Reel to Real: Subverting the "Spectacle" of American Indian Identity
Type of Presentation
Individual presentation
Brief Description of Presentation
This presentation will highlight a project conducted with preservice teachers using 1:1 technology to deconstruct images of the "Hollywood Indian" that permeate everyday life. Employing Guy Debord’s method of detournement as a guiding principle, this project attempts to interrupt and subvert the various historical and contemporary ways in which American Indian identity has been constructed through popular imagery. Specifically, it is an attempt to move preservice educators from consuming the “reel” to understanding the “real” issues American Indian people and communities face in the 21st century.
Abstract of Proposal
Stuart Hall (1997) contends representations of race are “media-mediated” from the dominant groups construction of the Other (p. 6). This is particularly true as it relates to representations of American Indian people in all aspects of media. As such, many preservice teacher’s notion of Native American peoples are derived from fictional media representations that have become a litmus for “authenticity” of contemporary Indian identity (Cobb, 2003). Thus, schools become sites of reproduction that further de-humanize American Indian people. One critical pedagogical strategy to interrupt the racialized and dehumaninzing nature of the “Hollywood Indian” with preservice teachers is detournement, “the reuse of preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble,” (Debord & Wolman, 1981, p. 55). This project pairs the strategy of detournement broadly with digital online technologies specifically to both chronicle and subvert the ways in which images of the Hollywood Indian permeate all aspects of our daily lives. Through an intentional pedagogy that critically examines the media’s portrayal of ‘reel’ Indians, educators can begin to move preservice educators to teach in more responsible, reality centered ways about American Indian people and communities.
Location
Coastal Georgia Center
Start Date
3-26-2016 12:50 PM
End Date
3-26-2016 2:20 PM
Recommended Citation
Adcock, Trey M Adcock, "Reel to Real: Subverting the "Spectacle" of American Indian Identity" (2016). International Critical Media Literacy Conference. 26.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/criticalmedialiteracy/2016/2016/26
Reel to Real: Subverting the "Spectacle" of American Indian Identity
Coastal Georgia Center
Stuart Hall (1997) contends representations of race are “media-mediated” from the dominant groups construction of the Other (p. 6). This is particularly true as it relates to representations of American Indian people in all aspects of media. As such, many preservice teacher’s notion of Native American peoples are derived from fictional media representations that have become a litmus for “authenticity” of contemporary Indian identity (Cobb, 2003). Thus, schools become sites of reproduction that further de-humanize American Indian people. One critical pedagogical strategy to interrupt the racialized and dehumaninzing nature of the “Hollywood Indian” with preservice teachers is detournement, “the reuse of preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble,” (Debord & Wolman, 1981, p. 55). This project pairs the strategy of detournement broadly with digital online technologies specifically to both chronicle and subvert the ways in which images of the Hollywood Indian permeate all aspects of our daily lives. Through an intentional pedagogy that critically examines the media’s portrayal of ‘reel’ Indians, educators can begin to move preservice educators to teach in more responsible, reality centered ways about American Indian people and communities.
