writer made a costly miscalculation.

Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).

Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “Indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.

Pan movie Tiger Lily

Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of Indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one at Bitch Flicks, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary obtuseness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.

So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Here are some of the amazing Native actors you should have considered casting: Devery Jacobs, Cara Gee, Tanaya Beatty, Jamie Loy, Amber Midthunder, Taysha Fuller, or Crystle Lightning. That list is by no means complete, but the reason none of these women were chosen is because they are not considered bankable money makers by the Hollywood machine.

Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.

Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested — re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiosity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that follows this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.

Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.

That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.


See also at Bitch Flicks:

On Racism, Erasure, and Pan
Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen


Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

‘Imprint’: Examining the Presence of Indigenous Representation in the Horror Genre

In the endless web of conundrums that Native peoples face, marginalization is a result of societal erasure, whether that be through stereotypes or the lack of representations all together. … With that in consideration, I seek to influence popular consciousness by analysis of horror through a Native woman’s lens. One endeavor of asserting Native presence is through my analysis of the Native thriller film, ‘Imprint.’

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This guest post written by Danielle Miller appears as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.


The horror genre has always been a realm that I naturally gravitated towards, simply because of the ways it embraces imagination, eccentricity, and feeds my curiosity for the unknown. The more involved I have become in social justice discourse and analysis, I have become cognizant of the lack of representations for Native people, and even more so when narrowed down to specific genres like horror. In the endless web of conundrums that Native peoples face, marginalization is a result of societal erasure, whether that be through stereotypes or the lack of representations all together.

Many times, I have been angered by the films that whitewash and stereotype, and they drove me to educate myself to dismantle those depictions in hopes of also addressing the further links to oppression. With so many resources available and outlets within social media to discuss my grievances, I have very much reached the saturation point of feeling the need to prove that Native oppression is real. Yes, I recognize the need for those conversations, but no longer do I question the validity in my analysis of linking the existence of power structures and settler colonialism to the struggles Indigenous peoples face.

Increasingly, I have begun to expand beyond basic concepts and feel more free in applying these ideals to everyday interest to assert that Natives are multidimensional in every aspect of our identities, personhood, and modern existence. Being burdened by the need to constantly educate, means exclusion from participating in the upper echelons of art forms such as film. That is not to say there haven’t been artists and creators asserting their vision, but as I see it, if we are denied basic understandings of personhood, then we are also being pushed out from artistic options as creators and from participating as an acknowledged and respected audience. Without being creators or consumers, Native people will also be denied opportunities for creating and overseeing accurate and positive representations.

With that in consideration, I seek to influence popular consciousness by analysis of horror through a Native woman’s lens. One endeavor of asserting Native presence is through my analysis of the Native thriller film, Imprint (2007).

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The story was written by Michael Linn and produced by prominent director of the “Ndn famous” film Smoke Signals (1998), Chris Eyre. With Smoke Signals being “the first wide-release feature film written, directed, co-produced, and acted by Native Americans” and popularly known as a positive representation of Native peoples, that gave me an optimistic feeling about Imprint. I had every intent to view this film in hopes that it wouldn’t just be a good watch, but also offer analysis of Native identity in proximity to broader themes of the horror genre.

One of the most important aspects of horror I seek to critique as a Native person, are the various tropes that so frequently repeat in film. One of the most pervasive tropes is “Indian mysticism.” Initially, I watched this film with hopes to see that trope turned on its head because the protagonist Shayla Stonefeather (Tonantzin Carmelo) worked as a lawyer. While it was successful in showing an authentic contemporary narrative, there were some moments that may still pander to that stereotype. During multiple scenes Shayla sees a wolf, (Hello “spirit animal” trope!) eventually this leads her to follow the wolf, where she meets a spiritual leader from her community. There weren’t terms used like “spirit animal” or “shaman” IN the film, but it was clear he had done spiritual work as he cleansed her house previously and gave her advice: “What you see might frighten you until you learn to listen.”

Where filmmakers were successful in not replicating the Noble Savage trope, was in the content of the Elder’s advice to Shayla. Rather than ending the conversation on a note of vague wisdom, the elder takes the conversation a step further in bringing up real issues:

“…I was here, these people were slaughtered, we forget, but it’s the trees, rocks that remind us. It is imprinted on this land. The past, present and future together, time doesn’t exist. Can you hear them? Can you hear their cries?”

The cries that he is referring to are an implied allusion to the genocide of Wounded Knee massacre. It is in this conversation that one realizes where the title is mentioned in the film, which then leads to further speculation on its meaning. In alluding to connection with the land, collective memory, and the concept of time, it ultimately sets the stage of paradigms as they relate to Indigenous survivance. I immediately saw a juxtaposition which challenges colonial perceptions of time and reiterates collective memory as a shared value of Native peoples. One can also assume this correlates to the identity conflicts Shayla faces, inner turmoil in questioning which paradigms are more valid: the cultural views she grew up with or the new views she internalized through her occupation as a lawyer? The supernatural element of that conversation, as well as the general idea of the film, is emblematic of a larger statement; one that diverts from the societal conception that Natives are ghosts of the past. In centering Shayla as the lead character experiencing supernatural phenomena and asserting her agency in confronting her many struggles, her character renders that popular misconception of the Native ghost, as paradoxical.

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A significant aspect of this film was the fact it brought up real-life issues. In the special features of the DVD, an excerpt explains more about the making of the film. Initially, Imprint was supposed to be a story about a white family, which was decidedly changed after actor Misty Upham posed the question, “Why aren’t there more Indigenous representations in film?” This question is put into a deeper perspective with the knowledge of the suspicious and tragic details of her passing on October 4, 2014 — a tragedy emblematic of the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women worldwide, that is so reoccurring but goes unsolved. It’s interesting that the film started with her brother Nathaniel (Tokola Clifford)’s disappearance, as there is also little discourse on the disappearance of Indigenous men. In a way, this shifted things away from this turning into an expected story centered purely on the trope of a broken and battered woman. In mentioning the inspiration of Misty Upham, one can see the ways in which that influenced the dynamics of the story.

One barrier to the discussion of issues like Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, is white fragility. This film doesn’t shy away from displaying a white man as the cause for injustice. Shayla’s romantic relationship with a white man (Cory Brusseau) exacerbates her conflicts with culture clash and eventually endangers her life. But the way this played out was not over the top; a nice outcome in comparison to films that mention violence against Indigenous women, but end up reinforcing ideals by displaying scenes of gratuitous and triggering violence (such as rape scenes like in The Revenant). Although there were moments which underlined dynamics of whiteness and paternalism, there wasn’t fear to ultimately subvert that. The main character’s internalization of colonial systems as well as the paternalism of her white boyfriend running for office were a bit touchy in concern of identity (maybe too often simplified as universal Indigenous identity conflict) but they ultimately remained relevant to the outcome of the story.

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Other references to larger issues of oppression, such as state sanctioned violence and the protest of the court decision, mirror the ongoing movements of resistance that Indigenous peoples have lived for centuries against the myriad faces of settler colonialism. It was unexpected to see a reference to Native protest in a horror film.

Other scenes challenged popular misconceptions of Native culture as stagnant, by showing cultural rituals and customs actively taking place. In one scene, Shayla smudges with her parents, in another they huddle together around a drum group. There was nothing performative in the manner of which either takes place, but is simply representative of Natives as contemporary peoples.

One symbol I do wish to address that plays into the trope of mysticism is the dream catcher, pervasive throughout the film. Numerous dream catchers inhabit Shayla’s brother’s room, to the point that it’s almost overkill. On the film’s poster and DVD cover, a dream catcher is placed next to wolf, which could admittedly be perceived as a bit stereotypical.

The dream catcher has been commodified to a point that it has the potential of pushing Pan Indianism. However, this brings up the question, would I remove them from the film? There are Native tribes all over that embrace the dream catcher symbol. While not always in the appropriate way of using them, there is an intercommunity connection in recognizing the dream catcher origin that is Ojibwe. It led me to think this is also representative of the complexities of Native cultural identity as an example of the intercommunity customs that organically take place, such as the process of cultural exchange. Recognizing those dynamics is what sets the distinction between when a symbol like the dream catcher is a cultural identifier or blatant cultural appropriation. While I wouldn’t conclude it must go, I am critical enough to recognize the need to make those distinctions and recognize the ways symbols are being represented in films. There could have been a better inclusion of the dream catcher that respects its purpose, but I also recognize that its relationship to Native people is different than with non-Natives.

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After introducing the dynamic of the way Native symbols and identity are consumed, that leads me to the topic of intercommunity conversation and conflict. In one scene, the word “Apple” was spray painted across Shayla’s car as backlash to her complicity in a guilty verdict which ends up leading to a Native young man’s death. In another scene, Shayla argues with her mother (Carla-Rae Holland) about alleged mismanaging of funds from Tribal members and her mother points out how much she changed; Shayla retorts with the remark, “Our problems are self-inflicted.” On the surface, these are all complex issues that definitely should not be for the judgment of non-Natives, or even Natives outside of those communities. So I’ll admit, they made me feel a bit uncomfortable. While it is frustrating to know that non-Natives might watch this and feel affirmed in their presuppositions, it does give credence to the idea that Natives can be complex, flawed human beings and reclaim those struggles.

In summation, Imprint is a film that I enjoyed. There were emotional moments, a solid plot, a unique take on visuals of the spirits Shayla encountered (suspense with minimal effects), and a twist ending. I would recommend it just on the basis that the film cast so many Native actors. It was nice to watch something where I felt represented rather than alienated or excluded. It was refreshing to see new faces, rather than the standardized casting that caters to colonial/white supremacist beauty standards. Another huge positive for me was the use of Lakota language throughout the film, which further contributed to the idea of Native culture as thriving and contemporary. It also showed a sense of ethical dedication because of the process of cultural coaching and consultation that should be heeded when incorporating a cultural story in a film. There are aspects of the film that could have been fine-tuned and I’m sure the film would be even more engaging had the script been an Indigenous story from the beginning and Indigenous representation was a priority. Ultimately, films like this will be an example to open doors, and inspire more Indigenous filmmakers to pursue their talents and tell their own stories, regardless of societal perceptions and expectations.


See also at Bitch Flicks:

Complicating Indigenous Feminism: Shayla’s Story in Imprint


Danielle Miller is a Native American (Dakota/Lakota) with a Tribal Affiliation to Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, that grew up and currently lives in Southern Maryland. Danielle is an alumni of the University of North Dakota, a writer and co-founder of the horror platform called Never Dead Native. You can follow Dani on Twitter @xodanix3 and @NeverDeadNative.

Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen

Over and over, violence against Indigenous women is made to titillate, built into narratives along with action, suspense, swashbuckling, and romance. Indigenous women become exotic props, and when we are identified with these dehumanized caricatures, it becomes easier to treat us inhumanely.

Captain Hook kidnaps Tiger Lily in Peter Pan

This guest post by Elissa Washuta originally appeared at Racialicious and on her Tumblr. It previously appeared at Bitch Flicks is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women. It is cross-posted with permission.


The body of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, a member of Sagkeeng First Nation, was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg on Aug. 17. Her murder has brought about an important conversation about the widespread violence against First Nations women and the Canadian government’s lack of concern.

In her August 20th Globe and Mail commentary, Dr. Sarah Hunt of the Kwagiulth band of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation wrote about the limited success of government inquiries and her concerns about other measures taken in reaction to acts of violence already committed, such as the establishment of DNA databases for missing persons. Dr. Hunt writes:

“Surely tracking indigenous girls’ DNA so they can be identified after they die is not the starting point for justice. Indigenous women want to matter before we go missing. We want our lives to matter as much as our deaths; our stake in the present political struggle for indigenous resurgence is as vital as the future.”

Violence against Indigenous women is not, of course, happening only in Canada. In the U.S., for example, the Justice Department reports that one in three American Indian women have been raped or experienced an attempted rape, and the rate of sexual assault against American Indian women is more than twice the national average. This violence is not taking place only in Indian Country.

In the Globe and Mail on August 22nd, Elizabeth Renzetti wrote about three recent murders of First Nations women.

“What unites these three cases is that the victims – Tina Fontaine, Samantha Paul and Loretta Saunders – were all aboriginal women. What else unites them, besides the abysmal circumstances of their deaths? What economic, cultural, historical or social factors? Anything? Nothing?”

I can’t answer that, but I know that all of these women — and every other Indigenous woman in Canada and the U.S. — lives in a society that includes images of violence against Indigenous women in its entertainment products. Over and over, violence against Indigenous women is made to titillate, built into narratives along with action, suspense, swashbuckling, and romance. Indigenous women become exotic props, and when we are identified with these dehumanized caricatures, it becomes easier to treat us inhumanely.

Pocahontas

Take as an example Disney’s Pocahontas. Released in 1995, the cartoon feature has replaced the historical figure’s life story in the minds of many Americans. Much has been made of Disney’s exotification of Pocahontas. John Smith is only compelled to put down his gun because of her beauty. Pocahontas is imbued with animal qualities throughout the film as she scuttles, bounds, swims, creeps, and dives. This reinforces a long-held conception of Native peoples as being “close to nature” at best, “more animal than human” at worst — and the latter is a view that makes us easier to abuse.

Emily and Sam in New Moon

The recent depiction of Emily (a Makah woman) in the Twilight series offers viewers a direct representation of violence in a fictional Native community. Emily’s broad, visible facial scar is said to be the result of her partner Sam’s (a Quileute man/werewolf) outburst of rage: he was a younger werewolf, with difficulty controlling his “phasing” from human to wolf, he became angry, and she was standing too close. The presentation of this story is problematic in its shrugging absolution of Sam of his responsibility in maiming Emily, and the aftermath is heartbreaking: in the more detailed version of the story presented in the Twilight books, after Sam mauls Emily, she not only takes him back, but convinces him to forgive himself. This sends the message that an episode of violence can and should be overlooked for the sake of romance. Emily, a Native woman, becomes expendable. Her safety is of little concern; the fact that Sam has “imprinted” on her, cementing his attachment, is more important than the reality of recidivism.

In a Globe and Mail editorial, “How to Stop an Epidemic of Native Deaths,” the author brings up the many social factors at work in the epidemic of violence against Native women. I bring up the problematic and pervasive imagery above not because I think it is the most problematic issue, but because it is what I know, and because we can start solving it with our individual actions. We don’t need to call Native women “squaws” and joke that they were “hookers” when forced into prostitution, as Drunk History did last year. We can make better choices than “naughty Native” costumes on Halloween. We have the freedom to choose the representations we make in the world, and when we perpetuate damaging stereotypes of Indigenous women as rapeable, we are using our autonomy to disempower others.

Karen Warren wrote in “A feminist philosophical perspective on ecofeminist spiritualities”:

“Dysfunctional systems are often maintained through systematic denial, a failure or inability to see the reality of a situation. This denial need not be conscious, intentional, or malicious; it only needs to be pervasive to be effective.”

Tiger Lily faces Hook

I’m tired of hearing that these images aren’t harmful. I’d rather see how much they’re missed when they’re gone than continue to listen to the insistence that the image of Pocahontas at the end of a gun barrel is wholesome while, every day, more and more Indigenous women die while we are told that this is not a phenomenon, not a problem, nothing more than crime.


Elissa Washuta is an adviser in the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington and a faculty mentor in the MFA program in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her first book, a memoir called My Body Is a Book of Rules, was recently published by Red Hen Press.

The Threat of Feminine Power in ‘The Witch’

Recognizing the witch hunts dotted throughout the U.S.’s early history as a feminist issue, Robert Eggers smartly constructs his film to be a power struggle between the two main female characters, each representing a different conception of femininity. … By rejecting motherhood, the witches reject their feminine role in the patriarchal Puritan society.

The Witch

This guest post is written by Josh Bradley. | Spoilers ahead.


Judging it against other modern horror films, a lot is surprising about Robert Eggers’ outstanding debut, The Witch. It’s not a slow build like so many others in the genre, as one of the very first scenes shows us a witch and is as horrifying as anything I’ve ever seen in the first 10 minutes of a movie. It manages to be deeply unsettling and creepy without resorting to jump scares, a staple in the genre sometimes leaned too heavily upon. And it fully commits to its ending without going the ambiguous route that many have come to expect from this type of story.

The ending that the film ultimately commits to also illuminates another surprise: the eponymous witch alluded by the title may not be the hooded figure from the first 10 minutes or the bewitching woman in the woods who curses Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) in the second act. It could just as easily refer to the protagonist, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Sure, Thomasin’s climactic decision indicates this may be the case, but so does Katherine’s suspicion and treatment of her daughter. And that’s the biggest surprise: the film presents a family-vs-witch situation as the main dramatic conflict, but the fates of the characters show that – from a narrative standpoint – Thomasin is the definitive protagonist, and the antagonist is actually her mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie). Considering some of the heinous things done by the witches in the movie – and the fact that Satan himself is a literal character – revealing Katherine to be the ultimate antagonist is quite the statement.

The Witch

Recognizing the witch hunts dotted throughout the U.S.’s early history as a feminist issue, Eggers smartly constructs his film to be a power struggle between the two main female characters, each representing a different conception of femininity. Katherine, a middle-aged woman and mother, believes her power comes from her ability to give life, from her ability to have children. This fits nicely into the patriarchal Puritan society of the time, as women were relegated to be mothers and caregivers. The disappearance of her infant and the untimely death of her son compromise her caregiving abilities, leaving her powerless without her children (visualized by the nightmare image of her breastfeeding a crow, laughing maniacally as it gores her breast).

Unlike Katherine, the witches – who live outside the patriarchal Puritan society – at least partially draw their power from their sexuality, giving them (potentially) even more power than men. It’s no accident that Caleb’s demise stems from his male (hetero)sexual curiosity, as a witch takes the form of a young, attractive woman to lure him in and curse him. It’s also no accident that Caleb takes particular note of Thomasin’s developing chest (unbeknownst to her), around the same time Katherine announces to her husband, William (Ralph Ineson), that Thomasin needs to be sent away to work for another family now that she “begot the sign of her womanhood.” Now that Thomasin is a woman – with youth, beauty, vitality, sexuality, and fertility – she’s a threat to Katherine’s power.

In her final scene, Katherine, who is quick to blame all of the family’s hardships on Thomasin and her blossoming womanhood, attempts to strangle her scared and crying daughter to death. After Thomasin cuts her, Katherine bleeds all over Thomasin’s face, as if trying to insist that she (Katherine) still has the womanly power too (blood being “the sign of her womanhood”). But she doesn’t.

The Witch

Directly contrasting Katherine, the witches in this world reject motherhood in the most drastic way imaginable, as evidenced by young Samuel’s fate. Eggers has mentioned in interviews that the macabre scene involving the infant was inspired by legends of witches using the entrails of an unbaptized babe as a “flying ointment,” hinted at by a blurry image of the witch floating in front of the moon directly after rubbing the… “ointment”… all over herself. Following the above metaphor, the witches are literally stealing Katherine’s source of power (her children) to further their own.

By rejecting motherhood, the witches reject their feminine role in the patriarchal Puritan society (although they still seem to follow a male leader). And that is what makes the witches so scary to the family in the film (and to the Puritans in general); they refuse to use their feminine power in the service of the patriarchal family, which threatens the patriarchal family. Add this to William’s inability to either protect or provide for his family – i.e., the man’s traditional source of power – and Thomasin’s feminine power becomes even scarier to them.

In a symbolic final act of desperation, William locks Thomasin away with her young siblings, as if attempting to force her to be with children (perhaps as indirect punishment for her failed moment of motherhood, where her infant brother was stolen from under her nose). Instead, the witches – and Satan – rescue her from this prison of mandated maternity. Ultimately, Thomasin decides that she has no use for the societal structure (or pious religion) that her family tried to confine her in, and she leaves it behind in order to embrace – and fully realize – her feminine power. As a witch.


See also at Bitch Flicks:

‘The Witch’ and Legitimizing Feminine Fear
‘The Witch’ and Female Adolescence in Film


Josh Bradley is a literal rocket scientist who spends most of his free time with his YouTube channel, watching the Criterion Collection, or staring at a blank Final Draft document. You can follow him on Twitter @callme_Yosh.

‘Best of Enemies’: When Politics Was All About Men

Out queer writer Gore Vidal was prescient in discussing the danger of self-labeled “conservative” Republicans (“reactionary” has always been a better term for them). In 1968, as part of network news coverage of the political conventions Vidal debated William F. Buckley, the loathsome “conservative” stalwart… In their debates, Vidal describes Buckley’s rhetoric as “always to the right and almost always in the wrong.” The debates are the focus of Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s documentary ‘Best of Enemies.’

Best of Enemies

Written by Ren Jender.


When the media or an individual claims Donald Trump is the Republican presidential candidate who most directly scapegoats marginalized groups, I think of all the decades Republicans have wallowed in their slander of queer and trans people. That slander is a big part of the reason I have no tolerance for hearing or reading that Democrats and Republicans are “just as bad” as one another and why I don’t see people who vote Republican and Republican candidates themselves as adorably quirky, the way white-guy, late-night talk show hosts seem to.

Out queer writer Gore Vidal was prescient in discussing the danger of self-labeled “conservative” Republicans (“reactionary” has always been a better term for them). In 1968, as part of network news coverage of the political conventions Vidal debated William F. Buckley, the loathsome “conservative” stalwart perhaps best known these days for his proposal in The New York Times, during the the peak years of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s, that infected people should be forcibly tattooed with their status on their buttocks and forearms. In their debates, Vidal describes Buckley’s rhetoric as “always to the right and almost always in the wrong.”

The debates are the focus of Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s documentary Best of Enemies, released last year and streaming this month on pbs.org, but anyone looking for context on either man’s opinions (like Buckley’s views on people with AIDS) will have to look elsewhere. The curse of gotta-hear-both-sides “balanced” journalism that legitimized the presidential campaign of Donald Trump is very much in evidence in Best of Enemies, as we see white guy after white guy lionize Buckley (so few women are in this documentary that one wonders if the filmmakers counted the woman in archival footage asking Buckley on Laugh-In, “Do you think mini-skirts are in good taste,” or the woman in a white bikini shown from behind on Miami Beach, as part of the film’s gender balance). He employs many of the same methods we see Trump using today, though Trump’s speeches are on a middle-school reading level, so he doesn’t have Buckley’s much vaunted vocabulary (which Vidal points out Buckley uses to distract, not illuminate).

Vidal wrote incisively about the debates and Buckley in an article in Esquire (which stung Buckley enough that he sued the magazine). One of the essay’s many truths leaps out in the wake of current events — and recent debates: “…There is a demagogic strategy in all this. If one is lying, accuse others of lying.”

Vidal came from the same patrician background as Buckley (Vidal was the grandson of a senator and the step-brother of Jackie Onassis) so like native Californian Joan Didion writing on Ronald and Nancy Reagan, he was able to get under the skin of Buckley and look into his corrupt soul:

“…Joe Kennedy’s sons and Senator Gore’s grandson changed as they made their way in the world, learned charity or at least good sense, but not Bill — he is still the schoolboy debater echoing what he heard in his father’s house…”

Best of Enemies

During a final debate when Vidal angered him, Buckley said in his affected, nails-on-the-blackboard accent, “Now listen you quee-ah, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face.” What most riled Buckley in that Esquire article was Vidal’s implication that he was a closet “quee-ah” himself. Vidal cites two gay publications of the era which outed Buckley, and later writings (including novelist Alexander Chee’s wonderful remembrance of working as part of the coterie of gay cater waiters in the Buckley residence in the ’90s) have implied the same, but those avenues remain unexplored in this film.

The film applies its misguided, “even-handed” approach when portraying both men in later life. We’re supposed to see Vidal as pathetic and mostly forgotten (even as his late biography Palimpsest was one of his best-reviewed books) but hanging out in an Italian villa with a young, cute “friend” seems a much more pleasant old age than the one Buckley evinces in later clips when he tells Charlie Rose he’s ready to stop living. Although the film states the election of Ronald Reagan was a triumph for Buckley, as time progressed more and more of Buckley’s opinions (his support of Joe McCarthy, his view that Martin Luther King belonged “behind bars,” and something he says in the debate “Freedom breeds inequality”) were discredited, so much so that they seem like they could have been written for The Onion.

Buckley died before Vidal did, and Vidal was able to give him the send-off Buckley earned, “RIP WFB — in hell.” But really Vidal had written Buckley’s obituary years before in Esquire, when he described Buckley’s on-air homophobia during their debate:

“…In full view of ten million people, the little door in William F. Buckley Jr.’s forehead suddenly opened and out sprang that wild cuckoo which I had always known was there but had wanted so much for others, preferably millions of others, to get a good look at.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzgfQvB2dvA”]


Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing on Bitch Flicks has also been published in The Village Voice, The Toast, Rewire, xoJane and The Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Call For Writers: Representations of Indigenous Women

There is a continually growing, vibrant presence of Indigenous independent films that are often made by and star Indigenous people telling their own stories, and these stories are receiving critical acclaim. Native people across the world are participating in this movement that raises the voices and visibility of Indigenous people.

Call-for-Writers-e13859437405011

Our theme week for October 2016 will be Representations of Indigenous Women.

There are relatively few mainstream representations of Indigenous people and even fewer representations of Indigenous women. Throughout the history of film, non-Native women have been playing the roles of Indigenous women; a prime example is Peter Pan‘s Tiger Lily who is effectively whitewashed in her various incarnations. When Indigenous women do appear on-screen, they are often stereotyped, exoticized (Pocahontas), and brutalized (The Revenant). Indigenous women have little agency in these stories that objectify and violate them because these are the stories told by non-Native men who use these women as a plot device or a symbol.

However, there is a continually growing, vibrant presence of Indigenous independent films that are often made by and star Indigenous people telling their own stories, and these stories are receiving critical acclaim (Smoke Signals, Ixcanul). Native people across the world are participating in this movement that raises the voices and visibility of Indigenous people (The Cherokee Word for Water: an American Cherokee film, Once Were Warriors: a New Zealand Māori film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner: a Canadian Inuit film, Samson and Delilah: an Australian Aboriginal film, and Ixacanul: a Guatemalan Kaqchikel Mayan film). Much of the movement of Indigenous storytelling focuses on male protagonists, so there is still a great need for the stories of Indigenous women.

We desperately need more Indigenous people on-screen and behind the camera, especially in mainstream Hollywood films, which is why it’s exciting that the upcoming 2016 Disney animated film Moana will feature the first Polynesian princess, voiced by Auli’i Cravalho, a Native Hawaiian girl.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so please get your proposals in early if you know which topic you would like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Monday, October 31, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.


Here are some possible topic ideas:

Moana

Rabbit-Proof Fence

The Revenant

Imprint

Red Road

Pocahontas

The Far Horizons

The New World

Smoke Signals

Northern Exposure

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner

A River Runs Through It

Longmire

Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Whale Rider

Peter Pan

Once Were Warriors

Edge of America

Ixcanul

Four Sheets to the Wind

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

Dances with Wolves

Inuk

Samson and Delilah

The Cherokee Word for Water

How ‘My Own Private Idaho’ Changed My Life as a Bisexual Man

The film never demonizes either Mike or Scott for their sexuality or their profession, which is great, but it also never feels the need to explain their sexuality. Maybe these characters haven’t quite figured it out yet. Maybe Mike is gay and maybe Scott is straight, or maybe they’re both bisexual, but from the film itself, it makes more sense to me to not label them. They simply fall somewhere on the wide spectrum of sexuality. You have no idea how important it is for me to see this on-screen.

My Own Private Idaho

This guest post written by Logan Kenny appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.


My Own Private Idaho‘s Mike (River Phoenix) is always destined to end up in the same place. No matter where he goes, he will always end up on this deserted road in Idaho where the film begins. He can go anywhere in the world and he’ll end up back where he started, dealing with his thoughts, his fading memories, and his narcolepsy. This is his existence, almost the entirety of it: go somewhere, meet people, have sex, come back here. My Own Private Idaho is an almost aimless film, there is no traditional narrative and many scenes occur with no real sense or purpose. While there is sometimes the idea of a plot or narrative goal, the film isn’t really about that; instead, it’s a film about characters and how they live their lives, their circumstances, and the things that haunt them.

Mike is a hustler living on the streets, the cities change but that stays the same. He’s a drifter and a sex worker. His narcolepsy affects every part of his existence: frequently when he engages in sexual acts, his body shakes and he falls to the ground. Mike is haunted by his past, often having flashbacks: visions of a house crashing down onto the road and smashing completely; the same woman is always there, looking at him; so close yet not there. Mike stands on a road in Idaho and collapses. The film then cuts to Seattle where Mike receives oral sex from a male client. The film doesn’t show how Mike ended up here, it doesn’t matter; he’s here now and won’t be for long. He engages with a few clients before ending up with a wealthy woman (Grace Zabriskie). His friend Scott (Keanu Reeves) and acquaintance Gary (Rodney Harvey) are there as well. Scott is Mike’s best friend, the man who carries him when he loses consciousness, holds him when he cries, and who never seems to fail to make Mike a bit happier. This journey is as much Scott’s as it is Mike’s. These two are connected under the same circumstances, yet different reasons have brought them together.

Mike has no other way to make money. He has a dysfunctional relationship with his father and is haunted by his mother leaving him. The family collapsing, the house falling down and breaking apart. Scott is here to kill time. He has sex with men for money not because he needs it but because the prospect of living like Mike thrills him. Scott lives on the streets and drifts from place to place in order to experience life. He’s a rich kid, the son of a mayor. This existence is merely temporary for Scott. He does seem to genuinely care about Mike though, their relationship is extremely strong and he’s willing to do a lot for his friend. Mike is quite awkward and reluctant to truly be himself. He doesn’t really interact well with many people apart from Scott. In certain scenes, Mike only starts speaking loudly because Scott did first. Scott is the opposite, as he’s immensely charismatic and outspoken. He can interact with seemingly anyone and his charm benefits him especially in sexual situations.

My Own Private Idaho

Whenever Mike has a narcoleptic attack, My Own Private Idaho either shows Scott or someone else deal with the situation, or the film cuts to a title screen, stating the name of their current location. This is a film about a journey yet we never really get to witness it. The audience experiences snippets, tiny fractions of the characters’ lives, which is perfect because this film works much better without a conventional narrative and character arcs. Some characters do achieve proper resolution by the film’s end, this chapter of their lives has concluded and the next one shall begin. Other characters will continue meandering through life, destined for nothing but to repeat the same cycle over and over. This sounds really bleak, and it certainly is, but it’s not nihilistic. It’s a remarkably human film where every character, whether likable or not, feels alive and three-dimensional. Mike and Scott are sympathetic people, you grow to care about both of them. You form a real connection with the two of them as the film progresses, which makes the overall bleakness of the film much more genuinely affecting.

The acting is incredible, especially by River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. One of the most powerful moments in My Own Private Idaho — which is amplified considering that Phoenix died not long after — is the scene where Mike and Scott ride through Portland on a motorbike. When they stop at a red light, they start talking about how long they’ve driven down the street and how long they’ve known each other. Then Scott says, “We’re still alive,” and my heart shatters every time I hear that line. Phoenix is revelatory throughout; this is a star-making performance. He captures vulnerability better than most actors ever could and conveys so much emotional range. Keanu is also brilliant, showcasing so much power as an actor at such a young age. There are frequent shots of just his face which are some of the most poignant moments of the film. He is far more subtle than Phoenix but his approach is just as wonderful.

My Own Private Idaho

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is that about a third of it is based on William Shakespeare’s Henry V, along with Shakespeare inspired dialogue. These scenes all take place in Portland, where Scott’s father is the mayor. Every scene with Bob Pigeon (William Richert), the middle-aged leader of the men on the street, is presented with long speeches, using certain phrases and language that wouldn’t commonly be used in the time period of the film. This adds to the overall strangeness of the film’s universe, that this world on the street is unlike anywhere else. This reality is different, this place changes people; even the mayor talks in this style of speech. The entire city is a surreal descent into another existence: an existence of depravity, robbery, sex, infrequent drug use, and long soliloquies. These scenes all feel disjointed, almost as if they don’t belong, but in a good way. The film’s tone is often bizarre, to say the least. There is a scene where Mike and Scott are represented as talking models in magazine covers which remarkably manages to be weirder than it sounds. A lot of the imagery in flashbacks and several supporting characters also contribute to the film’s surrealistic tone.

Nearly halfway through the film, a template of a plot is introduced. There is a narrative guide, motivations for the characters, and an actual destination. Mike wants to find his mother and Scott accompanies him in this journey. Yet, this doesn’t really feel like the focus of the film. Mike’s mother is crucial to the story because of her absence. His memories of her are hazy at best and it seems that he wants to find her in order to fix himself: not the narcolepsy, but rather his sense of aimlessness. My Own Private Idaho has no interest in making this a sentimental experience nor does it want to make it like any other cinematic journey. The addition of an admittedly bare-bones plot doesn’t really change the film thematically and is clearly designed to further develop and portray the main characters. The events that take place during Mike and Scott’s travels are without a doubt some of the best sequences in film, especially the campfire scene which I won’t spoil. It’s melancholic throughout and from this point onward, becomes increasingly pensive and poignant. The last 20 minutes are flawless and the ending is perfect. When the end credits roll, I always think that it is one of the best films ever made. I love it so much.

My Own Private Idaho

I’m discussing this film thematically because its themes are so central to its portrayal of sexuality, or more specifically, its lack of definition of the sexuality of its protagonists. Mike is clearly attracted to men and it’s never expressly stated that he is attracted to women. But Scott is clearly attracted to women but also has sexual interactions with men for money. My belief is that neither Mike or Scott are gay or straight but both fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t think I can specifically call either of them bisexual or pansexual, since sexuality is very hard for some to define, especially if we aren’t given explicit self-identification or clear insight into their sexual orientations. The film never demonizes either Mike or Scott for their sexuality or their profession, which is great, but it also never feels the need to explain their sexuality. Maybe these characters haven’t quite figured it out yet. Maybe Mike is gay and maybe Scott is straight, or maybe they’re both bisexual, but from the film itself, it makes more sense to me to not label them. They simply fall somewhere on the wide spectrum of sexuality. You have no idea how important it is for me to see this on-screen.

I’m a bisexual man. I realized I was bi earlier this year. I haven’t known who I really am for very long and since I’m young, I still have a lot to learn about myself. The first time I watched My Own Private Idaho was the first time I felt like I wasn’t straight. It kick-started my awakening sexuality, the first step of many in realizing who I truly am. It was the first time I felt sexual desires towards men and for a couple weeks, I thought that I could be gay since I thought like this. Then I realized that I was attracted to both women and men and I didn’t have to choose; I could be attracted to both and that would be okay. I came out to my parents, a lot of my friends, and my girlfriend. This film changed everything about my life, nothing was the same for me after watching.

Rewatching the film means even more to me as a bi man because of how it portrays sexuality, something that passed me by the first time. I started to notice so much more and I cried a lot. That’s okay though because this film means more to me than I can ever fully describe. We need more films with the sexual representation of My Own Private Idaho so that other queer kids like me can figure out who they really are. It is truly a spectacular piece of work.


See also at Bitch Flicks:

A Place to Call Home: The Search for Love and Identity in My Own Private Idaho


Logan Kenny is a bisexual man with autism. He has an obsessive love of movies and music. He frequently rambles about lots of trivial things. You can follow him on Twitter @LoganKenny1.