For factual historians and other certaintists, the gap between European “first-contact” New World narratives as written and “what really happened” poses difficulties.

Length: 850 word minimum (about 3 ½ pages) double-spaced, edited, proofread, submitted as a Word Document (there are blank ones ATTACHED to each of the three assignments) through Blackboard.

For factual historians and other certaintists, the gap between European “first-contact” New World narratives as written and “what really happened” poses difficulties. But for creative writers and filmmakers that very same gap becomes a huge imaginative space in which to enact and portray psychological, emotional and other kinds of “truths.”
Based on La Relacion, Nicholas Echeverria’s film is a strange, mysterious and visually stunning (re)imagining of the 8-year wilderness trek (1528-1535) of Nunez and three other survivors of the Narvaez expedition across Florida, the northern Gulf of Mexico, Texas, what is now the American Southwest, and Northern Mexico.
You will watch the film actively, paying close attention to the American “naturalization” of Nunez and how by film’s end he has become a man between two worlds, in some ways one of the first “hyphenated-Americans.”
Some things to look for, take note of and question while you watch the film (You WILL NOT submit answers to these, as they are designed to help you watch the film in a more focused way, and so help with context for Assignment # 2).
[1] How do the Spanish treat each other?
[2] How does the process of assimilation work for Alvar Nunez? What stages does he go through?
[3] What is the lifestyle of the first indigenous peoples portrayed in the film (a hybrid of Gulf Coastal Florida and Texas)?
[4] Why are there no translations/subtitles for the native languages?
[5] How does Nunez try to “hold on” to his Spanish identity?
[6] When the shaman and his sidekick hear Nunez recite some lines from Abenamar, why do you think they realize that this is somehow different from his other rantings?
[7] How do the natives express their emotions?
[8] Near the film’s end, when Nunez is speaking to the Spanish captain near Culiacan, Mexico how do the landscape and their postures in relation to each other reflect the differences between the two?
[9] Think about “agency,” who is “in control.” How does that differ between text and Film?

In order to explore the differences between text and film for Assignment # 2 (DUE Wednesday September 27th by 9:00 am), we need to think about narrative, counternarrative and backstory. Narrative in this case is the first “take” on events, usually written by those with the most power (at the time). Counternarrative, is the response or responses to that initial narrative, from the perspective of characters, cultures, races, genders, histories, events that were distorted, muted, erased, etc. in the first account. Literary history is rich with these “pairings,” and here a just a few of them. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (circa 700-1000 AD) is about the Geat (modern southern Sweden) warrior who comes to fight for a Danish king. The counternarrative is Grendel (1971 by John Gardner), a novel which retells the story in prose from the perspective of the titular “Monster.” Charlotte Bronte published her novel Jane Eyre in 1847, and the Anglo-Caribbean author Jean Rhys responded with The Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. In the latter, Rhys seizes on the plot fact that Mr. Rochester, who Jane eventually marries, has a first wife deemed “mad,” and so locked in the attic of his large mansion. We learn about this character’s background (also Caribbean) and Rhys explores issues of feminism, Victorian psychology, etc. in her novel. Many of you read Huck Finn (1885) by Mark Twain in high school. In 2007, Jon Clinch published Finn which focuses on Huck’s abusive father, a minor character in the original. Another famous book (and film) is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1936), about Scarlet O’Hara and her triumph over defeat and destitution in post-bellum Atlanta. In 2001, Alice Randall published a counternarrative, The Wind Done Gone, told from the perspective of the black characters who were often reduced to stereotype in the original novel and film. Finally, and directly relevant to this assignment, we have La Relacion by Alvar Nunez published in 1542. In 2015 Laila Lalami, a Moroccan-American novelist, published The Moor’s Account which reimagines the original from the perspective of Esteban the Moor (and slave) who you will meet in both the written account and in Echeverria’s film.
In some ways, American literature and history is one of constant narrative, counternarrative, counter-counternarrative, etc. The larger and more diverse the country has become, the more this process continues and will continue. At its best, this is not a zero sum win-lose, either-or proposition. If you’re looking for that, then stick to politics and the puerile zingers of social media. Instead, think of it as a kind of “restoration,” a both/and of voices lost and found that add to the chorus of the on-going American work-in-progress.

Your second essay (850 words minimum; typed, double-spaced, submitted through Blackboard as a WORD Document) will be a comparison/contrast paper between the material Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in the full text of La Relacion which you read the first week of the term on the Texas State website, the author introduction, excerpts on pp. 53-62 of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Beginings to 1865 Shorter 10th edition and the film Cabeza de Vaca (’91) directed by Nicholas Echeverria.

Link to Cabeza de Vaca film
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cNu0lXqgfJa7r0Ko_oCOft4OnU91zcMq/view?usp=sharing

this is a compare and contrast paper between text in a textbook and a film

I can provide the link for both