Abstract
Tracy Letts’s screenplay, August: Osage County (2013), and John Wells’s film adaptation (2013) offer a compelling critique of American racism towards Native Americans which demands that viewers consider their own inculcation into ongoing settler-nation colonialism. The film layers the history of place (Oklahoma) with the Cheyenne character Johnna, whose Indigenous heritage is negotiated throughout by liberal academics, conservative rural matriarchs, and Johnna herself. The role is small but essential to the film’s allegorical analysis of settler-colonialism and racism. The Weston family’s secrets, addictions, and dysfunction starkly contrast with Johnna’s health and stability. Through Johnna, the film questions the toll colonialism takes on the mental and physical health of the American people. This paper analyzes the metanarrative association of the Weston family’s dysfunction and racism with ongoing colonialism that results in disease of the settler-colonial space as it emerges in the screenplay and film.
Works Cited
August: Osage County (2013). Dir. John Wells. The Weinstein Company.Search in Google Scholar
“Aversive Racism.” Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Encyclopedia.com. <https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/aversive-racism> (May 10, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
DiAngleo, Robin (2011). “White Fragility.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3.3, 54–70.Search in Google Scholar
Letts, Tracy (2008). August: Osage County. New York, NY: Theater Communications.Search in Google Scholar
Letts, Tracy (2013). August: Osage County. The Weinstein Company. <http://screencraft.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/August-Osage-County.pdf> (August 21, 2017).Search in Google Scholar
Lloyd, Roger Hall (2006). Osage County: A Tribe and American Culture 1600–1934. New York, NY et al.: iUniverse, Inc.Search in Google Scholar
May, John D. “Osage County.” Oklahoma Historical Society. <http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS004> (September 3, 2017).Search in Google Scholar
Mohler, Courtney Elkin (2010). “Nostalgia, Irony, and the Re-Emergence of the Reified American Indian Other in August: Osage County.” Kiki Gounaridou, ed. Text & Presentation, 2010. Jefferson, NC, et al.: McFarland, 130–142.Search in Google Scholar
Pendler, Paul and Phillip Beverly (2015). The Racism Root Kit: Understanding the Insidiousness of White Privilege. New York, NY: Sachs Center. <https://sachscenter.com/wp-content/uploads2015/08/PaulPendler-Root-Kit.pdf> (May 10, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Population Demographics of Osage County, Oklahoma in 2019, 2018. US Census Bureau. <https://suburbanstats.org/population/oklahoma/how-many-people-live-in-osage-county> (May 10, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Powwow Highway (1989). Dir. Jonathan Wacks. HandMade Films.Search in Google Scholar
“Removal of Tribes to Oklahoma.” Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City, OK. <https://www.okhistory.org/research/airemoval> (May 11, 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Sue, Derald Wing, gen. ed. (2010). Microagressions and Marginality: Manifestations, Dynamics, and Impact. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Search in Google Scholar
Sue, Derald Wing (2015). Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Different Dialogues on Race. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Search in Google Scholar
©2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
