Popular culture and the media have assisted the boundaries that exist between, ethnicities, leaving in their wake hybrid personnel who are in the struggle to obtain a sense of identity. It might be that popular culture has assisted in producing new homogenously mixed “American” identity. In fact, in the contemporary age of global communication as well as information, ethnic boundaries have turned to be more permeable. In fiction, young American authors of various ethnic backgrounds, characters have often chosen to portion allegiances to their ethnic history, which comprises of important parts of most young American’s environment, and Sherman Alexie is not an exception.
In his narration “Blasphemy” Alexie investigates the intersection that is involved between the dominant white world and Native American. More than any other ethnic minority, Native Americans have been in the attempt to maintain a distinct history as well as traditions from the predominately white America, standing as the only minority to govern independently large land areas within America. Alexie introduces American popular culture as well as the media and the way they have infiltrated virtually all regions in America, including Native American reservations, which involve the reputation of being almost off-limits to outsiders. Alexie Native Americans, even for the ones, who are fully blooded, have hybrid identities, in part made aware by the popular culture and consumerism, both of which play an important role in the reservations.
Like most of the writers of his generation, Alexie is well-informed of the significance of power as well as humor in contemporary society. He does not glorify Native American in the sense that they are seen to be closed off and instead intolerant of ethnic differences. On the Reservation, Indians of Mice descends are treated like subordinates by full-blooded Indians. Alexie “worried about the children of mixed blood marriages. The held-breed kids at the reservation school suffered through even much worse beatings compared to Thomas’s suffering” (82). At the same time, Alexie insists on the community importance of the Native Americans. One of the statements he provides about this is when he says, “The Indian world is tiny” (151). According to Alexie, the Native Americans, in fact, need to remain in their ethically self-enclosed world, for through their appropriation of American popular culture that Coyote their springs, obtain their voice.
Alexie, at the same time, provides an argument that ethnic cross-pollination is inevitable, however, he has feared for white America might subsume the heritage and identity of the Native Americans. In an instance, Alexie communicates to of a subject that, “Those quarter blood and eight –blood grandchildren will realize they are Indians and torment the other real Indians” (283). Certainly, this seems like a natural course of event in Native Americans’ history of ethnic appropriation. In case white people are infiltrating reservation and appropriating Native American cultures as their own; a proper response can be for Native Americans to do the exact opposite –drop the reservation and appropriate the equipment of white Americans for their advantage.
Still, even though this necessarily does not imply that Alexie supports ethnic assimilations. Alexie has the intentions of making his characters maintain their sense of ethnic identity, and he believes that they are in a position just that in an urban center without falling prey to the potentially dominating effects of white-dominated urban society and popular culture. Alexie Native Americans notwithstanding for the ones, who are completely blooded, have half-breed characters, to some degree made mindful by the mainstream culture and consumerism.
Alexie seems to be no proponent of ethnic assimilation, for him, there can be no assimilation, only the subsuming of identity, in a white dominated America. The strongest adverse reaction of Alexie is micromanaging Native American history as well as its traditions by the white Americans. A most similar example of Native American identity, culture, and history is where he demonstrates in his other book Indian Killer. At the end of this novel John Smith, the Indian Killer, is seen to be kidnapping the pseudo-Indian Writer Jack Wilson, whom he leaves with injuries and tells “Let me, let us have our pain” (411).Consequently, John ends up committing suicide. After his death and Wilsons recovery, Wilson writes a portrait that illustrates the life that John Smith lived, which is also firmly denounced by Marie. In a similar sense, Alexie provides an argument that Wilson and the pretentious Professor Mather is misinterpreting Native Americans and ending up damaging them as well.
As a songwriter, filmmaker and comedian, Alexie is well informed of the power of popular culture in contemporary America and its potential for Native Americans. While Alexie is not in the interest of condemning the unnecessary actions, his apparent intentions seem to be apparent to the violent tension hat at times are seen among people of different ethnicities and the way the struggle comes between individual identities can turn to conflict. Alexie does not provide any easy solution, but does, in fact, demonstrate the process of ethnic assimilation or subsidence, with all the possibilities, issues of culture and identity can and will be continued matter of discussion in America.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories. Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2012.
