Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Dunbar is presented as a man that loves life and all the good things about it. He expresses a sentiment of extreme pride when he prefers to die rather than have his leg amputated. Most people have returned to their homes after the war with the desire to have a normal life and a well-paid job. Dunbar, in contrast, chooses to remain in the military to protect an abandoned U.S. garrison on the western frontier. Total isolation does not seem strange to Dunbar and he immediately adapts to life in solitude, interacting only with Cisco, his horse, and Two Socks, his wolf. The Indians name him Dances with Wolves because he frequently plays with Two Socks.
In spite of wanting to make a typical Western, Costner has added some special touches to the script which changed some patterns that normal Westerns had followed. Most early Hollywood Westerns pictured Indians as savages that attacked white settlers. Indians were considered to be against civilization and against all that was perceived to be good. The Sioux tribe in Costner's movie breaks away from the standard image of savage Indians and they prove to be a highly cultured race. The fact that Costner had his actors speaking the Lakota language, instead of bad English as Indians from other Westerns did, also contributes in making the natives seem more intelligent.
Instead of bringing civilization in the west and being a supporter of the Manifest Destiny, Costner ended up joining the Sioux tribe. He did so because he learnt that civilization was in fact perverted, while Indians were authentic free people at peace with the world.
The director manages to transform the west in a fairy-tale land where nature is thriving without any intervention from the white people. The...
While Costner's Indians are shown to possess a great amount of intelligence and great organizational skills, they do not express any kind of feelings. Most of the time they are numb and the only member of the tribe that forms a closer relationship with Dunbar is Stand With a Fist, who is also white.
Dunbar and Stand With a Fist's relationship even makes matters worse because they are superior to the other characters through the fact that they express their love. Indians are mostly expressionless and they do everything that is typical for a normal Indian to do.
Costner's success is owed to the fact that he made a natural movie, with little Hollywood cliches in it. The audience is captivated by the impressive acting and each scene brings more tension to its viewers. Even if Costner did not have previous experience in directing, Dances with Wolves truly is an interesting and successful movie.
After having seen the movie, one is sure to have changed some opinions regarding Westerns that involved Indians. Dances with Wolves takes its viewers further by bringing them in the very heart of a Sioux tribe. Moreover, the film does not support civilization and the Manifest Destiny. White soldiers are presented as ruthless men that only want to exploit the Native-American lands and to destroy the American-Indian culture.
Works cited:
Dances with Wolves. Dir. Kevin Costner. Orion Pictures, 1990.
Works cited:
Dances with Wolves. Dir. Kevin Costner. Orion Pictures, 1990.
Often, these films portrayed the Indians as bloodthirsty villains who preyed on whites for no reason. They were often violent, and whites almost always died at their hands. In addition, most of the "Indian" actors were actually white actors in makeup. These stereotypical ideals where what most Americans thought of when they thought of the Old West, and as this film shows, they were often very far from the
In contrast, Dances with Wolves seems more like a western in that it takes place in the wild frontier and it centers on the white man's relationship with the Native Americans. The initial conflict and anxiety that the Natives experience is something that we can link to a western. There are other scenes, too, that make the film feel more like a western. These include a buffalo hunt and a
When the pigs take refuge in the second house, their case is similar to the one when the Natives have been constantly trying to defend their territory. In spite of their attempts, they have been pushed back and sent into reservations by the new-comers. The wolf had been blinded by his greed and did not pay any attention to the suffering that he caused along his migration toward the west. At
Conceptualization/Film Analysis: Dances with Wolves The movie, 'Dances with Wolves' is among the most noteworthy of Hollywood motion pictures. Though it comes with its flaws, the movie has still proven to be successful in bringing an image of the culture of Native Americans into mainstream America's collective consciousness. The movie's screenplay manages to introduce a better understanding, acknowledgement, and sensitivity towards Lakota people. Several scenes in the movie back the
Dances with Wolves is a movie that clearly shows the moral and political dilemmas that existed in those times and it also represents that fairly savage policy that the United States had against Indians and those that sided with the same. It also proved that skin color alone is not enough to keep people separated, as proven by Costner's character and the white woman he eventually took as his wife.
American Civil War/Sioux Indians Cowboys and Indians in Hollywood: The Treatment of Quotidian Life of the Sioux People in Dances With Wolves The old Hollywood Westerns that depicted the heroic cowboy and the evil Indian have past; they no longer sell out the movie theaters and are inundated with critique instead of cinematic favor. In the last thirty years, new Hollywood has attempted to correct this revisionist history, as embodied by Kevin Costner's "Dances