Context
What year was Little Big Man released?
What is 1970?
The roguish hero encounters a series of adventures
How was this western different from other westerns?
It reverses the traditional roles of white and Native Americans, develops the Native American characters, and reveals the true horrors of Westward Expansion in the U.S.
What do circles represent in the film?
Indian camp arrangement
Artifacts
Cycles of time, seasons, days are a part of the "great circle of life"
Contrasts with the visual rigidity/chaos of white society
What relevant event was going on during the production/release of this film?
What is the Vietnam War?
The hero attains mature insight through experiences that shape him
What is the Initiation Archetype?
How does the author say how the film is relevant to the political and social climate of the Vietnam War?
The cinematic massacres of the Cheyenne explicitly mirrored the real-life atrocities of the My Lai Massacre
What does massacre represent in the film?
Used to portray the moral emptiness of white society
Debunks that westward expansion was heroic/peaceful, instead was a genocide against Native Americans
Guilt
What Indigenous people does the film present?
Who are the Cheyenne?
Reverses traditional roles of white and Native American archetypes
What is Revisionist?
What did the comical tone of the film cost in terms of the representation of the Cheyenne?
"authentic representation of the complex and highly developed Cheyenne culture is made subordinate to the comic tone of the film"
Example: the film encourages the audience to ridicule Little Horse, the heemaneh, when in reality they were highly respected by tribe
What does clothing represent in the film?
Little Big Man and Old Lodge Skins wear identical clothing
Attainment of wisdom
What type of Western is Little Big Man?
What is Revisionist?
A culture whose values, norms, and behavioral patterns are explicitly opposed to those of mainstream society
What is counterculture?
"Although Little Big Man offers many details of Indian life not usually included in Hollywood Westerns, the Cheyenne in the film do not fully represent an authentic Indian culture. Rather, they..."
"...reflect the fashions and mores of the Sixties counterculture, whose practices included a return to the land, experimentation with drugs and alternative lifestyles, communal living, sexual freedom, and a search for peace and harmony"
How does the film contrast white society with Cheyenne society?
Goal-oriented, Hypocritical, Exploitative, Greedy
VS
Harmony, Honest, Accepts differences, Generous
What signaled the production and release of many mainstream counterculture films towards the 1970s?
What is the eliminated of the Production Code in 1968?
A sexually ambiguous role taken on by some men in many native tribes that combines the behavior, dress, social and sexual habits of both women and men
What is heemaneh, or berdache?
How does the film reconsider how western expansion was viewed by Americans?
"Whereas the westward expansion is usually represented as producing unmixed benefit, this film suggests that the land was conquered through the use of brutal force that decimated people and nature."