There are two required critical readings for John Ford's Stagecoach included as PDFs below. The first, Michael J. Blouin's "Auditory Ambivalence: Music in the Western from High Noon to Brokeback Mountain," explores the meanings of the Western genre as they are created by the way music is used in the genre. The second, Robert B. Pippen's "What is a Western: Knowledge in John Ford's The Searchers" explores the defining characteristics of the genre through a close reading of John Ford's The Searchers. Since we are watching Stagecoach rather than The Searchers, it will be interesting to look for ways that this article's points apply to the film we are discussing-- and perhaps ways in which we need to modify the article's claims to describe Stagecoach.
auditory_ambivalence.pdf | |
File Size: | 83 kb |
File Type: |
what_is_a_western_by_robert_b._pippen.pdf | |
File Size: | 599 kb |
File Type: |
Below you will find the film Stagecoach with the original English audio but with Spanish subtitles added at the bottom(the only way it is available for free and uninterrupted on Youtube). You can also watch it on Hulu if you prefer no subtitles (but on Hulu the film is occasionally interrupted by ads). Finally, i am working on getting a copy on reserve at Walsh Library (it should be there by Friday) and there are two other copies available in Quinn Library at Lincoln Center.
PERSPECTIVES ON THE WESTERN:
Women and the Western
Pam Cook, 1988
Historians have turned their attention to women’s participation in the westward trek and discovered, to no surprise, that their real contribution was far more extensive and diverse than traditional histories and literature have led us to believe. When it comes to movies, the picture is much the same: the impoverished range of female stereotypes on offer (mother, schoolteacher, prostitute, saloon girl, rancher, Indian squaw, bandit) never matches up to reality. In the epic battle between heroes to tame the wilderness, the heroines who fought to change the course of history (the suffragettes, farmers, professional women) fare badly…(293).
It’s tempting to put this down, as many critics have, to the male Oedipal bias of the Western, a narrative based on a masculine quest for sexual and national identity which marginalizes women. Fruitful though this approach may be, it has not really come to terms with the dual, contradictory role of women. On the one hand she is peripheral (Budd Boetticher: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one…who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”). On the other hand she is central (Anthony Mann: “In fact, a woman is always added to the story because without a woman the Western wouldn’t work”). (293)
Stagecoach (1939) directed by John Ford, whose reverence for motherhood and family is legendary, produced some significant reverberations: the East/West conflict is centered on two women, the respectable Lucy Mallory and the prostitute Dallas, and is played out at the point of life and death as the stagecoach and its motley group of passengers come under attack by savage Apaches. The hope for future civilization (revolving around who is a “good mother”: Mrs. Mallory, who gives birth during the journey, or Dallas) lies not with the effete, class-conscious visitors from the East but with the Westerners who, in spite of their illegality, have an instinctive compassion and sense of right and wrong. Dallas herself, reviled by the snobbish easterners, is presented as a more “natural” mother than Lucy Mallory: shots of her cradling Lucy’s baby while the stage is under attack are quite transgressive, since prostitutes are outside the family and the law. It’s true that the resolution is entirely conventional: Dallas is the civilizing force that brings the outlaw Ringo back into society. Nevertheless, she remainsan ambiguous figure, half-prostitute, half-wife, partly because of the positive valued attached by Ford to renegades and social outcasts (295).
Perhaps the nearest Hollywood has come to a feminist western [note from Professor Walsh: please keep in mind that this article was written in 1988, three years before the release of Thelma and Louise, for instance[, Johnny Guitar (1954), predates the modern women’s movement by more than a decade and does not deal directly with social issues at all….Vienna, the film’s extraordinary heroine and one of the most compelling female images the Western has produced, has often been seen as a feminist ideal, a woman who survives on equal terms with men…. Vienna is certainly unusual: a powerful combination of several western heroines in one (a gunslinger, a musician, and a successful entrepreneur…she is sexually independent but also mother….) Feminine in her white dress, masculine in black shooting gear, she moves between tomboy and mother figure with ease, demonstrating and maintaining a level of control allowed to very few women….(298-299).
The rancher’s daughter/saloon girl duality reaches back into all forms of narrative and cultural consciousness—she is in essence the madonna or whore, settling down here on the American frontier with a specific yet still eternal resonance (303).
Below you will find the trailer for the 1954 film Johnny Guitar starring Joan Crawford, which Pam Cook called in 1988 "the nearest Hollywood was come to a feminist western."
Women and the Western
Pam Cook, 1988
Historians have turned their attention to women’s participation in the westward trek and discovered, to no surprise, that their real contribution was far more extensive and diverse than traditional histories and literature have led us to believe. When it comes to movies, the picture is much the same: the impoverished range of female stereotypes on offer (mother, schoolteacher, prostitute, saloon girl, rancher, Indian squaw, bandit) never matches up to reality. In the epic battle between heroes to tame the wilderness, the heroines who fought to change the course of history (the suffragettes, farmers, professional women) fare badly…(293).
It’s tempting to put this down, as many critics have, to the male Oedipal bias of the Western, a narrative based on a masculine quest for sexual and national identity which marginalizes women. Fruitful though this approach may be, it has not really come to terms with the dual, contradictory role of women. On the one hand she is peripheral (Budd Boetticher: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one…who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”). On the other hand she is central (Anthony Mann: “In fact, a woman is always added to the story because without a woman the Western wouldn’t work”). (293)
Stagecoach (1939) directed by John Ford, whose reverence for motherhood and family is legendary, produced some significant reverberations: the East/West conflict is centered on two women, the respectable Lucy Mallory and the prostitute Dallas, and is played out at the point of life and death as the stagecoach and its motley group of passengers come under attack by savage Apaches. The hope for future civilization (revolving around who is a “good mother”: Mrs. Mallory, who gives birth during the journey, or Dallas) lies not with the effete, class-conscious visitors from the East but with the Westerners who, in spite of their illegality, have an instinctive compassion and sense of right and wrong. Dallas herself, reviled by the snobbish easterners, is presented as a more “natural” mother than Lucy Mallory: shots of her cradling Lucy’s baby while the stage is under attack are quite transgressive, since prostitutes are outside the family and the law. It’s true that the resolution is entirely conventional: Dallas is the civilizing force that brings the outlaw Ringo back into society. Nevertheless, she remainsan ambiguous figure, half-prostitute, half-wife, partly because of the positive valued attached by Ford to renegades and social outcasts (295).
Perhaps the nearest Hollywood has come to a feminist western [note from Professor Walsh: please keep in mind that this article was written in 1988, three years before the release of Thelma and Louise, for instance[, Johnny Guitar (1954), predates the modern women’s movement by more than a decade and does not deal directly with social issues at all….Vienna, the film’s extraordinary heroine and one of the most compelling female images the Western has produced, has often been seen as a feminist ideal, a woman who survives on equal terms with men…. Vienna is certainly unusual: a powerful combination of several western heroines in one (a gunslinger, a musician, and a successful entrepreneur…she is sexually independent but also mother….) Feminine in her white dress, masculine in black shooting gear, she moves between tomboy and mother figure with ease, demonstrating and maintaining a level of control allowed to very few women….(298-299).
The rancher’s daughter/saloon girl duality reaches back into all forms of narrative and cultural consciousness—she is in essence the madonna or whore, settling down here on the American frontier with a specific yet still eternal resonance (303).
Below you will find the trailer for the 1954 film Johnny Guitar starring Joan Crawford, which Pam Cook called in 1988 "the nearest Hollywood was come to a feminist western."
Below is Betty Hutton playing the historical character Annie Oakley in the film version of the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Her character is making fun of the stereotype that women in the Western are supposed to be demure and domestic-- the very opposite of what she is! (Also please note that you can fuse genres-- here we have an example of a Western Musical, a sub-genre of the musical that also includes Oklahoma!, Girl Crazy, and more.
Irving Berlin wrote some pretty fabulous lyrics for this song, including the following:
"A man's love is mighty, he'll even buy a nightie
For a gal who he thinks is fun.
But they don't buy pajamas for pistol packin mamas
And you can't get a hug from a mug, with a slug
Oh you can't get a man with a gun."
Irving Berlin wrote some pretty fabulous lyrics for this song, including the following:
"A man's love is mighty, he'll even buy a nightie
For a gal who he thinks is fun.
But they don't buy pajamas for pistol packin mamas
And you can't get a hug from a mug, with a slug
Oh you can't get a man with a gun."
Sherman Alexie is a contemporary American writer who has spent his career deconstructing the myths of the Western. Here is his poem "My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys" and essay "I Hated Tonto (Still Do)."
My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys
1.
In the reservation textbooks, we learned Indians were invented in 1492 by a crazy mixed-blood named Columbus. Immediately after class dismissal, the Indian children traded in those American stories and songs for a pair of tribal shoes. These boots are made for walking, babe, and that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
2.
Did you know that in 1492 every Indian instantly became an extra in the Great American Western? But wait, I never wondered what happened to Randolph Scott or Tom Mix. The Lone Ranger was never in my vocabulary. On the reservation, when we played Indians and cowboys, all of us little Skins fought on the same side against the cowboys in our minds. We never lost.
3.
Indians never lost their West, so how come I walk into the supermarket and find a dozen cowboy books telling How The West Was Won? Curious, I travel to the world’s largest shopping mall, find the Lost and Found department. “Excuse me,” I say. “I seem to have lost the West. Has anyone turned it in?” The clerk tells me I can find it in the Sears Home Entertainment Department, blasting away on fifty televisions.
4.
On Saturday morning television, the cowboy has fifty bullets in his six-shooter; he never needs to reload. It’s just one more miracle for this country’s heroes.
5.
My heroes have never been cowboys; my heroes carry guns in their minds.
6.
Win their hearts and minds and we win the war. Can you hear that song echo across history? If you give the Indian a cup of coffee with six cubes of sugar, he’ll be your servant. If you give the Indian a cigarette and a book of matches, he’ll be your friend. If you give the Indian a can of commodities, he’ll be your lover. He’ll hold you tight in his arms, cowboy and two-step you outside.
7.
Outside, it’s cold and a confused snow falls in May. I’m watching some western on TBS, colorized, but the story remains the same. Three cowboys string telegraph wire across the plains until they are confronted by the entire Sioux nation. The cowboys, 19th century geniuses, talk the Indians into touching the wire, holding it in their hands and mouths. After a dozen or so have hold of the wire, the cowboys crank the portable generator and electrocute some of the Indians with a European flame and chase the rest of them away, bareback and burned. All these years later, the message tapped across my skin remains the same.
8.
It’s the same old story whispered on the television in every HUD house on the reservation. It’s 500 years of that same screaming song, translated from the American.
9.
Lester Falls Apart found the American dream in a game of Russian Roulette: one bullet and five empty chambers. “It’s Manifest Destiny,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger five times quick. “I missed,” Lester said just before he reloaded the pistol: one empty chamber and five bullets. “Maybe we should call this Reservation Roulett,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger once at his temple and five more times as he pointed the pistol toward the sky.
10.
Looking up into the night sky, I asked my brother what he thought God looked like and he said “God probably looks like John Wayne.”
11.
We’ve all killed John Wayne more than once. When we burned the ant pile in our backyard, my brother and I imagined those ants were some cavalry or another. When Brian, that insane Indian boy from across the street, suffocated neighborhood dogs and stuffed their bodies into the reservation high school basement, he must have imagined those dogs were cowboys, come back to break another treaty.
12.
Every frame of the black and white western is a treaty; every scene in this elaborate serial is a promise. But what about the reservation home movies? What about the reservation heroes? I remember this: Down near Bull’s Pasture, Eugene stood on the pavement with a gallon of tequila under his arm. I watched in the rearview mirror as he raised his arm to wave goodbye and dropped the bottle, glass and deams of the weekend shattered. After all these years, that moent is still the saddest of my whole life.
13.
Your whole life can be changed by the smallest pain.
14.
Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies. Arthur, here we are again, you and I, fancydancing through the geometric progression of our dreams. Twenty years ago, we never believed we’d lose. Twenty years ago, television was our way of finding heroes and spirit animals. Twenty years ago, we never knew we’d spend the rest of our lives in the reservation of our minds, never knew we’d stand outside the gates of the Spokane Indian Reservation without a key to let ourselves back inside. From a distance, that familiar song. Is it country and western? Is it the sound of hearts breaking? Every song remains the same here in America, this country of the Big Sky and Manifest Destiny, this country of John Wayne and broken treaties. Arthur, I have no words which can save our lives, no words approaching forgiveness, no words flashed across the screen at the reservation drive-in, no words promising either of us top billing. Extras, Arthur, we’re all extras.
i hated tonto (still do)
Sherman Alexie
Los Angeles Times, June 28 1998
I was a little Spokane Indian boy who read every book and saw every movie about Indians, no matter how terrible. I'd read those historical romance novels about the stereotypical Indian warrior ravaging the virginal white schoolteacher.
I can still see the cover art.
The handsome, blue-eyed warrior (the Indians in romance novels are always blue-eyed because half-breeds are somehow sexier than full-blooded Indians) would be nuzzling (the Indians in romance novels are always performing acts that are described in animalistic terms) the impossibly pale neck of a white woman as she reared her head back in primitive ecstasy (the Indians in romance novels always inspire white women to commit acts of primitive ecstasy).
Of course, after reading such novels, I imagined myself to be a blue-eyed warrior nuzzling the necks of various random, primitive and ecstatic white women.
And I just as often imagined myself to be a cinematic Indian, splattered with Day-Glo Hollywood war paint as I rode off into yet another battle against the latest actor to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
But I never, not once, imagined myself to be Tonto.
I hated Tonto then and I hate him now.
However, despite my hatred of Tonto, I loved movies about Indians, loved them beyond all reasoning and saw no fault with any of them.
I loved John Ford's "The Searchers."
I rooted for John Wayne as he searched for his niece for years and years. I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been "soiled" by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece.
I hated those savage Indians just as much as John Wayne did.
I mean, jeez, they had kidnapped Natalie Wood, transcendent white beauty who certainly didn't deserve to be nuzzled, nibbled, or nipped by some Indian warrior, especially an Indian warrior who only spoke in monosyllables and whose every movement was accompanied by ominous music.
In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I've seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I'm constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.
I am always aware of how my whole life is shaped by my hatred of Tonto. Whenever I think of Tonto, I hear ominous music.
I walk into shopping malls or family restaurants, as the ominous music drops a few octaves, and imagine that I am Billy Jack, the half-breed Indian and Vietnam vet turned flower-power pacifist (now there's a combination) who loses his temper now and again, takes off his shoes (while his opponents patiently wait for him to do so), and then kicks the red out of the necks of a few dozen racist white extras.
You have to remember Billy Jack, right?
Every Indian remembers Billy Jack. I mean, back in the day, Indians worshipped Billy Jack.
Whenever a new Billy Jack movie opened in Spokane, my entire tribe would climb into two or three vans like so many circus clowns and drive to the East Trent Drive-In for a long evening of greasy popcorn, flat soda pop, fossilized licorice rope and interracial violence.
We Indians cheered as Billy Jack fought for us, for every single Indian.
Of course, we conveniently ignored the fact that Tom Laughlin, the actor who played Billy Jack, was definitely not Indian.
After all, such luminary white actors as Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, Burt Reynolds, Burt Lancaster, Sal Mineo, Anthony Quinn and Charlton Heston had already portrayed Indians, so who were we to argue?
I mean, Tom Laughlin did have a nice tan and he spoke in monosyllables and wore cowboy boots and a jean jacket just like Indians. And he did have a Cherokee grandmother or grandfather or butcher, so he was Indian by proximity, and that was good enough in 1972, when disco music was about to rear its ugly head and bell-bottom pants were just beginning to change the shape of our legs.
When it came to the movies, Indians had learned to be happy with less.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians never had jobs.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were deadly serious.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were rarely played by Indian actors.
We made up excuses.
"Well, that Tom Laughlin may not be Indian, but he sure should be."
"Well, that movie wasn't so good, but Sal Mineo looked sort of like Uncle Stubby when he was still living out on the reservation."
"Well, I hear Burt Reynolds is a little bit Cherokee. Look at his cheekbones. He's got them Indian cheekbones."
"Well, it's better than nothing."
Yes, that became our battle cry.
"Sometimes, it's a good day to die. Sometimes, it's better than nothing."
We Indians became so numb to the possibility of dissent, so accepting of our own lowered expectations, that we canonized a film like "Powwow Highway."
When it was first released, I loved "Powwow Highway." I cried when I first saw it in the theater, then cried again when I stayed and watched it again a second time.
I mean, I loved that movie. I memorized whole passages of dialogue. But recently, I watched the film for the first time in many years and cringed in shame and embarrassment with every stereotypical scene.
I cringed when Philbert Bono climbed to the top of a sacred mountain and left a Hershey chocolate bar as an offering.
I cringed when Philbert and Buddy Red Bow waded into a stream and sang Indian songs to the moon.
I cringed when Buddy had a vision of himself as an Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk through the window of a police cruiser.
I mean, I don't know a single Indian who would leave a chocolate bar as an offering. I don't know any Indians who have ever climbed to the top of any mountain. I don't know any Indians who wade into streams and sing to the moon. I don't know of any Indians who imagine themselves to be Indian warriors.
Wait -
I was wrong. I know of at least one Indian boy who always imagined himself to be a cinematic Indian warrior.
Me.
I watched the movies and saw the kind of Indian I was supposed to be.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to climb mountains.
I am afraid of heights.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to wade into streams and sing songs.
I don't know how to swim.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to be a warrior.
I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade and she beat the crap out of me.
I mean, I knew I could never be as brave, as strong, as wiser as visionary, as white as the Indians in the movies.
I was just one little Indian boy who hated Tonto because Tonto was the only cinematic Indian who looked like me.
My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys
1.
In the reservation textbooks, we learned Indians were invented in 1492 by a crazy mixed-blood named Columbus. Immediately after class dismissal, the Indian children traded in those American stories and songs for a pair of tribal shoes. These boots are made for walking, babe, and that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
2.
Did you know that in 1492 every Indian instantly became an extra in the Great American Western? But wait, I never wondered what happened to Randolph Scott or Tom Mix. The Lone Ranger was never in my vocabulary. On the reservation, when we played Indians and cowboys, all of us little Skins fought on the same side against the cowboys in our minds. We never lost.
3.
Indians never lost their West, so how come I walk into the supermarket and find a dozen cowboy books telling How The West Was Won? Curious, I travel to the world’s largest shopping mall, find the Lost and Found department. “Excuse me,” I say. “I seem to have lost the West. Has anyone turned it in?” The clerk tells me I can find it in the Sears Home Entertainment Department, blasting away on fifty televisions.
4.
On Saturday morning television, the cowboy has fifty bullets in his six-shooter; he never needs to reload. It’s just one more miracle for this country’s heroes.
5.
My heroes have never been cowboys; my heroes carry guns in their minds.
6.
Win their hearts and minds and we win the war. Can you hear that song echo across history? If you give the Indian a cup of coffee with six cubes of sugar, he’ll be your servant. If you give the Indian a cigarette and a book of matches, he’ll be your friend. If you give the Indian a can of commodities, he’ll be your lover. He’ll hold you tight in his arms, cowboy and two-step you outside.
7.
Outside, it’s cold and a confused snow falls in May. I’m watching some western on TBS, colorized, but the story remains the same. Three cowboys string telegraph wire across the plains until they are confronted by the entire Sioux nation. The cowboys, 19th century geniuses, talk the Indians into touching the wire, holding it in their hands and mouths. After a dozen or so have hold of the wire, the cowboys crank the portable generator and electrocute some of the Indians with a European flame and chase the rest of them away, bareback and burned. All these years later, the message tapped across my skin remains the same.
8.
It’s the same old story whispered on the television in every HUD house on the reservation. It’s 500 years of that same screaming song, translated from the American.
9.
Lester Falls Apart found the American dream in a game of Russian Roulette: one bullet and five empty chambers. “It’s Manifest Destiny,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger five times quick. “I missed,” Lester said just before he reloaded the pistol: one empty chamber and five bullets. “Maybe we should call this Reservation Roulett,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger once at his temple and five more times as he pointed the pistol toward the sky.
10.
Looking up into the night sky, I asked my brother what he thought God looked like and he said “God probably looks like John Wayne.”
11.
We’ve all killed John Wayne more than once. When we burned the ant pile in our backyard, my brother and I imagined those ants were some cavalry or another. When Brian, that insane Indian boy from across the street, suffocated neighborhood dogs and stuffed their bodies into the reservation high school basement, he must have imagined those dogs were cowboys, come back to break another treaty.
12.
Every frame of the black and white western is a treaty; every scene in this elaborate serial is a promise. But what about the reservation home movies? What about the reservation heroes? I remember this: Down near Bull’s Pasture, Eugene stood on the pavement with a gallon of tequila under his arm. I watched in the rearview mirror as he raised his arm to wave goodbye and dropped the bottle, glass and deams of the weekend shattered. After all these years, that moent is still the saddest of my whole life.
13.
Your whole life can be changed by the smallest pain.
14.
Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies. Arthur, here we are again, you and I, fancydancing through the geometric progression of our dreams. Twenty years ago, we never believed we’d lose. Twenty years ago, television was our way of finding heroes and spirit animals. Twenty years ago, we never knew we’d spend the rest of our lives in the reservation of our minds, never knew we’d stand outside the gates of the Spokane Indian Reservation without a key to let ourselves back inside. From a distance, that familiar song. Is it country and western? Is it the sound of hearts breaking? Every song remains the same here in America, this country of the Big Sky and Manifest Destiny, this country of John Wayne and broken treaties. Arthur, I have no words which can save our lives, no words approaching forgiveness, no words flashed across the screen at the reservation drive-in, no words promising either of us top billing. Extras, Arthur, we’re all extras.
i hated tonto (still do)
Sherman Alexie
Los Angeles Times, June 28 1998
I was a little Spokane Indian boy who read every book and saw every movie about Indians, no matter how terrible. I'd read those historical romance novels about the stereotypical Indian warrior ravaging the virginal white schoolteacher.
I can still see the cover art.
The handsome, blue-eyed warrior (the Indians in romance novels are always blue-eyed because half-breeds are somehow sexier than full-blooded Indians) would be nuzzling (the Indians in romance novels are always performing acts that are described in animalistic terms) the impossibly pale neck of a white woman as she reared her head back in primitive ecstasy (the Indians in romance novels always inspire white women to commit acts of primitive ecstasy).
Of course, after reading such novels, I imagined myself to be a blue-eyed warrior nuzzling the necks of various random, primitive and ecstatic white women.
And I just as often imagined myself to be a cinematic Indian, splattered with Day-Glo Hollywood war paint as I rode off into yet another battle against the latest actor to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
But I never, not once, imagined myself to be Tonto.
I hated Tonto then and I hate him now.
However, despite my hatred of Tonto, I loved movies about Indians, loved them beyond all reasoning and saw no fault with any of them.
I loved John Ford's "The Searchers."
I rooted for John Wayne as he searched for his niece for years and years. I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been "soiled" by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece.
I hated those savage Indians just as much as John Wayne did.
I mean, jeez, they had kidnapped Natalie Wood, transcendent white beauty who certainly didn't deserve to be nuzzled, nibbled, or nipped by some Indian warrior, especially an Indian warrior who only spoke in monosyllables and whose every movement was accompanied by ominous music.
In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I've seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I'm constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.
I am always aware of how my whole life is shaped by my hatred of Tonto. Whenever I think of Tonto, I hear ominous music.
I walk into shopping malls or family restaurants, as the ominous music drops a few octaves, and imagine that I am Billy Jack, the half-breed Indian and Vietnam vet turned flower-power pacifist (now there's a combination) who loses his temper now and again, takes off his shoes (while his opponents patiently wait for him to do so), and then kicks the red out of the necks of a few dozen racist white extras.
You have to remember Billy Jack, right?
Every Indian remembers Billy Jack. I mean, back in the day, Indians worshipped Billy Jack.
Whenever a new Billy Jack movie opened in Spokane, my entire tribe would climb into two or three vans like so many circus clowns and drive to the East Trent Drive-In for a long evening of greasy popcorn, flat soda pop, fossilized licorice rope and interracial violence.
We Indians cheered as Billy Jack fought for us, for every single Indian.
Of course, we conveniently ignored the fact that Tom Laughlin, the actor who played Billy Jack, was definitely not Indian.
After all, such luminary white actors as Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, Burt Reynolds, Burt Lancaster, Sal Mineo, Anthony Quinn and Charlton Heston had already portrayed Indians, so who were we to argue?
I mean, Tom Laughlin did have a nice tan and he spoke in monosyllables and wore cowboy boots and a jean jacket just like Indians. And he did have a Cherokee grandmother or grandfather or butcher, so he was Indian by proximity, and that was good enough in 1972, when disco music was about to rear its ugly head and bell-bottom pants were just beginning to change the shape of our legs.
When it came to the movies, Indians had learned to be happy with less.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians never had jobs.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were deadly serious.
We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were rarely played by Indian actors.
We made up excuses.
"Well, that Tom Laughlin may not be Indian, but he sure should be."
"Well, that movie wasn't so good, but Sal Mineo looked sort of like Uncle Stubby when he was still living out on the reservation."
"Well, I hear Burt Reynolds is a little bit Cherokee. Look at his cheekbones. He's got them Indian cheekbones."
"Well, it's better than nothing."
Yes, that became our battle cry.
"Sometimes, it's a good day to die. Sometimes, it's better than nothing."
We Indians became so numb to the possibility of dissent, so accepting of our own lowered expectations, that we canonized a film like "Powwow Highway."
When it was first released, I loved "Powwow Highway." I cried when I first saw it in the theater, then cried again when I stayed and watched it again a second time.
I mean, I loved that movie. I memorized whole passages of dialogue. But recently, I watched the film for the first time in many years and cringed in shame and embarrassment with every stereotypical scene.
I cringed when Philbert Bono climbed to the top of a sacred mountain and left a Hershey chocolate bar as an offering.
I cringed when Philbert and Buddy Red Bow waded into a stream and sang Indian songs to the moon.
I cringed when Buddy had a vision of himself as an Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk through the window of a police cruiser.
I mean, I don't know a single Indian who would leave a chocolate bar as an offering. I don't know any Indians who have ever climbed to the top of any mountain. I don't know any Indians who wade into streams and sing to the moon. I don't know of any Indians who imagine themselves to be Indian warriors.
Wait -
I was wrong. I know of at least one Indian boy who always imagined himself to be a cinematic Indian warrior.
Me.
I watched the movies and saw the kind of Indian I was supposed to be.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to climb mountains.
I am afraid of heights.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to wade into streams and sing songs.
I don't know how to swim.
A cinematic Indian is supposed to be a warrior.
I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade and she beat the crap out of me.
I mean, I knew I could never be as brave, as strong, as wiser as visionary, as white as the Indians in the movies.
I was just one little Indian boy who hated Tonto because Tonto was the only cinematic Indian who looked like me.