In this movie, the opposing sides were made obvious, in that it was made as more of a cowboys vs. indians movie. In the beginning of the movie the family’s house was burned down and the indians killed some of the family members and kidnapped one as well. From that point on anyone could tell which group was bad and which group was good. Watching the movie from this point on you can tell what type of stereotypes popped up. First of all the different types of music that was playing between when the cowboys were being shown and then the indians. Anytime the cowboys were on the horses during a particular seen, it was very noble music being played, and you are able to tell which side is good and bad just by the sound of the music. When the indian’s were in the picture, there would be drums playing and they would be screaming as they were riding their horses.
Also, every person had their role, Ethan and Martin obviously with the main roles, but also everyone in their family had their part they had to play, even the daughter that was kidnapped and was only shown in the movie for a short while had an obvious role in it. But looking at the roles of the indian’s, the only person who you really knew who they were, was the Chief. The roles of the other indians in the movie were either very brief or non-existent, and most of them involved horses.
Lastly, throughout the movie as soon as Ethan found out that the daughter was now an indian after they took her, he immediately wanted to kill her. So now the bond that was formed between Ethan and Martin was almost broken because there was no way Martin would let Ethan kill her. At the end of the movie when Ethan finally caught up to her, it didn’t look at all like he was trying to kill her, so I was wondering what was going on in his head, or what caused the change of mind.
Did you catch what the big "offense" was that was implied as the reason for Debbie "being" an Indian now? Great points about the film-making choices used in characterization and their effects on themes.
ReplyDeleteI personally was not suprised at all by the fact that Etahn wanted to kill Debbie because of the fact that she had become an indian. However, I was also a little confused by the fact that he changed his mind so quickly from wanting to kill her to picking her up and giving her a big hug. I also did think that the music that was played in different scenes was very steryotypical to what kind of action was going on.
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