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Those We Don't Speak Of: Indians in The Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Lauren Coats ,
Matt Cohen ,
John David Miles ,
Kinohi Nishikawa  and
Rebecca Walsh
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Abstract

American literary studies has shown that the symbolic exclusion of Native Americans from the Puritan and early national imaginaries was an essential component of the making of an American identity. This argument builds on reading practices that stress literary-historical contextualization. Our essay considers how M. Night Shyamalan's film The Village (2004) addresses the continuing relevance of Native American exclusion from the national imaginary not by faithfully representing “history” but by layering its narrative with multiple historical registers. Realized through editing, cinematography, and set design, these registers—seventeenth-century Puritan, turn-of-the-twentieth-century utopian, and “the present”—are stage-managed by a group of idealistic elders who wish to protect their community from the evils of the world outside. While most critics have reduced The Village to an allegory of post-9/11 United States political culture, we propose a viewing of the film as parable that marks historical collapses and exclusions as the limits of utopia.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 2 , March 2008 , pp. 358 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

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