Killing the Indian maiden : images of Native American women in film

Book

Killing the Indian maiden : images of Native American women in film / M. Elise Marubbio.

Marubbio, M. Elise, 1963- (Author).

Summary:

"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 in an attempt to define what it means to be an American." "Killing the Indian Maiden reveals a cultural iconography about Native Americans and the role in the frontier that is 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 depict her as 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 - symbolize 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."--Jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780813124148 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 081312414X (alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780813192383 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0813192382 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: xiii, 298 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, ©2006.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Filmography: p. [233]-239.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-283) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Emergence of the celluloid maiden -- The celluloid princess. Death, gratitude, and the squaw man's wife : the celluloid princess from 1908 to 1931 -- White-painted lady : the 1950s celluloid princess -- The sexualized maiden. What lies beneath the surface : the sexualized maiden of the 1940s -- The only good Indian is a dead Indian : the sexualized maiden of the 1950s and 1960s -- The hybrid celluloid maiden. Free love and violence : "going Native ' with the celluloid maiden in the 1970s -- Ghosts and vanishing Indian women : death of the celluloid maiden in the 1990s -- Into the twenty-first century.