They both present themselves in different ways.
#Smoke signals cast movie#
During the movie we see how different Thomas and Victor are as people, and even as Native Americans. This scene has a lot of meaning when it comes to the shot and the cut. This article I found can explain more on how the Americans took land from the Natives: Native American Culture: Smoke Signals.Īnother scene with racist tones is the scene at the police station. Even today Natives are being pushed into reservations and having the land their ancestors found and grew up on taken from them, like the Dakota Access Pipeline issue. Many Natives weren’t able to do anything about it because they were simply out-gunned. The one cowboy says “these are our seats now and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it” which can be compared to Americans taking Native American land by force ( Smoke Signals). Even in what the cowboys were saying to Thomas and Victor helped reinforce this “cowboys vs. As we have seen in the movie’s we have watched for class, cowboys and “Indians” don’t necessarily get along. The directors dressed them up to look like New Age cowboys on purpose. It’s also interesting in the way that the men being disrespectful are cowboy-like. If you’re interested in reading about Thomas and Victor each perform their race head to this blog post: The “Real Indian” Man as Constructed through a Real Indian’s Stereotype. Although Thomas and Victor didn’t get their seats back, we still view them as the heroes, and the cowboys as the bad guys and the angled shots helped reinforce that. Thomas and Victor are in the right and they deserve to sit in their seats, but these cowboys aren’t budging.
Using the shots this way, the audience sympathizes more with Thomas and Victor and the awkward situation they are in and are able to see the world as they view it. A low angle shot is used to show the subject as strong and powerful, while a high angle shot is used to make the subject look vulnerable and powerless. But there is another meaning to these angled shots. You’d be correct in saying that the cinematographer did this to help show that the cowboys are just sitting down and looking up at Thomas and Victor. Throughout this scene, Thomas and Victor are shown with a low angle shot (camera is low looking up at subject), while the two cowboy-esque men are shown with a high angle shot (camera is high looking down at subject). It’s one of the few scenes where Thomas and Victor are being discriminated against because they are Native American (or possibly these men are just jerks in general).
And the bus scene was interesting to me because it has a very “us vs. The whole film shows a Native American Perspective through what Thomas and Victor go through. These two scenes, while short, still manage to give meaning in different ways. The second scene is the police station scene, which conveys characterization between Thomas and Victor. The first scene is the bus scene with the two racist men, where the shot and the cut (and mise en scene) convey a Native American Perspective. I will be examining two scenes from the film and will tell how each scene conveys a different meaning. The shot and the cut in Smoke Signals convey meaning and are able to put the audience in Thomas’s and Victor’s shoes as individuals and as Native Americans. The shot and the cut in films are not just used to edit a film. Feature Image: Smoke Signals, ©1998, Miramax
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