Representation and Reality Alexie on Film Essay

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Alexie, Victor, Thomas and Tonto



Alexie's experiences as a boy compare to those of Victor and Thomas each. It is as though Victor and Thomas are two alternate projections of Alexie's character: Victor represents the unhappy Indian, who is dissatisfied with the way his family and the people on the reservation conduct themselves (they drink too much); he wants to think of himself as a proud, warrior Indian. Thomas on the other hand is far more sympathetic to Victor's family and sees good points in Victor's dad. He also reminds Victor that their tribe was not a warrior tribe but rather a fishing people -- which is a humorous reminder because it completely takes the wind out of Victor's prideful sails and returns him for a moment back to earth. This is essentially the push and pull that Alexie identifies in his own self going to the movies to the see the "Indians" on screen played by white men, rooting for John Wayne in The Searchers to kill the Indians who dared make off with Natalie Wood to nuzzle for a bit like on the covers of the romance books. Alexie wishes he could be like those Indians on the romance book covers -- blue-eyed and nuzzling up against a beautiful white-skinned woman in throes of ecstasy (Alexie). Yet, Alexie also wants to be proud of being an Indian, which is ironic because he loathes the only real depiction of an actual Indian on screen he had every seen -- Tonto.



What Alexie reveals is that there are actually competing narratives within his own heart and head about what it means to be Indian. These competing narratives are represented by Victor and Thomas. Victor is like the angry and resentful side of Alexie, which wishes that Indians could be strong, noble, fierce, handsome and warrior-like, as they are depicted in the films. He lives in an idealistic mindset and is angered that the Indians in his real life do not measure up. It is not that he is embarrassed of being an Indian but rather that the Indian he is and the Indians he lives with do not match the ideal that he has envisioned. That is what makes him sad, angry and lost. He has to find himself -- the reality of himself -- and Thomas is the one to help him do that. Thomas represents the realistic side of Alexie -- the honest side, the finds humor in the cognitive dissonance and the consonance of voices and views in peoples' own hearts and minds and actions. He is there to help Victor realize that what is really needed is simply a healthy does of realism, humility and acceptance.

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Alexie demonstrates as much in his own writing as he struggles with the fact that he and his fellow tribe were so enamored of the white Indians on screen and so hateful towards the real Indian -- Tonto -- because he reflected them more accurately than the others. Alexie's admission is a humble statement of fact that he and the others really wanted to be the white hero and have the white woman.



Alexie's experiences thus compare to Victor's and Thomas's in the sense that they come from a place that is real, honest, yet somewhat confused and nonsensical, while at the same time quite sensible and revealing and even thoughtful and intelligent. The honesty, acerbity, wit, humor, hostility and gentleness that Alexie interweaves in his writing is seen in the characters of Victor and Thomas, as they essentially do battle with the imaginary and the real in their attempt to come to terms and accept who are what they are and what that means. They are all -- all three of them -- coming of age in this respect, but it is not a process that is achieved quickly. Indeed, Alexie gives the impression that he is still attempting to come of age, even as he writes of his hatred of Tonto. The humor that he uses is based on a kind of reluctant irony: Alexie knows he is being ridiculous and that is why goes ahead admits it -- it is funny, honest, poignant and reflective of what everyone goes through when he or she is clumsily looking for an identity or looking to shape the one they have.



The power of representation is a real force to be reckoned with primarily because it allows one to project onto a screen or onto a page an idea. That idea goes from being mental or intangible to being tangible -- seen, felt, heard, possessed. The representation becomes in a way more real than the subject being represented. The Indians, for instance, actually existed and did battle with white men -- they did fight with Custer. But that reality was less real for Alexie than the representations of Indians on screen battling Custer in the movies. Alexie was shaped more deeply by those representations than by any historical or actual/factual account of those battles. Had he been exposed to a more realistic account, a more realistic representation, he might have been effected differently: then again….....

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Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. "I Hated Tonto (Still Do)." Los Angeles Times, 1998.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Web. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html

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