First off, I want to start by saying that Hollywood and Americans have usually portrayed Native Americans as “foreigners” and anything but the winning side. And by the “winning side” I mean the dominant group that is either always portrayed as good or better. Even the video states this, “They say history is written by the winners.” They’ve made the representation of Native Americans (and other races) look worse off than they really are which is horrible because history must be seen from two sides, not just one. (Which eventually builds on to be a dangerous one-sided story). I dislike colonialism and from just watching that 5 minute video, it made me feel disgusted by what Hollywood has done. They make Native Americans look like “savages” that are brutal and blood-thirsty and those aren’t even my own words. It says, “Yes they fought savagely for they were a primitive people and self-preservation is a primitive instinct.” They have poorly depicted other races or, Native Americans to be exact and from that, they falsely represented a certain group of people. “A nation that does not know its history has no future.”
I personally think that Shakespeare purposely made Caliban represent that of a foreigner and has made Stephano and Trinculo attempt to be the dominant group. Of course there’s evidence to prove this because I’m sure at one point in time the Americans found Native Americans and others to be “monsters”, “foreigners”, “others”, and/or “savages”. Just like how Stephano and Trinculo call Caliban a “monster…an awful monster.” (107). However, although throughout history they’ve described the Natives to be violent, I don’t think that was the same as Shakespeare because he hasn’t and he didn’t show Caliban to be violent in any way besides the cursing.
Representation is important and I can’t stress that enough. It reveals and attempts to show others how a certain peoples are and if you are misrepresented in any way, of course that makes that certain group look awful.
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