How Media Entertainment Can Help Us Understand the Past

Media entertainment, such as literature and movies, can often be viewed interchangeably with actual historical documents since this entertainment is often written by people who lived during the era and reflects the social and political views of the time period. This is done either by arguing for or against those views and helps us to understand the cultural climate and its production of historically notable moments. It is through this perception of the film makers, like for The Lone Ranger and Zorro, that the viewers and their own perceptions are filtered which alters the representation of the characters in the film and in turn, those of the people from the historical period. This is also what leads history to be a problem when people read about certain groups of people, like Indians, continually being put down and in losing positions. This sends the message that it is a bad group to belong to and perpetuates stereotypes like the idea that little boys should grow up to be things like cowboys, whom are favored highly in history and films, and not Indians.

This message can be seen in the 1938 television series “The Lone Ranger.” During the time period this film is from, Native Americans were still being moved to reservations, in Mexican run California they were still being used as indentured slaves and the vast majority of them were being treated as second class people. Even given all of this, an Indian is still given a star role in the film. He appears as Tonto, the lone ranger’s side kick. Here we can already see cultural differences emerging and people’s perceptions affecting the representation of characters. In the original radio version, the lone ranger saves Tonto who later becomes his side kick. In later versions, Tonto saves a Texas Range named Reid who is the sole survivor of a group of attacked Texas Rangers and together Tonto helps him establish his identity as the lone ranger and in the process becomes his side kick. Although this film allows us to perceive Indians in a more favorable light since Tonto fights for good along side our hero, the representation for the two characters still forces little boys to want to be cowboys instead of Indians. This is primarily due to the fact that all of the credit, catch-phrases and star like qualities are primarily given to the lone ranger and not Tonto which makes people less likely to want to emulate Tonto.

In the 1920’s silent film “The Mark of Zorro” by Douglas Fairbanks, although instead of deliberately referring to Indians, the concept is still there that it is better to be the hero than the oppressed or the beaten. The film features Don Diego Vega who is the son of a very wealthy family. Although he perpetuates the stereotype for rich people of the time period in being arrogant, self-satisfied and nonchalant, he is also the masked hero Zorro who is compassionate and empathetic in his quest to help the oppressed poor people. This film truly forces people to change their perceptions by showcasing the representation of being a hero as the only viable option. In the film you can not be the poor, oppressed people because you are constantly being beaten down and live in despair. At the same time however, you can also not be the wealthier class because of the negative characteristics (such as bad personalities) that are associated with them and also because they come under attack by our masked hero and since historically this representation of the hero been repeated in many different ways (Robin Hood, Joaquin Murrieta, etc.) it really works against us in forcing us to believe that it truly is better to be a hero/cowboy rather than the oppressed/Indians.

As we can see from the two above movies, history and movies can be interchanged since one is a reflection of the other. Because this is the case, the perpetuation of peoples ideals and standards through film often show the perception of people from the time period and affects the way that characters and populations are represented. This creates the problem of history teaching little boys that they are better off growing up to be cowboys since they are culturally, socially and historically more acceptable than Indians. This constant historical and cultural reinforcement also prevents more little boys from breaking away from the norms and becoming Indians because of their natural drive to emulate perceived heroes which are typically represented by biased stereotypes.


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