Adaptation Theory and Criticism by Slethaug Gordon E.;

Author:Slethaug, Gordon E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

FIGURE 4.1 Thomas celebrating Victor’s need to take him to Phoenix in Smoke Signals

The two youths are pulled together by their goal to retrieve the belongings, Thomas’s aim to restore Arnold’s image in Victor’s eyes, their status as the only Native Americans on the bus, and ultimately their position as a small minority in the United States because of the injustices of the past.

For the most part, the other passengers leave the two alone though they look at them suspiciously, as does the bus driver (whom, ironically, the film audience stares at suspiciously because of his beard, sunglasses, and odd looks), but, when two obnoxious racists take their seats, Victor and Thomas are forced to relocate but respond by singing “John Wayne’s teeth,” a comic reflection on this actor who not only portrayed the frontiersman’s conquering of Native Americans, but physically embodied hegemonic ideology behind the frontier concept of Manifest Destiny. This clearly sends up John Wayne, his acting in films like Stagecoach, and the entire Western genre. (It also pushes the viewer to think of a similar sing-along on Get on the Bus that is both celebrative and highly political, but there it is communal, while here it is restricted to the Native American pair—though the accompanying tribal chanting and drums suggest a communal force off the bus.) So the song celebrates the triumph of the endurance of Native Americans, despite the white man’s attempts at their annihilation. For his part, Thomas continues to tell celebratory stories about Arnold Joseph, forcing Victor to reassess his anger toward his father, so that when they arrive at the trailer, Victor can begin to participate in a healing process that could symbolically restore his father and allow him to take the ashes back to his mother, thus closing the gap in the family circle.

The road trip to pick up Victor’s father’s ashes and possessions when he dies is thus very important personally and culturally for it means that Victor does accept responsibility for the legacy of his father, and the film builds toward their implicit reconciliation, if only in death. It is clear in the film that the difficult relationship between the youthful protagonists, Thomas and Victor, in some way involves the father for Thomas always asks about Victor’s father and Victor, for his part, responds in embarrassment and rage to these questions. Because of his father’s alcoholism, abuse of himself and his mother, and abandonment of them, Victor feels under duress and, consequently, attacks Thomas. When Victor finally understands that these abuses arise in some manner from his father’s responsibility for the fire and that his father loved him and regretted leaving, he can finally let go his rage. This in turn leads to the final scenes of the films—Suzy Song’s setting fire to Arnold’s trailer in an act of ritualistic purification and the film’s important questions: “How do we forgive our fathers?” and “If we forgive our fathers, what is left?”11 Exorcising and purifying the past and forgiving our fathers—brown

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