Native Americans In Pop Culture Essay
Conclusion As I have explained, this research sought to investigate media representations of Native Americans in pop culture, including film, TV, video games, and music. The premise of this work is that it is important to include Native American perspectives on media representation. Do modern media representations of American Indians honor Native American identities or do they continue to degrade them? Based on the information I’ve researched and the students I’ve interviewed, the portrayal of Native Americans in popular media has had a steady balance over the last couple of decades, but there is still a bit of room for improvement. One of the biggest problems is that many people still retain the old movie image. It all comes down
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First of all, we’ve seen the wild, savage and bloodthirsty animal persona, depicting Native Americans as the villains against innocent and helpless white settlers, with the typical Anglo hero. After the Second World War, Westerns started to sympathize with American Indians, depicting them as a misunderstood, peace loving people who only attacked when threatened. And, by the 1970s, the genre of “white man becoming Indian” was becoming popular, showing the evil of the white men and vilifying the army. In TV, we’ve seen the transformation of Native Americans from stereotypical dimwitted cartoon characters to pidgin speaking sidekicks of white protagonists. In the world of gaming, natives have gone from being sexual pursuits, to mystical tournament fighters of the arcades and dinosaur/monster hunters. “While marketing and media presentations are not solely responsible for causing or maintaining prejudice and discrimination, they should be held accountable for those times when they participate and preserve it” (Merskin 2014:198). In a nutshell, while they may not have started these presentations, they still were involved in it. However, regardless of the images that media has bestowed upon them, those that I interviewed suggested that most of their native traditions have stayed the same, despite all the changes in pop
First of all, we’ve seen the wild, savage and bloodthirsty animal persona, depicting Native Americans as the villains against innocent and helpless white settlers, with the typical Anglo hero. After the Second World War, Westerns started to sympathize with American Indians, depicting them as a misunderstood, peace loving people who only attacked when threatened. And, by the 1970s, the genre of “white man becoming Indian” was becoming popular, showing the evil of the white men and vilifying the army. In TV, we’ve seen the transformation of Native Americans from stereotypical dimwitted cartoon characters to pidgin speaking sidekicks of white protagonists. In the world of gaming, natives have gone from being sexual pursuits, to mystical tournament fighters of the arcades and dinosaur/monster hunters. “While marketing and media presentations are not solely responsible for causing or maintaining prejudice and discrimination, they should be held accountable for those times when they participate and preserve it” (Merskin 2014:198). In a nutshell, while they may not have started these presentations, they still were involved in it. However, regardless of the images that media has bestowed upon them, those that I interviewed suggested that most of their native traditions have stayed the same, despite all the changes in pop