SMOKE SIGNALS

A 1998 Film

 The film opens up with the most explicit theme in the film, which in my opinion is fire. Even in the title itself it alludes to the theme,  "Smoke Signals." Some children are not children at all, and they burn everything they touch. Some children are like ash, they crumble from a touch, which alludes to the emotional life of two children, as a result of this historic tragedy that pertains to the fire at the beginning of the film. Fire versus ash, plays a role in the story. 

        The film is a road trip genre, symbolizing an American development of identity by getting on the road and discovering oneself. Victor and Thomas go on a journey and throughout the process and different circumstances that they are confronted with, they find themselves. 

Thomas and Victor, the name's themselves lead to the distinctions within that metaphor as it's fleshed out. The children that are no children at all, that burn everything they touch, you would associate that with understanding Victor's emotional life. Thomas struggles to get a hold on anything, recuperating this tragedy in a desperate way. Both frustrated in different ways, however these are the results of that destructive national history. Thomas struggles to find himself and his Indian culture within himself in a mainstream frame of what it is to be an Indian. One is the optimistic individual and the other is wounded and in pain, though both take the trip in order to reach a happy medium of self discovery. 

In many ways, Thomas is the warrior, while Victor  is the child of ash. Even though on the surface it seems as though it's exactly the opposite. Which is what makes complicated their identities and defies the mainstream stereotypical notion of Indian identity that we have created ourselves within our minds. As Americans we perceive the warrior to be this tall strong individual, while the Thomas figure would be a story telling type of individual who could even be perceived as a feminized individual.

        The film itself is filled with metaphors and allusions layered upon each other that pertain to the idea of a road trip; a road trip that's related to a form of journey that one takes in life, or in other words the journey that Thomas and Victor took in order to discover themselves intellectually.