The Differing Shades of Redface: The Evolving Image of Native Americans in Hollywood Comedies

ABSTRACT Native Americans have consistently been misrepresented through humor directed at them in Hollywood film and television. This article explores how Hollywood humor stereotypes and distorts images of the Native American “other.” Relying on Louis Giannetti's genre development theory, which postulates that film genres evolve through four distinct stages (primitive, classical, revisionist, and parodic), it constructs a racial stereotype development theory to show how racial stereotypes similarly evolve and give rise to a fifth (satirical) stage of development. It also demonstrates that racial humor perpetuates further racial inequalities until the satirical stage, during which stereotypes are purposely challenged using the corrective strategies of satire.