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Killing the Indian Maiden
Images of Native American Women in Film
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Book Presentation:
Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. Through discussion of thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, M. Elise Marubbio examines the sacrificial role of what she terms the "Celluloid Maiden"—a young Native woman who allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. Marubbio intertwines theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her study in sociohistorical context all in an attempt to define what it means to be an American. As Marubbio charts the consistent depiction of the Celluloid Maiden, she uncovers two primary characterizations—the Celluloid Princess and the Sexualized Maiden. The archetype for the exotic Celluloid Princess appears in silent films such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man (1914) and is thoroughly established in American iconography in Delmer Daves's Broken Arrow (1950). Her more erotic sister, the Sexualized Maiden, emerges as a femme fatale in such films as DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940), King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946), and Charles Warren's Arrowhead (1953). The two characterizations eventually combine to form a hybrid Celluloid Maiden who first appears in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and reappears in the 1970s and the 1990s in such films as Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Michael Apted's Thunderheart (1992). Killing the Indian Maiden reveals a cultural iconography about Native Americans and their role in the frontier embedded in the American psyche. The Native American woman is a racialized and sexualized other—a conquerable body representing both the seductions and the dangers of the frontier. These films show her being colonized and suffering at the hands of Manifest Destiny and American expansionism, but Marubbio argues that the Native American woman also represents a threat to the idea of a white America. The complexity and longevity of the Celluloid Maiden icon—persisting into the twenty-first century—symbolizes an identity crisis about the composition of the American national body that has played over and over throughout different eras and political climates. Ultimately, Marubbio establishes that the ongoing representation of the Celluloid Maiden signals the continuing development and justification of American colonialism.
About the Author:
M. Elise Marubbio is an assistant professor of American Indian Studies, English, Film, and Women's Studies at Augsburg College. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Press Reviews:
Winner of the 2006 Peter C. Rollins Annual Book Award.
"An abundantly detailed and sophisticated study of the depiction of Native American women in film by a scholar who has mastered the latest currents of critical race theory and post-colonial theory. Erudite, yet accessible, the book offers a fresh and provocative angle on the Western, the genre that dominated American cinema across much of the twentieth century."—Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
"Named one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles in its January 2008 issue."—Choice
"Other film scholars have studied the portrayal of Native Americans in film. Unlike other works, Marubbio's work is tightly focused on the depiction of female characters. In addition to film studies, this work makes a valuable contribution to women's studies."—American Indian Quarterly
"A refreshing rereading of a familiar subject... demonstrates theoretical sophistication and scholarly poise in highly readable prose.... This is a valuable text. It should find a place not only in research libraries and undergraduate classrooms, but also as the cornerstone to subsequent studies of Native Americans and film."—Journal of the West
See the publisher website: University Press of Kentucky
> From the same author:
Native Apparitions (2017)
Critical Perspectives on Hollywood's Indians
Dir. Steve Pavlik, M. Elise Marubbio and Tom Holm
Subject: Sociology
Native Americans on Film (2013)
Conversations, Teaching, and Theory
Dir. M. Elise Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead
Subject: Sociology
> On a related topic:
Reservation Reelism (2013)
Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film
Subject: Sociology
Hollywood's Indian (2003)
The Portrayal of the Native American in Film
Dir. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor
Subject: Sociology
Polyamory, Monogamy, and American Dreams (2019)
The Stories We Tell about Poly Lives and the Cultural Production of Inequality
Subject: Sociology
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