Third Posting-Videos

HMyers9901 (HMyers9901@aol.com)
Mon, 22 Dec 1997 12:04:35 EST

I especially wanted to comment on the video of Leslie telling her stories
because I was only able to view the last half of Thunderheart. I found it
amazing that she was so young first of all. I really expected someone much
older would be sitting there in the porch swing talking with her friends. She
seems to know so much for being so young based on some of the stories from her
book. And Ceremony has such a serious overtone that I just would've pictured
her as much older and having lived more of life. Her lighthearted and happy
tone and disposition also struck me as odd. While reading Storyteller I
didn't read the stories with any smile on my face and I certainly wasn't
laughing. Hearing them in her voice and with a different tone really brought
a whole new meaning to the stories, especially the one about the guy who hears
a noise in his barn and goes to check it out on his way to the bathroom.
Hearing her tell it had me laughing, but my reading of it was pretty mundane.

As far as Thunderheart goes, I was only able to view the last half of the
movie, but I had seen it some years before. I think it Brian Green in his
posting who said that for him before it was only a movie, but after reading
Ceremony it made him see the movie in a different light. This happened for me
as well. Things that seem just entertainment sometimes carry a deeper
meaning, but why would it take a course like this for me to see that? In the
future I plan to try thinking a little more about the meaning of a film or
book rather than just coasting through it and taking nothing with me. I see a
lot of correlations between the movie and the book. Val Kilmer's character in
the movie seems to be like Tayo from Ceremony. He (Val) doesn't realize that
his job will help him to find out more about his heritage and his dreams while
Tayo doesn't realize that he will get better by going on his quest that Old
Betonie has laid out for him. There are also struggle issues. In both cases
the Indians land is being invaded by Whites for mining. There are so many
similarities that it seems hard to pick just the major ones. I enjoyed the
movie the first time I saw it, but learned more from it this time around. I
think Hollywood used a few too many Indian and White stereotypes, but for many
people there isn't an understanding of subtle things. Overload is needed to
get the point across.

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