Ep. 23: Why Won't Hollywood Let Adam Beach Live?

Will it happen again? Will someone portrayed on-screen by Aboriginal actor Adam Beach be quickly dispensed with, leaving us next to no time to really know his character? According to our guest this week, it's been something of a pattern for Mr. Beach—indeed, it's a fate faced by all too many Indigenous actors in Hollywood, as they appear all too briefly in mainstream television and film productions. Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. She's also the author of the 2015 blog post, "I Can't Believe You Keep Killing Off Adam Beach, NBC: Gender, Representation, Settler Colonialism and Native Cameos on Television." In the course of exploring what's at stake in how Indigenous people are represented by the major studios, we'll also discuss whether Beach's latest role as SlipKnot in the summer superhero flick, "Suicide Squad," breaks with the pattern she's described. // Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.