Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney

WILD WEST SHOWS
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WILD WEST SHOWS
The readings this week are from Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney by Linda Scarangella McNenly. Following the warm welcome and positive reviews on her previous job on a similar topic, Linda Scarangella decided to address the burning issue of the question as to why Native people participated in shows and representations that, largely, amounted to the depiction and perception of the U.S frontier expansion and for the sake of the nation when they understood very well that the performances buttressed or massively supported stereotypes about the life and culture of the Indian people in the American mainstream. The second article departs itself from the focus on entrepreneurs and performers to explore the experience of native performers and their views within the setting of travelling and performing various acts including Wild West show by Buffalo Bill. Secondly, the article addresses the manner in which mainstream newspaper reports about Native performers in the show were produced to foster and reinforce as well as progress civilization of marginalized groups in the country.
The points and the overall discussion of the author in this topic has several influences by other writers and philosophers such as Mary Louis Pratt who wrote the article, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation in 1992. She lays most of her emphasis on the section of the book where the author talks of contact zones as regions where minority and marginalized groups meet with meet dominant cultures. The author finds out from the text that despite the major differences in the nature and powers of the two cultures as well as the linking factor, the two are still potentially able to demonstrate some kind of agency. The quest of the author in her analysis of the book is to trace various forms and degrees of agency portrayed by the Wild West Shows after finding out that unequivocally, the performers in the two have been given a platform where they can express and expressions their various but distinct social meanings of Nativeness. Moreover, her extensive use of first person in her narration in this point is to prove that the performers have full knowledge of the difference that exists between the two cultures and their relationship, but essentially carry on with the show which is a complete manifestation of stereotypes.[Wrobel, David M. "Linda Scarangella Mcnenly. Native Performers In Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill To Euro Disney.". The American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (2014): 186-187. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.1.186.]
As a discussion to the main topic, Scarangella McNenly states that the creation of the shows and the intentional employment of the Native people as performers in Wild West shows may have contributed to the perpetuation of Native culture and stereotypes in a time when the government and t...