Transforming Captivity Narratives in Kevin Willmott’s The Only Good Indian (2009)

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Issue Date
2016Author
Mielke, Laura L.
Publisher
Mid-america American Studies Association
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In this essay, I closely examine Kevin Willmott's The Only Good Indian (2009), a post-modern filmic reflection on the Native boarding school experience, to think about how narrative forms associated with captivity of white subjects mutate in the context of institutional violence. In particular, I consider the film's depiction of the boarding school experience in light of American Indian accounts of such; the film's use of the gothic-horror genre to capture the trauma of the boarding school student; and the film's interrogation of the Western genre in light of repressed histories of colonialism.
Collections
- English Scholarly Works [308]
Citation
Mielke, Laura L. "Transforming Captivity Narratives in Kevin Willmott's The Only Good Indian (2009)." American Studies 55.1 (2016): 5-30.
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