Indian in the Cupboard

     The time has come.  Netflix has finally sent me the film 'The Indian in the Cupboard', so now I have a real chance to look at the content and see how it relates, if at all, to any of the things we've discussed in class.  In my initial nostalgic thoughts about the film, I entertained the idea that there was some kind of meaning behind the relationship between the onscreen characters that went a little deeper than 'kid has tiny magic Indian friend' but alas, it seems nothing of that sort is actually going on.  The film is strictly children's fare in terms of content.  It was interesting to find out, however, that the film was directed by none other than Frank Oz, the man who frequently worked with Jim Henson, voiced Yoda in the Star Wars films, and previously directed the wonderful Rick Moranis musical Little Shop of Horrors.
     More relevant to our class material, the main Indian in the film was portrayed by a Native American rapper with the incredibly Indian stage name 'Litefoot'.  (His real name is Gary Paul Davis... that's right.  Three, count them three, white guy names)  I also found out that he portrayed another Native American character in an awful awful film I was already familiar with, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.  In that movie ( a sequel to a bad film based on a series of occasionally good video games), he was known as 'Nightwolf'.
     Further examination of his wikipedia page has revealed some interesting details.  Apparently, his work in music has created a distinct style which he calls 'tribalistic funk' meant to blend several influences including Native American reservation life and African American street life.  He has won six Native American Music Awards (more on those later), started several clothing lines, and has a radio show called Reach the Rez Radio. His latest album, released in 2008, was his first one to receive nationwide distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litefoot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ96yeb897k
     As far as these Native American Music Awards, I had no idea these even existed.  Apparently they've been around since 1998.  Now I don't see any reason to rephrase the description here so I'll just pull it straight from wikipedia.  "The Annual Native American Music Awards, which USA Today urges to “take seriously” and Indian Country Today has called, “Awesome & Incredible,” is the largest professional membership-based organization for Contemporary and Traditional Native American Music Initiatives and consists of over 20,000 registered voting members and professionals in the field of Native American music. They also hold the largest Native American Music Library in the World with a national archive featuring a collection of over 10,000 audio and video recordings in all formats housed since 1990."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Music_Awards
     While the film has little entertainment value (mostly thanks to its annoying and untalented child protagonist) there were a few moments that attested to the kinds of relationships I was hoping to see in it.  At one point, the little boy hands the tiny Indian a plastic tipi to sleep in.  The Indian responds by saying that his tribe built longhouses and never used tipis.  So it is nice to know that they paid some consideration to actual Native Americans at the time and not just the 'reel injun' we're so familiar with.  On the other hand though, they went a bit overboard when the brought in a tiny cowboy to fight with the Indian in the second half of the film. (The cowboy's performance was so over the top that I almost forgot how awful the child actors were)
     So there you have it.  What i was hoping would be a meaningful and cool film with a robust commentary on American-Indian relations is just a dull Hollywood kid's film wit little of anything to offer.  Nostalgia has once again lied to me.  I hope that Litefoot has moved on to bigger and better things.

The Business of Fancydancing

     Before I get to the film, I would like to mention something I noticed on television the other day.  I've been a huge fan of the show Bizarre Foods for quite a while, and have seen that guy eat everything from fresh cow placenta to popped sorghum.  He's visited just about every country on the map.  As of yet though, I have not seen him do a fully Native American episode yet.  There have been several from various places in the United States, but not 'Native American' cuisine.  So far all I've seen is fry bread and various organ meats!  He was doing an episode in Arizona and it appeared that many of the people he was talking to were of American Indian descent.  The only foods of theirs that was mentioned though was the fry bread being sold from a food truck and one family's lamb barbecue.  Andrew, the host, was given a piece of fry bread filled with meat, cheese, and fixings.  He loved it and called it a Navajo taco.  This makes me curious about the traditional food of various tribes.  Did they ever have complex dishes unique to their cultural tradition or was the food always simple and not combined with many other ingredients?
  Obviously Bizarre Foods is not the most reliable source because it focuses on the weird.  The Navajo family in question was actually living in Monument Valley.  Having familiarized myself somewhat with this location after watching both Reel Injun and seeing lots of western film information in my film genres class regarding John Ford and John Wayne movies, it's a bit surreal.  All those movies feature lots of stereotypes getting shot and/or killed in unpleasant ways.  I've now seen a clip of John Wayne shooting a dead Indian in the face.  (You just never think of him doing that kind of thing)  Meanwhile, these real Indians are living where they shot these movies.  They're living where someone playing a member of the tribe was shot in the face by one of John Wayne's blanks.
     As far as the non-fry bread portion of the segment...  There was a lamb's head cooked whole, meat wrapped in intestines, and a blood, potato, and blue corn sausage sealed in the stomach.  It makes me wonder how common these kinds of seemingly exotic cuts are with American Indians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUA4dETYwo   (fry bread taco is about three and a half minutes in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtGAvj13c1o  (skip past the intro sequence)
     The first thing I noticed in the film is how it is structured exactly like the Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.  It's a very nonlinear mix of scenes punctuated by traditional cultural images.
     One thing I wondered about was the somewhat conflicting image of homosexuality between the book and the film.  The one time it is mentioned in the book, there seems to be a unique kind of respect for them.  I remember something about a special magic or medicine that they had over heterosexuals.  meanwhile, in the film, the poet character is isolated from his old reservation by his new life.  No one seems to care about his 'special medicine'.  Do they just not even pay attention to it since the cultural separation is so much more important than any orientation issues or ideas?  Does being Indian override being gay or straight?  If it does you would think that it also overpowers where you live, whether or not it is in the reservation.  In such a close knit community it seems weird to me that they would even consider turning away a fellow Indian when he comes back.  Sure, he has 'sold out' in a sense, but it can also be viewed as an embracing one's heritage.
     I found myself identifying with Seymour Polatkin because of his success.  The guy made a career and a reputation out of the way he views his own life.  he inspires people.  he's not afraid to admit who he is.  Aristotle on the other hand, really contrasted those feelings.  He randomly assaults someone because they're white and he's seen sniffing at a gas tank like some fourteen year old suburban skateboard punk.  The fact remains that both these people started with the same out-of-focus opportunities and in-focus community and only one of them acted responsibly and ethically whether or not they 'abandoned' their family, heritage, or duty.
 

The Latest Week of Native American Literature

     One discussion question in particular for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven stuck out as representative of the entire book.  It was the one regarding the mingling of humor, sorrow, and tragedy in the stories.  Although we discussed this in class, I would like to once again point out the portion of the text where Sherman Alexie literally answers that question.  It's a few lines from 'The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor'.
     "Still, you have to realize that laughter saved Norma and me from pain too.  Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds."
     While Sherman Alexie seems to occasionally tout this trait as something uniquely Indian, I don't really think it is.  It strikes me as something that is entirely accurate, but representative of the entire human species.  I believe the root of this kind of statement is the same one that created the old idiom that 'laughter is the best medicine'.  After all, Alexie is basically calling it that when he uses the term antiseptic.  Laughter like the kind in these stories often shows up in action/ adventure movies.  The protagonist will go through something strenuous and damaging, then when he finds out it was futile or that it might continue endlessly, he just laughs as the blood trickles down his forehead.  (The episode of Nightmares and Dreamscapes called 'Battleground' comes to mind)  It's an interesting phenomenon I've experienced myself after falling down an extended flight of concrete stairs.  I lost most of the skin on my chin, both my knees, both my elbows, and both my shoulders.  When I stood up and turned around, blood already leaving a trail, I realized I had to walk all the way back up the winding set of stairs to access other people or bandages.  So I laughed.  Then I started on my way back up.  Although I certainly didn't feel it with the same intensity that a Native American might when joking about a racist cop or the size and shape of his tumors, I think I can accurately report on what it does emotionally.  It's sort of a reset.  Everything that bothered you before seems to vanish.  The clean slate after the laughter quickly gets muddied up again, but there is a moment of clarity whee all that exists is the laughter.
     While I haven't been very appreciative of Alexie's prose up until this point, I do have to admit that he captures this moment where nothing but laughter exists perfectly.  While I don't think Native Americans experience the sensation differently than their fellow humans, they may have had to resort to this kind of 'antiseptic' a lot longer than other groups.
     Whenever I watch a civil rights documentary or read some kind of slave narrative, I notice that the African American communities tend to bond over songs and some ideal of internal strength.  This is opposed to Indians, who have invested their emotional fortitude in the ability to laugh and absorb the Popular culture ideas of their history into their lives.  It's almost as if the majority of American Indians subconsciously decided to view their history as a sort of sour joke, the kind someone might laugh at without smiling.
     The idea of an Indian laughing without smiling actually made me think about the Cleveland Indians baseball team's mascot.  Seeing it now and comparing it to Indian culture is kind of a moment of horrific realization.
     http://www.sportsgeekery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/indian-wp-1.jpg
having read Sherman Alexie's book... I can't think of anything that looks less Indian than that.  Even Thomas builds-the-fire from Smoke Signals doesn't smile like that.  It reminded me of the racist caricatures of black people that used to show up in Warner Bros. cartoons.  (Midnight skin and big gummy worm like red lips)  I've also got a book of political cartoons made by Dr. Seuss during World War II, and it reminded me of the     Japanese caricatures with the buck teeth and the squinting eyes.  Looking at it makes me think that the Cleveland Indian really reflects white people a lot more than Indians.  That creepy cartoon smile seems to say, "Hey, look what we did to the Indians.  We took everything.  We called them savages.  Then we forced them to show their pearly whites on merchandise."  it's like the Cleveland Indian knows his own existence is as a hideous money grubbing exaggeration of a people it wouldn't bother to protect.  it's sinister.  All I can really say is... That is not an Indian's smile.
     A quick wikipedia search has revealed something even more tasteless.  The mascot's name is 'Chief Wahoo'.  Seriously.  If I had taken it upon myself to come up with a hideous insensitive cartoon name for an Indian designed to insult them, I could not come up with anything better.  While I agree that the Cleveland Indians have the first amendment right to use the mascot and the name, I think it's in incredibly poor taste that they continue to do so.  I imagine it's a combination of the merchandisers not wanting to lose all the nice profit a good recognizable logo leads to and the baseball fans who are typically American in that they never want anything to change even if it will erase something so inappropriate.  I mean, imagine the outrage if they changed their team name to the Cleveland A-rabs and had a turban-headed tan-skinned head with sinister curly eyebrows.
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Wahoo

Native American Literature Week Four

Having just finished The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, I thought it would be appropriate to devote the entirety of this week's blog post to it.  Although I certainly can't say that I even came close to enjoying the book, it did make me wonder about several things in the American Indian community.
     For starters, would most Indians consider Sherman Alexie's version of them true?  I don't doubt that many of the events depicted in the book are accurate to his childhood, adolescence, and adult life, but I'm not so sure about the ideas he fuses into the stories.  There seems to be a definite current of inherited defeat that is presented so literally that it's like a genetic disorder.  Many of the characters seem to be born with their spirits stepped on.  While I look at this and consider it to be the overall cultural effect of various forms of suppression, oppression, and repression, I wonder why Alexie didn't choose to have a single character that led a happy, successful, and fulfilling existence.  While the Spokane Indian reservation does seem like a depressing place to live, he takes great pains to describe how Indians can always laugh.  They laugh at themselves, they laugh at their physical injuries, and they laugh at their diseases.  So why is it so hard for them to find rays of hope?  To me it seemed like Alexie was trying to say that Indians live a more 'in the moment' kind of life, but that life style seems to lose its validity when most of the moments are either seen through a drunken haze or spent toiling under the judgmental nose of whitey.  That seems like something that would foster a united, sober, and maybe slightly xenophobic attitude.  Instead, the Indians seem to regard other Indians not as brothers and sisters but as rivals and drinking buddies.
     I imagine a large part of my confusion comes from the 'well you didn't live it' factor but I don't believe for a second that there wasn't one Indian from that reservation that lived a happy existence.  I'm willing to bet there was more than a handful of them that never had alcohol problems and actually had hobbies separate from dancing, storytelling, playing basketball, and making fry bread.  (Coincidentally, fry bread seems to be just about the only pleasant image in the book)
     Another thing I would like to point out is the similarity between Sherman Alexie's 'stories' told by his characters, and the trickster tales that we read.  They share the same kind of logic that I just can't wrap my head around.  For instance, when several Indian boys tell Thomas Builds-the-fire to incorporate the surrounding elements into a story, the story makes very little sense.  it involves an Indian stealing a hot dog and drowning and a hot dog vendor who turns himself into a duck.  The other boys deem Thomas's story to be so good that they give him twenty dollars and some change.  Just like with Coyote and rabbit though, I don't get where the 'quality' of the story comes from.  How are we supposed to tell if one trickster tale or Indian story is better than another when none of them establish an internal logic?
     That leads me to my biggest issue with Alexie's writing.  He uses so many contradictory statements that I lose track of what he may or may not be trying to say.  He describes victory as defeat, lovers as people who hurt you, and friends as the ones who used to beat you bloody in the schoolyard.  While one of these on their own could be used to shine a light on the complex and admittedly contradictory nature of human relationships, taking them all together just creates a puddle of a world where no one ever achieves anything.  All they ever seem to get is a good laugh, hung over, or some cognitive dissonance.
     Is this how Alexie sees life?  Or is it how he sees the life of an Indian?  Either way it presents a world view of constant struggle and an absence of progress.  It's like watching someone run in place, give up, turn around, and then run in place in the opposite direction.  It makes me wonder why he really wrote this book. Was it intended just as a window into that reservation at the time he grew up?  If it was you could probably call it a success.  if it was meant to show the richness of American Indian thought, soul, and culture... well I can't say it failed because it doesn't even seem to have tried.
     What I'm hoping to get in one of the other books we read this semester is a point of view that is Anti-Alexie.  I want to hear from an American Indian that seems defiant rather than defeated.  Maybe that's just me playing into another bias or stereotype.  I honestly don't know.  I turn to books for education, hope, wit, and thrills... none of which seem to come from Sherman Alexie.