Down The Powwow Highway Essay

Almost always, a movie based on a book is shortened and distorted from its original book to appeal more audiences since a movie appeals more to popular, general audiences. It is no exception for Powwow Highway, written by David Seals and was later made in movie. One of perspective review article, Easin’s on Down the Powwow Highway(s), by Rodney Simard focuses on difference between the film and original novel. It reveals several important points: intensification of Indian stereotype, westernized women roles and the main plot. Although Simard praises the actors’ actions, he criticizes that the movie westernized and reduced characters into stereotype characters by intentional omission and distortions while transforming the original novel to a movie of pop culture’s.

First, while the movie presents, Simard insists, some deviations from original plot so that it could appeal more audiences, but those shadow original plot. The main deviation was making saving Bonnie the main story. Throughout the movie, I felt that as if Philbert’s vision quest is a side story and the quest of saving Bonnie was the main story. I at first wondered why the
She seems to be a passive and warm-hearted woman, a typical “ideal” woman character in literature, caring Philbert as he is bullied. The article points it out that in the original novel that Bonnie is a tough and licentious drug dealer that is very different from the movie’s -- caring, passive, almost a saint-like--, that she is a realistic woman figure. Also, the role of the children is passive and powerless figures in the movie, from which they are opposite in the book. In the movie, the children and women rely completely on protagonists to help them, which the author of article also notices. This is also typical of westernized movie, sacrificing the novel’s integrity and individuality for greater