Description:
At the opening of each episode of The Lone Ranger radio series, audiences are invited to “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear”. From 1933 through to 2013 productions of The Lone Ranger media franchise have continued to extend this invitation. The evocation of the past through The Lone Ranger franchise includes Tonto: the masked man’s Indian sidekick. Tonto has remained an element of the franchise since the inception of The Lone Ranger and the development of Tonto presents an intriguing map of changing Indian characterization across the twentieth-century. This study argues that Tonto has developed as the masked man’s foil to incorporate colonial violence and Anglo-American culpability into The Lone Ranger narratives. In doing so, this thesis notes that Tonto’s assimilation within narratives of The Lone Ranger can be read like a parable, presenting a model of appropriate social responses for the interrelation of races through the masked man and Tonto’s partnership. The structure and style of Tonto’s assimilation develops gradually in the franchise over the course of the twentieth-century. Initially Tonto’s assimilation suggested a Romanticized future for the Indian following colonization. However, later productions of The Lone Ranger juxtapose assimilation with extermination. In analysing the development of Tonto, this thesis examines six features of the character. The first three are foundation concepts consisting of the idea of the Indian, the Western genre and franchise theory and development. The second three are constant facets of characterization comprised of Tonto’s status as an Indian, the recurring theme of Manifest Destiny in The Lone Ranger texts, and the growth of Tonto parallel to activism of the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis contributes to knowledge as the first study of Tonto as an ongoing development rather than a static characterization discussed in broad terms.
Description:
At the opening of each episode of The Lone Ranger radio series, audiences are invited to “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear”. From 1933 through to 2013 productions of The Lone Ranger media franchise have continued to extend this invitation. The evocation of the past through The Lone Ranger franchise includes Tonto: the masked man’s Indian sidekick. Tonto has remained an element of the franchise since the inception of The Lone Ranger and the development of Tonto presents an intriguing map of changing Indian characterization across the twentieth-century. This study argues that Tonto has developed as the masked man’s foil to incorporate colonial violence and Anglo-American culpability into The Lone Ranger narratives. In doing so, this thesis notes that Tonto’s assimilation within narratives of The Lone Ranger can be read like a parable, presenting a model of appropriate social responses for the interrelation of races through the masked man and Tonto’s partnership. The structure and style of Tonto’s assimilation develops gradually in the franchise over the course of the twentieth-century. Initially Tonto’s assimilation suggested a Romanticized future for the Indian following colonization. However, later productions of The Lone Ranger juxtapose assimilation with extermination. In analysing the development of Tonto, this thesis examines six features of the character. The first three are foundation concepts consisting of the idea of the Indian, the Western genre and franchise theory and development. The second three are constant facets of characterization comprised of Tonto’s status as an Indian, the recurring theme of Manifest Destiny in The Lone Ranger texts, and the growth of Tonto parallel to activism of the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis contributes to knowledge as the first study of Tonto as an ongoing development rather than a static characterization discussed in broad terms.
Description:
That the American Civil War occurred exclusively within North America and affected specifically United States affair is a common misconception. Whilst the majority of the infantry conflict occured within and between the United and then Confederate States of America, the clash was such that it and its effects spread accross the globe. Also engaged in the American Civil War were Prussian military observers; political entanglements with the United Kingdom and Russia; Canadian volunteers within the Union army; smuggling and blockade running from the Bahamas into the Confederate States; cotton shortages in French industries that were heavily reliant on raw materials imported from the southern states; merchant raiding in the Pacific and Atlantic; along with countless other entanglements to Europe and their colonies into the conflict through one means or another. The tyranny of distance notwithstanding, Australia was no exception to the overflow of conflicts and consequences that resulted from the American Civil War.
Description:
The western genre has long been hailed as an iconic expression of the United States’ history and culture. However, the 2010 Australian film Red Hill (dir. Patrick Hughes, 2010) actively engages the genre’s tropes, styles, and conventions. In doing so, the film converts the ideas of a ruggedly individualistic frontier, key to the western genre and the popularised notions of nineteenth-century United States expansion, to the contemporary Australian context, providing a translation and mutation of the western genre. This paper argues that, through disassociation of the western genre from the United States, Red Hill’s frontier is made Australian over the course of the film, exploring the lingering traumas and ongoing violence of a specific colonisation process. Drawing on theories of genre, history, and postcolonialism, this paper investigates the exploration of national character, history, and boundaries through the western genre. In doing so, this paper situates the western genre as having a nationalistic function in general, rather than one associated with any particular nation, and as providing a touchstone for ideas of history and themes of colonial expansion in a contentious landscape of class, race, and society.