Stereotypical Behaviors and Images in Smoke Signals

Smoke Signals, released in 1998, was the first widely distributed film by a major studio that was made by and starred Native Americans. The characters are not the stereotypes of Indians that Hollywood portrayed during the previous century. They are complex individuals living in a modern world struggling to deal with their past and present problems. Stereotypical images of Indians are directly confronted and recontextualized, usually with humor. Lines from Western films are repeated and words changed for a comedic effect. The more the viewer is familiar with Native American culture, reservations, and the images of Indians in Westerns, the more he or she can appreciate what screenwriter Sherman Alexei has achieved in Smoke Signals. However, it is the stereotypical patterns of verbal and physical abuse by Victor Joseph, the lead character played by Adam Beach, which may not be as obvious.

Victor makes a trip from the Coeur d’Alene reservation, in Idaho, to Phoenix where his abusive alcoholic father who had abandoned him as a child, has recently died. The real life experiences of Alexie and Beach are the source of the detailed realism of Victor’s dialogue and accurate portrayal of anger and abusive behavior. Alexie as an infant underwent an operation for hydrocephaly. He was in poor health, had seizures, and was teased for his round shaped head. His father was an alcoholic who left home periodically. Alexie also is an alcoholic who is currently sober. Adam Beach was eight years old when his pregnant mother was killed by a drunk driver. Two months later Beach’s father drowned. As a teenager, he lived with his aunt and uncle in Winnipeg, and was a gang member. 

During the initial 16 minutes of the film, before the trip starts, sufficient but purposely incomplete information is given by flashbacks. Victor’s anger, dysfunctional communicational skills and abusive behavior to people he considers weak, are revealed. A fire at a bicentennial house party killed Thomas’ parents. Thomas was thrown from the burning house and caught by Arnold Joseph, Victor’s father. A present day scene shows Victor at a basketball practice starting to lose his temper when he claims a player wearing a blue T shirt fouled him. The other player denied it but then backed down despite being taller and more muscular than Victor. There is a flashback to a younger Victor threatening to again beat up the considerably smaller Thomas because he said Victor’s father will never return home. The film returns to the present day basketball practice with Victor leading a chant with the basketball as a percussive instrument. The physically larger player in the blue jersey shows how weak and subordinate he is when he smiles and obsequiously seeks Victor’s opinion on who the best Indian basketball player was. Another flashback shows a young Victor with his father who is drinking. He hits the child when Victor accidentally spills a bottle of beer.

The film shifts to present time. Victor doesn’t have enough money to get to Phoenix. Thomas offers to help with the money he has in a glass canning jar but with the stipulation that Victor must take him on the trip. Victor is verbally abusive when he refuses the offer and tells him to buy a car or get a woman. Victor’s mother tells him she can’t make the best fry bread without the help of others. Victor decides to take Thomas’ offer, but with three conditions. He “can’t wear that stupid suit. And secondly I don’t want you telling me a million of your damn stories. And third, were going right there and coming right back.”

As they walk to the bus stop, Thelma and Lucy offer them a ride in a car that is being driven backwards. Sophisticated critics might use Vladimir Lenin’s thesis, and interpret Lucy’s car that has only one functioning gear, as sometimes it is necessary to step backwards before going forward. More simplistically the analogy could be the frog in the well jumping up two steps and falling back one step. The frog gets out, but it is a long arduous struggle. Others might have the interpretation that the reservation system doesn’t work. Or simply it could be a stereotypical image that vehicles on the reservation are in a perpetual state of disrepair and this is a filmic interpretation of the sarcastic statement that affluence on the reservation is two cars on blocks in front of a HUD trailer.

Thelma brings up another stereotype when she asks Thomas to trade something for the ride. “We’re Indian’s remember? We barter.” Thomas, who is still wearing his suit, starts to tell one his many stories about Victor’s dad. Victor can’t enforce his rule of no stories because he is outnumbered by the two women who are enjoying the story. Victor reins in his abusive behavior to a slight rolling back of his head in disapproval. The women don’t have physical power, but Victor knows their real power is that they would probably bad mouth him all over the rez. When they ask Victor if it was a true story about his dad, Victor has the opportunity to say that Thomas is “full of shit,” rather than attack the story directly. The audience knows that Thomas’ stories are part truths. When he described the bicentennial house party, he said in voice over, “I mean every Indian in the world was there.” His stories are fascinating. His first story in the film gives the  information  about the fire, his memory of flying in later stories, and the metaphor “that some children are pillars of flame that burn everything they touch, and some… are pillars of ash that fall apart if you touch them.” Thelma validates Thomas as a storyteller and says “I think that is a fine example of the oral tradition.” Thelma’s comment is Alexie’s quick jab at salvage ethnography. She knows that Indians have been telling stories for thousands of years but she sarcastically uses the modern academic label. Thelma and Lucy are an Indian version of the female road buddies Thelma and Louise (1991).

Victor and Thomas are the only passengers who board the bus. When they walk down the aisle the camera records the expressions of the other passengers staring at the two Indians. Several quick close up shots show the driver’s hand pulling the door lever, the door closing, the gear shift lever going into position, and the tires starting to turn. These shots would seem more appropriate for a racing car movie or a chase scene, rather than for a bus on a two lane black top. As the bus pulls away, the words “Evergreen Stage Lines” are visible on the side of the bus. Unlike the stage that took the white man through dangerous and unsettled territory, this stage will take Victor and Thomas off the reservation and into the foreign country that Thelma and Lucy told them they needed vaccinations for. The close ups are reminiscent of stagecoaches in films, with the skilled driver adjusting the reins, the horses responding, and the wagon wheels turning. Like the classic film Stagecoach (1939), there will be conflict between people who usually try to avoid each other but are now brought together by the confines of the stagecoach.

The woman in the seat across the aisle is stretching with her leg above her head. Thomas says that he has to ask her something and Victor tells him not to. Thomas starts to talk to her and Victor shows his disapproval with a sigh and then puts his head back and closes his eyes. When she says to Thomas, “Nice suit,” Victor needs to discredit her and save face since he had called it a stupid suit. She rambles on about how she was an alternate for the 1980 Olympics, but Jimmy Carter took away her opportunity.*  Thomas comments how her loss gives her something in common with Indians. Victor has sized her up as weak and that she will be an easy target. He pretends to wake up and then asks her a series of questions about being an alternate. Her affirmative responses verify her weakness and Victor tells her that she has nothing to complain about and to be quiet. Almost on the verge of tears, she moves to a different seat.

^* The United States boycotted the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.       

In the confines of the bus the gymnast’s abrupt moving to another seat is not without risk. An abuser, with a short fuse before becoming violent, can interpret her behavior as disrespectful and the level of anger escalates. Her moving away can be especially dangerous with an abuser who has been abandoned by a loved one. The abuser stalks her to the new location on the bus; it gets ugly, and out comes a weapon. Shelters for battered women are acutely aware of this danger and carefully plan a safe exit for the victim. The basketball player in the blue T shirt understood that to quickly stop Victor’s rising anger, giving him the basketball was all that was necessary to make Victor think he was correct about the foul. A simple nod of agreement from the gymnast would have allowed her to change seats at a calmer time, perhaps at the next bus station or on a different bus. Film historians would probably ignore this sociological issue of the scene and would invoke the hegemonic image of the bellicose warriors burning down the farmhouse and running the white settlers off their homestead.

Thomas challenges Victor’s behavior and says she was nice. Like many clever abusive people, Victor knows it is more effective to tear apart Thomas’ opinion of the gymnast than to justify his own behavior. He quickly lectures Thomas on how she is a liar, how naïve Thomas is for trusting people, and that he needs to grow up. He lets Thomas know how important his advice is because people will rob him blind if he is not watching. Then he mockingly asks him if he still has his piggy bank.

Three flashbacks, that give details about Victor and his father, occur in succession on the bus. The start and end of each flashback is visually connected to present time to maintain clarity. The first flashback is at night when Victor starts to fall asleep and covers his face with a blanket. Arnold Joseph is drunk at an outdoor party and demanding that Victor tell him who his favorite Indian is. He responds with “Nobody” which makes his father angry. His mother shields him with a hug and moves him away from her husband. Arnold Joseph’s anger rises as he demands to know who his son’s favorite Indian is. She pleads with Victor to tell his Dad that he “didn’t mean it.” His father’s drinking and physical abuse has resulted in Victor hating all Indians, including himself, and he responds with “Nobody, nobody, nobody.” Thomas starts to tell a story about Victor’s dad while the image of young Victor is still seen on the screen. Cutting to the present time, Victor and Thomas are eating in a restaurant at a bus stop, as Thomas continues his story. The screen image changes to Arnold Joseph and Thomas at a bridge over the Spokane Falls, while Victor continues his story as a voice-over. The second flashback ends back at the restaurant with Thomas finishing his story. Victor, angry that he has “heard this story a thousand times” walks away from the table. There is a cut to an image of a young Victor in the mirror of his parent’s bed room. The third flashback shows an angry young Victor smashing his father’s beer bottles, his father hitting his mother, his father leaving, Victor running after his father’s pickup, and Victor beating up Thomas when Thomas tells him his Dad isn’t coming back. The flashback ends with a young Victor running after the bus and a present day Victor looking out the bus window. In film theory jargon Victor’s flashbacks are called enacting. Thomas’ flashback is recounting when Victor and Thomas are seen on screen in the restaurant. When the screen image shifts from the restaurant to the past, and Thomas is still telling his story, the label is enacted recounting.

As Victor emerges from chasing his dad’s pickup truck and running after the bus, Thomas annoys him by asking what he remembers about his father. Victor doesn’t respond so Thomas starts a story about Arnold Joseph at a fry bread eating contest. Victims will frequently try to endear themselves to the abuser by demonstrating that they have a close attachment to details in the abuser’s life. Thomas doesn’t quite get it that Victor gets angry when someone else has closeness and positive recollections of an abusive father who abandoned him. Thomas lashes out with “I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time. Why is that?” Demanding the victim answer a question about why the abuser is unhappy or disappointed about their behavior is another common tactic to weaken the victim. When Thomas shows his weakness by answering “I don’t know,” Victor starts a barrage about what’s wrong with Thomas’s behavior. Thomas has the same on the verge of tears look that the gymnast had. Victor attacks his weakened victim with, “Don’t you know how to be a real Indian?” A defeated Thomas responds, “I guess not.” Victor then goes into “rescue the helpless damsel in distress mode” and benevolently says “I’ll guess I’ll have to teach you then.” Thomas smiles approvingly that he is going to get this “makeover.” Victor immediately becomes an abusive teacher when he tells him, “First of all quit grinning like an idiot.” Even Thomas’s stoic look is wrong and Victor demonstrates a correct warrior look. To Victor this is very important because, “White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean.”

At the next bus stop Thomas fulfills Victor’s other requirements and sheds the suit and lets his hair be free flowing. Thomas carries the transformation a bit over the top with a “Frybread Power” T-shirt and a military style canteen on his hip. The bus driver, annoyed that Thomas has kept the bus waiting, shakes his head in disapproval. Victor smiles approvingly at his pupil. Abusers know how to keep control on their victim by withholding and rationing love, compliments, or approval.

Their seats are taken are taken by two men who are stereotyped by their clothes as redneck and cowboy. Redneck, the physically dominant one of the duo, is seated in the aisle seat and does the talking. His ball cap is in camouflage brown with the words “My Gun Cleaning Hat” on the front. Thomas uses his best social skills to tell them, “Excuse me those are our seats.” The redneck answers with terse speech and mannerisms similar to John Wayne, “You mean these were your seats.” Victor uses an aggressive style and comes closer to the man and says, “No. That’s not what he means.” The response is, “Now listen up. These are our seats now. And there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.” Each time the camera cuts to redneck, the sidekick is seen with a felt cowboy hat that is sitting on his ears and almost on his eyebrows. He periodically has a smirk on his face to show approval for his partner. They are more accurately John Wayne and a Walter Brennan type sidekick. The encounter is at a temporary stalemate when he says, “So why don’t you and super Injun there, find yourselves someplace else to have a pow-wow. OK?”  Victor doesn’t move and stares at John Wayne. The confrontation ends when the bus driver is heard off screen saying, “Come on you all boys, just sit down so we can all…{voice fades}. Victor then backs down. Some days there just are too many white men.

Critical film scholars might argue that the John Wayne type character would be more authentic if he wore a cowboy hat. Others would claim that a Western hat would make him too much of a caricature. The simple truth is that the high back seats on the bus make it is very difficult to wear a Western hat because the back brim hits the seat. It’s even more difficult in newer vehicles with the safety head cradle projecting above the seat. The iconic image of the cowboy wearing a Western hat and driving a pickup truck is each year becoming less common. The sidekick with the oversized Western hat has to lean forward from the seat in each shot. The scene plays so well because the nonchalant and flat affect of the John Wayne character is enhanced as he rolls his head back in the seat and closes his eyes feigning sleep.

They get their bags from the rack over their seats and go to the back of the bus. The background music is the Native American a cappella female trio Ulali, and their interpretation of Garryowen. Custer made the song the Regimental Air of his 7th Calvary and had it played before battles. It has been used in numerous Westerns, including the Custer biopic They Died with their Boots On (1941), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), during a forced march of woman and children over a snow covered trail in The Searchers (1956), and during Custer’s Battle of the Little Bighorn in Little Big Man (1970). Victor and Thomas’ land or seats have been taken and they have to gather their belongings and relocate. Neither Thomas’s diplomacy nor Victor’s warrior posturing were effective in preventing the appropriation of their seats.  Young students who see the film as part of a social issues class, associate the scene with the Civil Rights Movement and segregation on buses. This is understandable since Native American history and the American Indian Movement have not received as much attention. In the film, the announcer of KREZ, the tribal radio station located in a trailer, is played by John Trudell. During the United Indians of All Tribes' occupation of Alcatraz, Trudell set up a radio station on the island and had a show called Radio Free Alcatraz. But that was almost half a century ago and probably few young viewers are aware of this real life connection to the actor.

They sit down in their new seats and Victor is staring in anger at their lost seats. Thomas is either too naïve or doesn’t care that his remark,” I guess your warrior look doesn’t work every time,” will be interpreted by Victor that he is being challenged. His anger level rises. He raises his hand and barks out, “Shut up Thomas.” Thomas says “the cowboys always win.” Victor negates Thomas’s statement, but that doesn’t deter Thomas from talking about Tom Mix and John Wayne. Victor again demonstrates the same tactic he used on Thomas about the gymnast. He shifts the conversation to teaching Thomas what is wrong and abnormal about John Wayne, who according to Victor never showed his teeth in his movies. Pounding his hand on the arm rest, Victor starts a powwow style chant about John Wayne’s teeth. The annoyed passengers look at the back of the bus. The relocation of the Indians to their new territory didn’t end the white man’s problems. At the back of the bus is an uprising. The words “are they false are they real? Are they plastic are they steel?” challenges the veracity of the hero and the stereotypical notion that in the movies it was the Indians who were the stoics who never smiled. The chant continues off-screen, performed by the Eaglebear Singers, as the bus arrives in Phoenix.

 Many of the signs of Victor’s abusive behavior are revealed by Victor’s reactions while other characters are advancing the story with dialogue. Film excels in this quality of simultaneous action. In a stage play, most of the audience is too far from the stage to see the subtle nuances of facial expression. In literature words are read sequentially and the simultaneous description of two actions is not possible. Some writers are extremely skillful in knowing how long it takes the reader’s brain to process the images of their words and how long the mental image can be maintained. With good writing the reader can experience a sensation of events occurring simultaneously. Storytellers for thousands of years have been very effective in allowing listeners to create simultaneous images. Anyone who has had to struggle through a lecture by an instructor who is talking too fast, giving out too much information and jumping from one seemingly unrelated event to another, can attest to this phenomenon in reverse. For many students, the pace is too fast to get any meaningful notes and the only solution is to stop trying to keep up processing the information and simply make a list of the topics that were superficially rattled off. The topics and incidents can easily be looked up after the lecture. In the world of literature, stage, and theater this can translate to financial disaster.

From the bus station in Phoenix they walk to Arnold Joseph’s trailer. Thomas annoys Victor by repeatedly asking him when they will get there. The walk to the trailer is a forced march. Twice Victor throws Thomas’s canteen into the scrub. Thomas says “We’ve been walking a long time,” and then transitions into a discourse about how Columbus showed up and “we had to walk away from that beach… Then Custer showed up… and we got to keep on walking… Then old Harry Truman drops the bomb… and we got to keep on walking somewhere.” The Truman reference is to the post war testing of atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site on Shoshone lands. Viewers familiar with the Sonoran Desert around Phoenix recognize that the scene was not filmed in a location that remotely looks accurate. The silvery species of sagebrush are indicative of the higher elevation and colder climate of the Great Basin Desert. Westerns are frequently filmed in locations that are wrong for the locations in the story. Just as Indians in the past have been stereotypically cast as the same type, why shouldn’t all deserts be the same?

In Suzy’s trailer Victor’s abusive behavior to Thomas is attenuated. Abusers usually act better when they are in public, especially when someone new is present. Thomas tells a story about Victor’s mother’s fry bread. Victor again has to listen because Suzy is enjoying the story. Suzy says that it was a good story. When she asks if it was a true story, Victor again has the opportunity to limit his attack to Thomas’s veracity.  The story shifts away from Victor and Thomas’ relationship, and moves to the relationship between Victor’s dad and Suzy. Through a series of flashbacks Suzy tells Victor about his dad. Victor’s anger increases because now it is Suzy who is  telling  him positive stories about his father. Victor becomes verbally abusive after she tries she tries to coax Victor to go into his Dad’s trailer to take home some of his belongings. “Who the hell are you anyway? You tell me all these stories about my father and I don’t even know if they’re true.” Suzy gets into a direct confrontation with Victor when she says, “I Know more about him than you do.” Victor yells back, “You don’t know anything.” Suzy breaks the stalemate and tells Victor how his father, holding a sparkler when he was drunk, caused the fire that killed Thomas’s parents. Suzy tells him that his father didn’t abandon him but ran back into the fire looking for his son, talked about the fire every day, and wanted to return home. Victor finds in his father’s wallet a photo of the family, with the word “home” written on the back. Victor starts to cut his hair as his father did after the fire. On the bus trip Victor had demanded that Thomas get rid of his braided hair and free it because “an Indian man ain’t nothing without his hair.”     

They drive back to the reservation in Victor’s dad‘s pickup truck. Another story from Thomas about his dad starts a verbal confrontation. This time Thomas doesn’t back down. He tells Victor how he has been moping around the reservation for 10 years, has no job, and hurts his mother worse than his dad did. Victor swerves his father’s pickup truck off the road to avoid a wrecked car with a drunk driver and two passengers. Victor starts to run the twenty miles to the next town for help. He has a flashback of the burning house and Suzy’s voice over saying that his father did one good thing when he ran back into the burning house looking for his son. During her voice over the Image changes to a young Victor running to stop his father from leaving. The flashback continues with Victor’s father’s voice and the image of his father holding a basketball. “Everything in the world can fit in this ball. It’s not about magic. It’s about faith.” Victor, clutching his side that was injured when the pickup went off the road, continues to run for help and then collapses. The screen image is his father on the bridge in Spokane. The father’s image dissolves into a construction worker extending a hand to help Victor off the pavement.

This early stage of healing of the wound with the father who disappeared has not restructured the way Victor treats Thomas. He still displays the same dysfunctional communication style when he berates Thomas about the way he is pushing the wheelchair he is in. He gives Thomas a lecture why he shouldn’t complain about one small wreck and mentions Lester Falls Apart’s yearly wrecks. This is another example of Sherman Alexie’s tightly woven script. The audience is familiar with Lester and his unique name from the traffic reports at the beginning of the film. The scene at the sheriff’s office confronts the stereotype of Indians and alcohol. The drunk driver’s sworn statement was that it was Victor who was drunk and that Victor physically assaulted him. Victor is unable to control his frustration even when up against the sheriff. He displays the same aggressive impulsive response he used with the weak basketball player. He tells the Sheriff, “That’s bullshit.” Tom Skerritt, who played the humane and efficient sheriff married to the town doctor on the TV series Picket Fences, which ran a few years before this movie, has a similar role in Smoke Signals. He simply and unemotionally says, “Well that Kind of language isn’t necessary, Victor.”  He tells the sheriff that he doesn’t drink and has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. The sheriff’s reply reflects his preconceived notion about Indians and alcohol. “Just what kind of Injun are you exactly?”  Addressing the “exactly”, Victor responds, “I’m Coeur d’ Alene.” The sheriff promptly releases them after reading them a statement by one of the woman passengers.

When they arrive at the reservation Victor abandons his hostile communication and gives Thomas a portion of his father’s ashes. They talk about what each one plans to do with the ashes. Thomas asks Victor if he knew why his dad really left. Victor quietly responds, “He didn’t mean to.” These are the same words that Victor’s father said when Thomas’ grandmother told him that he” did a good thing” after he caught Thomas. Thomas smiles at Victor revealing that he knew Victor’s father started the fire that killed his parents.

Another real life connection In Smoke Signals is that the KREZ announcer, John Trudell lost his wife who was pregnant, his three children, and his mother-in-law in a house fire on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada. To this day Trudell is convinced it was arson because of their activism. His wife was working for tribal water rights and was in conflict with state, federal, and local officials, and special interest groups of ranchers and the water recreation industry.  

The film has a structure similar to classical Hollywood detective films where the plot withholds information during the crime portion of the story and then incrementally provides information during the investigational part of the story. Late in the film, Suzy provides information about motive and why Arnold Joseph left. It’s not until Thomas reveals that he knew Arnold Joseph started the fire, is the story completed. The film ends with Thomas going in his house and his grandmother asking “Tell me what will happen.”  Thomas closes his eyes and starts a recounting of “How do we forgive our fathers,” a poem by Dick Lourie. An aerial view follows a river downstream and ends at the bridge by the Spokane Falls. Thomas’ recounting temporarily stops and there is an enacting of Victor scattering the ashes. Ulali’s Wah Jhi Le Yihm plays as background music. It’s not a “throwing things away when they have no more use,” as Victor had told Thomas. Victor is waving his hands above his head in a symbolic gesture of finally letting go of the past that has haunted him for most of his life.

The ability of Thomas to predict the future adds an element of magical realism to the film. Thomas’ magical ability is revealed early in the movie when Victor asks him how he knew that his father had died. Alexie veils this power of Thomas to keep the film grounded in the realm of physical reality. Thomas answered Victor’s question:

                      I heard it on the wind.
                      I heard it from the birds.
                      I felt it in the sunlight.
                      And your mother was just in here crying.

Viewers not familiar with Native American culture would interpret these lines as a parody on the stereotype of the medicine man. Those familiar with traditional healers would understand how the lines refer to the shaman as being able to transcend different realities. Earlier in the film, Thomas and his grandmother had finished a silent prayer before starting their evening meal. There was a knock at the door, and they smile and almost giggle at each other. Most viewers think they are simply acting silly. Those more familiar with traditional cultures realize that they know it is Victor at the door and he is coming to accept Thomas’s help to get to Phoenix. During the trip Victor is condescending and hostile about this ability of Thomas, and says, “Why can’t you have a normal conversation? You’re always trying to sound like some damn medicine man or something.”  By reserving the overt act of Thomas predicting the future, to the end of the film, viewers do not have to contend with any magical elements during the story.     

Getting back to a physical reality, Victor’s years of acquired dysfunctional communication patterns will be there to surface at times of tension and stress. There is the increased risk of him repeating this pattern in the future with spousal and child abuse. The availability of mental health programs, group counseling, and classes to acquire assertive but non-aggressive ways to communicate are not readily available on rural reservations. Even with availability, reimbursement by government and third parties is limited and will not cover the years that are necessary to acquire these skills.

Movies rarely deal with the struggle that will occur after the happy ending. In the typical romance film, after a long second act of obstacles that keep the couple apart, they are united and the film ends. There is no mention of the years of work ahead to maintain a marriage or relationship. War movies end with the victory and rarely with the hard work of establishing a new order. Real life is not as simple as the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes of its dead parent. Nor is it as simple that the ashes, brought from the city of Phoenix, will free Victor from the past. Perhaps Sherman Alexie will make a future film with an older Victor and his son.

Victor and Thomas on their walk to Suzy's trailer.