Dancing With Wolves

One could say that Dancing with Wolves is a strong display of post dramatic stress, stratification of power and a lack of communication and understanding. The film shows many creative ways to depict these things. For example, Lieutenant Dunbar is on his horse looking into the distance as inspirational music plays. This happened multiple times throughout the film. It doesn't just happen with Dunbar either, there have been scenes of pathos on the Native American side as well. However, throughout scattered pathos scenes of Native Americans there are scenes of fear mis-communication and misunderstanding between cultures. For instance, there is a scene where Lieutenant Dunbar encounters a  Native American. It is obvious they are both scared of each other  most likely because of what each of there cultures have done to the other. Dunbar most likely sees the Native American to be a mysterious and deadly character. When in reality, he is just the same type of person as Dunbar. One thing that makes the two cultures different is their stratification of power. For the most part, the Native American warriors and elders are the leaders in their society.  This is shown in the scene when they were talking about what they should do with Dunbar. Interestingly, in the American military, the creators of this film decided to depict the leader to be a drunk, strange man who seemed unfit for his duty, however the Native Americans were depicted as wise. All these factors helped this film become a great visual tool to help people understand both sides of the story.

It could argued that before this movie, the American military is mainly depicted as the good side or the protagonist. Numerous people will not even acknowledge Native Americans and see them as bad or dumb people because of how Hollywood, for the most part, portrays them.  In the first scene of the film where  Native Americans are introduced, they are portrayed as brutal and savage. The Shawnee see a traveler and automatically kill and scalp him. This is an interesting point of view for someone who is seeing a Native American for the first time in the film. However, the film does not depict them as dumb, only savage. In a later scene, there is a group of Native American leaders sitting and talking about how they should proceed with Lieutenant Dunbar. This shows Native Americans did not just kill for fun, they have a mis-understanding of white mans' culture. A very bloody mis-understanding, American military came into several villages around that time and scalped woman and children as well.  In this film, costume shows cultural differences between people. For example, the Pawnee warriors are dressed up with all sorts of leather armor, headgear, face paint and other extremities. On the other side, Dunbar is dressing up with his sleek blue jacket, hat sward and golden cuff links. Dunbar might think he looks more civilized but really it is just a matter of perception. While Native Americans costume looks scary to us, a human probably looks just as scary to a lion.