|
This is a critique of the film "Dances With Wolves" and the vision of Kevin Costner regarding the project. -Bill
EXISTENCE
The air is crisp. The landscape holds shadows and light. Mesmerizing. Resplendent. Haunting. Flashing memories from a not so distant time. People. Culture. Dreams. There are romantic notions. The tint of grandeur. Nobility. Savagery. This is life. This is death. Melancholy illusions. Fields of sadness. Is this all gone? Where are the songs? The dances? Sometimes we revel in mystique. Tears are shed for ancient lives. When death is all around us. Pain. Anguish. Poverty. There is no beauty. Nobody rides off into the sunset. What is life? What is death? What are dreams? Some call them existence.
_________
In his only nonfiction novel, Killing Custer, Blackfeet Indian author, James Welch, critiques the film, Dances With Wolves, by arguing it is everything that a white person could want in a film. Lieutenant John Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, taps into romantic notions of American Indians. He becomes an Indian, marries another Indian, who is really a white woman, and does all of this amidst gorgeous, breathtaking landscapes. The Indians in the film have a homogeneity to them. There are the “good” Indians, the “bad” Indians, the funny and the dangerous. Some yip, some holler and some just stand around and act noble. The good Indians have a child-like quality to them, while the bad ones perpetuate the stealing, murdering savage myth. Welch eludes to all of this. And, I would say he is right. Yet, sometimes I think that the people who critique Costner’s vision, not necessarily Welch, miss the point of this whole process. Costner, while not perfect, holds an integral role in the evolution of Indian film.
Obviously, Dances With Wolves, is told in a Eurocentric manner. The “story” of Indians is told by a white man and through the eyes of a white man. That is one of the biggest criticisms of films made about American Indians. It is not from an Indian point of view. Costner makes no pretense of seeing the Indian world through an Indian’s eyes, and in part, this may be why this film is so romantic. The character, Lieutenant Dunbar, humorously finds white men absurd. Whether it’s the flatulent mule driver, the suicidal military commander, or the dangerous rube, Spivey, who steals Dunbar’s journal and encompasses the embodiment of Euro-ignorance, the protagonist finds them all ridiculous. In the end, he finds no real home. He does find peace with the Indians, but has to leave them, so his character never quite sheds his loneliness. He simply leaves the Indians with the belief that a way of life - his way and the way of the wild frontier- is about to vanish.
This concept of the vanishing frontier, more specifically in this case, the vanishing Indian is at the heart of the Eurocentric view. This is the biggest flaw of Costner’s vision and the film itself. Death is quite symbolic in Dances With Wolves. It’s all around Lieutenant Dunbar. From his participation in the Civil War, to the death of animals, to the eventual demise of the whole indigenous culture. The latter of course is a myth. That’s what makes the Eurocentric vision so flawed. Indians have not died. We are still here. Through the Indian wars, assimilation, and socioeconomic turmoil, the Indian people have persevered. There is nothing romantic about life on a reservation. It’s difficult, rife with addiction, poverty and violence. Indians have suffered, not vanished, so it does no good to wax philosophic about the grievances and injustices of the past. It’s not important to lament the vanishing Indian, but it is important to examine the current situation of the contemporary Indian populace. That is the most valid contemporary criticism of this film. However, I understand what Costner was trying to do here, and it is tremendously respectable.
By getting people in theaters, Costner was able to conjure interest in American Indians. Without his film, we may never have had an interest in films about Indians and by Indians. Sherman Alexie and Chris Eyre may not have made Smoke Signals, for example. Neither may have went on to make other films told through an Indian’s perspective, either. Costner helped push a golden age, if you could call it that, of Indian film and Indian interests which have expanded into the world of literature as well. Indian literature and film are relatively mainstream now. They transcend Indian audiences. While people like Pulitzer winner and Kiowa Indian, N. Scott Momaday, ushered in a revolution of Indian art, Kevin Costner helped create an interest that opened the doors even further to these artists. That is his most important contribution to the Indian people.
Last August I was talking to the Montana State Coordinator of Indian affairs, Reno Charette. She told me that in the process of getting a program called “Indian Education for All” funding, she had to attend meetings of the Montana State Legislature. The program would provide education about Indians and Indian history to all Montana students, both white and indigenous alike. She recalled how one white male member of the Senate stood up and argued against the program. His argument was that the program was unnecessary, because Indians do not exist anymore. He wondered if “we,” meaning Montana, America and the world, even had Indians anymore. That is the type of thinking that American Indians have to deal with nowadays. People wonder if we even exist. Now while Kevin Costner may have helped perpetuate that myth to an extent in his film, he also piqued enough interest so that Indians can now prove those stereotypes wrong. The importance of that interest cannot ever be understated.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
