The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven vs Smoke Signals - Assignment Example

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven vs. Smoke Signals: A comparison of the text’s literary elements and the film’s cinematic features Abstract This paper will compare and contrast the literary elements in Alexie Sherman’s book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and the cinematic features in its filmic adaptation based on the seventh story “This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona”. This paper will compare and contrast the manner in which the text’s literary elements are translated into the film’s cinematography by focusing on the relationship between symbolism in source text, and its translation in the film’s cinematography. In the Chris Eyre’s and Sherman Alexie’s filmic adaptation, symbolism as the dominant literary element in the source text has been captured effectively through numerous visual images that can be interpreted both at the literal and figurative levels. Published in 1993, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is the book that put Sherman Alexie’s name on the literary scenes being a collection of twenty-two interrelated short stories all of which have repeated characters. The short stories focus on the relationships, desires and histories of family members as well as relations of the book’s central characters, Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, two Native American young men residing on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The author creatively blends his storytelling with surreal imagery, dream sequences, flashbacks, diary entries, as well as extended poetic passages, to build tales that read like prose poems rather than conventional narratives. The seventh story, “This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona” forms the basis of Alexie’s first movie Smoke Signals (1998), which was directed and co-produced by Chris Eyre with a screenplay by Sherman Alexie. The film is structured as a picturesque road movie, in the true sense of Victor’s and Thomas’ journey from the Coeur D’Alene reservation in Idaho to Phoenix to collect Arnold’s ashes; the late Arnold was Victor’s father, and his relation with the two Indian teens forms plot of rest of the film. This paper will compare the primary text’s literary elements and the film’s cinematic features. Alexie relies on numerous literary elements such as flashback and tone to relay his story; nonetheless, symbolism is the overarching literary device explored by the author. Notably, the title of the story is extremely significant as Phoenix is not only a city in Arizona, but also the name of a bird in Egyptian mythology. This mythical bird has the capacity to rise from its own ashes and to be reborn; thus, phoenix is a symbol of immortality and regeneration. In the story, Victor and Thomas Builds-the-fire arrive in Phoenix in the hot Arizona summer to reclaim Victor’s father ashes from his trailer both literally and metaphorically; apart from victor’s father ashes, the two Indian teenagers reclaim all that has been lost, particularly ashes of Victor’s own life. From the first flashback of the fire in the story, it is evident that Thomas and Victor have had a common childhood, and their history on the reservation has always been connected since Victor’s father rescued young Thomas from the burning house on 4 July. Thomas Builds-the-Fire is both the character and agent through which Victor reclaims both his own and his father’s ashes while the fire itself is also a symbol that represents passions and the heart. Thomas’ tale of his journey to Spokane Falls in search of Victor’s father enlightens Victor on the connection between himself, his father and Thomas; the realization that his life is inevitably intertwined with Thomas’s leads him to reclaiming that part of him that he had lost by abandoning Thomas. In the text, it is revealed through a narration that after Thomas’ visit to the Spokane Falls in a dream, he encountered Victor’s father who instructed him to look after Victor; through this narration, the underlying connection between Victor and Thomas is revealed. In relation to the metaphorical significance of the title, by embarking on the journey to Phoenix to reclaim what is lost, Victor attempts to regenerate from the ashes of his own life. In that respect, Victor also reclaims his friendship with Thomas, as it should be since the two had grown apart over the years, due to Victor’s anger and irritability in reaction to his father abandonment. The duo return to the reservation just as the sun is rising, signaling a new dawn, both literally and figuratively as Victor has been reborn through the journey to Phoenix, where he reclaimed all he had lost through the years of pain and abandonment by his father. In that case, the rising sun symbolizes new beginnings for Victor, as suggested by his name, which suggests victory; as in the case of the “rising sun”, Victor is a rising native son in the reservation. Throughout the movie, symbolism also makes up a great part of the cinematography, as the film, unlike its primary source, does not rely on language, but on photography as its medium; numerous images are offered in connection with the meaning of the story as told by Alexie in his book. To begin with, the title of the movie, Smoke Signals, differs from the text’s title, but is very significant to the movie; it plays on the image of Indians in blankets sending smoke signals for communication purposes, a conventional stereotype of Indians that is prevalent in most old cartoons. Nonetheless, smoke signals were a form of communicating with others in times of trouble and we see this in relation to the difficulty in communication; in the text, it is evident that Victor and Thomas are struggling to communicate not only with each other. However, with their entire community, which explains the images of a huge fire and smoke at the beginning and at the end of the film (“Smoke Signals”); in these scenes, both Victor and Thomas are reaching out to the rest of their Native American community. The fire is yet another important symbol since it carries great significance in relation to the overall meaning of the movie, and the first instance of fire is when Arnold is saving Thomas from the burning house. In this scene, Thomas compares children with flames and ashes through his narration; that while some children are pillars of the flame that burn everything they touch; others are pillars of the ash that falls apart when they are touched (“Smoke Signals”). The comparison of children to flames and ashes is sustained throughout the movie with Victor often having anger management issues due to his absentee father and Thomas being the sensitive and caring type respectively. The meaning in this case is obvious that having lost everything to the fire, Thomas has been reduced to ashes while Victor’s fire is still raging on due to the pent up emotions locked up in his heart; Thomas is the ash and Victor is the flame. Victor wears a white shirt rimmed in fire red at the neck, but changes into a red tee shirt under a flannel shirt with red undertones, after his father inflicts a wound on his face, thereby giving the impression of a pain that is bleeding through his clothes. In the text, Victor’s anger and irritability that led to his troubled relationship with Thomas is explicit through the narration; the writer says, “When they were fifteen and had long since stopped being friends, Victor and Thomas got into a fistfight…Victor was really drunk and beat Thomas up for no reason at all (Alexies 65).” The on-location filming at the Coeur D’Alene reservation, which lies in the middle of nowhere, depicts both the lingering attraction and hopelessness that drives reservation Indians to desperation; the reservation is characterized by a rugged mountainous landscape with scanty ramshackle housing as seen in the establishing shots of the K-REZ radio headquarters, a weathered trailer home (Hearne 193). This is vividly captured in the primary text in the descriptions of the hopelessness and desperation of the natives in the reservations; poor and helpless, the Natives resort to alcoholism as narrated in the flashback where the Natives celebrated 4 July. This is also captured in a scene in the movie, where a drunken Arnold asks Victor who his favorite Indian is, but young Victor runs away and cries ‘nobody’ repeatedly (“Smoke Signals”), thereby highlighting his disappointment in the cultural stereotype of the drunkenness of Native Indians (Johandes). In another story that Thomas narrates, Spokane Falls, a river that is clear and running wildly, symbolizes a return to life from the hopeless drugged state of the Indian reservation; the interpretation of this story is that both Victor and Thomas together with their environment are heading towards the hope of life from their present lifeless state. The film captures this metaphorical return to life through Victor’s insistence that Thomas must change his looks to look like a real Indian, which prompts Thomas to change his clothes and to take down his hair, to take up a more stoic look for survival in the Whiteman’s land. From the scene where Victor and Thomas are heading to the bus station, the jalopy truck in which they hike a ride alongside two teenage girls, Lucy and Velma, is stuck in the reverse gear (“Smoke Signals”), thereby quipping at the assumed notion of reservation cars being driven in various states of disrepair due to difficulties in meeting repair costs. The character of Arnold, who vanishes by abandoning his family, represents the contextual image of the popular inter-textual Indian joke of the ‘vanishing Indian’; Arnold’s disappearing act symbolizes the Euro-American colonizing strategies as well as disruption of the native identities and families. In the text, Victor recalls through a flashback how Thomas predicted the disappearance of his father through a story while Victor’s father still lived with the family; Thomas says, “Your fathers heart is weak…Sometimes he feels like he wants to buy a motorcycle and ride away. He wants to run and hide. He doesnt want to be found (Alexies 275).” Victor losses his father first through alcoholism, abandonment, and eventually through death; all these are prevalent stereotypes of Indians, particularly as portrayed in a vast majority of Hollywood Westerns. In addition, the film further exploits popular image to comment on the historical injustices meted against the Native Americans; the bus, a modern stagecoach is one of such symbols that acts as a microcosm of the social mingling on the borderline (Hearne 197). The bus functions as a symbolic performance space since the native characters are admitted but pushed to the back seats; on their return from the rest stop, both Victor and Thomas find two white men have occupied their seats on the bus (“Smoke Signals”). The two white men, posing as cowboys and rednecks ask Victor and Thomas to “find someplace else to have a powwow (Hearne 195),’ which forces them to move to the backseat; the native character’s move to the back recreates the bus as a segregated social space akin to the civil rights era of the American South. In addition, the native characters’ move to the back of the bus does echo the federal dislocation and relocation policies that saw the native tribes marginalized in reservation areas on the frontiers. In the text, the writer uses dialogue and flashback to point out to the Indian feeling of marginalization as the “others” in a space that once belonged to them; Thomas says, "Its strange how us Indians celebrate the Fourth of July. It aint like it was our independence everybody was fighting for (Alexie 63)." In addition, the writer highlights the loss of identity of the Native Americans in the reservations through this dialogue; Victor says that all the people on the reservation were named junior, which implies that they lost their individual independent identities when they were hurdled into the reservation. The structure of the film, as a picturesque road movie has a greater symbolic significance as the journey motif through the plane ride to Phoenix, arrival at Victor’s father’s trailer as well as the road trip back to the reservation can be interpreted both literally and metaphorically. The journey that Victor and Thomas embark on to Phoenix to collect Victor’s father’s ashes, becomes a metaphor for the inward journey that the two characters must undertake towards maturity, reconciliation with grievances of the past, as well as towards true friendship (“Smoke Signals”). In Phoenix, Victor goes to reclaim what is lost in his father’s trailer, especially items of sentimental value such as letters and photographs; inside the trailer, and on encounter with Suzzy, Victor rediscovers his father in a new human light (Johandes). On the road trip back to the reservation, Victor drives his father’s pickup through the Nevada desert for nearly sixteen hours when he is relieved by Thomas after driving for some time, Thomas accidentally runs over a Jackrabbit, which both characters describe as an act of suicide on the part of the victim. This allusion to suicide and the desert are also significant images in the text since they nuance the fate that befell both Victor and his father, the two men who refused to escape the metaphorical desert of their personal lives, despite having the ability to do so. This is captured in the movie through the car accident that the two characters encounter, as a result of a drunken driver’s recklessness (Johandes); while the drunk driver blames Victor for the crash, Victor considers it absurd and further realizes that it was equally absurd to blame himself for his father’s disappearance (“Smoke Signals” 1998). The realization that the power to decide his fate was in his hands hits Victor at this point in time and he resumes to the steering wheel as a way of taking full charge of his own path; in the end, Victor emerges not only as a changed person, but also as someone with the capacity for change. Ultimately, Chris Eyre’s and Sherman Alexie’s filmic adaptation, translate the text’s massive symbolism into the film’s cinematography through numerous visual images that can be interpreted both literally and figuratively. The metaphorical significance of the title of the text, the fire and ashes, as well as the Spokane Falls, among other images in the film summarize the fate of the texts’ protagonists who emerge at the end as regenerated and reborn after returning from claiming Victor’s father’s ashes in ‘Phoenix’. Works Cited Alexie, Sherman. “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” NY: Grove Press. 2005. Print. “Smoke Signals” Dir: Eyre Chris and Alexie, Sherman. 1998. DVD. Hearne, Joanna. “John Wayne’s Teeth: Speech, Sound and Representation in Smoke Signals and Imagining Indians. Western Fotklme 64.3&4, (2005):189-20 Johandes, Jenise. The Film and the issue of Identity: Smoke Signals. Web. 2000. 7 August 2014 Read More