FORMAT
PDF/182 pages
by
Yasemin Gümüş
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF
COMMUNICATION AND DESIGN AND THE
INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
SCIENCES OF
BİLKENT UNIVERSITY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
A Cultural Renewal:
Native Americans in Road Movies
Yasemin Gümüş
M.A. in Media and Visual Studies
Supervisor: Duncan CHESNEY
May, 2008
In this thesis, contemporary Native American road films
Powwow Highway (Wacks, 1989), Dead Man (Jarmusch,
1995), Smoke Signals (Eyre, 1998), and Dreamkeeper
(Barron, 2003) are studied in terms of their relation
to the formal and thematic conventions of the road
movie genre. The movies are examined as social
reproductions of postmodern mainstream American road
picture. The films are analyzed as social texts working
as cultural renewals of the texts representing American
Indians in the mainstream American cinema as well as
they are taken as major contributions to the road
genre. In this sense, Native Americans’ use of the road
picture’s generic patterns and contemporary tendencies
in order to tell their own experiences of the road
journey is investigated.
A CULTURAL RENEWAL NATIVE AMERICANS IN ROAD MOVIES