Book description
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 all in
an attempt to define what it means to be an American. As Marubbio
charts the consistent depiction of the Celluloid Maiden, she uncovers
two primary characterizations -- the Celluloid Princess and the
Sexualized Maiden. The archetype for the exotic Celluloid Princess
appears in silent films such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man
(1914) and is thoroughly established in American iconography in Delmer
Daves's Broken Arrow (1950). Her more erotic sister, the Sexualized
Maiden, emerges as a femme fatale in such films as DeMille's North
West Mounted Police (1940), King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946), and
Charles Warren's Arrowhead (1953). The two characterizations
eventually combine to form a hybrid Celluloid Maiden who first appears
in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and reappears in the 1970s and the
1990s in such films as Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Michael
Apted's Thunderheart (1992). Killing the Indian Maiden reveals a
cultural iconography about Native Americans and their role in the
frontier 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 show
her 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 -- symbolizes 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.
""Named one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles in
its January 2008 issue."--Choice" --
M. Elise Marubbio is an assistant professor of American Indian
Studies, English, Film, and Women's Studies at Augsburg College. She
lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
