Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film - Hardcover

Marubbio, M. Elise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081312414X ISBN 13: 9780813124148

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 2006

Synopsis

Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. M. Elise Marubbio examines the sacrificial role in which a young Native woman allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. In studying thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, Marubbio draws upon theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her analysis in broader historical and sociopolitical context and to help answer the question, ""What does it mean to be an American?"" The book reveals a cultural iconography embedded in the American psyche. As such, the Native American woman is a racialized and sexualized other. A conquerable body, she represents both the seductions and the dangers of the American frontier and the Manifest Destiny of the American nation to master it.

About this title

Review:

Marubbio stunningly demonstrates how little these films actually tell us about Native peoples and how much they reveal about the intertwined Euro-American fantasies of sexuality, race, and conquest. - Annette Kolodny, author of The Lay of the Land and The Land Before Her

From the Back Cover:

Killing the Indian Maiden examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. Through discussion of thirty-four Hollywood films 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. Marubbio intertwines theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground her study in sociohistorical context to define what it means to be an American. While films show the Celluloid Maiden suffering at the hands of Manifest Destiny and American expansionism, 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 -- symbolizes an identity crisis about the composition of the American national body. Ultimately, Marubbio establishes that the ongoing representation of the Celluloid Maiden signals the continuing development and justification of American colonialism.M. Elise Marubbio is an assistant professor of American Indian studies, English, film, and women's studies at Augsburg College

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 081312414X
• ISBN 13: 9780813124148
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312