Regular $15/ $11 Matinee
Member $11/ $6 Matinee
This illuminating essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape.
Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Westerns has had a lasting influence on stock photography, advertising, and tourism. The valley has been given mythical significance as an image of a “primitive West” firmly in the hands of white people and meant to be protected from intruders. The fact that Monument Valley is traditional Navajo territory has been obscured in the process.
A radical examination of Monument Valley’s representation in cinema and advertising since John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939), THE TAKING scrutinizes how a site located on sovereign Navajo land came to embody the fantasy of the “Old West,” replete with self-perpetuating falsehoods, and why it continues to hold mythic significance in the global psyche.
Misunderstood because of her green skin, a young woman named Elphaba forges an unlikely but profound friendship with Glinda, a student with an unflinching desire for popularity.
Years after witnessing the death of Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius must enter the Colosseum after the powerful emperors of Rome conquer his home.
Tensions run high as producer Lorne Michaels and a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers prepare for the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live on Oct. 11, 1975.
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