Mighty whitey to the rescue
The white man often rules even in fiction ostensibly about Indians.
Mighty WhiteyQ: How many white males does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One.
Anything you can do, he can do better. He can do anything better than you. Oh yes he can, especially if you happen to be of Asian, Indian, African, Aboriginal or Native American descent. It doesn't matter that you have spent your entire life living in the densest African jungle, being taught the ways of your ancestors since you were old enough to stand up--the moment Mighty Whitey arrives in your town (most likely as a prisoner of war, an orphan or a lost traveler), you might as well hang up your blowpipe and take up crochet because his European (and therefore superior) genetics have pretty much made you redundant.
A common trope in 18th and 19th century adventure fiction, when vast swathes of the world were being explored and properly documented by Europeans for the first time, Mighty Whitey is a displaced white European, usually of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative. Comment: Among the examples given in this posting are the Legion of Super-Heroes, Arak, Karl May's Old Shatterhand, Natty Bummpo in The Last of the Mohicans, Pathfinder, and Dances with Wolves. We could add several John Wayne movies, Windtalkers, End of the Spear, and Pirates of the Caribbean, among many other examples.
In comics, people have written about the phenomenon of "white Indians" (Firehair I, White Indian, Apache Kid, Green Arrow, Tomahawk, Scalphunter, Firehair II, et al.). I'd also point to perhaps the greatest (non-Indian) example in American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Below: Saving the Indian is the white man's burden...literally.
Mighty Whitey
A: One.
Anything you can do, he can do better. He can do anything better than you. Oh yes he can, especially if you happen to be of Asian, Indian, African, Aboriginal or Native American descent. It doesn't matter that you have spent your entire life living in the densest African jungle, being taught the ways of your ancestors since you were old enough to stand up--the moment Mighty Whitey arrives in your town (most likely as a prisoner of war, an orphan or a lost traveler), you might as well hang up your blowpipe and take up crochet because his European (and therefore superior) genetics have pretty much made you redundant.
A common trope in 18th and 19th century adventure fiction, when vast swathes of the world were being explored and properly documented by Europeans for the first time, Mighty Whitey is a displaced white European, usually of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative.
In comics, people have written about the phenomenon of "white Indians" (Firehair I, White Indian, Apache Kid, Green Arrow, Tomahawk, Scalphunter, Firehair II, et al.). I'd also point to perhaps the greatest (non-Indian) example in American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Below: Saving the Indian is the white man's burden...literally.
posted by Rob at 3:36 PM
4 Comments:
One thing I liked about "Dances with Wolves" was that the Dunbar character did not "becomes [the] greatest warrior/leader/representative", but slowly became just a member of the tribe. None of the "white man becomes and Indian, and is better at it than Indians" thing.
I haven't seen Dances in a long time, so I can't say how "great" Dunbar seemed. Wasn't he leading raids against the Pawnee by the end?
Writerfella here --
In fact, no. While the rest of the tribal men were out hunting, Dunbar was THE ONLY ADULT MALE present when the Pawnees attacked. And he defended the tribe AS ANY OTHER TRIBAL MALE WOULD HAVE. By Rob's estimation, Dunbar should have climbed a hill, sat down with a sheaf of papers, and then RECORDED the Pawnee attack for scientific purposes. But no, they had become his people and so he defended them with all his own resources.
Once again, writerfella will express the main thrust of the film: American EuroMan had just gone through a time of complete racial insanity, a civil war. The Sioux 'cured' Dunbar of that insanity and thus he became one of them. When Dunbar goes back among the whites, they want to destroy him because he no longer is insane as they are. (In anthropology, it is called 'the Green Monkey syndrome,' catch a tribal monkey and paint him green -- the others will destroy him because he no longer is like them.) The Sioux come and rescue him because they know how his own people will treat him. Dunbar is one of the Sioux and so must be saved. The film ends with Dunbar warning his tribe that his own people will be coming. It cannot be more obvious than that...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Your estimation of my estimation is wrong, as usual. I've never criticized Dances with Wolves for its depiction of Dunbar.
But how exactly is the scenario you described different from the scenario in the posting? To reiterate: "Mighty Whitey is a displaced white European, usually of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative."
The movie didn't show Dunbar saving the tribe because he was a randomly chosen tribal member. It showed him saving the tribe because he learned their ways and became their "mighty whitey" representative. In short, the movie focused on Dunbar precisely because he was white. This is the epitome of the "mighty whitey" syndrome.
You could argue that this is a Hollywood necessity. That people will watch Native-themed movies only if it's through a white man's eyes. But this is your Eurocentric opinion, not a fact. If they're done well, I say people will watch movies with nonwhite protagonists.
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