DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit

The New Natives: The Mechanisms of Going Native and Their Realization in Selected 20th- and 21st-Century Films

Verfasser

Michael Komjati

angestrebter akademischer Grad

Magister der Philosophie (Mag.phil.)

Wien, April 2014

Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt:

A 190 344 338

Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt:

UF Englisch, UF Latein

Betreuerin:

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Carmen Birkle

Acknowledgements Since it has taken some time until my ideas were finally turned into words to fill the pages which are to follow, I first of all want to thank Prof. Dr. Carmen Birkle for her patience. It is due to her that my eyes were opened for this particular chapter of America’s cultural and literary history, and her generous care for my work has enabled me to express my voice openly and straightforwardly. I want to thank my family for always being my safe haven – in spite of everything. And K. I could not write these words today if it was not for your unselfishness and your confidence in me. What you have done for me goes far beyond what words could measure. Here, all I can say is “thank you.” And yes, you were a definite instance of serendipity.

für Christoph

Table of contents

Acknowledgements 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 2. Theory ..................................................................................................................... 5 2.1. The Images of the Native American .................................................................. 5 2.1.1. In the Beginning Was the Word ................................................................. 7 2.1.2. A Native Kind of Spook ............................................................................. 9 2.1.3. The Noble Other ....................................................................................... 16 2.1.4. Back to the Primitive ................................................................................ 18 2.1.5. The Noble Savage in America – Phantom of Factotum? .......................... 23 2.1.5.1. Last Exit Nature ................................................................................. 26 2.1.5.2. “Hurrah for the Huron!” ..................................................................... 28 2.2. Going Native ................................................................................................... 33 2.2.1. Till Death Do Them Part – A Historical Synopsis ................................... 34 2.2.2. Going Native in the 20th Century .............................................................. 37 2.2.3. Going Native Is… ..................................................................................... 39 2.2.3.1. …Escape ............................................................................................ 40 2.2.2.2. …Conservation .................................................................................. 42 2.2.2.3. …Redemption .................................................................................... 43 2.2.2.4. …Regeneration .................................................................................. 46 2.2.2.5. …Renaissance .................................................................................... 48 2.2.2.6. …Self-Discovery................................................................................ 50 3. Dances with Wolves............................................................................................... 53 3.1. Critics’ Voices ................................................................................................. 53 3.2. Going Native in Dances with Wolves .............................................................. 55 3.2.1. Cyclic Composition of the Movie ............................................................. 58 3.2.2. Language ................................................................................................... 61 3.2.3. The Buffalo Hunt ...................................................................................... 62 3.2.4. Naming and Renaming ............................................................................. 64 3.2.5. One Way, Several Trails ........................................................................... 67 3.3. Depiction of Ethnic Groups in Dances with Wolves ....................................... 70 3.3.1. Depiction of Native Americans ................................................................ 72 3.3.2. Depiction of Settlers and Soldiers ............................................................ 75

3.4. Nature in Dances with Wolves ......................................................................... 80 3.4.1. Native by Nature ....................................................................................... 81 3.4.2. The Eco-Indian and Red-Exploitation ...................................................... 82 3.5. Farewell ........................................................................................................... 83 4. The Last Samurai .................................................................................................. 87 4.1. Go East! ........................................................................................................... 87 4.2. Progress and Sickness ...................................................................................... 88 4.3. The Wild East – Appropriating the Term ........................................................ 90 4.4. Dances with Tigers .......................................................................................... 95 4.5. From Indian Fighter to Native Lover .............................................................. 98 4.5.1. Cold Turkey .............................................................................................. 98 4.5.2. Purging the Nation .................................................................................... 99 4.5.3. A Heavy Cross ........................................................................................ 101 4.5.4. Cherry Orchard Revisited ....................................................................... 103 4.6. Staging the Myth – Cinematic Devices ......................................................... 104 4.6.1. Colors and Geometry .............................................................................. 104 4.6.2. Wild in Woods – First Contact ............................................................... 108 4.6.3. Costume = Custom .................................................................................. 112 4.6.4. Native Knighthood .................................................................................. 116 4.7. A Small Measure of Peace............................................................................. 118 5. A Glimpse of the Future: James Cameron’s Avatar ....................................... 121 5.1. Onward to New Horizons .............................................................................. 121 5.2. The Extraterrestrial West ............................................................................... 122 5.3. Native, Naïve, Na’vi ...................................................................................... 124 5.4. Jake Sully: White Messiah, Blue Skin........................................................... 126 5.5. What’s in a Name? ........................................................................................ 128 5.6. Going Na’vi ................................................................................................... 131 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 137 7. References ........................................................................................................... 141 8. Figures ................................................................................................................. 149 9. Index .................................................................................................................... 153

1. Introduction The tempestuous history of the young American nation has demanded a great deal of its people up to the present day. Much did the settlers from the remote European continent have to undergo; much did they have to endure, before they could righteously call their new home a united nation. And even more did those have to suffer who had been there long before the European newcomers, for their place in this new land never seemed to be fully defined. Manifold were the crises into which the American nation plunged every now and then, and manifold the cures and remedies which were sought. Some tried to escape, some to preserve what was on the verge of disappearance, some were vexed by feelings of guilt, and some even lost themselves in the meandering turmoil of history. And if one reads between the lines of the past, there is one phenomenon which often seemed to serve as an answer to the circumstances of the particular epoch: going Native. But how could this simple process – nothing more than leaving one’s own, allegedly civilized society, and turning towards a more natural, more innocent, and simpler life – ever play a part so important to socio-cultural mechanisms? What does it mean to go Native for the American? In order to find out what kind of fascination this phenomenon has exerted and still exerts upon the American way of thinking, it is essential to examine the image which the Native has held in the minds of the Americans since the dawn of the modern age. Not only the positive representation of the Native American – most of all the well-known notion of the noble savage – inspired people to trade civilization for savagism. Also the opposing image of the red-skinned demon of the woods was of crucial importance to American history, for it laid the groundwork for the concept of the noble savage to finally take root. Thus, the first few sections of this thesis will serve to present the historical development of this imagery in cross section, tracing it from negative to positive. Then, after the desired result of going Native will have been defined by the example of the noble savage, the intellectual substructure of the concept shall receive some attention. It will be shown that going Native and similar aspirations are not a uniquely American phenomenon but undeniably originate from earlier periods of European philosophy and even classical antiquity. The related sections of this paper will be intended to shed some light on the concept of primitivism, which is an -1-

inclination of the mind towards a simpler state of being, leading away from the complex structures of modern societies. And since the idea of primitivism was prominent especially in the Renaissance, its roots have to be sought for in even earlier periods of the history of civilization. Also these fundamental ideas will be surveyed with due brevity. So much for history. The case studies of going Native in this thesis will be based on motion pictures from the 20th and 21st centuries, specifically Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990) and Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai (2003). In addition, also a short analysis of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) will be presented, in order to demonstrate in which direction a modern interpretation of the going Native myth might go. Thus, the actual core of the theoretical framework will revolve around the latest manifestations of this transcultural practice. What makes a present-day individual get lost in utopian dreams of the simple and satisfied existence of a more primitive, of a wilder being? Which social conditions and historico-political circumstances drive people to search harmony and clarity far from civilization? Having the major reasons uncovered, the main motives for going Native shall be deduced therefrom. Some of them will turn out to be self-evident, like the simple wish to escape from here and now. Other motives will bear resemblance to a cry for help, triggered by the fear of loss – loss of cultural symbolism, of future perspectives, or of natural resources. Moreover, going Native will prove to be a way in which to uphold social structures and hierarchies which actually are to be subverted. In addition, the personal disposition of the individual who goes Native will add some complexity to the whole procedure, because in some cases going Native is nothing more than a quest for self-discovery. Self-discovery, then, will be one of the central themes of Dances with Wolves, the first one of the motion pictures to be examined. The objective of these analyses will be to put the theoretical framework to the test, and Kevin Costner’s 19th-century homage is a perfect example of how the diverse mechanisms and layers of going Native operate in concert. The second motion picture in question, The Last Samurai, illustrates perfectly that motives which only seem to meet American needs can easily be transplanted geographically as well as culturally – in this case to Japan – and will not lose any of their significance. The last extrapolation of this subject matter will incite to think outside the box. Avatar, the most recent movie of the three, appears to defy both time and place. James Cameron’s box office hit is set in a -2-

distant future and not even on planet Earth, and still the theoretical parameters of going Native can be applied without any restrictions. Like a potpourri of different motives derived from genuine American literature, this space epic shimmers in manifold colors and proves that the phenomenon of going Native still is of unlimited relevance and interest in the 21st century.

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2. Theory Going Native implies movement. Movement requires direction. And direction eventually leads towards a desired result, a goal, an idea. As stated above, the central idea behind going Native in our case is the Native American, an otherwise plain reference to a member of a specific ethnic group which has accompanied the development of Americanness in the course of history and has thus come to be a heavily loaded concept in the American mind. And if one tries to uncover the reasons and motives for this well-known process of going Native, it is to be kept in mind that the initial impetus behind it always originates in the image of the Native American itself. The idea of going Native would not even exist if it was not for the fascination and awe that these ig/noble creatures have exerted upon the American mind in the course of time. Nevertheless, what stands out more than any particularly positive or negative depiction of the Native Americans in their turbulent history is the sheer number of representations that arose at different stages of the American past – ranging from bogeyman to benevolent saint. And the motives for going Native which were spawned by these portrayals are as manifold as the images themselves. 2.1. The Images of the Native American This creature was to wear many masks, changeable, at will, to suit heaven and hell. He was simpleton, wise man, loyal friend, treacherous foe, virtuous or wanton. The Indian became all things to all people. (Ralph Friar and Natasha Friar, The Only Good Indian) Oddly enough, the uniting element of the countless representations of Native Americans is a term which rules out the notion of unity per se: dichotomy. This concept of difference and polarity is not only inherent in the rather young history of the American continent, but in humankind in general. It is to be found not only in history, but also in mythology, religion, and art. Good versus bad, light versus darkness, and White versus – for the most part, as history has taught us – everybody else. In the particular case of the Native American, however, both favorable and unfavorable depictions seem to serve a similar purpose, as Shari M. Huhndorf competently points out:

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In many respects, these visions are two sides of the same coin. Each one serves as a means of defining Western identities (either individual or collective) against an other, figured alternately as superior or inferior to oneself. (6) Naturally, as far as the setting of this thesis is concerned, one end of the spectrum, i.e. the vision of the sublime, superior man in the woods, seems to be of more interest, since this idealizing portrayal of the Native American is one major motive for the tradition of going Native. But as one delves deeper into the early ages of the American nation, it becomes apparent that also the unfavorable view of Native Americans plays a major role. It served as a counter-example through which the new American identity could be bent into shape, and it turned out to be a handy means for justifying the conquest of the continent. And as Huhndorf has already stated above, one can again strip down this bipolar imagery to one single denominator. Because what unites all these concepts reaching from “the demon of the continent” (Lawrence, 42) to the noble savage of the Romantic Period, is the perception of the Native American as the other. “All known human societies seem to formulate ideas of the ‘other’ in order to define and legitimate their own social boundaries and individual identities,” Susan Hiller (11) begins her thorough analysis of the influences of so-called primitive art on Western concepts of art and culture, and she continues to explain that “[t]he ‘other’ is always distant as well as different, and against this difference the characteristics of self and society are formed and clarified” (11). This view also represents a central concept in Leslie A. Fiedler’s passionate – yet sometimes harsh and even reactionary – farewell and simultaneous salutation of Native Americans in American art and literature. “The Vanishing Americans,” as he refers to them, “may have bowed out as Last Mohicans or Flatheads or Sioux, but they return as what they all seemed to invading White Europeans from the start, simply ‘Indians’, indistinguishable non-White others” (Fiedler, 10). The start that Fiedler alludes to above is, as a matter of fact, marked by none other than Christopher Columbus. When the virgin coast of the Bahamas finally dropped its veil of mist and emerged in all its splendor on October 12, 1492,1 Columbus not only heralded the dawning of a new age, but also was the first one to encounter these hitherto untouched people – at least untouched by continental

1

Or, as James Axtell less heroically puts it, “when [he] stumbled across the Taíno people of Guanahaní island on October 12, 1492” (Natives, 15).

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civilization. And thus, he laid the cornerstone for the ever-shifting ways of associating with the inhabitants of the new land. As we proceed to lay the groundwork for a compact dissection of this dichotomized view of Native Americans it is to be kept in mind that, of course, there has not been a sudden break or an incision in the line of history. Not every savage savage turned into a noble savage at once. Both images, as we will see, are deeply rooted in the rules of conduct which different cultures apply when they clash, and they have been well-established long before Portuguese seafarers set foot on American soil or British philosophers could even think of considering a more primitive lifestyle more enticing. Neither of these representations necessarily ruled out the other one, but especially in the case of the colonization of America, the positive portrayal of the Native American had to wait for the necessary political and intellectual circumstances to fall into place and to finally be able to break through the surface. In the remaining sections of this chapter, I will provide a rough set of chronological landmarks and treat both images of Native Americans separately, the negative and the positive one.

2.1.1. In the Beginning Was the Word By the end of the 15th century, the European economic and intellectual world was fueled by the “rising spirit of nationalism” (Berkhofer, 4), and when the modern Colonial era finally dawned, this spirit was carried to distant spheres across the Atlantic. When the earliest agents of colonization finally arrived in the New World – America – the conceptual categories of the Old World were applied. These concepts are especially retraceable in the imagery and terminology used to refer to the newly encountered autochthonous population.2 It is truly ironic that in the case of America one of the most creative and significant rituals in the initial clash of two cultures – the act of mutual naming and renaming3 – in the end turned out to be one big faux pas, virtually foreshadowing a long history of misunderstanding and mistreatment. Thus, “[t]he name ‘Indian’ itself memoralizes the first misguided effort of Columbus to assure himself that he was in those other, those East Indies, after all, confronting nothing but types known since Marco Polo” (Fiedler, 20). 2

Cf. Berkhofer, 4. See also section 2.2.2.6.

3

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Apart from heartfelt accounts of the lifestyles of those Indians, describing their basic customs, their rudimentary moral principles, as well as their overall features, rendering them as a sociable and friendly people – though Columbus here and there all too readily lapses into generalizations – we also find descriptions less in favor of the Native Americans. This is especially true for his letter to King Ferdinand of Spain in which he relates the experiences of his first voyage to the new continent. On an island referred to as ‘Carib’, Columbus reports the encounter with a very fierce people who eat human flesh and describes them as “ferocious among these other people who are cowardly to an excessive degree” (Columbus in Whitehead, 54).4 Columbus’ blunder in giving a proper name to the inhabitants of the newly discovered continent did – as mentioned above – give a peculiar turn to this historical encounter, but at least it ensured that the old order was being kept. For as long as this untouched people fitted into the system which the Western conquerors had in mind when they came to the New World, things would be fine. But not only the new Americans’ identity played an important role, the identity of the original Americans, the Native Americans, did as well. As long as they would be living in the East Indies, i.e. the Indian subcontinent, they would be Indians. But as soon as this geographical mistake became evident, the Native American would quickly turn out to be a threat to the White man, not because of what he did, but simply because of what he was, as Leslie Fiedler points out wittingly: So long as he was taken as an Asiatic, this threat did not operate, as it did not operate for Columbus; but once Cathay5-Paradise had been recognized as America, a New Found Land, and its inhabitants as problematic aliens, the damage was done. (38) And whereas the first Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores had shown a peculiar eagerness for pointing out all the cultural instruments that the indigenous people of the New World were in lack of, actually “no one argued that the Indian was as good as the European in this early period” (Berkhofer, 10). Fiedler even emphasizes that shortly after Columbus’ first expeditions beyond the new shores of America the Native Americans were not even granted the status of human beings, most obviously

4

From the multitude of available translations of Columbus’ letter I have decided to use Neil Whitehead’s interpretation published in his work Of Cannibals and Kings: Primal Anthropology in the Americas. 5 Cathay is the “name by which North China was known in medieval Europe” (“Cathay,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online).

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one of the after-effects of being denied a soul by the Roman Catholic Church. 6 And although Fiedler at first seems to paint a rather discouraging picture of the Native Americans regarding this early epoch of the conquest, he nevertheless opens up more promising perspectives: Once a European Christian has granted the American Indian full human status, he has the choice of either trying to Christianize him, i.e. to complete or perfect his humanity, or of recognizing his ‘paganism’ as an alternate way of life, an equal though totally other human possibility. (39) As history has shown, the Native Americans nonetheless had to wait and endure until this other possibility of an alternate way of life would finally be recognized as something desirable, something worth striving for – a striving which would ultimately even be given a name: going Native.

2.1.2. A Native Kind of Spook To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. (Herman Melville, Moby Dick) In his Studies in Classic American Literature, D.H. Lawrence introduces the Native American as “the demon of the continent” (42), ominously prophesizing that the force of this demon will hit the American soul – be it the national identity, be it the literary heritage – when the “last nuclei of Red Life” (42) finally will have been dispersed.7 Though this prediction may sound rather unpleasant, Lawrence seems to have chosen the term demon on purpose. Unlike its pejorative equivalent in contemporary language use, the ancient Greek term δαίμων referred to a godlike spirit inhabiting the paradisiac worlds of Greek mythology.8 This underlying mythological patronage which the Native American seems to hold for the young history of the American continent also exerted great fascination on Leslie Fiedler, who grounded the whole conception of his New Western on four basic myths deeply rooted in the Native American world. In fact his myths are prototypical sujets drawn from the homegrown literature of America which turn out to be mostly male fantasies of escaping domestic monotony, leaving the new Western women rendered

6

Cf. Fiedler, 38-39. Cf. Lawrence, 42. 8 Cf. “demon,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. 7

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as – apart from Native Americans – “the only other supernatural or transhuman creatures viable in archetypal American tales” (Fiedler, 49). One of these classic tales is Washington Irving’s story of the solitudinarian Rip Van Winkle, a hybrid of Sleeping Beauty and a new American Odysseus, who returns back home after his 20 years’ slumber to find his wife – dead, “happily,” as Leslie Fiedler does not forget to remark (51). What is really remarkable about Irving’s short story from 1819, is that at one point Rip tells the children of the village “long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians” (Irving, 3), “two imported kinds of spook, and one native one” (Fiedler, 59). Needless to say, the history of this native kind of spook begins simultaneously with the history of the colonization of America. The colonizers’ initial drive was to make the Native American a ghost, a demon in the present sense of the word, an evil spirit which causes anxiety and problems. And how could they ever have named him more aptly than by using a term which summarizes all the detestation and inconvenience that this supposedly benevolent creature may have caused to the early settlers who tried to establish themselves as the righteous dwellers in this new Edenic paradise – savage. There is a good chance that the terrifying and ominous meaning which this word holds today may cast a cloud over our perception of the actual reasons for choosing this very term in the 16th century. Savage, pronounced in the 21st century, may – thanks to decades of one-dimensional Western movies blowing the good-vsbad motif out of all proportions – immediately make the listeners visualize tomahawk-wielding, half-naked actors, uttering blood-curdling war cries and – in order to use an example that could have also been taken from the accounts of Mary Rowlandson – taking babies from their crying mothers. Five centuries ago, the use of the term savage seemed to be a matter of mere deductive reasoning. After the Spanish conquistadores came French and English explorers, and the image which they had in mind when they chose to call the inhabitants of the New World sauvage, or savage respectively, was not as despicable as the one described above, though not very favorable either. What these pioneers did, in fact, not come upon were highly developed “peoples with complex social and governmental organizations” (Berkhofer, 13) as the Aztec or Inca civilizations would have been, “[but] the explorers of those two nations met ‘wilder’ Indians” (Berkhofer, 13). Hence the term savage. -10-

This image of the wild Native Americans or the wild men in the woods can etymologically be traced back to the Latin adjective silvaticus, meaning belonging to or living in the forest.9 As the mythological ancestor of the wild Native American Berkhofer introduces the medieval German legend of the wild man (i.e. wilder Mann), a “hairy, naked, club-wielding child of nature […]. Lacking civilized knowledge or will, he lived a life of bestial self-fulfillment, directed by instinct, and ignorant of God and morality” (Berkhofer, 13). As a matter of course, such medieval conceptualizations were then projected on to the newly discovered children of nature in America. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and James Arthur Levernier not only follow anthropological and historical studies of the closing 20th century, but also take into consideration accounts from the earliest explorers – as there were Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci – to substantiate their thorough treatment of the Native American’s image in American culture and history.10 Also adopting an approach which is based on the notion of dichotomy, they put forth that “two distinct images of Indians predominate in white American culture from colonial times through the present: one negative and one positive” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 52). And their description of the so-called bad Native American in parts perfectly matches Berkhofer’s picture of the wild man in the woods: Portrayed as culturally and often mentally deficient and incapable of what white society considered civilization and progress, this Indian lived a rude nomadic existence generally characterized by the basest of emotions and motives. Simply put, the ‘bad’ Indian was a barbarian. (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 52) “Ironically,” Derounian-Stodola and Levernier add, “from the start, Europeans seemed less capable of fathoming the complexity of Native American cultures than Indians […] were of understanding European values” (53). Thus, the onedimensional and, what is more, ethnologically incorrect collective term Indian. An even stronger case of irony then is the fact that in order to differentiate themselves from the foreign invaders, Native Americans fell back on the very same term: Indian.11 Unsurprisingly, the first accounts of Native American life and culture which early readers could lay their hands on were, “for the most part, filtered through the 9

Cf. Berkhofer, 13. Cf. Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 52-53, and section 2.1. above 11 Cf. Berkhofer, 15. Berkhofer here refers to Roger Williams’ A Key into the Language of America. 10

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perspective of explorers, missionaries, traders, trappers, and captives who wrote about their experiences with Indians” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 52). More straightforwardly put, James Axtell speaks of “European depiction of the alien faces and conduct they saw and the strange words they heard” (Natives, 16). In his work Natives and Newcomers, Axtell takes White America to task seriously and is rather unstinting with accusing overtones. One fact he mentions as not to be dismissed is that school history books pick up American history at the turn from the 16th to the 17th century, that is more or less when the Pilgrim Fathers’ vessels dug into the coast of New England. And in doing so, those books lay the emphasis on crude horror stories like the one of the Chesapeakes, who in 1607 ambushed the first wave of Europeans to come to Virginia, or the Nauset war party, who attacked newly arrived settlers at Cape Cod in 1620. As Axtell further maintains, references of this kind inevitably spawn a disadvantageous portrait of the war-waging savage who is hostile by nature. What such clipped histories, however, do dismiss, is that the Pilgrim Fathers’ first encounter was no event of mutual awe and enjoyment. Not at all, as Axtell points out vigorously. Because what the first settlers did not bear in mind was “that the natives who received them so ungraciously were not acting out of some atavistic racial hatred or primitive xenophobia but from a well-founded sense of revenge for injuries inflicted by earlier European visitors” (Axtell, Natives, 16). Those savage Native Americans by then had to look back on a hundred years’ history of capricious European missionaries imposing their conception of civilization and culture upon them. And these ideas had to be received with arms wide open in order to give the impression of being a good Indian, i.e. a Native American susceptible to the White men’s words.12 Because of this bias, the Jamestown settlers had the pictures given in earlier accounts in mind, “and therefore their accounts of the encounters seem to follow the same procedure – even more so considering the fact that the two criteria of Christianity and civilization guided their perception of the natives” (Berkhofer, 18). But also the autochthonous people of this area may have had their share of experiences and hearsay, and “in this way both sides exhibited behavior that confirmed the previous stereotypes of each other” (Berkhofer, 18). In order to illustrate what the pictures described above could look like in the worst case, Berkhofer refers to Alexander Whitaker, a Christian theologian who 12

Cf. Axtell, Natives, 16.

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came to be known as the “Cambridge Apostle to Virginia” (Porter, 317).13 In order to justify his missionary work he presented a mainly negative picture of the Native Americans in his Good Newes from Virginia, rendering them as “naked slaves of the divell” (Whitaker, 24), comparing their priests to witches and accusing them of lying, deceiving, and stealing, “as their master the divell teacheth them” (Whitaker, 24). Presumably being a people desperately in need of the kind measures carried along by European missionaries, the Native Americans, however, did also evoke some positive reflections, as Whitaker praises their quickness in apprehending, their basic readiness to understand and their admirable diligence.14 Altogether qualities which miraculously seemed to meet the newly arriving missionaries’ strivings half way. And “[t]hey arrived,” Paul Hazard sounds ominously in The European Mind, his comprehensive work on the intellectual life of Europe at the turn of the 18th century, “these apostles from distant lands with their strange beliefs and customs, their laws, their peculiar sense of values” (12). But unfortunately, the Natives did not seem to fit into the newcomers’ traditional world view at all, as Hazard continues: The aboriginal American was a problem. Lost to sight in the midst of his continent, a continent so long undiscovered, he was the son not of Shem, nor of Ham, nor of Japeth. Then whose son was he? That was the question. Pagans born before the coming of Christ at least had their share of original sin, since they were all descended from Adam. But these Americans? (12) “Natives, Salvages, Indians, Wild-men […], Pagans, Barbarians, Heathen” are but a few of the names – collected by Roger Williams (A4) in 164315 – which were used by European settlers to refer to the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. Some of these names most obviously carry a prominent biblical air, as this was the usual Puritan way of coming to terms with, well, life in general and the impediments it brought along. And since the major part of the European newcomers was of Puritan religion, the Native Americans had to be incorporated into their accustomed world view at any cost. Kathryn Derounian-Stodola and James Levernier clarify this approach: Seeking scriptural justification for their existence, the New England Puritans structured their society upon that of ancient Israel. Following this concept, they viewed Indians as neo-Canaanite infidels who must and would be subdued in the name of the Puritan Jehowah. Eventually they elaborated on this concept until Indians were seen as devils in human disguise. (17) 13

Cf. Berkhofer, 19. Cf. Whitaker, 25. 15 The quote is taken from Roger Williams’ Preface “To the Reader” in A Key into the Language of America. 14

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And out of this Puritan – or Protestant – framework emerged the first genuine literary genre of the growing American nation – the early captivity narratives. In her article on the interplay of captivity and the phenomenon of going Native, Linda Colley calls these narratives a “uniquely American and distinctively Protestant genre” (173). In doing so, she steps onto a well-trodden path which scholars like Kathryn DerounianStodola and James Levernier or Richard Slotkin have already come across.16 And as Derounian-Stodola and Levernier logically add, authors of captivity narratives “rarely considered the welfare of the Indian, [and were] often harboring ingrained prejudices” (52), though numerous instances of captives gone Native deliberately give proof of the contrary. Most of all, this rich Puritan echo rings in people’s ears when the figure of Mary Rowlandson enters the scene. The narration of her captivity by Narragansett warriors in 1675 is, according to Colley, “the seminal text usually cited” (173) when it comes to the captivity narrative. On the one hand, the highly biblical tone of Rowlandson’s relations and the recurrent references to the Book are a result of the Bible being the sole company and only refuge she had in this initially dreary environment. On the other hand, the general Protestant conception of captivity may have cast a shadow over Rowlandson’s account, as David Downing informs us: Captivity, in the Old Testament, is viewed as a means of both instruction (or spiritual testing) and correction (or punishment). The Babylonian Captivity came to the Israelites as a penalty for their apostasy, but for the faithful few, such as Daniel and his friends, it served as a witness of their steadfast trust in God. Rowlandson derives from her captivity a similar lesson. (256) Following Downing, this stroke of fate for Mrs. Rowlandson seemed to be nothing more than God’s mysterious way of putting her faith to the test, and the Native American, thus, became “part of the cosmic drama willed by God to reveal His sovereignty and His grace” (Berkhofer, 81). And Berkhofer continues, “[t]he central theme of this drama was the eternal conflict between God and Satan” (81). In his article “The ‘Ruines of Mankind’: The Indian and the Puritan Mind,” Roy Harvey Pearce examines Puritan images of the Native Americans and elaborates that “[w]herever the Indian opposed the Puritan, there Satan opposed God” (“Ruines,” 204). Thus, being “literally and continually the devil’s advocate for a 16

Cf. Slotkin, Regeneration. Despite the pioneering effort which Slotkin has undertaken in this visionary work for the development of an American national myth, Berkhofer calls attention to the fact that Slotkin might be put among those writers dealing with White images of Native Americans in history who “tend to treat all Native American cultures as a single Indian for the purposes of analyzing the validity of White stereotypes” (Berkhofer, 26).

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people who needed such to remind them of their own sinfulness and the agonizing hope of regeneration and election” (Pearce, “Ruines,” 211), the Native American in Rowlandson’s captivity narrative ends up being called names which leave no doubt about the fiendish role he plays in this tragedy. “To her the Indians are not only ‘merciless heathen’ and ‘barbarous creatures,’ they are ‘hell-hounds’” (Downing, 256). And although a few of Rowlandson’s captors are given a more detailed characterization, “many of the Indians receive scant and stereotyped attention” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 108). Nevertheless, the story of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity not only holds the privilege of being an archetype to both the captivity narrative and genuine American literature in general, it also remains one of the first texts to make the phenomenon of going Native on American soil accessible to a quite large audience, because “Rowlandson appealed to the archetypal human experience of cultural and personal integration, followed by disintegration, and succeeded by a sense of frail reintegration” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 110). However, the Native American’s villainous part in the coming decades and centuries of American history was set. He was doomed to play the evil counterpart, the diabolical other to the masses of White settlers spreading across the new lands. In her work The Noble Savage in the New World Garden, Gaile McGregor also touches on this cosmic drama of righteous European settlers and mysterious American Natives. By deliberately focusing on the significance that the American wilderness held for the first Europeans coming to the new continent, she observes that the Puritans’ initially negative approach to this wild and untamed nature also led to the demonization of its dwellers, the Natives. And thus, they had to remain a threat (not only) to the Puritan peace of mind until the middle of the 18th century, when they were allowed to become noble again.17 Similarly, Robert Berkhofer, following Richard Slotkin among other scholars, concludes: “In the end the image of the bad Indian triumphed over that of the good one in the Puritan imagination, just as the Lord’s forces in the end must overcome Satan’s army” (84). And also Kathryn Derounian-Stodola and James Levernier, after elaborating on their clearly dichotomized theory of White images of Native Americans, have no choice but to realize that the fact that in the settlers’ eyes “fewer ‘good’ Indians seemed to exist than ‘bad’ Indians […] provided a convenient

17

Cf. McGregor, 34-46.

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justification for why Indian culture, in the eyes of white culture, would vanish along with the frontier” (53).18 And this fact, the vanishing of both the frontier and the peoples dwelling at this gateway to the wilderness, developed into one of the most vigorous motives for the transcultural act of going Native in the further course of history. Because if the above image of the ever-evil Indian had not been exploited for decades to corroborate the bloody conquest of the West and the extermination of unimaginable numbers of Native Americans, the resulting feeling of guilt which eventually stung the American mind to the quick would not have led to the reversal of this very picture in the end – at least to some extent. All of a sudden, the Native American served as a counter-image, the good Indian, a counterpoint to the White American, destined to cleanse the American mind of its troublesome past. Gradually, a movement well disposed to the Native American gathered momentum. Going Native became redemption, and there was more to come.19

2.1.3. The Noble Other The social advancement of the Native American in the 18th century was foreshadowed by a simple reinterpretation of the concept of the other. Whereas this concept had experienced a mainly negative interpretation in the times of Puritan settlement, it was finally revised after 200 years. A shift had occurred in the American mind which facilitated the perception of Nativeness as something positive, something desirable. 18th-century thinkers eventually realized that the other may not only incorporate the vices we flee, but the virtues we want, and this simple 18

Regarding the development of the captivity narratives’ role in the record of White America’s estimation of Native Americans, Derounian-Stodola and Levernier speak of four different “images of the American Indian, all of which to one degree or another reflect the biases and racist preoccupations of white America” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 53). In the first place, there are, of course, the stereotype-laden images of early colonial America. Secondly, they describe the negative depiction of Native Americans during the 18th and the 19th centuries. And although the third type of portrayals, i.e. the positive ones, in these centuries rendered the Natives sympathetic and kind, for Derounian-Stodola and Levernier they nevertheless had a mostly negative effect on the general perception of Native Americans. The fact that only a small number of such positive accounts made it to public circulation (e.g. the story of Mary Jemison’s captivity in 1755 and her later adoption by the Seneca) further deepened the supposition that favorable reports of the like were only to be interpreted as exceptions, and that the actual disposition of the Native American mind still was a vicious one. Finally, most of the depictions, no matter how realistic, in Derounian-Stodola and Levernier’s view often seemed to “reveal[…] more about the prejudices and hostilities of the writers themselves and the culture they represented than about the realities of Indian culture” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 93). For a more detailed treatment of these four forms of representation see Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 53-93. 19 For a more thorough discussion of the different functions of and motives behind going Native see section 2.2.

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realization set off the triumphant progress of a literary topos which would become almost indispensable – not only – to American literature: The dawning idea of the noble savage finally began to take shape. Commonly thought to be a product of 18th-century romanticism, the mere term noble savage did already exist by the time Mary Rowlandson painfully collected the material for her now world-famous captivity narrative. Three years before Rowlandson’s captivity, in 1672, John Dryden had Almanzor, the protagonist of his heroic tragedy The Conquest of Granada, speak the words: “I am as free as Nature first made man, / ’Ere the base laws of servitude began, / When wild in woods the noble Savage ran” (Dryden, 1.1.1. 207-09). In his extensive study of The Myth of the Noble Savage, the American Ethnomusicologist Ter Ellingson goes even so far as to ascribe the invention of the mere term noble savage to Marc Lescarbot, a French lawyer-ethnographer, who used this expression as a model in comparative law already in 1609.20 Whoever the true inventor of the term may have been, the positive way of perceiving the wild other was not an 18th-century invention; it even goes back to antiquity. Already the famous Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus had resorted to the concept of the noble savage, when he used the image of the so-called barbarians to hold the mirror up to the corrupt and dissolute characters of the Roman Empire. In his ethnographic work Germania this means of social criticism has received special scholastic attention and was even given a proper name, the Sittenspiegeltheorie.21 Tacitus discusses the geographical peculiarities of Germania and presents an ethnographical sketch of the customs and everyday practice of its rather primitive inhabitants. In Germanisches Sakralkönigtum?, an interdisciplinary study on the Germania, Eve Picard points to the subliminal social criticism which Tacitus is said to express in his ethnographical excursus: “Die Germania wurde als Vorarbeit für einen Germanenexkurs der Historien oder Annalen betrachtet, […] als Sittenspiegel,

der

dem

dekadenten

Rom

das

unverdorbene

Naturvolk

gegenüberstellen sollte” (40). This view is shared by Jacques Barzun, who in his work From Dawn to Decadence, a historical treatise on Western civilization, summarizes Tacitus’ depiction: “He portrayed Rome as decadent and slavish and the German tribes as nobly moral and free” (9). 20

Cf. Ellingson, xv. For further information on this interpretation of Tacitus’ Germania see also Pöschl, Tacitus, and Pöschl and Klienz, Zeitkritik bei Tacitus. 21

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It is clear to see that the idea of noble savagery had already existed at the beginning of our cultural history. So if this concept had endured all these centuries on a subconscious level of people’s cultural perception, why did the noble savage have to wait until the 18th century to finally ascend to general acceptance? He obviously had to wait for a propitious moment, when the world’s political status quo was in need of a myth like that and the scholarly circle was ready to carry the tidings of the noble savage to distant shores. But what did this peculiar political situation look like? What were the particular intellectual circumstances which paved the way for the noble savage to finally rise up in the New World? What was the “preliminary work [which] had been done already” that Hazard (13) speaks of so ominously? To find answers to these questions, we will have to go back chronologically, geographically and, in the end, even evolutionarily. Back to the 16th century, back to Britain, back to the primitive.

2.1.4. Back to the Primitive The key to the enormous popularity of the noble savage in the 18th century actually lies in the centuries before the breakthrough of this concept – i.e. in the Renaissance and the subsequent epochs. One characteristic feature of these ages was the quest for simplification and the sublimation of the simple being. In fact, such tendencies are nothing more than a rephrasing of the concept of going Native. In a Renaissance context, this movement towards simplification is often termed primitivism, although Michael Bell reminds us that “[w]e cannot refer to ‘the Primitivists’ as we do for example, to ‘the Romantics’” (3). So even without primitivism being a proper intellectual movement, the general concept of it is indispensable to the idea of the noble savage. According to Gaile McGregor, primitivism “is the term used to designate collectively the philosophy, attitudes, and assumptions from which the species [i.e. the noble savage] emerges” (12). Therefore, the following paragraphs are intended to give a rough outline of the different forms as well as of the history of this partly undetermined phenomenon. In her discussion of the different forms of primitivism McGregor introduces two opposing models and terms them properly. The longing for a desirable, not necessarily existent, past – like the Golden Age of classical antiquity or the Christian paradise in the Garden of Eden – she calls chronological primitivism, whereas the yearning for a geographically remote place of sanctuary – be it the real America or -18-

the mythical Atlantis – is referred to as geographical primitivism.22 Despite the different labels, both of her versions of primitivism share the same core motifs, as McGregor explains furthermore: The one thing both variants have in common is the assumption that primitive cultures provide a viable or at least instructive alternative to civilized existence. The primitive man is thought on the one hand to be freer, both physically and emotionally – less inhibited, less oppressed by the necessities of labor, less trammeled with constricting conventions; on the other hand, his simple austere lifestyle, devoid of luxury and sophistication, is supposed to inculcate both character and morality. (12) Another scholar dealing with different variants of primitivism is Jonathan Friedman. In his work Cultural Variety and Global Process he takes a closer look at the processes and developments which occurred in European civilization during the colonial times. The transformation which struck Europe at that point, according to Friedman, follows a cyclic principle the beginning and end of which are again marked by two different forms of primitivism.23 The first one “is a protest against the breakdown of personal bonds of traditional society, and against the new cold and insecure conditions of civilized society” (Friedman, 57), a kind of plain anti-civilizational or anti-societal primitivism, striking the chords of the initial idea behind the concept of primitivism.24 The second form “is a vision of primitive Utopia, a return to nature, to equality, to community” (Friedman, 57). Thus, it turns out to be a mainly chronological variant of primitivism with a scent of back-to-nature or retour-à-la22

Cf. McGregor, 12. For a more detailed illustration of the different manifestations of primitivism and especially their realization in classical Antiquity, see Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. The distinctions which Lovejoy and Boas make in their thorough study are geared to certain philosophical and literary trends in Greek and Roman Antiquity, but the basic separation adopted by McGregor is still maintained. Nevertheless, Lovejoy and Boas use a slightly different terminology, speaking of chronological and cultural primitivism. The latter, according to them, “is the discontent of the civilized with civilization, or with some conspicuous and characteristic feature of it. It is the belief of men living in a relatively highly evolved and complex cultural condition that a life far simpler and less sophisticated in some or in all respects is a more desirable life” (Lovejoy and Boas, 7). As far as chronological primitivism is concerned, Harry Levin draws attention to the ancient idea of the Golden Age, rendering it as a “nostalgic statement of man’s orientation in time” (Levin, xv) which is always oriented towards an epoch now gone, an epoch worth longing for in the face of the crookedness of contemporary society. What he basically describes is a precedent version of going Native which is directed towards a period in time. And although the act of going Native may, on the face of it, look like a transgression from one culture to another, it is as well a journey back in time, to a stage of social development which seems more fitting to the person who travels. A voyage back to the primitive. 23 Cf. Friedman, 56-57. 24 Similar to Friedman, Roderick Frazier Nash notes in Wilderness and the American Mind, his scholarly work on the American landscape, that “[p]rimitivists believed that man’s happiness and wellbeing decreased in direct proportion to his degree of civilization” (47).

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nature attitude, a well-known slogan Jean-Jacques Rousseau is commonly credited for, without any literary proof, though. In the face of these manifold manifestations of primitivism, Michael Bell observes that these “different forms can be approached with the same initial questions” (4). And he continues, “[w]hat seems to be required is not so much a definition as a methodology” (4). Now, if we apply this statement to the concept of going Native, the same problem is encountered. Whereas the phenomenon itself is explained relatively straightforwardly (i.e. individual of society A moves towards, delves into, and finally becomes absorbed in society B, or the Native society, up to a particular degree), the mechanisms or, as Bell puts it, the methodology is not to be grasped that easily. Approaching the concept of primitivism from a historical perspective, we have to – as stated above – go back to 16th-century Europe in order to locate the big bang of this movement. By the end of the 16th century, the primitivistic attitude was gradually coming en vogue in the intellectual world, and it catered for “[t]he public [who] wanted a new and different model by which to measure themselves” (McGregor, 16). In the 17th century this idea finally seemed ready for its genesis, and from Harry Levin we learn that the germination of this thought, i.e. “[t]he decisive confrontation between the thoughtful European and the uncivilized American happened in the Essais of Montaigne” (74). Nevertheless, he comments that Montaigne “is not defending the virtues of savagery; he is attacking the vices of occidental culture” (77) and thus “has earned his reputation as a primitivist of sorts, and his Essais have been a primary source for the stream of primitivistic thought that was to become a major current of the romantic movement” (79). This train of thought was then mounted by the spearhead of the British Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, and gradually names like John Locke or David Hume took their place in the long line of philosophers, scholars and intellectuals favorably disposed towards primitivistic thought.25 Locke, for instance, “gave support to the view that the savage, his intellect unhampered by the stifling and artificial attitudes and habits acquired necessarily in a civilized environment, was more capable of true insight than the educated man” (McGregor, 18), whereas Hume later corroborated the noble savage’s position in contemporaneous philosophy, 25

For a more detailed account of this development see McGregor, 18-29.

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“[s]ince any glorification of the emotions and the instincts was even more encouraging to primitivism than the idea of natural wisdom” (McGregor, 19). A similar thought goes for Paul Hazard as he cheers “Hurrah for the Huron!” (13) when analyzing the 18th-century dialogue between civilized French mariner and explorer Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce de Lahontan, and the savage Adario, who “triumphantly sings the praises of natural religion” (Hazard, 13).26 The result of this seemingly unbalanced debate presents Adario being vastly superior to his civilized adversary. Thus, Hazard gives a résumé of the two quarrelers: So, [Adario] looks with compassion on poor civilized man – no courage, no strength, incapable of providing himself with food and shelter; a degenerate, a moral crétin, a figure of fun in his blue coat, his red hose, his black hat, his white plume and his green ribands. He never really lives because he is always torturing the life out of himself to clutch at wealth and honours which, even if he wins them, will prove to be but glittering illusions. Sturdy, untiring on his feet, skilled in the chase, inured to fatigue and privation, what a magnificent fellow is your savage! How noble in comparison! His very ignorance is an asset. Unable either to read or write, what a host of evils he escapes! For science and the arts are the parents of corruption. The savage obeys the will of Nature, his kindly mother, therefore he is happy. It is the civilized folk who are the real barbarians. Let them profit by the example of the savage and so regain man’s birthright of dignity and freedom. (13-14, emphasis in the original) However, in the primitivist microcosm and the thence arising idea of the noble savage no name will ever be pronounced with more momentousness and awe than the one of 18th-century thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But as one explores and sounds out the depths of scholarly research conducted on this affair, the image of Rousseau as the godfather of the noble savage begins to fade. Whereas Levin asserts that “[w]ith the proclamation and dissemination of the idea itself, we are accustomed to credit or discredit Jean-Jacques Rousseau” (79), turning the whole matter more into a kind of customary acceptance than into a fact, McGregor at first glance confirms that Rousseau is “[t]he one philosopher whose name has become almost synonymous with the idea of noble savagery” (19). Nevertheless, she then adds that, although proclaimed figurehead of the noble savage movement and most determined supporter of savage life, Rousseau’s “overall estimate of that level of existence is far from enthusiastic” (McGregor, 20). A similar approach is presented by Roderick Nash, who observes that “Rousseau argued in Emile (1762) that modern man should incorporate primitive qualities into his

26

For the complete dialogue see Lahontan, Dialogues avec un Sauvage.

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presently distorted civilized life” (49) although he “expressed no personal desire to revert to the woods” (49). Another scholar in opposition to the inventive role of Rousseau is Ter Ellingson. He does not only put Rousseau’s association with the noble savage in a bad light, but also criticizes the concept as a whole. Already in the introduction of his 400-page treatise on The Myth of the Noble Savage, Ellingson seems to get to the conclusion that there actually is no myth of the noble savage, or there is no “belief in something called the Noble Savage” (xiv). “In fact,” Ellingson says, “there is no mystery behind the myth of the Noble Savage, other than its continued success and longevity. Serious investigators have known since the 1920s that Rousseau did not create the myth, but its source has never been satisfactorily identified” (xiii). Nonetheless, he presents Rousseau as “the most effective agent of its promotion” (2), and after spotlighting the main points of various studies carried out on behalf of the Noble Savage myth,27 Ellingson finally has to conclude “that Rousseau’s invention of the Noble Savage myth is itself a myth” (4). An even more arduous opponent of Rousseau’s work is Robert Whelan, who in 1999 composed a compact study entitled Wild in Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage. In his discussion of the inventors of the concept of noble savagery, he virtually tears Rousseau apart and goes even so far as to refer to him as the “prototype of the arrogant intellectual” (Whelan, 17). Also Rousseau’s famous Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is not highly acclaimed by Whelan and in the end remains “one of those classics that everyone has heard of but almost no one has read” (Whelan, 16). However, even without a proper progenitor the noble savage was well able to find his way into the highest spheres of progressive 18th-century thinking. “Once well launched, the idea of noble savagery – or, rather, the cluster of general sentiments from which this idea emerged – exerted such an allure that it was able to wrap to its own ends almost every major development in contemporaneous thought” (McGregor, 19). A trick which Ellingson applies – and which would provide a reason for the noble savage’s adaptability and longevity as well as his volatility and thence resulting obscurity – is not to treat him as a myth. Instead, he suggests considering the noble savage as a “discursive construct” (Ellingson, xv) which appears every now

27

Cf. Ellingson, 2-5.

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and then, equally distributed over the literary output of an era, serving several purposes and sometimes disappearing for an indefinite period. Naturally, a concept of such versatility will easily succeed in bridging the geographical gap between Europe and the New World. Further, it will, without difficulty, become integrated in the modes of thought and conduct this new continent has ready for its colonizers. In Europe, however, the noble savage’s last hour was about to come. By the second half of the 18th century this figure had gone through so many changes and adaptations that Hoxie Fairchild’s often-cited quote is still, after nearly 100 years, the one hitting the right tone, making the noble savage “a convenient example of whatever a writer may wish to prove” (Fairchild, 142). After a development, or better an evolution, from the “stern and stoical embodiment of classical austerity” (McGregor, 20) to “a gay and colorful child of nature, a spontaneous democrat, a romantic savage” (McGregor, 21, emphasis in the original), the noble savage on European soil was finally doomed to remain “a logical impossibility” (McGregor, 20). By the beginning of the 19th century, the British variant of the noble savage, then, had turned into the myth which forms the central idea of various studies carried out in the last 100 years. Some, like Ellingson, denied that there had even been a myth at all, to some, in the end, it seemed “less a myth than a puerile fantasy” (McGregor, 28). But although the noble savage’s source of power threatened to run dry on European soil, he had already entered a world which had always seemed to be his destined and true home – the Americas. And now, when European settlers were about to come to terms with the challenging circumstances, the lush and pristine nature and the inflamed spirit of the new continent, the noble savage more and more established himself as an essential attribute of the new American mindset. But of course, as always, he first had to spend hard times floating in a state of uncertainty, longing to find his place. 2.1.5. The Noble Savage in America – Phantom of Factotum? The peculiar feature of primitivism which had paved the way for the noble savage to blossom in the hazy environment of post-medieval Europe was its “moral ambivalence – an inherent duplicity of reference – that enabled it to satisfy simultaneously both reactionary and radical impulses” (McGregor, 15, emphasis in the original). And mankind could hardly ever witness the clash of such impulses -23-

more warily than in the days when the traditional conception of the world was shaken to its very foundations and, all of a sudden, a new continent made its entrance into the maps of this world. On the one hand, McGregor refers to the discovery of America as “a pure accident of history” (15); on the other hand, she defines it as the “final factor” (15) which engineered the noble savage’s breakthrough. And just like McGregor speaks of the emergence of America on the world’s horizon as “the immediate impetus which was ultimately to make the noble savage a household word” (15), Harry Levin discovers in this monumental event the inception of a new kind of myth,28 yes even a whole new mythological apparatus, as time-honored studies have shown.29 No discovery can have made more impact on the European consciousness than the exploration of the Americas. At this crucial point, as we shall see, the old myth was transposed from a chronological to a geographical sphere. The voyagers reported on the natives of the western hemisphere in language which created a new myth, that of the noble savage, launched by Montaigne and assigned to so strategic a role in the ideology of Rousseau. (Levin, xvii-xviii) Unsurprisingly, the impact described by Levin tore open the traditional forms and long-established mindset of 15th-century Europe, and the first colonists to put down roots in this new-found land had to come to terms with a multitude of phenomena which would not follow the patterns they knew. Some adjusted to this new situation by applying familiar concepts, some let the new conditions lead the way – and advanced. One of these new conditions clearly was the Native American. Shrugged off as a “problem” by Hazard (12), Fiedler goes even so far as to make the Natives – or the confrontation with them respectively – “[t]he heart of the Western” (19).30 And being an essential element of the Western, the Native American “escapes 28

Cf. Levin, xvii-xviii. While Ellingson’s The Myth of the Noble Savage has received particular attention by scholars all over the world, other studies have focused on the creation of different genuine American myths substituting for the ancient European mythology which could not be applied to the new environment. The most extensive and notable work in this field would certainly be Richard Slotkin’s tripartite survey of the mythology of the American West, comprising Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890, and Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Another author who tries to come to terms with the alternative mythology of America is Leslie A. Fiedler. In The Return of the Vanishing American, he establishes a set of four original American myths which are to be found in the literary landscape unfolding during the westward movement. 30 In his work, Fiedler distinguishes four genuine American genres, or “four kinds of American books” (14), as he calls it: Northerns, Southerns, Easterns and Westerns – each of them identifiable by a certain touch of straightforwardness, melodrama, Gothic atmosphere or artistry. Fiedler’s Western is a genre laden with the most common sujets that would make up the word-family revolving around the term Western in 20th and 21st-century pop culture: confrontation, wilderness, annihilation of the Indian, moccasins, trappers, hunters, pioneers etc. See Fiedler, 14-26. 29

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completely the mythologies we brought with us from Europe, demands one of his own” (Fiedler, 20). After long periods of vilification, he was finally granted a properly termed myth: the noble savage. And although the name of this myth had been imported from the old world, the concept behind it had to be adapted throughout the centuries. Unsurprisingly, this mythological phantom has haunted the American soul since the pilgrims had set foot on the new continent’s shores: [I]n the five hundred years between, how the Indian in his ultimate otherness has teased and baffled the imagination of generation after generation of European voyagers and settlers. How they have tried to assimilate him to more familiar types, to their own mythologic stock-in-trade. (Fiedler, 20) Of course this process of assimilation and re-familiarization did not exclusively apply to the concept of the noble savage, but to everything unknown encountered in the new continent. “Eager to express its sense of momentousness yet incapable of assimilating too much novelty all at once, the Renaissance public was inclined to conceptualize the Americas largely in terms of familiar stereotypes and ready-tohand stocks of imagery” (McGregor, 30). And what met the eyes of the arriving European settlers in the first place was the lush and ravishing beauty of the new continent. In sight of such heavenly splendor, what first came to mind were paradisiac images regardless of which tradition, and soon these images were developed and exaggerated until the pioneers finally “combined Eden with Arcadia, Elysium, Atlantis, the Hesperides, Tirananogue31” (McGregor, 31). And again, considering imaginations of the like, things seem to come full circle. The reason why phenomena like the dichotomized image of the Native American, the myth of the noble savage or the historical and political setting for the emergence of primitivism receive special attention in this thesis, is because all these singularities have in the course of time engaged with each other like gearwheels to lay the groundwork for the process of going Native and facilitate it. In view of the comparisons which colonists drew and the prominent tone of escapism sounding through the whole going Native matter, we again discover that such ideas are results of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, and as such their roots are to be sought in epochs long gone.

31

McGregor here uses this spelling for Tír na nÓg, the famous otherworld of Irish mythology, located far in the West beyond the edges of the map; a place where supernatural beings dwell and misery and suffering simply do not exist.

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2.1.5.1. Last Exit Nature Let us seek in the works of Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, who “had suggested an escape from history to geography, when he proposed that the faithful should leave strife-torn Rome and seek the Islands of the Blest. There, according to Hesiodic tradition, the golden age continued to exist” (Levin, 58). What Horace expresses is nothing more but McGregor’s notion of geographical primitivism.32 And as the centuries passed, this ancient dream of escape was adapted by generations of intellectuals until finally Romanticist thought let European settlers seek their salvation in the wild nature of the new American continent. This longing for a distant, pristine and wild place of refuge may either be a pattern of behavior innate in the human soul or nothing more but a social habit developed in the course of time, but it definitely is an essential part of going Native. Accordingly, the geographical and nature-related aspect must play a major role in the analysis of this phenomenon, too.33 The fascination with nature, which accompanies the notions of primitivism and going Native throughout the history of mankind, also has its roots in philosophical concepts of classical antiquity. The ancient manifestation of chronological primitivism, i.e. the idea of the Golden Age, can be taken as a reference point. Harry Levin collects data from various texts about the Golden Age in the Renaissance era and discovers that one of their uniting features is “a pleasance or pleasant landscape, the locus amoenus” (xvi). The concept of the locus amoenus, the delightful place, can be traced from the heyday of Roman literature during the Augustan age – which in history books has actually come to be the Golden Age of Latin Literature – over the wide-ranging literary output in Late Antiquity to its revival in the works of the writers of European Renaissance. And although the idea of this truly special place can be stripped down to a few characteristic features, as 32

Also in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot), a legendary Latin travelogue from the 9th century, Brendan’s crew sets out from Ireland to find the promised land in the West, i.e. terra repromissionis. Cf. Selmer, ed. Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis: From Early Latin Manuscripts. 33 In The Noble Savage in the New World Garden, Gaile McGregor lays emphasis on this naturerelated aspect while she ploughs through the choppy history of the noble savage motif. As she proceeds to relate the most significant stages in the Neo-Americans’ struggle with the new continent to certain ways in which the settlers may have responded to the unknown excrescence of its nature, the reader gradually gets the impression that going Native is merely a matter of going natural in the first place. Likewise, when it comes to the noble savage, she always highlights this concept’s strong connection to nature, and that this “link with the landscape” (McGregor, 30) – despite all the metamorphoses this figure had to face in the New World – was one of the most important features the noble savage was able to transfer from his British patria to America. See McGregor, 30.

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there are rich green meadows, a single tree amidst a lush landscape, and a small brook vividly running across the scenery, this utopian pastoral sanctuary was more than just a literary ornamented reverie. For the writers of antiquity the locus amoenus was a symbol of escape, an escape from urban travails, and a getaway amidst untouched nature where one could leave behind the strain and jumpiness of the everevolving society in the big city. As we see, the escape into the wild does not necessarily have to involve traveling to remote otherworlds or glorious eras of the past. It can also happen on a smaller scale, in a garden, under a tree standing all alone amidst a rye field behind the house. Unquestionably, this obsession with nature had already struck root in people’s minds when the philosophical concepts of 18th-century Britain began to be passed across the herring pond. And strangely enough, it was this extreme focus on nature which initially cast its shadow over the noble savage, and also the decades and even centuries to follow had some tribulations ready for him.34 Because far from sharing the unconditional idealization of primitivism and nature inherited from Romantic Britain all too openly, the colonists, instead of exalting the epicurean wild man from the woods, first went over to glorify the agrarian. After all, he was the one who struggled to cultivate raw and untamed nature, for it still exercised a fair amount of unease on the settlers.35 Yet, “the fear inspired by the primitive did not in any sense eliminate all desire for it” (McGregor, 55). Then, after the American War of Independence in the second half of the 18th century, the country witnessed a new trend which was manifest in a drive towards a well-established, modern – and mainly Christian – society. This admittedly antiRomantic way of thinking is also recognized by Roderick Nash in his analysis of the function of the American wilderness: While Romanticism was creating a climate of opinion in the new American nation in which wilderness could be appreciated, the fact of independence gave rise to a second major source of enthusiasm. It was widely assumed that America’s primary task was the justification of its newly won freedom. This entailed more than building a flourishing economy or even a stable

34

In her survey, McGregor gives a careful account of the transformations which the concept of the noble savage underwent in the 18th and 19th centuries. For the sake of simplicity, only the major developments will be taken into consideration here. For a really detailed coverage, see McGregor, 46120. 35 Cf. McGregor, 46.

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government. Creation of a distinctive culture was thought to be the mark of true nationhood. (67) 2.1.5.2. “Hurrah for the Huron!”36 The first ones to recognize the alarming tendencies which a development of this kind could involve were the artists, and, what is more, they feared a growing readiness to criticize among the propellers of this national movement. Although the spirit of going Native had been in the air for quite some time, art now became the first public means of expression to be moved away from the vibrant centers of national advancement and be relocated in the West, in the wild. And gradually, going Native was not just a fleeting idea anymore; it now entered the written word. Philip J. Deloria puts this process in concrete terms: The rising glory paradigm, many argued, contained the seeds of moral decay and was to be feared. As free America prospered economically and joined the ranks of mercantile empires, the arts would migrate westward and settle in the New World, scattering new Shakespeares, Popes and Scotts across the American landscape. (75) This fear of the corrupting and evil systems of society and its establishments ultimately led to “a new and revitalized vision of nature” (McGregor, 63) – the Transcendentalist school, spearheaded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. However, neither progressivists nor Transcendentalists could win this tugof-war, and in the middle of it all remained the Native American, still a problem child, for his “primitivism just could not be reconciled with dreams of national advancement” (McGregor, 64). And what happens to people who get in the American nation’s way to a more prosperous future? They are pushed aside. Thus, “[t]he American was enabled to believe that appropriation of Indian lands, removal, and even (regretfully, of course) the killing of recalcitrant natives were fully justified – indeed, morally demanded – by the Grand Christian Idea of Progress” (McGregor, 65). What then became the darkest and direst chapter of Native American history kept the rates rising for the fictitious concept of the noble savage as he was doomed to vanish – alas, only a quantum of solace. Berkhofer explains: To pity truly the poor dying Indian, American authors and artists had to transform him from a bloodthirsty demon into a Noble Savage. That transformation occurred late in the United States compared to Europe. Except

36

Cf. Hazard, 13.

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for a few examples among eighteenth-century accounts, the Noble Savage in the United States is really a ninenteenth-century fashion. (88) At that point the 19th century saw the omnipresence of the sentimental novel, “gushing with sensibility, gentility, and didacticism” (McGregor, 92), as well as the rise of Gothic literature and the exotic tale – all together “being by and large products of Enlightenment ideas rather than of full-fledged Romantic philosophy” (McGregor, 93). Finally, a visible shift in the attitude of the American society occurred, too. “[W]hile the American public had not been receptive to a positive version of the savage during the earlier period, they were now not only receptive but eager” (McGregor, 93). At last, we might say. After all, also Roy Harvey Pearce observed that “[a]s a man sprung from western European stock, the American had inherited a notion, faint but clear, that the simpler life of the savage was a good devoutly to be wished for” (Savagism, 135). Speaking of the new civilized American, Pearce also informs us that he “was obsessed to know who and what he was and where he was going, to evaluate the special society in which he lived and to know its past and its future” (Savagism, 135). And going back to art and literature in the first half of the 19th century, this “quest for literary independence and a cultural identity” (Berkhofer, 90) led to an ambivalent attitude among American writers toward the Native American and the frontier. The aim was to honor White pioneer individualism and civilization, but at the same time sport the adventurous spirit of Native frontier life. The direction led towards the praised ways of the noble savage, but not without tightly clinging to a well-known core deeply rooted in White civilization.37 In short, going Native represented a perspective or at least a component of the cultural identity of Americans at this time. Beside the fact that this adventurous spirit proved to be a convenient embellishment of 19th-century pioneer fantasies, the source of this spirit – i.e. the autochthonous dwellers of the virgin lands beyond the frontier – seemed to decline steadily. Native Americans were disadvantaged, dispersed, and about to disappear. This circumstance, again, was all grist to the mill of literature because the authors of poems, plays, and novels generally conceived of the Indian as noble only before White contact or during the early stages of the encounter between the Red and the White cultures. In short, they portrayed the Noble Savage as safely dead and historically past. (Berkhofer, 90)

37

Cf. Berkhofer, 91.

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The sentimental novel came into fashion, the quest for national identity and cultural significance as well as the pioneer spirit hit the American soul with full force, and the Native American inexorably was pushed into the role of the poor and pitiable victim of civilization. A combination of these major factors and all their underlying developments launched one of the most significant chapters of American literature, producing works which laid the cornerstone for the kind of texts and movies which make up the target material to be surveyed in this thesis. Literary works which propagated the reinvigoration of Native American characters like Pocahontas or King Philip, literary works which vividly delved into a good wallow of sentimental retrospective of the vanishing Native American and in the same breath presented a well-designed method of compensating for the gradual loss of this comforting cultural asset: by going Native, by embracing values which all of a sudden seemed so self-evident and nevertheless had been neglected throughout the decades before – for the sake of higher goals such as expansion, modernization, cultural independence, and acquisition of land and property. Now was the time when a James Fenimore Cooper could let his wild and noble Chingachgook ride proudly next to his White brother Natty Bumppo; when he could let his Magua miraculously display all the detestable features that had been loaded upon the red man’s shoulders for so long, just to have them neutralized by the goodness of Natives like Uncas or his father. Now it was about time to rise for Leatherstocking, a man who marvelously united only the noblest and best qualities of both worlds in his, well, White character, who nevertheless chose to live a Native life and thus became the mediator between the parties on both sides of the frontier. The friendship and deep sense of unity between once warring men moved the whole new American nation and instigated – more than a hundred years after – Leslie Fiedler to make the “myth of the good companions in the wilderness” (Fiedler, 50) one of the four myths which created the true image of the West.38 Following Fiedler’s train of thought, to go Native, thus, becomes an essential aspect of the Western – a fact which we have to bear in mind if we take a closer look at movies like The Last Samurai or Avatar. At first glance, these motion pictures do not appear Western at all, but upon closer examination they turn out to carry the spirit of a true Western quite well. In some cases they appear to be even more Western than many of those classic flicks featuring yodeling actors in ridiculous 38

Cf. Fiedler, 49-120.

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Injun-costumes encircling a bunch of trigger-happy cowboys on their bareback horses. Being a commuter between the two worlds, between society and wild(er)ness, as it were, “Cooper’s frontiersman represented the ideal blend of the two cultures in a somewhat primitivistic version” (Berkhofer, 94). And although this Indianized trapper clearly played the leading part in this sentimental male fantasy, the inspiring figure of Chingachgook, the really noble savage, deserves at least as much attention as Natty Bumppo himself. Also Gaile McGregor comes, after a thorough analysis of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, to the conclusion that “[t]he Chingachgook version of the noble savage, […] with its greater maturity of conception and wider range of signification, is […] capable – at least in the abstract – of striking a modern chord” (176). Despite Chingachgook’s applicability to the new century we have to realize that the noble savage in the 20th century was “conspicuous mainly for his absence” (McGregor, 203), but he did not simply stop to exist. The peculiar thing is that all the ramifications of the concept do, in fact, only operate on a surface level, thus the apparent non-presence of it. Actually, the spectrum of different areas of deployment for the idea of the noble savage has even increased exponentially in the last century. One of the contemporary issues for which this idea could be put to good use is the Conservation Movement which gained momentum in the 1970s during the Nixon era. And environmental issues continue to make up a large part of the political agenda around the globe in the 21st century. In his study Wild in Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage, Robert Whelan presents a somewhat dire synopsis of what the noble savage has come to be over the years and through the changing seasons: The noble savage has been used to make different points at different times, depending upon the concerns of the moment. He has been in the propaganda offensive for a variety of causes, from the French Revolution to the sexual revolution. Rousseau’s attack on private property portrayed the savage as proto-communist, while the primitivist fantasies of unrestrained masculinity dreamed up by neurotics and neurasthenics like Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence went some way towards smoothing the path to power of fascist dictators. The noble savage is no longer required to prop up some of the causes for which he has been conscripted in the past. […] In recent years, however, the noble savage has turned green and appeared on the frontline of a very modern propaganda offensive. (19) To make a long story short, the concept of the noble savage has changed because times have changed. In fact, they have changed very much. And also primitivism, the -31-

initial idea behind the notion of the noble savage and going Native, has altered its face considerably in the 20th century. For McGregor, the labels for this era are “ranging from relatively neutral terms like ‘post-modern’ or ‘post-industrialized’ […] to value-laden ones like ‘post-scarcity’ or ‘post-civilized’” (1). Especially the last term expresses a trend towards a social order which is not geared to synthetic and rational modes of communal conduct, but to natural and innate reason. Now if the presence of the noble savage could not really be felt in the 20th century – and if it could be felt at all, then “only as a minor character presented in either conventionally sentimentalized terms or, more likely, due to the stigma associated with the romanticized Indian, as a parodic version of the former” (McGregor, 203-204) – when did this figure rise and ride again? When did the vanishing American, as Fiedler proposed almost fifty years ago, return? Did he at all? He did. He returned “as the alien, often witty, critic of the industrial and mass society that White intellectuals find so hard to live in. Modern writers employed the counter-cultural Indian in a way equivalent to the eighteenth-century philosophes’ use of the Noble Savage,” explains Robert Berkhofer (108, emphasis in the original). And the embers which kept the fire burning beneath the surface all these years was the “recurrent effort of Whites to understand themselves, for the very attraction of the Indian to the White imagination rests upon the contrast that lies at the core of the idea” (Berkhofer, 111).

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2.2. Going Native [T]here must be in their social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of these Aborigines having from choice become Europeans! (J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer) The truth remains the same, as another century has proved it – it is easier to turn white men into Indians than Indians into white men. (D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature) Playing Indian is a persistent tradition in American culture, stretching from the very instant of the national big bang into an ever-expanding present and future. (Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian) Over the last century, going native has become a cherished American tradition, an important – even necessary – means of defining American-European identities and histories. In its various forms, going native articulates and attempts to resolve widespread ambivalence about modernity as well as anxieties about the terrible violence marking the nation’s origins. (Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native) One might argue that there is nothing more to say about the cross-cultural phenomenon of going Native than the basic facts given in the quotes above. Another one, then, might claim that the timespan of a single human life is not enough to compose an extensive survey of this phenomenon. And both of them might be right. Perhaps there really is nothing more about going Native than its firm connection to American history and future and its longevity. And everything that goes beyond these basic facts is probably better examined in single case studies which are aimed at the investigation of the particular circumstances and stimuli which have resulted in the act of going Native in this very example. The approach chosen in this treatise will be – as it is often the case – a fusion of both opinions presented above. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the historical conditions which have fertilized the cultural soil of America for the venture of going Native. Furthermore, an account of the different reasons and motives arising from these circumstances will be given. By this means a methodological framework shall be presented which can easily be applied to particular instances involving the performance of going Native. This, then, will make up the further sections of this thesis, the application to single examples of going -33-

Native in the late 20th and the 21st century. The primary material chosen in this analysis will beautifully exemplify the development which going Native has undergone in the last two decades – the compromise being that this investigation will mainly take into consideration the act of going Native as presented in motion pictures. Nevertheless, as we will see, the reasons do not change for the most part. Sure, as the decades went by the motives were slightly adapted to the needs, desires, and anxieties of the ever-changing generations – after all going Native always served as a reserve to resort to in moments of crisis. But basically the nuts and bolts of this refuge were forged in the fire of the hissing and steaming heart of the rising American nation. 2.2.1. Till Death Do Them Part – A Historical Synopsis Going Native in its modern manifestations originates in the relations between two simultaneous late nineteenth-century events: the rise of industrial capitalism, with its associated notions of linear historical progress, and the completion of the military conquest of Native America. (Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native) To be able to fully grasp the basic historical conditions for the lift-off of going Native, we once again have to go back to the time when the image of the noble savage more and more seems to leave us and visibly gives way to a fathomless sobriety among the American settlers. They are about to witness the last years of the 19th century and, all of a sudden, an unsettling lack of perspectives begins to spread among the people of the once aspiring nation. But why? What has happened? It is 1893, and historian Frederick Jackson Turner has just put forth his paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History. In this essay Turner delineates how the mere existence of the frontier, of a parting line between civilization and savagery, has inspired the American mind since the first settlers have landed on the new continent centuries ago. The fact that there was unknown land behind this mysterious dividing line, inhabited by wild men and noble savages, those almost mythological creatures, led the American spirit per aspera ad astra. It made this country, as the proverb has it, the land of opportunity. The reason why it did take the American thinkers so long to realize what significance the existence of this crucial line of civilization actually had for the nation’s attitude was simple: It had been there all the time, and suddenly it was gone. The so-called closing of the frontier in the last decade of the 19th century plunged the -34-

American nation into a crisis, because it deprived people of their belief in a future of unlimited opportunity. “The wilderness was valuable: the wilderness was gone. This was the basic problem to be confronted,” McGregor (116) states straightforwardly, and the most obvious way of coming to terms with this fact was derived from an intellectual movement which had had its heyday almost a century ago: nostalgic Romanticism. The wilderness and all its amenities, as well as its inspiring and unsettling mysteries, had given way to the westward rushing hordes of settlers envisioning their pursuit of happiness. It had gotten lost, and “[b]ecause the disappearance of the wilderness was as rapid as the need was great, […] nostalgia was only the lowest common denominator to this reaction” (McGregor, 113). But not only Romantic retrospective and recollection did shoot up in the minds of the ones who had pushed the frontier this far. Little by little, a bitterly biting aftertaste ran down the nation’s throat und began to twist its insides. Gradually it turned into certainty that this fervently loved country had had to pay for the American dream of unhindered progress and unlimited freedom. But according to Berkhofer, this realization did not hit the American soul unexpectedly: American nature was beautiful for its wildness, its great expanse, and its unspoiled picturesqueness, but it was equally or even more beautiful in the eyes of many Whites for what it promised to become – a land of farms and a treasure house of resources for exploitation. […] The transition from wild, savage nature to a cultivated, domesticated garden in the American West was believed to be as certain as the westward movement of progress had been in European history. (92) The American nation had to learn that knowing about one’s fate is fundamentally different from enduring it. Nash identifies wilderness as the “basic ingredient of American culture. From the raw materials of the physical wilderness, Americans built a civilization. With the idea of wilderness they sought to give their civilization identity and meaning” (Nash, xi). But the crucial point is that, always, “wilderness is in danger of being loved to death” (Nash, xi). This “fatal dilemma […] of wanting to savor both civilized order and savage freedom at the same time” (Deloria, 3) is probably rendered best in D.H. Lawrence’s brilliant and moving analysis of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s paradoxical fascination with Native ways: He disliked civilisation even whilst he continued one of the most civilised of all beings. […] He knew the dreariness of living from pre-determined will, admitting no otherness, only the mechanical oneness, as of two buttons from -35-

the same machine. He wanted equality and fraternity, and he would allow nothing else. At the same time he wanted to know the mystery of the sensual being. He wanted to know the thing he determinedly excluded from knowledge. Which cannot be done. He wanted to have his cake and eat it. (203). The dilemma of simultaneously wanting to have and eat the cake seems to lie at the heart of American identity and describes what the idea of going Native is all about: a fusion of two possibilities, sometimes protruding on the one side, sometimes on the other. What remained then, after having devoured even the last few crumbs of the once rich cake of wilderness and Native life, was – as noted before – more or less a terrible hangover. There was nothing more to be explored or dreamed of, no Native Americans any more to give the vexed American salvation of the soul. And to make things even worse, there also was the awareness of the terrible manner in which the growing American nation had bereft itself of these essential goods. Now contradictions like “the discrepancy between the myth of peaceful expansion and the history of bloody conquest” (Huhndorf, 11) had to be sorted out. The omnivorous conquering of new land, the dispersion, relocation, and extinction of countless Native American people, the relentless pushing of the line of civilization, all of this preyed hard on the American mind and marked the beginning of a nationwide crisis. What followed was naturally a recollection of values once savored and a desperate drive towards everything that was deemed irretrievably lost. Going Native became part of the game. What paralleled this movement was – as we can gather from Huhndorf’s statement at the beginning of this section – “the rise of industrial capitalism” (Huhndorf, 14), or in simpler terms: the onslaught of modernity. The Industrial Revolution originated from the United Kingdom in the second half of the 18th century, and from there it spread over the rest of Europe and across the seas to North America and – what is of particular importance here, since one of the case studies, i.e. the analysis of The Last Samurai, will delve into this matter – even to Japan. What followed in the wake of modernization were individual capitalization, a rapidly developing mechanization, and a tremendous boost for international trade. These phenomena then culminated in a kind of post-industrial fallout, happening mainly on a social or even personal level. [T]he vast changes sweeping a rapidly modernizing American society created a nostalgia for origins, now embodied in the cultural imagination and the -36-

‘primitive.’ Idealizing and emulating the primitive, modernity’s other, comprised in part a form of escapism from the tumultuous modern world. Consistently, throughout the twentieth century, going native has thus been most widespread during moments of social crisis, moments that give rise to collective doubts about the nature of progress and its attendant values and practices. (Huhndorf, 14) In a nutshell, the crisis carried along by the completion of the conquest was multiplied by the full onset of modernity. Moreover, one further aspect to optimize the climate for going Native began to stir this tense situation.39 The American Revolution, although having ended a century before, now started to bear fruit, and the “rising glory paradigm” (Deloria, 75) turned its ugly face on the poor American soul, sickening it with coldness and social inconvenience. The same circumstances had made Romantic primitivism a major intellectual movement in the 19th century and even paved the savage’s way to nobility. And in fact, these phenomena are nothing but sub-forms of going Native, or the other way round. 2.2.2. Going Native in the 20th Century On the basis of the intersection of historical crises discussed above, Huhndorf sets out to give a record of similar times of upheaval in the last century which were in parts overcome by turning Native and adopting Native ways.40 She seems to ground her analysis of these eras on the categorization of Philip J. Deloria, who in his work Playing Indian uses a similar differentiation of the single periods. Deloria is credited by Huhndorf for having composed the only book-length study – up to the year 2001 – which “has analyzed the ways in which European Americans have imitated Natives to construct their individual and collective identities” (Huhndorf, 7). Nevertheless, Huhndorf’s analysis seems to be more adequate for the setting of this thesis. Whereas Deloria appears to investigate the phenomenon of going Native on a more superficial level and even renders the sheer act of dressing in feathers as an instance of it – the title of his work already drops a hint at his way of approaching the matter – Huhndorf acknowledges the practice of going Native as a truly crosscultural marvel, designed to enrich one’s own existence and to cope with the troublesome past.

39

Cf. Deloria, 7. A short synopsis of these four historical eras is given below. For a detailed account, see Huhndorf, 19-198. 40

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The first stage of the modern manifestations of going Native is marked – as said before – by “the rise of industrial capitalism” (Huhndorf, 14) and “the completion of the military conquest of Native America” (Huhndorf, 14). Huhndorf puts these events in concrete terms as she explains that “[t]he conquest enabled the romanticization of Native life and impelled European Americans to explain this history in self-justifying ways” (8). And she continues, “the historical relations between European America and Native America, particularly the nature of the conquest, play a determining role in the forms that going native has taken during the last century” (8). As every history book will tell, this conquest was of a relentless, cruel and bloody nature, and, according to Huhndorf, the denial of this violent conquest of North America has led to collective anxiety. Therefore, going Native is a technique of expressing and overcoming this angst.41 The first prominent era in the 20th century is located by Huhndorf in the years after WWI. The horrors of war had left gaping craters in the communal memory of the American nation, and the ones returning from the “slaughterhouse of Europe” (Huhndorf, 78) wished to quickly dispose of anything which reminded them of the hell experienced in European trenches. Demilitarization was the magic word, and as “[i]mperialism, too, grew increasingly suspect, as did social progress manifested in modern industrial capitalism” (Huhndorf, 78), going Native once more proved to be a comforting and consoling place of refuge.42 Then, the “turbulent 1960s and 1970s” (McGregor, 14) went down in history as an era of radical change. Also McGregor notices that whereas in the 1950s technology was proclaimed “the great liberator” (1), “[d]uring the 60s […] this technophilia turned into technophobia” (1) due to its liaison with the military industry. “Technophobia in turn stimulated neo-primitivism,” McGregor (1) continues, and “[n]eo-primitivism stimulated a cult of ‘naturalness’” (1). This, of course, brought the concept of the noble savage back into play, and all of a sudden the countercultural exploitation of the Native American gained momentum, opening up the way for a warm embrace of Native ways. The final stage of Huhndorf’s enumeration coincides with the Reagan-era, the 80s of the 20th century. A more popular association for this era, and even a generic term, would be the New Age movement, comprising a countercultural agenda and a

41 42

Cf. Huhndorf, 14. Cf. Huhndorf, 78.

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spiritual consciousness which has always been a popular asset of Native American people. In addition, Robert Whelan does not forget to remind us that “[t]he decade of the 1980s saw the emergence of the Green or environmental movement as one of the most potent forces shaping the public agenda” (20). Being convinced that our Western way of treating Mother Earth resembled a declaration of war to the planet, “[t]he only solution, according to the Greens, was a radical reassessment of our lifestyle, and this in turn would involve a reappraisal of our relationship with the rest of nature. We would have to ‘redefine our relationship with the planet’” (Whelan, 22). “Fortunately,” Whelan continues to inform us, “there were convenient rolemodels at hand. The native peoples of the earth were said to be living in the sort of harmonious relationship with nature which ensured minimal environmental damage” (22). And although Whelan, at the end of his study, comes to the conclusion that the myth of the all-ecological savage is, indeed, only a myth, the model of these Native people, supposedly living in harmony with nature, became the figurehead of the conservationist movement in the last quarter of the 20th century. And today, still, this image clings firmly to Native people, even if they are about ten feet tall and of an alarmingly bluish complexion (see Fig. 1). In each of these historical moments, Americans have returned to the Indian, reinterpreting the intuitive dilemmas surrounding Indianness to meet the circumstances of their times. (Deloria, Playing Indian) 2.2.3. Going Native Is… If we set out to grasp the complex and multilayered methodology of going Native, we will at first probably get lost in the maze-like structures and endless meanderings of this cross-cultural movement. What we can do is put the stimuli in line, examine the various responses and strip them down to a collection of the most basic motivations and underlying intentions. As far as the actual techniques, the single stages, and externally visible manifestations of going Native are concerned, we will – again – have to pursue a more eclectic approach. Documenting every single instance of anyone dressing in -39-

Indian garb would, on the one hand, go beyond the scope of this thesis, and, on the other hand, seem pointless, since the outward appearance of the culture-changing individual is of less interest than the reasons for him or her to push or act this way. Thus, simply donning feathers will not do, but it may be part of the game. The same goes for the various paths which can lead an individual to Nativeness. History is bursting with examples of Whites being adopted, assimilated, integrated and taken captive, but although the umbrella terms for the way of changing culture may be but a few, the actual mechanisms behind these keywords are as unique as the human fingerprint. Therefore, these paths, stages and indications will be analyzed on the basis of case studies, i.e. the motion pictures in question. The scope will range from captivity and adoption to the total physical incorporation of the individual. 2.2.3.1. …Escape The essential myth of the West and, therefore, of ourselves, is not the myth of John Smith and Pocahontas, no matter how we invert or distort it, but the myth of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook. Here is, for us – for better or for worse, and apparently for ever – the heart of the matter: the confrontation in the wilderness of the White European refugee from civilization and the ‘stern, imperturbable warrior.’ (Leslie A. Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American) Though put in a kind of outdated context, Fiedler gets the point across. It is all about escape. The actors behind the roles are random. The escapist might be a frail and burned-out soldier, a tenacious and good-natured environmentalist, or a white-collar capitalist stuck in the rush-hour traffic jam. They all seek to escape from something. Escape, thus, turns from the “essential myth of the West” (Fiedler, 168) into a genuine American myth, and hence to one of the core functions of going Native. Taking into consideration the historical framework examined in the previous section, the concept of escapism is easily deducible from all of the aforementioned conditions. The long-term effects of industrial capitalism drove countless numbers of city-dwellers away from the Moloch and into the clutches of a neo-primitivist world view. The quest for a pre-industrial sanctuary let the masses disregard the benefits of technological progress. Instead, they traded their roles in a well-structured society for a somewhat wilder existence, closer to their original homeland and, supposedly, -40-

closer to one another. The rising spirit of the American nation left people longing for a counterbalance. All these miniature escapes led towards the Native. In a slightly chauvinist fit, Fiedler goes on and refers to the core myth of escapism as “the myth of the runaway male” (50). Generously ignoring these undertones, we can adapt this basic principle and establish a myth which fits our own purposes, the myth of the escapist. This escapist is also to be found in the very instances when the American consciousness clashes with the nation’s – so to speak – problematic history. And this does not even have to do with a coming to terms with the past, but with a simple way of working up the horrors and cruelties which the Americans have experienced in the violent forging of their nation. Huhndorf wittingly picks out a peculiar example and tries to demonstrate how much of an escapist lies in Lieutenant John Dunbar, army officer, aspiring Pawnee, and protagonist of the box office hit Dances with Wolves.43 What Dunbar escapes is neither modernity nor bloodshed alone, but the effect which both phenomena together conjured up in the American mind: madness. “The character is, in part, fleeing to the edges of civilization from a European-American world apparently gone mad in the bloody civil war” (Huhndorf, 1). This madness is also one of the central themes in Fiedler’s work, who puts forth the thesis that only in “states of altered consciousness” (Berkhofer, 111) will European Americans be able to go back to the peaceful and innocent times of their evolutionary youth.44 And also in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is identified as a New Western45 by Fiedler, the White anti-hero McMurphy gets lost in the wave of madness which White civilization has brought over itself. Significantly, the only character fit to break free of the metaphorical madhouse of this society is the Chief, the Indian, the Native one. Another example showing that going Native is not only covering up scars received in a remote past but can also mend fresh wounds, is the frequent use of this cultural tactic in connection with the Vietnam dilemma. In the late 1960s, reacting to the Vietnam War, “American institutions […] called for a revolution at home in order to redirect America’s priorities and to achieve a more humane way of life for 43

Cf. Huhndorf, 1-5, and section 3 of this thesis. Cf. Fiedler, 174-87, and Berkhofer, 110-11. 45 What defines the New Western, according to Fiedler, is psychedelia instead of nostalgia. Whereas the traditional Western sought to remember and worship the past, the aim of the New Western is escape through transcendence and hallucination. For a comprehensive treatment, see Fiedler, 169-87. 44

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all peoples,” explains Berkhofer (110). And he continues, “[i]f alternative ways of life were proposed as the solution to America’s problems, then the communal and spiritual foundations of Indian life offered a superior example” (110). 2.2.2.2. …Conservation And it is a familiar characteristic of human nature that almost every step towards what would generally be regarded as increased sophistication or progress is accompanied by misgivings frequently leading in turn to doubts about the whole enterprise of civilization. (Michael Bell, Primitivism) The connection between going Native and a conservationist attitude is almost self-explanatory. In large parts it rests upon the 19th-century noble savage myth and basic primitivist efforts during the Romantic period. “Western consumerism and industrialism were traced to the arrogance towards nature” (Whelan, 21), and once more going Native turned out to be the most promising way “to encounter the authentic amidst the anxiety of urban industrial and postindustrial life” (Deloria, 7). There has always been a fair degree of respect for – and sometimes even reasonable fear of – the miracles of modernity and technical progress, but at no point in time this way of thinking gained more momentum than towards the end of the 20th century. The New Age movement appeared on the scene, motivated by “[q]uests for a connection to the land, spiritual regeneration, and other forms of Native culture” (Huhndorf, 17). Thus, going Native became popular among followers of this movement in order to “remedy modernity’s ills” (Huhndorf, 17). Also Robert Whelan reports this tendency: The wisdom of the tribal peoples, and its favorable contrast with the cruel rapacity of the white man’s approach to the environment, has become one of the mantras of the Green movement. (23) But not only due to the onslaught of industrialism was going Native presented with a conservationist touch. Particularly when the frontier had disappeared and there was nothing left of the once virgin grounds of the West, the Americans had to face a rude awakening and desperately struggled to save what could not be saved, because it was not even there anymore. As a consequence, “nature, that purported touchstone of health and sanity, inevitably became touched with nostalgia” (McGregor, 113), and nostalgia, in turn, nurtured the worship of Native lifestyles. Wilderness had been smothered by the passionate embrace of civilization, and, all of a sudden, the significance of this Native element became evident. Images -42-

of edenic paradises were held in high regard; dreams were dreamed of a golden age, when wilderness and Native life had still been part of the American nature, and loci amoeni were sought for, where the poor American soul could hope for regeneration. 2.2.2.3. …Redemption The first colonists saw in America an opportunity to regenerate their fortunes, their spirits, and the power of their church and nation; but the means to that regeneration ultimately became the means of violence, and the myth of regeneration became the structuring metaphor of the American experience. (Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence) Regeneration through Violence, the pointed title of Slotkin’s uncovering examination of America’s origins, cannot even be said to tear open old wounds, because these wounds will, in fact, never fully heal – cuts and bruises which the American nation has inflicted upon itself by conquering and quenching the continent regardless of the consequences. But what the nation has constantly tried is finding ways of coping with the past, of overcoming it, ways of redemption. On December 29, 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre marked the negative climax of four centuries full of mistreatment and ill-fated conduct regarding the Native Americans, and still this dark chapter of American history lies heavy on the nation’s shoulders. 80 years later, in 1971, Dee Alexander Brown’s startling book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West set sail to plunge the American conscience into an even deeper crisis. Brown fiercely pulled the intolerable discrimination against Natives to pieces and thus put straight the Americans’ view of their history as well as their self-conception.46 In addition, the political environment into which this book was released was just about to open the gates for a full-fledged environmentalist upswing, and the alternative ways of Native tribes fitted – as has already been discussed – perfectly into this setting. In short, the violent making of the nation had to be compensated for. And given the fact that it could not be made undone, the American conscience had to be cleared in other ways. Huhndorf explicates that contradictions like the discrepancy between the myth of peaceful expansion and the history of bloody conquest […] reemerge again and again in the cultural imagination. It is, perhaps, for this reason that European Americans have always been obsessed with stories of the nation’s origins, repeatedly retelling and refiguring their collective past in self-justifying ways. (11) 46

Cf. Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.

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And these stories of the nation’s past will serve as a basis to put the motives worked out in this thesis to the test. Dances with Wolves, a sentimental retrospective blunting the edges of history with endless views of pastel-colored prairies and White-Indian peace of mind; The Last Samurai, a magnificent reappraisal of the Indian Wars, cleverly trading moccasins for kimonos and tomahawks for katanas47; and finally Avatar, waging war against environmental devastation whilst redeeming selfinflicted dilemmas resulting from America’s countless wars. One of these wars was the Vietnam War. The inconsistencies of the government’s overall Vietnam policy and the borderline experiences of the American troops in Indochina culminated in a nationwide crisis which even today continues to burden the American mind. Surprisingly or not, going Native turned into a safe haven for the ones broken and torn apart by the war. What had worked well in the 19th century as a compensation for the brutal dispersion and extinction of Native Americans, worked a hundred years later just as well with a different war. In order to appease their conscience, many Americans saw a promising way out in going Native. This peculiar circumstance turns the act of going Native into a culturally inherited practice, since it is applicable regardless of historic, ethnic or political background. What this cathartic act can look like is brilliantly exemplified by the American poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder. In his poem “A Curse to the Men in Washington, Pentagon” he speaks of shedding Americanness and Whiteness entirely, and turning Native instead:

47

The katana is the traditional Japanese long sword carried by the samurai.

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As you shoot down the Vietnamese girls and men in their fields Burning and chopping, Poisoning and blighting. So surely I hunt the white man down in my heart. […] I won’t let him live. The ‘American’ I’ll destroy. The ‘Christian’ has long been dead. […] As I kill the white man the ‘American’ in me And dance out the Ghost Dance: To bring back America, the grass and the streams, To trample your throat in your dreams. (Snyder)48 Snyder here aspires to perform the Ghost Dance, which in the 19th century became the ultimate expression of Native rebellion against European settlers. The Ghost Dance movement met its calamitous final chapter in the aforementioned Wounded Knee Massacre, which even today impels scholars and historians to compare the dire fate of Native American people during the westward expansion to the Holocaust of the 20th century. There is no question that deeds of this kind can never be redeemed by whatsoever actions taken. In this respect, Huhndorf’s approach seems to gain practicality, for she implies that this path of redemption through going Native for the most part only leads to concealment of the actual trauma in the end.49

48

The poem was originally published in the American countercultural magazine The Realist 81 (Aug 1968): 2. For a scan of this issue and the relevant page, see . 49 Cf. Huhndorf, 5 and 12.

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2.2.2.4. …Regeneration While those who go native frequently claim benevolence toward Native peoples, they reaffirm white dominance by making some (usually distorted) vision of Native life subservient to the needs of the colonizing culture. (Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native) When the term regeneration is used in this subsection, it differs from the concept which Richard Slotkin has in mind in Regeneration through Violence. Slotkin’s idea of regeneration hides its causes in a grey and distant past. Just like R.W.B. Lewis’ American Adam is “an individual emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry” (Lewis, 5), Slotkin perceives the early American colonists as creatures sine historia. According to him, settlers came to the new lands in order to create a mythology of their own, to design a genuine national character, regardless of what they left in the old world. What my use of the term regeneration pertains to is something different. In fact, history – the aspect sought to be covered up by new experiences in Lewis’ and Slotkin’s theories – is of utmost importance to my approach. In this thesis, regeneration will hold negative overtones, though it seems to be one of the core functions of going Native – yet an apparently unintentional one. The dilemma is as follows: As the analysis of the ever changing view of Native American people and the troubled mutual past of European Americans and Natives has shown, both ethnic groups maneuvered themselves, or were maneuvered, into now well-established roles in the play of history. If one looks at the different motives and functions of going Native that have been discussed so far, it could be argued that an act of transcultural migration is actually aimed at breaking up these encrusted role traditions. The best example of this drive is the myth of the noble savage. The dominant ethnic group realizes its moral and social inferiority and moves towards the other, the counter-culture. The underlying problem is that by presenting a new distribution of the roles and thus trying to restructure the balance of power between the ethnic groups, the old roles are reinforced in many instances. This phenomenon begins with one of the most popular and significant pieces of writing in American literature, James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales, and is still to be found in contemporary stories of going Native, like our examples The Last Samurai or Avatar. Of course the protagonists of all these stories live and love Nativeness to the bottom of their hearts, -46-

and they fight ruthlessly to defend their new homes against the evil grip of the West. They incorporate “the ideal blend of the two cultures” (Berkhofer, 94), but, after all, the bodies to possess these perfect hybrids are always White. Of course this phenomenon is a matter of fact, since going Native clearly has to begin in a society fundamentally different from the Native society. Thus, the protagonist will always be non-Native to a certain degree. But still, an underlying sub-routine of the whole enterprise of going Native will always be a straightening of European standards and a dilution of historical ballast. The sheer impetus arises not from benevolence towards the Native people, but merely from abhorrence of one’s own corrupted society and the problematic past. Going Native becomes a simple corrective, finally leading to the regeneration of the European American society. Also Dances with Wolves, even though being claimed to be one of the first motion pictures to give a fair and favorable depiction of Native life, has its dark sides, as Huhndorf notices: Not only does Dunbar’s character ironically demonstrate white superiority even as he goes native, his foray into the Indian world also redraws the boundaries separating racially marked Native American and EuropeanAmerican societies. (3) Thus, although going Native is actually always accompanied by exclusively good intentions towards the target society, the act de facto often happens to the detriment of it. In this way, “Dances with Wolves, in other words, actually reinforces the racial hierarchies it claims to destabilize” (Huhndorf, 3). It regenerates the very social structures it seeks to resolve. The above problem might be eliminated if this redistribution of the roles is not perceived as a redefinition of ethnic spaces, but as a transference of identities. Following this approach, the qualities and assets of the Native culture are thought to become absorbed in another society, just like they were being passed on from one generation to another. Again, one of the best examples at hand is Dances with Wolves, where Dunbar redeems the American soul from its sins of the past by going Native. Consequently, the whole movie symbolically purges white America of its responsibility for the terrible plights of Native Americans, past and present. It thus assures contemporary European Americans (including Costner, who reaped vast profits from the film) of the legitimacy of their power and possessions. Because real Indians were destined to disappear, European Americans are the proper heirs of ‘Indianness’ as well as of the land and resources of the conquered Natives. (Huhndorf, 4-5) -47-

Nevertheless, a blue-eyed perspective like the one presented above will only function in one direction, and its applicability does not seem wide-ranging at all. In fact, this thesis of identity transference only appears to be an adaptation of the redemption motive, whereas the actual aims behind it are again reassurance of the mind, suppression, and concealment. 2.2.2.5. …Renaissance Speaking of the inheritance of Indianness, the next motive represents an extrapolation of this thought, though enveloped in a more practical wrapping. The motive of renaissance will not be derived from political and developmental circumstances of the past and present, nor will it be the result of an intercultural exchange between ethnic groups. Renaissance, here, will simply refer to a (mainly)50 spiritual rebirth. Together with the last one of our motives, self-discovery, the phenomenon of renaissance originates in the field of developmental psychology. It is a vehicle of regeneration, too, but merely the regeneration of the individual. Thus, the application of the renaissance motive to literary illustrations of the going Native myth will turn out to be very rewarding, as we will see. The Native American “dies giving birth,” says Leslie Fiedler; he “’vanishes’ without a surviving bodily heir in order to leave room for his spiritual offspring” (119). This spiritual offspring, which Fiedler talks about, is – without any doubt – the White man gone Native. And Fiedler immediately produces the most magnificent example of this species – Natty Bumppo. The hero of Cooper’s Leatherstocking pentalogy is “neither a White Man nor a Red, but something new under the sun, the archetypal Westerner whose legend is the essential myth of America” (Fiedler, 119). But a spiritual death along with partial renaissance is not exclusively left up to the Native American in the literary landscape. Upon closer examination of relevant texts and movies one discovers that a metaphysical death accompanied by a kind of cathartic experience represents almost a necessity to prepare the individual for the mythical journey into the Native world. Heart and soul of the aspirant are purified in a spiritual act. It is like an exorcism, driving out the demons of the past.

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Avatar happens to be one of the first going Native epics to introduce the possibility of both, a spiritual and a physical rebirth.

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A magnificent example of a ritual with such purgative function can be found in another brilliant illustration of a European settler going Native. In the 1970s motion picture A Man Called Horse, starring Richard Harris, the central scene is the so-called Sun Dance (see Fig. 2). Harris plays the snobbish English aristocrat John Morgan, who is taken captive by a Sioux tribe and forced to live among them like an animal. In order to prove himself worthy of becoming a full member of the tribe – he even wants to be chief one day – he has to undergo an excruciating procedure. During the Sun Dance ritual he is hung up on hooks which have been driven through his pectorals and answers this severe act of torture by shrilly uttering the name of his former savior, Jesus. Then, he immediately passes out and drifts off into the abovementioned “state[…] of altered consciousness” (Berkhofer, 111), allowing him to dive into the Native world. In this otherworld, a Native animal spirit, the Great White Buffalo, speaks to him, and – taking into consideration Morgan’s last word before his passing out – has a decent set of Christian insights ready for the stuck-up Lord: “Speak the truth in humility to all people. Only then can you be a true man and free of your chains” (A Man Called Horse). Thus, the moral obligations loaded upon Morgan by this conversion do not differ all too much from his former moral code. What a convenient coincidence for White society. What is even more impressive about this scene is the expressive use of imagery brilliantly staged by director Elliot Silverstein. When John Morgan is pulled upwards in the tent, the last thing he sees before losing his consciousness is an orange-red burning ball of light. It is nothing else but the sun shining through the hole in the roof of the tepee, but for Morgan it becomes the light at the end of the tunnel, leading him the way to his new existence, i.e. his life as a reborn Native tribesman. Then, when Morgan’s thoughts whirl in agony, he sees himself in full European American gown; a storm arises and piece by piece tears this unnatural corset off Morgan’s body until he remains standing all-naked in his entire splendor: the newborn American Adam. Renaissance. -49-

This final metamorphosis is foreshadowed by one particular detail which goes hand in hand with the phenomena of Native renaissance and self-discovery: the act of renaming. The first attribute of his European appearance which Morgan loses is his name, one of his most-distinguishing features in European civilization. And although the name Horse is initially chosen to violate the English Lord’s snobbish attitude, turning the aristocrat into a mere workhorse, it simultaneously becomes his ticket to Indianness, spiritually equating him with renowned tribe members who are called Black Eagle, Striking Bear or Running Deer. This topos is very common in illustrations of the going Native myth. Old Shatterhand, the non-Native blood brother of Karl May’s Winnetou, is probably one of the best-known examples in German literature. And also in Dances with Wolves, Lt. Dunbar’s Indian name is the key to his true identity, as will be illustrated later. 2.2.2.6. …Self-Discovery As I heard my Sioux name being called over and over, I knew for the first time who I really was. (Dances with Wolves) The above quote marks the end of Dunbar’s successful journey into the Native world: Having his fixed position in the realm of the Sioux, a position which can be referred to by using the name he has been assigned, makes his transformation complete. And being an inherent part of this society in turn makes Dunbar realize who he should have been all the years. Like Huhndorf puts it, “the socially alienated character uncovers his own ‘true’ identity” (5). The aspect of alienation plays an important role in this conversion. In order to realize that someone’s previous existence has been but an unreal presence, a farce, the individual has to be at war with the conventions and systems of the original society he or she comes from. After taking one or several paths to Nativeness, be it escape, redemption or even renaissance, the individual becomes “something new under the sun” (Fiedler, 119). Also Philip Deloria confirms that going Native, or “Indian Play” as he calls it, “has been an intercultural meeting ground upon which Indians and non-Indians have created new identities” (187). The best possible outcome is that this new identity coincides with the individual’s true identity, which allows him or her to finally remain well-balanced and satisfied.

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Unsurprisingly, most of the true identities which protagonists all across our literary target area discover conspicuously diverge towards a Native existence. After all, Kirkpatrick Sale explicates in the epilogue of his comprehensive work on Columbus’ world-shaking enterprise that “[t]here is only one way to live in America, and there can be only one way, and that is as Americans – the original Americans – for that is what the earth of America demands” (369). However, every change of one’s maxims and standards necessitates two different actions: turning away from outdated and adamant structures and setting out for new horizons. For our current purposes, these horizons lie deep down in the West.51 After all, the West remains always in some sense true to itself, as long as the Indian, no matter how subdued, penned off, or costumed for the tourist trade, survives – as long as we can confront there a creature radically different from the old self we seek to recreate in two weeks’ vacation. (Leslie A. Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American)

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Except for Cpt. Nathan Algren, who goes East instead – although he actually would have sailed westwards from San Francisco to get to Japan.

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3. Dances with Wolves The mythological desirability of the West, the seemingly innate longing for the otherness of the lands beyond the line of civilization – this is what drives the hero of Kevin Costner’s Hollywood epic Dances with Wolves. In the decades of onedimensional and stereotype-laden Cowboy-and-Indian flicks, revisionist Westerns were at best to be treated as a sub-genre. This was about to change when in 1990 Costner’s Lieutenant John J. Dunbar set out to fight for a reappraisal of the Native American in film and took a sincere leap towards true appreciation of Native ways. John Dunbar’s dream of seeing the vast and untouched hunting grounds beyond the frontier keeps him from ending up as a disabled Civil War veteran. After being granted his – so to speak – last wish, he is moved to the middle of nowhere, Fort Sedgwick, a remote enclave in the West far from city centers and battlefields. Being all alone, he is able to find peace of mind and discover a new world. This new world is inhabited by men carrying names like Kicking Bird or Wind In His Hair, venerable Sioux tribesmen, and by Stands With A Fist, a White woman gone Native living with the Sioux tribe, who in the end becomes Dunbar’s travel guide on his way to Nativeness. Gradually the American Dunbar turns into the Native Dances With Wolves, a man commuting between the worlds, accompanied by his horse Cisco and a lone stray wolf. What was so special about Costner’s interpretation of the Western myth was the change of perspective which combines a loving gaze at American landscape and history with an upright affection for Native American life. Dances with Wolves marked the climax of a series of attempts to straighten out the crooked perception of Native Americans in film which had been established in the preceding decades. And this daring step was to be rewarded. 3.1. Critics’ Voices In 1990, Dances with Wolves was a true box office hit which did not only prove to be liked in terms of numbers ($184 million) but also when it comes to journalistic and academic criticism. In the reissue of his article “Going Indian” in 1998, Robert Baird mentions that “the film’s widespread success had […] much to do with its updating of the going-Indian myth” (“Dances,” 167).52 52

Since I used both, the original article “Going Indian: Discovery, Adoption, and Renaming Toward a ‘True American:’ From Deerslayer to Dances with Wolves,” published in 1996, and its reissue “Going

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Winding up the historical development of Western movies and the involved portrayal of Native American characters, Berkhofer recapitulates that “the Indian was generally depicted as a person of little culture and less language” (103). As far as Costner’s amendments to these conventions are concerned, Hal Hinson from the Washington Post says: ‘Dances With Wolves’ presents itself as a corrective to the classic Hollywood western’s version of American history […]. There’s a residue of 1960s counter-consciousness in the telling of this 1860s saga. Costner approaches his Indian characters with a respect verging on awe; no filmmaker has ever portrayed the Native American way of life with such passionate dedication. […] These are the most magnificent-looking Indians in movie history, the noblest and the most humane. (Hinson) Other critics fell in love with the monumental power of Costner’s pictures of nature in Dances with Wolves, and this love would ultimately induce some reviewers and scholars to see in the movie’s idyllic plains the American Garden of Eden. The film critic Mary Ann Johanson expressed this perception of Dances very vividly. She refers to the movie as “one of the most visually and emotionally stunning movies […] ever […], a glimmer of another world [and] a majestic requiem for a world that is gone” (Johanson). Facing this passionate affection towards the movie as well as its amazing success, it is hard to believe that there were aspects to be criticized, but there were. Baird gives a concise overview of the movie’s main points of criticism, stating that it was labeled “childishly naïve” and that others complained the film was anachronistic, an allegory of Hollywood liberalism (historical guilt, environmentalism, middle-class feminism, and the New Age Indian wannabe syndrome) rather than an accurate history of the meeting of white and Sioux cultures during the 1860s. (“Dances,” 167) Thus, some of the motives and stimuli carved out in the previous sections, e.g. environmentalism or the purging of historical guilt, not only speak for the movie’s outstanding development of the going Native myth, but also give cause for critics to insinuate ulterior motives to the director. There were, however, some critics who on the one hand conceded Costner a skillful touch for monumental arrangements, but on the other hand missed a deeper sense in these virtuous landscape drawings. Nick Schager puts it this way: Costner captures a dizzying array of gorgeous panoramic compositions that situate tiny silhouettes of humans amidst expansive stretches of green fields Indian: Dances with Wolves,” published in 1998, I will henceforth refer to the earlier article as “Discovery” and the latter article as “Dances.”

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and blue skies. What the first-time director doesn’t do, however, is infuse these images with any thematic weight or import—they are, in the end, just pretty landscape shots. (Schager) And also the other aspect of Dances that had triggered most of the positive feedback – the innovative depiction of Native Americans – served as a cause for criticism. Some felt it to be too wholesome, some too superficial. Jonathan Rosenbaum reprehends: For all the film’s respect for the Sioux, it has surprisingly little to tell us about their culture, and the implicit link between the hero’s wolf friend and his Sioux friends is rather emblematic of the sentimentality behind the overall conception. (Rosenbaum) A similar chord is struck by Karsten Fitz, who in his essay “Vanishing Indians and Whites Going Native: Screen Indians in Transnational Perspective” observes that [w]hile a world-wide blockbuster Hollywood movie like Dances With Wolves (1990), which triggered the re-emergence of Indians on the Hollywood screen, seems at first glance generally respectful of Native Americans, it still completely relegates Native Americans to the past and tells the story of ‘the Vanishing Indian’; and it tells it from an exclusively Euro-American perspective – from the perspective of a white man ‘going native.’ (63) This miniature survey of the critic’s target areas for either laud or censure easily develops a momentum of its own which straightforwardly leads us to the core of the matter. Both positive and negative criticism of this motion picture revolves precisely around those concepts which form the central ideas of the theoretical framework developed in this thesis. As a matter of fact, Dances with Wolves turns out to be a model testing object to prove that going Native in all its facets still holds sway over the American mind in the 20th century. And from thereon, we can follow the development of this phenomenon into the new millennium.

3.2. Going Native in Dances with Wolves There are many travels that Union Army Officer Lieutenant John J. Dunbar performs in the course of the truly epic tale of Dances with Wolves. First, there is the banal geographical journey from the sickbed of a Civil War field hospital at St. David’s Field in Tennessee (in the year 1863) to the outmost rim of civilization, the frontier, and the last sign of Eastern culture and progress, the dilapidated Fort Sedgwick in the area of South Dakota. Then there is, as Baird suggests, a journey “backward into history, back to tribalism” (”Dances,” 154). The Sioux medicine man Kicking Bird characterizes Dunbar’s way as “the trail of a true human being” -55-

(Dances),53 and the movie’s tagline finally suggests that Dunbar’s journey is a journey to his inner self: “Lieutenant John Dunbar is about to discover the frontier... within himself” (Dances). There is no doubt that John Dunbar makes a journey and actually he does not make this journey by chance. Granted a wish after his suicide attempt, Dunbar utters one of the most loaded lines in the whole motion picture: “I’ve always wanted to see the frontier […] before it’s gone” (Dances). And by this line manifold possibilities of interpretation are triggered. Some read in it an allusion to the Vanishing Indian, some take from it an attack on the destructive tendency of eastern civilization, i.e. a demonstration of conservationist thought, and some simply see in it Dunbar’s innate longing for natural harmony and the wish to go Native. Robert Baird gives a short and comprehensive overview of the motifs that can lie behind a 1990s Hollywood attempt to stage a renewed dramatization of the going Native myth.54 The first idea that he mentions is ascribed to Claude Lévi-Strauss and states that “myths and narratives reconcile cultural contradictions and bring opposing forces and values together” (Baird, “Dances,” 154). Baird locates these contradictions within Dances with Wolves and, thus, clearly identifies two of the core motives which were derived from historical fact and American attitude in the preceding chapter: redemption and conservation. Dances With Wolves is a cinematic myth that addresses still unresolved traumas and contradictions of American history, as well as current contradictions between industrialism and environmentalism, tribal society and industrial society, the melting pot (assimilation) and multiculturalism (racial/ethnic pride). (Baird, “Dances,” 155) The second motif presented by Baird is derived from The American Adam by R.W.B. Lewis, who describes – as we have heard before – this new American hero as “emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry, untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances of family and race” (5). In accordance with Slotkin’s later conception of regeneration, Lewis presents the new American as an individual capable of dissociating himself from the troubled and controversial past, finding himself amidst the untouched and paradisiacal surroundings of the frontier. And again, John Dunbar meets the requirements. He is emancipated from history, for he has already come to terms with his past (or rather fled it) since the day he decided to 53

For the sake of simplicity and shortness the movie Dances with Wolves will in quotes henceforth only be referred to as Dances. 54 Cf. Baird, “Dances,” 154-56.

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end his life with his reckless suicide attempt on horseback. He is bereft of ancestry, since there is not a single allusion made to Dunbar’s family background within the whole movie and the only connection that remains between him and his (though only immediate) past are the entries he makes in his journal – and nothing else. And, finally, he can remain untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances of family and race and is therefore able to meet his future Native brothers with astonishing uprightness and blissful awe. And this has made the movie become a powerful advertisement for Native life. As the third motif behind the myth of going Native, Baird introduces a theory by Sigmund Freud.55 Freud’s hypothesis of the family romance accounts for some children’s tendency to exalt their parents and likewise the happy days of their youth by replacing mother and father by morally superior people. In this way, a young adult man, for example, can regain the feeling of innocence and security he experienced “when his father seemed to him the noblest and strongest of men and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women” (Freud, 241). Dunbar pursues the same goal. In fact, everybody who goes Native does. Freud’s theory of the family romance is nothing more but a rephrasing of chronological primitivism, i.e. the yearning for a desirable past. In Dunbar’s case, the “imaginative romances,” the “grander people” (Freud, 239), are the Sioux, and he not only recognizes them as his new family but also lets go of all ties to his former existence – basically the one of a White soldier. Hence, Dunbar sheds it like a second skin and enters a new level of reality. In a way, he is born again, and this renaissance allows him to perceive this new world and its dwellers through the innocent eyes of the American Adam. Accordingly, he expresses the idea of the family romance when he sits at the campfire with his lupine companion, Two Socks, shortly before he actually does the dance with the wolf: The Indians have a great pull for me that goes beyond curiosity. There is something about them and I feel myself drawn to them in a way much stronger than my obligations to the military. (Dances) The pull Dunbar speaks of is characterized as a force considerably stronger than the ties which used to chain him to his former life, just as if this new level of existence had always been the “true identity” which Huhndorf (5) tells us about. As a matter of fact Dunbar unites several aspects of the motifs mentioned above. He returns to tribalism and, by doing so, also to environmentalism. He 55

Freud, “Family Romances: 1909,” 235-42.

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represents the idea of the melting pot by being assimilated to Sioux culture. He is an American Adam amidst the frontier’s Garden of Eden, and he feels an innate affection for the noble-minded “sons of the prairie” (Catlin, 19), which in the end is the most important precondition of his going Native. Dunbar’s disorientation, alienation, and feeling of emptiness and valuelessness are healed, in a sense, by living in this traditional ‘other’ culture. Native Americans here are surrogates for values and feelings of belonging, family, harmony, etc. which this alienated war veteran cannot find in his own society and culture. (Fitz, 72) In order to illustrate Dunbar’s journey from East to West, from civilization to wilderness, from industrialization to nature and, finally, from European to Native American properly, director Costner has made use of manifold special devices – some of them most evident, some most latent. Needless to say, the metamorphosis will leave traces, be it on Dunbar’s body, be it on his mind. There are certain changes of John J. Dunbar’s persona which have to be examined; there are certain rituals which have to be followed, and there are certain codes which have to be deciphered. Then, this extraordinarily illustrative example of the going Native myth will shine with flying colors.

3.2.1. Cyclic Composition of the Movie The act of going Native cannot happen from one day to another, yet not even from one year to another. It seems that director Costner was aware of the fact that he would have to demonstrate this slowly evolving process accordingly. Probably no narrative device in Dances with Wolves expresses ongoing development better than the one of cyclic composition. This means that Costner introduces certain scenarios relatively early in the movie and lets them reappear later. The peculiar thing is that these scenes either reappear in a different context or exhibit a slightly changed sequence of events, which finally makes these scenes act as a constant yardstick for Dunbar’s way from White to Native. One scene which contains such devices in high density is the first friendly encounter between Dunbar and a small Native legation led by Kicking Bird and Wind In His Hair. The preceding encounters turned out to be rather unfruitful since they went hand in hand with constant attempts of intimidation and partial selfembarrassment of Dunbar as an “Indian fighter” (Dances), as the mentally deficient

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Major Fambrough calls him at Fort Hayes.56 In this scene, finally, the first productive interaction of the cultures happens and Costner manages to stage this gradual approach magnificently (see Fig. 3). At the beginning of the scene, one can see Wind In His Hair and Kicking Bird slowly approaching Dunbar, while a group of Sioux is waiting in the distance. In almost the next shot, when Dunbar produces a coffee grinder, this group has already gathered around him just like they would gather around a campfire. In addition, each of them is holding a metal coffee cup, and by this simple device Costner achieves two things: In the first place, he expresses development via the use of remoteness and proximity, employing the approach of the Native party as a metaphor for the coming closer of the cultures. This cultural intermingling is rather comically shown by equipping each Native with a coffee cup. From a visual perspective, the gleaming coffee cups contrast brilliantly with the ordinary Native vesture, which drops a further hint at the obvious cultural differences between Dunbar and his new acquaintances. By finally showing a coffee cup dangling from a Native weapon at the end of the scene the director points at an aspect of the movie which will be discussed later in more detail: The import of the industrial age into the natural wilderness of the frontier. Also the running gag of the movie, which is Dunbar’s Eastern way of greeting his new friends by waving at them, is part of Costner’s cyclic composition. The Natives’ reactions to Dunbar’s gesture gradually shift from simple perplexity to pleasing reply by waving back. Only Wind In His Hair constantly seems to resist doing so and is ultimately frowned at by his tribal brothers for not returning the greeting. Nevertheless, Wind In His Hair’s relationship to Dunbar serves as one of the most important indicators of Dunbar’s acceptance among the Natives in the course of the movie. It is his line “I am Wind In His Hair. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?” (Dances) that expresses the strength of Dunbar’s belonging to his tribe in one of the last scenes of the movie. And of 56

For more information about these scenes see section 3.3.2.

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course this scene is a further example of a meaningful parallelism of scenes, since the first words that Wind In His Hair says to Dunbar are: “I am Wind In His Hair. Do you see that I am not afraid of you?” (Dances). But also the protagonist Dunbar himself is used by Costner to exemplify the successful journey from soldier to Sioux. It is Dunbar’s first riding out to visit the neighboring Sioux village that shows how deeply rooted he still is in Eastern virtues. He puts on his shiniest uniform and his hat, mounts his horse Cisco, and lets the American flag sway in the wind as he rides across the plains of the prairie – a truly heroic image according to Eastern standards. Amanda Smith puts forth that Dunbar makes his final journey willingly, yet goes dressed in the uniform of his former identity and carries the flag of the world from which he has come. A flag, raised high and brightly colored, is a symbol of defiance and power. […] Such symbolism depicting Dunbar’s transformation is eminently accessible to audiences and assists in making other interpretations. (201) When Dunbar finally reaches the village, the Sioux see nothing but an enemy in him. His first riding out is then perfectly mirrored in his last coming home. Dunbar, who has already gone Native from top to bottom, returns to Fort Sedgwick one last time to fetch his journal, but the place is already crowded with Union troops. As soon as they see Dunbar in his all-natural Native dress, riding a horse without saddle, they – just like the Sioux at the beginning of the movie – see nothing but an enemy in him. By depicting Dunbar’s last return in this way, the director manages to “show how divorced he has become from his former existence. Because he resists letting go of his new identity, he fails to be recognized” (Smith, 203). Another instance of the movie’s cyclic arrangement which helps shape the going Native myth is the scene in which the shabby coachman Timmons appears. When he and Dunbar come across a corpse on the way to Fort Sedgwick, Timmons bends over and says: “I’ll bet someone back east is going, ‘Now why don’t he write?’” (Dances), having in mind that this poor soul must have relatives back home who miss him. And this is just the effect that Costner tries to achieve when Dunbar, who has just returned to Fort Sedgwick after having spent a long period with the Sioux, meets the wolf Two Socks and says: “I bet you were thinking, ‘Now why don’t he write?’” (Dances). He already considers himself a relative of the wolf, one of the wolf’s pack, and this relation without any doubt is a central pillar of his bridge to the Native shore.

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Another scene featuring Dunbar and Wind In His Hair belongs in this category. At a feast after the buffalo hunt57 the two men happen to meet outside the Tepee and trade parts of their clothing. “Good trade!” Dunbar comments this scene, and Wind In His Hair does not seem to understand his words at first. In the next shot, when one of the Sioux wears Dunbar’s hat and gives him some Native gear in return, Wind In His Hair suddenly comes up with “Good trade!” and by doing so exhibits that also he, Dunbar’s most vehement rival in the Sioux clan, is eager to learn from the stranger and willing to accept him among his people. This last example already takes us to the next device that is made use of in the illustration of the going Nativemyth: language. 3.2.2. Language Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus) Wittgenstein’s famous quote perfectly demonstrates the function of language in Dances with Wolves. Fort Sedgwick is the border of the frontier, the border of the civilized area, the border of the world that is known to Dunbar. At first sight this border is only marked by a dilapidated log cabin referred to as Fort. The true dimensions of this border do not come to the surface until the two cultures clash in terms of communication. Due to the curiosity of Kicking Bird, the otherwise quiet part in the movie, the two worlds begin to intermingle. In the scene of the first friendly encounter the men make use of language to communicate for the first time, and even a simple word like buffalo, performed with an adequate measure of mimicry, causes common joy and relief. Speaking of language, one of the most interesting innovations to be found in Dances with Wolves is the fact that quite a large part of the dialogue in the movie is spoken in Lakota. The most significant use of the Lakota language is actually made by Dunbar himself. After he has come back to Fort Sedgwick to fetch his journal and has been taken prisoner by the Union soldiers, he first tries to explain his situation. After several attempts he recognizes the hopelessness of the situation and capitulates by resorting to Lakota speech. In this way he expresses his new kind of nature the best he can – with tremendous impact on the puzzled soldiers. 57

See section 3.2.3.

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Taking this scene into consideration, Costner’s true motive for keeping a major part of the dialogue in Lakota language suddenly seems questionable. Usually the device of a foreign language is used by directors to give the audience the feeling of bewilderment that probably one of the movie’s main characters is experiencing. Dunbar is experiencing this confusion without any doubt, but the audience can perfectly keep up with the plot development by reading the subtitles. If Costner had liked Dunbar’s alienation to be transferred to the viewer he would have had to omit the subtitles. 3.2.3. The Buffalo Hunt There is probably no sequence in Dances with Wolves which is more important for the depiction of Dunbar’s assimilation to Native culture than the scenes surrounding the buffalo hunt. Baird even calls the buffalo hunt “the perfect path, both fictionally and historically, for any non-Indian to follow if he sought access to the flesh-and-bone existence of a tribe” (“Discovery,” 200). And indeed, the allusions to Dunbar’s Going Native almost get out of hand in the buffalo hunt scene and the subsequent feast. This

already

begins

with

the

almost

stereotyped creeping up on the buffalo herd, showing Dunbar amidst the Native buffalo hunters as if it was the most natural thing (see Fig. 4). In this scene the viewer also gets an idea of Dunbar’s newly discovered fascination for nature. He is laying on the ground, gazing at the buffalo herd through his telescope and just grinning full of awe until one of his hunting fellows taps him on the shoulder and thus pulls him out of his ecstasy. The feast scene after the hunt is particularly important for Dunbar’s going Native. In this scene he is almost depicted as Native hero having saved the life of Smiles A Lot in the course of the hunt. Wind In His Hair and Dunbar have their first real conversation, even if it simply consists of Dunbar saying “Good trade!” after they have exchanged pieces of the Union uniform and the Native gear. Wind In His -62-

Hair subsequently pulls Dunbar into a Tepee were the Lieutenant not only takes part in the oral culture of the Sioux, but even becomes its center by taking the role of the storyteller at the campfire. This scene marks Dunbar’s almost complete transition from White to Native; but nevertheless we must not forget what happened the night before. In a scene which was not included in the shorter theatrical version of Dances with Wolves in 1990, Dunbar comes over to the Sioux to take part in a celebration in honor of the coming hunt. But he is petrified with fear as he sees a blond scalp being lifted up into the air next to a severed White hand. He slowly recedes and finds a wrecked trail wagon with fresh buffalo hides piled up upon it. Dunbar suddenly realizes that his Sioux friends have killed a group of buffalo hunters in the most Native like manner (including scalping among other cruelties) and are now celebrating their triumph as well as the buffalo hunt. Dunbar gives vent to his feelings with the following lines: It was suddenly clear now what had happened, and my heart sank as I tried to convince myself that the white people who had been killed were bad people and deserved to die, but it was no use. I tried to believe that Wind In His Hair and Kicking Bird and all the other people who shared in the killing were not so happy for having done it. As I looked at familiar faces I realized that the gap between us was greater than I could ever have imagined. (Dances) This quote clearly explains that the buffalo hunt scene does not function as a oneway representation and also foreshadows that the picture of the ever-noble Native has to be revised in some instances. Thus, despite all the promising strides which Dunbar has made, a seemingly unbridgeable gap still exists between the two cultures. A gap which yawns not only because of some minor disagreements in terms of attitude and the exploitation of natural resources, but because of fundamental incompatibilities resulting from a centuries-old history of misunderstanding and mistreatment. The scene immediately following Dunbar’s harrowing discovery was, however, included in the shorter version, leaving the quote below wholly to the viewer’s skills of interpretation: As they celebrated into the night the coming hunt, it was hard to know where to be. I don’t know if they understood, but I could not sleep among them. There had been no looks, and there was no blame. There was only the confusion of a people not able to predict the future. (Dances) The peculiar thing is that the incorporation of the originally omitted scene “change[s] not only the meaning of this single scene but imbue[s] the entire film with a greater -63-

moral complexity” (Baird, “Discovery,” 208). The missing of scenes like the feast scene above finally led to harsh criticism of Costner’s depiction of the Sioux as too favorable. As we will see later on, Costner presents Native Americans from two different perspectives, using two different tribes. In order to preserve the picture of the noble Sioux, the dramatically savage Pawnee have to stand in for every aspect of Native lifestyle which does not seem convenient to European American ideas of virtue.

3.2.4. Naming and Renaming The act of naming represents one of the most expressive means of demonstrating connection to a place or an ethnic group, and thus it has actually always accompanied moments of contact and communication in the history of mankind. From early conquerors, as there are Columbus, Raleigh or Smith, who mainly used the power of naming to gain possession of the newly conquered areas, it can be traced to present times. Well suited for the subject area of going Native, the example of Grey Owl58 shows how the power of names is employed to dispose of one‘s literal past and appropriate a new cultural background. In Dances with Wolves the act of naming operates in a similar way. Just like its predecessors, legendary Native American adventure stories like Leatherstocking, A Man Called Horse or Little Big Man, it makes use of the act of renaming to illustrate the evolution of the main character. In addition, the sheer significance of this act can be derived from the fact that the stories telling of people who truly go Native carry solely the Native name of their protagonists. Dances with Wolves is one of them, and also Robert Baird suspects more behind this procedure of renaming than plain Hollywood storytelling: [The] renaming of a White man with a natural name and his shedding of his European name is the quintessential American myth – the self-made man rediscovering both America and, most important, his own true self in the process. (“Discovery,” 203) And that is just what happens in the case of Dunbar. Only by being assigned his new name Dances With Wolves the journey from soldier to Sioux is completed. The tagline of the movie – “Lieutenant John Dunbar is about to discover the frontier... 58

Grey Owl, the well-known advocate of Native life in Canada, was originally born as Archibald Belaney in Hastings, England. After moving to Canada and discovering his true (Native) identity, Belaney continued to go by the Native name Grey Owl and devoted his life to the preservation of the Canadian wilderness and the establishment of a genuine Native existence. See also Grey Owl. Tales of an Empty Cabin. Toronto: Key Porter, 1998.

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within himself” (Dances) – suggests it, and Dunbar himself finally articulates the discovery of his own true self. After successfully defending the Sioux village against the attacking Pawnee warriors he realizes: I’d never really known who John Dunbar was, perhaps the name itself had no meaning. But as I heard my Sioux name being called over and over, I knew for the first time who I really was. (Dances) Dunbar himself says that his former name had no meaning, clearly confirming that his new name Dances With Wolves is what Baird calls a name “with direct relation to the universe” (“Discovery,” 203). In the culture of the Natives of the Great Plains of North America names have always played and still play a major role in the process of locating an individual within the society. Native American names are not as unalterable as their counterparts in European culture. A Native warrior’s name, for example, can be changed after major achievements the man has made in his life.59 For the Natives in Dances with Wolves, Dunbar’s most stunning achievement is his almost familiar relationship with the wild wolf Two Socks. When Kicking Bird and his companions watch Dunbar chasing around with Two Socks in the prairie they realize that “he is a special white man” (Dances) and the medicine man suggests that “[h]e should have a real name” (Dances) (See Fig. 5 and Fig. 6). This

real

name

must

therefore be a name which derives its meaning from its direct relation to

nature.

Once

again

the

interpretation leads towards Lewis’ notion of the American Adam. Baird establishes a connection between Adam’s naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden and the nickname given to Dunbar by the Natives, as all of these names share the quality of being derived straightly from their immediate natural surroundings. 60

59 60

Cf. Baird, “Discovery,” 203-204. Cf. Baird, “Discovery,” 203.

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The scene of the naming itself is actually one of the most outstanding ones in Dances with Wolves, because it achieves brilliancy through simplicity. There are no additional features which might distract the viewer from the actual scene – just the man, his horse, the wolf, and the endless plains. Moreover, there is no dialogue, no pompous musical theme and no explicative voice-over. According to Baird, Costner kept his central scene this simple in order to give his viewer the possibility to actively take part in the development of the going Native myth.61 Neither does Dunbar’s commentary explain that he was named after this scene, nor does the Natives’ dialogue. The audience just has to think logically to deduce that this event is responsible for Dunbar’s renaming and his assimilation to the tribal world.62 Nevertheless, the Sioux are not the only ones who make use of names to relate to their surroundings properly in Dances with Wolves. The first person in the movie to express a relationship to his discoveries by using names is Dunbar himself. In the first scene discussed (cf. Fig. 3), Dunbar calls Wind In His Hair the fierce one, describing him as a tough fellow who he never hopes to fight against. Kicking Bird is called the quiet one, and his eagerness to learn induces Dunbar to think that “he is a man of some weight among his people” (Dances). This proves that Dunbar already possesses a certain readiness to meet the Native people more open-mindedly than legions of White settlers and soldiers did before him. He lets them transcend from faceless savages to individual beings with personal character traits. Nevertheless, the visions of the European American world still seem to be deeply anchored within him at this point of the movie. Though he does not even have the slightest feeling of antipathy against these people, he hopes that he never has to fight Wind In His Hair and in this way refers back to Major Fambrough at Fort Hayes, who first identified Dunbar as an Indian fighter. The act of naming is also used to express Dunbar’s extraordinary relationship with nature and its creatures.63 As mentioned before, one of Dunbar’s most impressive qualities is his ability to communicate with his surroundings (people, nature, animals) in a way which in the movie is neither paralleled by Whites nor by Natives. His most evident links to the wilderness are the wolf and his horse – and both of them carry a name as if they were human beings. The horse, Cisco, is Dunbar’s faithful companion from the suicide act on the battlefield until it is finally 61

Cf. Baird, “Discovery,” 203. Cf. Baird, “Discovery,” 203. 63 For a more detailed discussion of this matter see section 3.4. 62

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killed by Dunbar’s former friends and new enemies – the Union troops. The same fate has to be faced by the wolf, Two Socks, who is the main reason for Dunbar’s renaming. And once more the close connection between Dunbar and Lewis’ American Adam, who is naming the creatures in his Garden of Eden, becomes obvious. The new name is not only recognized by Dunbar as a kind of missing link between him and the Sioux culture. When Dunbar tells Ten Bears about his fear of being pursued by the Union army, the old Sioux chief is finally the one who acknowledges Dunbar as one of his tribe and declares his past as not existent any more. “The white man the soldiers are looking for no longer exists. Now there is only a Sioux named Dances With Wolves” (Dances).

3.2.5. One Way, Several Trails There is no doubt that Dances is one of the most magnificent visualizations of the going Native myth, and at least on the surface level viewers did and do agree that Costner succeeded in developing it step by step. There is, however, a kind of divergence in terms of interpretation when it comes to the real meaning of Dunbar’s trip back to tribal culture. In the introduction of this chapter we have already learned about the different motifs behind staging a going Native epic of this size. We have learned about Dunbar’s journey to his inner self and about Dunbar’s defection from the army to the Natives in order to compensate for historical discrepancies and about his hidden wish for a nobler parenthood. Reading between the

lines,

Amanda Smith

understands

Dunbar’s

development as an allegory of the so-called mythic descent, an almost standardized narrative pattern in the epic poetry of classical antiquity.64 By going on a trip to the underworld the epic hero goes back in history, taking advice from his wise ancestors in order to be able to master the task he has been given. Smith further states that the power of Dances With Wolves lies not in its glorification of a specific culture, […] but in its ability to dramatize that culture in a manner so that it becomes the medium for freeing its protagonist from a vision that is too limited or circumscribed and awakening deeper sensibilities. Examining the pattern of the descent in the film allows us to perceive how central it becomes in accomplishing this new vision. (199) The literary topos of the Katabasis, the descent into the underworld, is a major distinguishing feature of the great epic tales of Greek and Roman Antiquity. The 64

Cf. Smith, 199-204.

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mighty Hercules, the gifted Orpheus, the furious Achilles, the brave Aeneas, even the wise Odysseus, they all had to undertake this traumatic journey to the otherworld, the underworld. Some of them to retrieve a love once lost, some of them to confront the terrors of their past, some of them to find enlightenment. Leading the hero across this insurmountable border between the living and the dead, between the real and the unreal, “[t]he epic descent,” and Lilian Feder is sure, “is always a journey to find someone who knows the truth” (290). 65 Dunbar’s journey starts at the very beginning of the movie. Fully aware of the fact that his days in the life of a soldier are numbered, he chooses the quickest possible way to leave this detestable existence, he wants to die. Rising from the deathbed of the field hospital, unwilling to accept his dreary future as a one-legged Civil War veteran, Dunbar mounts the whitest horse he can find and decides to end his miserable existence. “Forgive me, Father!” (Dances) sounds his call for redemption, before he spreads his arms and rides down the field of fire between Union and Confederacy, the bullets whizzing past his head. In doing so, Dunbar meets all prerequisite conditions of the epic hero to descend into the otherworld,

because

his

metaphorical death in the field allows him to be reborn and emerge as a purged individual. And yes, even his Jesus Christ pose (see Fig. 7) brings back memories of John Morgan’s Sun Dance ritual.66 Both Morgan and Dunbar need this cathartic experience; they need to be reborn in order to be able to walk the path to their own true identity. Dunbar’s regenerative journey to wisdom and truth is staged quite thoroughly – over three hours of runtime. But who is the one to finally enlighten Lieutenant Dunbar? Is it the open-minded and open-hearted medicine man, Kicking Bird? Is it the wise and experienced chief, Ten Bears? Or is it even the significantly insignificant wolf, Two 65

One could argue that Dunbar’s going Native at first does not really seem to apply to the pattern of the mythic descent, because the underworld in ancient epic tales is always presented as a rather inhospitable place and the hero has to travel there rather unwillingly – in order to find answers. A similar concept lies behind the allegorical myth of Hercules at the crossroads. Hercules finds himself confronted with the options of either receiving instant pleasure and wealth by taking the easy path or experiencing greatness and virtue by choosing the steep and rocky path. He chooses the hard path of virtue which leads him to a better life and finally to immortality. 66 Cf. A Man Called Horse, see section 2.2.2.5.

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Socks? In the end, it is Nativeness that changes Dunbar, and, eventually, his descent to the underworld turns into an ascent from another world. His renaissance. Going Native. In a way, Dunbar’s becoming Native also leads him back to humanity, allegorically. This impression is framed by the mercilessly unfavorable picture that White settlers and soldiers deliver in the movie. Also Kicking Bird’s line to Dunbar adds a further detail to the implication that – as Robert Whelan (26) has suggested – the Native way is the right way: “I was just thinking that of all the trails in this life, there is one that matters most. It is the trail of a true human being. I think you are on this trail and it is good to see” (Dances). This aspect of moral cleansing also becomes evident when Dunbar recognizes and renounces the false and greedy ideals of the colonizing industry in the face of the skinned buffalo carcasses. The renunciation of his European American background and his former life nevertheless seems to be a rather easy step for Dunbar, because actually he already leaves his life behind in the first few shots. And even though his body may have survived this kamikaze act, his former existence seems to have ended this very day. As a result, the life that Dunbar begins at his Western outpost is a new one – renaissance, as we have confirmed. The idea of rebirth is dragged even further by Smith. In Dunbar’s bathing in the newly-cleaned pool at Fort Sedgwick she sees a parallelism to the Christian baptism ritual, and when Dunbar rises out of the pool to chase Kicking Bird away – all naked – this marks the “fitting state of innocence for his [new] initiation” (Smith, 201). What is called birthday suit in English is referred to as Adamskostüm in German, which again portrays Dunbar as the biblical figure of Adam in his new paradise. The Eve to Dunbar’s Adam is finally represented by Stands With A Fist, who – just like Dunbar – has completely lost any relation to her former life and family. According to Baird, the marriage of Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist “accomplishes, […] for the first time in […] American imagination, the transmigration of the White family unit into the mythical hunting ground of the Indian” (“Discovery,” 204). The first to know that “Dances With Wolves loves Stands With A Fist” (Dances) is not Stands With A Fist herself, but Dunbar’s journal (see Fig. 8). For Smith this indicates that already two different souls live in Dunbar’s chest and they -69-

are communicating via the journal entries. And according to Smith there is another significant function which this small brown book holds in the movie.67 The fact that the illiterate soldiers cannot read it signifies on the one hand that Dunbar can no longer communicate with his former fellow men, but on the other hand it proves that – despite a common language – he probably has never really been able to confide in his European American people. Maybe he has never been a true member of his former society. And in the end, when Smiles A Lot returns the journal to Dunbar, “it is unreadable even to [himself]. In this fashion it becomes an entirely symbolic record of his metamorphosis, a map which traces his spiritual journey” (Smith, 203). Nonetheless, we must not forget that this is about the time when Dances with Wolves and Stands With A Fist are getting ready to leave the Sioux. Because he – now being known as a traitor among the Whites – represents the perfect excuse for the army to hunt down the tribe. A common future is not possible. “He is once more a man divided. His two selves, seemingly moving toward being at peace with one another, can no longer function separately” (Smith, 203).

3.3. Depiction of Ethnic Groups in Dances with Wolves [T]his is not another book pointing out the injustices done to the Indians, nor is it a book describing once more the inaccuracies and distortions that the movies have perpetrated in their representation of Indians. There are already plenty of those. (Edward Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’ Native Americans in the Movies) There are plenty of those, indeed. Plenty of those books dealing with injustices and inconsistencies, as well as plenty of those movies failing in representing Native American history and culture properly. The question to be answered is whether Dances with Wolves is also one of – those. As we have already heard in section 2, there is one specific function which the Native American has always held in the cultural history of America: the undeniably vital concept of the other. Being either boogeyman or benefactor to the

67

Cf. Smith, 203.

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American soul, the Native has always functioned as a corrective to the standards of American society. Dances with Wolves makes no exception here. It is what Donald Fixico calls a “non-Indian generated document[…] about Indians” (3), a Western, in more common terms. And putting a Western framework on display, it remains true to itself: The White guy is the hero. But there is something about this White guy named Dunbar. First, this White guy is actually not named Dunbar, but Dances With Wolves. Then, this White guy has deliberately settled for a strictly non-White philosophy. And finally, exactly this defiance of White standards is what actually makes him the hero of this upside-down Western. Dances with Wolves, thus, becomes a majestic piece of advertising for going Native, but it does on no account reinvent the wheel. The motion picture may seem to update old-fashioned stock characters, but sometimes its liberality tends to go too far and, in doing so, encourages critics to hold this fact against the movie. “Once settled in the wilderness, he proves to be a sensitive and caring ecologist, tenderly nursing the land and its creatures,” writes Richard Schickel (“Riding”) about Costner’s Dunbar. Others find less euphemistic expressions, like Ben Livant, who articulates that “the political correctness is so politically correct and sappy and sucky and conscience-appeasing and politically-pacifying and just generally brainnumbing” (Livant). Certainly, since paper does not blush, statements of the like may, for the most part, be dismissed as overreactions, but at the core of it, a certain tendency shimmers through. In order to cater to his liberal sense of mission, Costner had to go for an inversion of classical Western role models. This adds a further dimension to the usual way of employing dichotomy in Western movies. Whereas the classical setting stipulates either a good-natured White settler being distressed by a bloodthirsty horde of Indians, or a noble savage struggling against the oppression by the ever-evil White man, Costner’s American epic features both variants, allowing its protagonists to hop from one role model to another. Here, the White soldier can also be the oppressed noble savage, and the ordinary Native dweller can feel the threat of his fiendishly wild Indian brothers. In order to keep it clear, both ethnic groups will be discussed separately in the following two sections.

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3.3.1. Depiction of Native Americans Though being valued for renovating the Western genre, Dances with Wolves does actually not take a quantum leap as far as the representation of Native Americans is concerned. We face a centuries-old dichotomy: Noble and fierce. Good and bad. Sioux and Pawnee. Generally, the image of the Sioux in Dances with Wolves is limited to two clichés that have been mulled over again and again in literature: the vanishing Indian and the noble savage. The picture of the vanishing Indian is not clearly recognizable at first, but becomes more evident as Dunbar dives deeper into the Native American world. Throughout the movie, he seems to know well which fate the Natives will have to face sooner or later, and there are various scenes in which this awareness comes to the surface. To Major Fambrough he says that he wants to see the frontier before it is gone, and the more he becomes acquainted with the Sioux, the more he feels his fear and compassion for this fading people grow: We talk every day, but I know Kicking Bird is frustrated with me. He always wants to know how many more white people are coming. I tell him that the white people will most likely pass through this country and nothing more, but I am speaking in half truth. One day there will be too many, but I cannot bring myself to tell him that. I’m sure that Stands With A Fist knows that I am holding back, but to her credit she says nothing. (Dances) As if Dunbar’s hesitation to tell the Natives about the constant threat of White civilization could also hold back the westward progress itself, he keeps this information to himself and by this means naively tries to preserve his newly found natural paradise for some more time. But obviously he is not the only one who knows about the progression of westward expansion – the last line of the quote indicates that also Stands With A Fist shares this knowledge. This aspect deserves particular attention, because she has been part of Sioux culture since she was a little girl and is geared to their world just as any other member of the tribe is. Nevertheless, the quote suggests that she knows what the future will bring, and the question arises why she should possess this knowledge even though her clan members do not. This particular fact maneuvers her Native American brothers and sisters into a rather naïve position and indirectly suggests White superiority in terms of far-sightedness and regional dominance. But there is another member of the Sioux tribe who is aware of the dreary future – chief Ten Bears. Just like the Sage of Pelican Lake in Grey Owl’s Tales of -72-

an Empty Cabin, Ten Bears is a wise man. Costner almost depicts the old chief as a man of innate wisdom by letting Dunbar state that “there was purpose in everything he did” (Dances). It is this old man who perfectly represents the Natives’ history of constant intrusion as well as their tenacious strength of will. When Kicking Bird and Dunbar come to his Tepee to tell him about the Natives’ impending doom, he produces a Spanish conquistador’s helmet (see Fig. 9) and surprises them with both vision and calmness:

The white men who wore this came around the time of my grandfather’s grandfather. Eventually we drove them out. Then the Mexicans came. But they do not come here any more. In my own time, the Texans. They have been like all the others. They take without asking. But I think you are right. I think they will keep coming. When I think of that, I look at this helmet. I don’t know if we are ready for these people. Our country is all that we have, and we will fight to keep it. (Dances) According to Conrad Ostwalt, the comparison of American Natives and the White characters reduces the Whites entirely to the role of the conquistadores whose “colonial impulse […] dehumanizes not the subjugated race but the conquerors” (211). To Ten Bears there is no difference between the wave of White settlers following their Manifest Destiny and the horde of raiders his country has seen before, but Smith states that “he fails to realize […] that these new invaders are impatient with and contemptuous of the psychological and spiritual descent that must parallel the physical journey into the West” (202). Considering this, the White intruders of the late 19th century represent the most ruthless and destructive way of civilization. When Ten Bears refuses to move the camp, Dunbar’s comment that “there was purpose in everything he did” (Dances) is harshly refuted. In reality, Ten Bears is part of a people “waiting at the gate of the Last Frontier” (Grey Owl, 62). To finally make the gradual fading of the Native tribes seem even more pathetic, Costner falls back on another stereotype functioning as a descriptive device – the image of the noble savage. In Dances with Wolves the Sioux tribe is represented as a people of innate goodness, which is the exact opposite of the -73-

omnivorous rush of civilization. Just like the picture of the savage Native – who is a calculated fictional idea to make the Whites’ seizure of the land seem more tolerable – the imaginary noble savage is used here to extol the nature-related virtues of the indigenous people and to point at the maliciousness of the European American world. Dunbar himself disproves the picture of the savage Native existing in his days: Nothing I have been told about these people is correct. They are not thieves or beggars. They are not the bogeymen they are made out to be. On the contrary, they are polite guests and I enjoy their humor. (Dances) Nevertheless, the innate righteousness of the Native people is principally intelligible in its relationship to the virtues – or rather vices – of White civilization. But Costner even adds a further dimension to highlight the Sioux’s higher morality. The bogeyman, that Dunbar speaks of in the quote above, does in fact exist in the movie, and he could not have been embodied more ferociously as by Wes

Studi,

toughest

of

who the

plays

the

Pawnee

so

stunningly he sends shivers down the viewer’s spine anytime he appears on the scene. By loading every savage aspect ever conjured up about Native Americans upon the Pawnee’s shoulders, Costner creates an effect of dichotomy which was to be used two years later in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans, too. In Dances with Wolves the Pawnee become butchers and slayers, and Studi, the Pawnee antagonist, becomes the prototypical savage.68 “He will not quit until we are all dead” (Dances) conclude the other members of the Pawnee hunting party, as Wes Studi once more mounts his horse to still his apparently innate lust for killing. Thus, this fierce Pawnee warrior even seems to hold a special position within the inimical Pawnee tribe. He is the perfect antagonist. The most important means for creating this negative image are the massacre scenes, which could even be called a standard device of Western movies. Baird even puts forth that since Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative of 1682 “any White seeking to go Indian had to confront the massacre [and its] historical and mythic 68

In 1992 Wes Studi also impersonated Magua, the ultimate villain in The Last of the Mohicans – probably because of his convincing performance in Costner’s movie.

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power is so pervasive that it seems all Westerns that deal with the confrontation of White and Red must address it in some manner” (“Discovery,” 201-2). Unlike the Sioux, the Pawnee seem to kill for no apparent reason. The first poor soul to experience this is the mule driver Timmons, who is shot full of arrows and scalped by Wes Studi while dying (see Fig. 10). In analogy to Mary Rowlandson’s story Stands With A Fist’s family is also killed in an underhand fashion by four Pawnee warriors. There is hardly any cause given for the Pawnee’s attacks, but there is, however, always a righteous reason for the Sioux to do so. In one instance the Sioux have to defend their village and their food stores against the assaulting Pawnee; in another one they are killing the Union army troopers to free their brother Dances With Wolves. This last scene, a Hollywood-authorized slaughtering of the White men, is referred to by Baird as “ninety years of Hollywood history turned on its head” (“Discovery,” 202). By this obvious dichotomy Costner has coped with White historical fear as well as guilt within the same movie.69 Nevertheless, voices have been raised that called the depiction of the Sioux in Dances with Wolves too wholesome, and the fact that Costner has cut some of the scenes depicting the tribe’s bad qualities shows that he was aware of his obvious dual-track policy.

3.3.2. Depiction of Settlers and Soldiers With the exception of the two characters who go native, all other white characters are violent, dirty, ignorant, and desecrate the land. (Karsten Fitz, “Vanishing Indians and Whites Going Native”) Dances with Wolves’ tremendous impact on the classical and hidebound genre of the Western resulted not only from its revolutionary representation of Native Americans, but also from its rather dispiriting account of the settling of the West. Apart from the Pawnee, it is the White settlers and soldiers who exclusively have to shoulder the burden of representing the antagonists in Costner’s Hollywood epic, and the picture that is painted is a rather dark one. But also the story’s protagonist, Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, is by no means an infallible all-American

69

Cf. Baird, “Discovery,” 202.

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hero and part of the de-glorification process that the White characters in Dances with Wolves are exposed to. Yet Dunbar’s de-glorification happens on a smaller scale and at a more superficial level, and, in addition, it has a rather comical touch. In particular Dunbar’s first few encounters with the Natives at Fort Sedgwick help to illustrate him as an ordinary man and quickly erase the picture of the utterly fearless Civil War hero. One instance would be Dunbar’s absurd attempt to frighten Kicking Bird by rushing out of the pond in his Adamskostüm. Later in the movie, when the Sioux boys try to steal Dunbar’s horse Cisco, he grabs his gun, bravely dashes out of the cabin and knocks himself unconscious at the doorpost. And also his first encounter with Wind In His Hair exhibits hardly any heroism. The Sioux warrior charges at him and shouts him in the face whereupon Dunbar turns around and simply faints. A further attack on Hollywood heroism and American patriotism is hidden in Dunbar’s first encounter with Stands With A Fist. Dunbar is neatly dressed in his cavalry uniform, sits on horseback, and holds the American flag high. And the very moment he begins to introduce himself the flag flutters in his face and totally ridicules his otherwise boastful appearance. Despite all these rather comical scenes making up Dunbar’s persona in Dances with Wolves, we must not forget which role he actually plays in the movie. Dunbar is the White male hero, probably the oldest stock character of the relatively young genre of the Western. And sporting such a protagonist – as we have already indicatetd – Dances with Wolves’ claim to revolutionize the Western genre begins to crumble. Huhndorf explains: Not only does this white character retain center stage in the drama, he soon proves himself superior to his Native counterparts. […] Dances With Wolves, in other words, actually reinforces the racial hierarchies it claims to destabilize, and it thus serves another primary function of going native. […] [I]ts primary cultural work in fact is the regeneration of racial whiteness and European American society. (3) The depiction of the remaining White characters in Dances turns out to be even more somber than the protagonist’s initial ridiculing. When Dunbar finds the pond at Fort Sedgwick full of rotting carcasses and holes dug into the earth near the cabin, he tries to sort out this desolation. But despite his improvements he mentions that “there remains an ugliness that I cannot dispel. An injury that goes beyond neglect; like a bruise it will be slow to heal” (Dances). According to this quote the White settlers seem to be nothing but an injury to the health of nature, a virus coming over the untouched country and throwing it off balance. Mathias Peipp comments on -76-

Dunbar’s words simply yet aptly: “Die Zivilisation der Weißen ist damit treffend charakterisiert” (231). Yet it is not only the White man’s lack of respect for nature that Dances with Wolves exhibits unsparingly, but also his moral deficiency and highly materialistic motives. When Dunbar and the Sioux hunters follow the trace of the buffalo herd that Dunbar discovered, they find several skinless cadavers rotting in the prairie sun (see Fig. 11). Dunbar’s subsequent monologue appears to be deeply rooted in Native virtues:

Who would do such a thing? The field was proof enough that it was a people without value and without soul, with no regard for Sioux rights. The wagon tracks leading away left little doubt, and my heart sank as I knew it could only be white hunters. Voices that had been joyous all morning were now as silent as the dead buffalo left to rot in this valley – killed only for their tongues and the price of their hides. (Dances) Ostwalt points out that the idea of one hunting party being enraged because another one has killed twenty buffalo out of a herd of thousand seems rather ironic, but yet there is a crucial difference between the slaughter and the hunt.70 To the Natives the hunt is a sacred act and, in addition, their survival depends on a successful hunting season, the Whites only seem to hunt either for sport or for materialistic purposes.71 But this difference between Natives and Whites can not only be found regarding the hunt, it can also be applied on a larger scale. Therefore, Ostwalt introduces the term materialistic desacralization to describe the White race’s approach to the natural world, and he also provides a concise summary of his theory: This approach is utilitarian in essence, territorial in reality, and usually capitalistic at heart. […] It occurs when a civilization loses its awe for nature and its rhythms, intrudes upon the natural realm without respect for its 70 71

Cf. Ostwalt, 213. Cf. Ostwalt, 213.

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integrity, and utilizes natural resources for capital through subjugation of both land and its inhabitants. (211) The justification for this ruthless pattern of behaviour is sought and found in the White man’s Manifest Destiny which supports the seizure of foreign land with the will of God and dismisses the decline of the Native race as a matter of course. The opposite of this approach is, of course, perfectly displayed by the Sioux in Dances with Wolves. They do not only seek and practice harmony when dealing with their friends and families but also with nature. This almost religious awe the Natives exhibit when approaching nature is referred to by Ostwalt as naturalistic sacralization.72 Keeping this notion in mind, the depiction of White settlers and soldiers in Dances with Wolves seems to serve the sole purpose of illustrating the failure of materialistic desacralization, and indeed the examples are manifold. One of the first presented in Dances with Wolves is the pathetic yet frightening character of Major Fambrough, the officer in charge at Fort Hayes. Being driven into insanity by the barren surroundings and loneliness of frontier life, he identifies Dunbar as an Indian fighter and sends him on a knight’s errant. The hopelessness of Fambrough’s mental state becomes clear in the confusing line: “Sir knight? I’ve just pissed in my pants... and nobody can do anything about it” (Dances). Five minutes later he shoots himself in the head after uttering his last words: “The king is dead. Long live the king” (Dances). The subliminal presence of madness is also recognized by Shari Huhndorf, who observes that Dunbar is “fleeing to the edges of civilization from a EuropeanAmerican world apparently gone mad in the bloody civil war” (1). In his post-war work The Return of the Vanishing American Leslie Fiedler, too, puts forth the thesis that a befuddled state of mind – be it by “[m]adness, drugs, caricature [or] abuse” (174) – can pave the way to Nativeness. It is this mental condition which renders the prevailing mood in what Fiedler calls the New Western in the 20th century. “[M]any of these ‘psychedelics’ themselves,” Fiedler says, “are our bridge to […] the world of the Indian: the world not of an historical past, but of the eternally archaic one” (175). One of these so-called New Westerns is Ken Kesey’s work One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which the protagonist McMurphy hopelessly gets lost in the

72

Cf. Ostwalt, 212.

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madness which the wave of White civilization has brought over itself. And the only one fit to resist and escape this madness in the end is – the Chief, the Native guy. A further example of the Whites’ failure to cope with the nature of the frontier are the disastrous conditions of Fort Sedgwick. Another scene that has been taken out of the shorter theatrical version of Dances with Wolves shows Captain Cargill, the previous commanding officer at Fort Sedgwick, giving his men the order to leave the post supporting his instruction with the words: “The army can go to hell” (Dances). And just like the frontier’s constant dreariness has taken his command it has almost dehumanized his men – rendering them all ragged and deranged. Thus, the Whites’ improper approach to nature is comprehensively exhibited by the example of the two forts – the settlers’ deepest penetrations of natural, of Native country. Speaking of the depiction of the White characters, the role of Stands With A Fist must also be taken into consideration. Smith identifies her as an Eve to Dunbar’s Adam,73 but nevertheless her figure may convey a further message on a more subconscious level. Just like in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie it is finally the union between the European characters that remains in the end. Stands With A Fist’s Native husband has been killed, the relationship to Dunbar is supposed to last. After all, Stands With A Fist is a full-fledged member of the Sioux tribe, and at first glance there could not be any better approval of Dunbar’s Going Native than a deep and heartfelt relationship with a Native woman. But let us not forget that under her Native vesture, her broken English and her flawlessly fluent Lakota, she turns out to be an ordinary European American woman with no particularly Native features at all. In this fact Michael Hilger discovers the remnants of a long-standing genre tradition, a “taboo against mixed romances and marriages in the plots of the Westerns” (4). Also Shari Huhndorf notes that the delicate question of miscegenation is easily rounded by the tricky move of letting Dunbar fall in love with a White woman gone Native.74 “The match, in one character’s words, ‘makes sense’ because ‘they are both white’” (Huhndorf, 4). This rejection of miscegenation still appears to be of validity in the 20th and 21st centuries, simply because texts and movies created under the umbrella term Western tend to adhere to certain basic rules and conventions which are to be found

73 74

Cf. Smith, 201. Cf. Huhndorf, 4.

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in so-called classics of the genre. Among those seminal texts we also find Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Berkhofer observes that Cooper – deliberately abiding by the “romantic conventions of the novel of the time” (94) – would not allow his Native characters, “no matter how noble, to marry a White […]. Even Leatherstocking himself was too Indianized and too lower class to breach these conventions of the traditional romantic novel” (94). Dances with Wolves and Stands With A Fist thus seem to obey traditional genre rules. They are both Whites and Natives at the same time, no miscegenation at all. But although their relationship is – as the ending suggests – built to last, the couple has to leave the Sioux tribe, because – this is where irony sets in – they are neither Whites nor Natives any more. Dunbar and his wife seem to have lost their place in the world and remain dangling between the cultures.

3.4. Nature in Dances with Wolves As we have heard in the preceding sections on the mechanisms of going Native, utopian fantasies and strongly primitivistic thoughts have always been geared very closely to the idea of “society’s and man’s limited evolutionary capacity” (Friedman, 57). Taking for granted the unfitness to rise above one’s obviously natural limitations, societies – or mankind in general – seemingly push towards a primordial state of existence, a stripped-down mindset which is more capable of intuition or, more esoterically put, enlightenment. Naturalness, as we can sum up the entirety of the efforts described above, already carries the keyword within. Nature became the common denominator for a generation of thinkers who spread the word of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism. And since the concept of going Native is nothing more than the fulfillment of this edifice of ideas, the close relation to nature and the Garden of Eden in the American wilderness comes – well – naturally. In general, the notion of nature has two major functions in Dances with Wolves. In the first place, it clearly serves as an expressive means of enriching Dunbar’s descent into the Native world by making use of its highly associative meaning. Apart from that, it is used by the director to address a topic which more than a 100 years ago would probably have been referred to as the closing of the frontier, but which nowadays carries a name short and crisp – environmentalism.

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3.4.1. Native by Nature Dunbar’s relation to his natural surroundings and the creatures of nature is one of the most important yardsticks for his going Native. The firmer the ties with the natural world, the more he seems to be accepted amongst the “red sons of the prairie” (Catlin, 19). This fact deduces itself from the long-standing tradition of perceiving Native Americans as the “human manifestation of American nature” (Von Mehren, 173). The principal connecting link to nature is of course Dunbar’s connection to the wolf Two Socks, the epitome of wild nature and freedom. His bond with the wolf actually leads to his renaming, which has proved to be one of the most powerful means of trans-cultural movement. The fact that the two proverbial lone wolves actually team up already speaks for the peculiarity of this bond. It is a parable for the harmony which Dunbar is ready to enter into with nature, and thus he escapes the calamitous fate that the other soldiers at Fort Sedgwick, this outpost of civilization, had to face. The special relationship with the wolf is also what the Sioux seem to admire most, because not even a truly natural being like them shares such an intimate relationship with nature. When the Native party sees Dunbar romping around the yard with Two Socks, one of them says to Kicking Bird: “You were right, he is a special white man” (Dances). A very moving proof of the close relationship that man and wolf enjoy is their mutual feeding. When Two Socks eats out of Dunbar’s hand, the soldier’s transition seems to be complete. But also the wolf is ready to take care of his companion as he puts down a bird in front of Dunbar’s quarter. The most extensive use of animal-related symbolism is made in the campfire scene, when Dunbar performs the Native stomp dance. In two successive shots the viewer can first see Cisco and then Two Socks looking at Dunbar with an air of almost humanlike understanding. The wolf’s eyes are shown in extreme close-up, as if the director wanted to stress that in this very moment Two Socks recognizes Dunbar as one of his kind – the very moment in which Dunbar behaves like a Native for the first time. In exactly the same way works Dunbar’s relationship to Cisco, the horse that accompanies him from his suicide attempt at St. David’s Field until his last ride back to Fort Sedgwick. Just like a Western Dr. Doolittle, Dunbar seems to be able to speak -81-

to the horse merely by whistling. Both animals are, however, in the end taken away from Dunbar by his former comrades who thereby prove that they are not able to relate to nature in the way that Dunbar does. 3.4.2. The Eco-Indian and Red-Exploitation Although Dances with Wolves looks like a genuine Western movie at first sight, it does not fail to address the political agenda of the late 20th century. Since the 1970s the public has witnessed a growing awareness of environmental issues, and as we have heard form Robert Whelan, this development did not spare the favorable image of the Native American, for in the end “the noble savage has turned green” (Whelan, 19). A slightly green undertone is omnipresent in the movie, and the first character to put questionable actions on display is coachman Timmons. On the one hand, he shows true affection for nature’s creatures,75 but, on the other hand, thoughtlessly throws away a tin can in the prairie, which is recognized by Dunbar and even his horse with “the appropriately modern reaction of indignation” (Baird, “Discovery,” 205). Another proof for the destructive impact of European American civilization on nature is the polluted pond at Fort Sedgwick, which Dunbar has to clean of rotting cadavers. The most striking example of environmental devastation is nevertheless presented by the deserted settlement which Dunbar and Kicking Bird encounter during their visit in the Natives’ sacred mountains. The place looks almost like an everyday 21st-century dump and gives a rather figurative account of what awaits this untouched Western world (see Fig. 12). Ostwalt

elaborates

the theory that Dances with Wolves differs from other Western movies primarily because its focus lies not on the

capturing

indigenous

of

the

American

population but on the conquering of the untouched land. And into the movie’s center Ostwalt puts the tragedy resulting from the Whites’ thoughtless impact.76

75 76

When he is slaughtered by the Pawnee, his last words are: “Don’t hurt my mules” (Dances). Cf. Ostwalt, 209.

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Peipp agrees with Ostwalt as far as the fact is concerned that Dances clearly shows ecological motifs. But according to Peipp the focus lies wholly on the Native Americans and not really on nature itself. He employs the idea of the “Öko-Indianer” (Peipp, 10) to refer to Costner’s depiction of the Sioux and the conveyed political agenda. In the opinion of Peipp, the Native in Dances is a mere vehicle to convey environmentalist messages and to express humanity’s longing for ecological balance.77 This idea takes us back to the notion of a “lost preindustrial Eden” (Stone, 131) which the protagonist of every going Native story hopes to find in the untouched wilderness of the frontier (see Fig. 13). If this thought is developed even further, we leave the idea of the pre-industrial Garden of Eden behind and end up with a pre-Columbian Garden of Eden. Robert Whelan proceeds in like manner and sets out to question the enterprise of Columbus altogether, for it has “led to the rape of the environment” (Whelan, 26).

This European ethic had crushed the Native American ethic of living in harmony with nature to the lasting detriment of both America and the planet. (Whelan, 26)

3.5. Farewell There is no doubt that Dances with Wolves is a truly magnificent and vivid account of the going Native myth, and it is probably unequaled as far as the gradual development of this myth is concerned. Nevertheless, it has to cope with all the inconsistencies that also other authors who dealt with this subject matter had to face. A depiction of an ethnic group will always be connected to contradictions due to omnipresent cultural differences. It even seems to be impossible to look at one 77

Cf. Peipp, 230.

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culture by its own standards when being part of another one. Costner, however, chose to reverse hardline genre tradition and thus ventured into unknown territory, but was rewarded for his spirited step. Dances with Wolves represents a faithful and sensitive portrayal of Native life which back in the 1990s was without equal. Yet, there are questions which a critical viewer has to ask, as the argumentation of this thesis has shown. First of all, there is the almost insolent use of dichotomy regarding the representation of Native tribes, the occasionally ruthlessly overdrawn disadvantaging of the White characters and an ending which clearly states that a harmonious beingtogether of Whites and Native Americans is simply not possible. In addition, Michael Blake’s screenplay originally suggests an ending which makes Dunbar finally find true Nativeness in a transcendental dream sequence and spend the rest of his life with the Sioux. Why Costner decided to redesign this ending would be another question worth examining. As far as the representation of nature in Dances is concerned, the argument that the Native is used as a mere vehicle for environmentalism78 seems justifiable, although this is not really a reason for accusation. The Native is and has always been tied very firmly to the concept of undisturbed natural balance – a fact that also Grey Owl had discovered and made use of. Costner probably could have taken out the focus on drama in some instances, and some scholars could have curbed their fantasy in interpreting this pictorial account of Native American culture, but in times of global warming and change of climate Dances with Wolves seems to be more topical than ever. One last word has to be added on the cultural applicability of the movie. “In recent years it has become commonplace for cultural theorists to question whether an observer from one culture can ever truly understand another,” explicates Edward Buscombe (8), and this problem arises twice in Dances with Wolves. In the first instance, there is the fact that Dances with Wolves is – as we have heard before – a “non-Indian generated document[…] about Indians” (Fixico, 3), and we have to bear in mind that the story told in this movie is told by director Costner and script author Blake respectively – two ordinary European Americans. In 1997 Donald Fixico counted “more than thirty thousand books written about American Indians with roughly 90 percent written by non-Indians” (3). This statistical study in turn induced 78

Cf. Peipp, 10.

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Buscombe to think through the whole paradox of Native American historiography and apply it to European or European American standards. “I try to imagine how I might feel if 90 per cent of the books on English history, say, were written by foreigners. How much can they really know?” asks Buscombe (8), and of course his question echoes when looking at a motion picture like Dances with Wolves. How much can they really know? On top of that, this question even works on another level. Being one of the great box office hits of its decade, Dances with Wolves naturally transcended the borders of the United States of America, which were thought to be the primary target audience. Thus, also other cultures were confronted with these magnificent pictures, as well as with the heavily laden allusions made in the movie. Karsten Fitz, who in his essay puts the focus on a transnational perspective on Western movies, points out that most Americans would probably be able to decipher many of the subtexts to Dances with Wolves immediately – American westward expansion, a policy of extinction of Native American tribes in the nineteenth century, and feelings of national guilt connected to that history […]. (64-65) But in the very same line Fitz expresses his doubt “that the majority of Germans would actually ‘see’ the same film” (65). So if this historico-political agenda of Dances with Wolves gets lost as soon as it sets foot on non-American territory, it runs the risk of remaining nothing more than a ramble into a picturesque American landscape embellished with the most kind-hearted Natives one can imagine. However, taking Dances with Wolves for what it is, an American movie written and directed by Americans and – last but not least – made for Americans, it defies all too harsh criticism. It still is a moving piece of cinematic history and an exemplary illustration of the going Native myth. Dunbar escapes the ghosts of his all-American past just to be reborn as Dances With Wolves and to discover his true self. By adopting Native ways he seems to redeem the errata of his people, conserve what is left after the virus of civilization has bled the land white,79 and ultimately regenerates the stereotypes he claimed to destabilize by simply – as well as seemingly unintentionally – being the White male hero of a Western movie.

79

Or rather White.

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Maybe this is why Dances with Wolves refrains from a happy ending. Dunbar’s journey into the Native world in the end turns out to be a ramble like the one described above, and when he and Kicking Bird separate for good, Dunbar produces his pipe and hands it over to his friend. “How does it smoke?” asks Kicking Bird (Dances). “I’ve never smoked it,” Dunbar (Dances) replies (see Fig. 14).

Taken in a larger context, [Dunbar] is admitting that his leaving was inevitable from the start. He was never fully integrated into the new existence he helped create for himself. On his own initiative he followed his fate in coming, and he leaves in the same way. (Smith, “Mythic Descent in Dances with Wolves”)

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4. The Last Samurai 4.1. Go East! The West had been explored, and more than a hundred years after Frederick Jackson Turner had trumpeted the closing of the frontier, stating that “[t]he free lands that made the American pioneer have gone” (245), the minds of the American nation were still – or probably more than ever before – rife with the idea of going Native. Be it cross-cultural, be it countercultural, over the centuries the Native American had emerged as a cornerstone of American culture which deserved some genuine worship. In the closing years of the preceding millennium this tribute was finally delivered by Kevin Costner with Dances with Wolves, and despite its weaknesses in some points, it became a milestone for the appropriate depiction of Native American people as well as for the screening of this all-American going Native myth. But despite the fact that Native Americans as well as the practice of going Native had been put onto screen in such a respectful and unparalleled manner, the need to confront the burdensome past and the longing for a corrective beyond the limitations of civilization were still widespread and popular in America. In order to come to terms with this legacy of angst, in former times, artists had turned West and set sail. But turning West, artists – cinematographers in particular – now faced a skyscraping monument which had Dances with Wolves inscribed at its bottom, and this colossus seemed to leave no room for further enthusiastic addresses to noble savages and their benevolent ways. Edward Zwick maybe was not the first one to recognize the huge shadow which Dances with Wolves cast over the Western genre, but he definitely was one of the first to react to this fact properly. Instead of turning West, Zwick turned East and sent his hero Captain Algren to the archipelago of the Japanese Empire, standing on the threshold of modernity. “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” Horace Greenly announced in an editorial of the New York Tribune in 1865, drumming the American pioneer spirit into the nation’s workers and Civil War veterans. The Last Samurai, quite the reverse, promises all these benefits on the other end of the world.

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4.2. Progress and Sickness

Ladies and gentlemen: Winchester, America’s leader in all forms of armament used by the United States Army, celebrates our nation’s centennial by bringing you a true American hero. One of the most decorated warriors this country has ever known. Winner of the Medal of Honor for his gallantry on the hallowed ground of Gettysburg. He is late of the 7th cavalry and their triumphant campaign against the most savage of the Indian nations. (Samurai)80 We meet Captain Nathan Algren, one-time officer of the famous – or infamous – 7th cavalry, in the back room of a traveling gun sales show, and he seems to be everything but what was just promised to the audience by the flamboyantly energetic announcer. Captain Algren is far from being a knight in shiny Civil War armor, and his posture as well as the flask of Whiskey in his hand immediately allays any false impressions. Algren is a shill, a puppet for the Winchester gun company. Threadbare and alcoholic he is waiting backstage to repeat the same lines over and over again, not giving his audience the slightest reason to believe that he is really in favor of all this. But what is all this? What does Algren actually represent? The unbroken endeavor of the European Americans, the pioneers, the frontiersmen, the Indian fighters, the spirited conquerors of the new continent have made Algren what he is now: only a shadow of his former self, physically broken, his resources ruthlessly consumed in order to keep pace with the rising spirit of the new nation. Tormented by the horrors of his past crimes to satisfy the ambition of his General Custer, and addicted to the very drug which came to be known as the tranquilizer of a whole race – firewater. Algren is a distorted image of the troublesome American history, the distillate of three centuries of conquest and progress.

80

In analogy to Dances, the motion picture The Last Samurai will in quotes henceforth be referred to as Samurai.

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Algren’s actual attitude towards the well-known forging of the American nation becomes apparent not so much from what he says at this Winchester show – for he delivers his pro-West propaganda quite well – but from the sheer contempt and bottomless cynicism he puts into his words. “Why, many’s the time I found myself surrounded by a swarm of angry hostiles” (Samurai), sounds Algren’s theatrical introduction, repeating stereotyped stock characters from the so-called dime novels. These novels became popular in the second half of the 19th century and told stories of brave-hearted gunslingers, cruel-hearted savages, and warm-hearted Indian princesses. But soon Algren loses the thread, lets his thoughts wander and ends up with the “poor bastards out there at the Little Bighorn” (Samurai) – actually referring to his army comrades, not the Natives. Algren’s general attitude marks the farewell to a controversial era in the making of America, an era which some years later was to be rejuvenated in Wild West Shows, trying to romanticize the times of Westward expansion, the times of the Wild West. Despite Algren’s blatant opposition he – at this point of the movie – is what Berkhofer refers to as an “agent[…] of civilization” (97), and his duty is to make the American public familiar with the “gun that’s winning the West81” (Samurai). Basically advertised as the instrument of civilization, this Winchester rifle, in the end, became the decisive factor which orchestrated the unabashed taking of Native land and left no chance to the Native Americans to fend off the second place in American history, which they were assigned from the beginning. Just like Roberta Pearson observes: The prevalent trope of the ‘vanishing American,’ supinely acquiescing to the onrushing steam engine of white ‘civilization,’ cast native Americans as innocent, long-suffering, noble savages, whose very passivity and inevitable fate well suited them to their roles in the melodramatic narrative of manifest destiny. (89) So, drunk from his burdensome past, Captain Nathan Algren decides to demonstrate the power of this devilish instrument, fires a shot and hits the American spirit of progress in the heart: straight into the boiler of the steam engine located in the back of the hall. Hissing the engine vents its steam and immediately puts the bystanders to silence.

81

This slogan is still in use to promote Winchester rifles today, only with a minor change of the tense used: “The Gun that Won the West.” See .

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In the end, though initially being sold to the public as a genuine American hero, Algren gets out of this introductory scene as someone different. He is not yet the cross-cultural hero that a going Native story of this format needs, but he surely fulfills all the preconditions to set off for the distant shores of a culture which is not his own. From the very beginning of this tale, Algren opposes the machine, he opposes the machinery. And in the end his fate will be sealed by it. 4.3. The Wild East – Appropriating the Term The Last Samurai, directed by Edward Zwick, may sound like a war movie, but it’s actually a western: ‘Dances With Wolves… in Kimono.’ (Hoberman, “The Robe Warrior”) Keeping in mind what has been said about the monolithic role of Dances with Wolves among other Western movies, it is not surprising that almost no critical review of The Last Samurai gets away without at least once referring to Costner’s Western epic. But is The Last Samurai really that much of a Western? Geographically speaking: No. But taking some of the prerequisites into consideration that a movie has to fulfill in order to be legitimately referred to as a Western, we discover truly Western assets poking out between all the kimonos and swords. In his thorough treatment of the history of the American Western and the position of Native Americans in popular culture, Robert Berkhofer sets out to lay down the basic features of what has come to be known as a true Western. And the very first leap he takes almost rules out The Last Samurai from the beginning: “What distinguished a Western from other types of adventure literature is the setting and the costumes” (Berkhofer, 97). This said, The Last Samurai suddenly does not look that Western any more. But Berkhofer continues: More significant than its actual locale is its timing in the history of Westward expansion of White society. It must be set at the moment when social order and anarchy meet, when civilization encounters savagery, on the frontier of White expansion, in order to give rise to the conflict that is the heart of the genre. (97) Thus, putting the locale aside and looking at The Last Samurai with inverted coordinates, the movie instantly seems the perfect match. In Zwick’s screen epic, the new Western social order inflicted upon the Japanese Empire clashes with the alleged savagery of the samurai caste, and this conflict is what characterizes the Western. -90-

According to Berkhofer, another distinguishing feature of the Western genre is that the usually White protagonist happens to be temporarily isolated from his home society.82 This feeling of separation may be intensified by placing the story in a town, fort, or ranch removed from the rest of society on the frontier, with only a thin, easily broken link in the form of a trail, telegraph line, or railroad connecting the advance agents with the great body of White population that is to follow them. (Berkhofer, 97) In The Last Samurai, Algren – in the first instance – may have been one of these advance agents, for he was hired to carry the spirit of Western progress deep into the heart of traditionalist Japan. But then he is taken captive in an idyllic village “removed from the rest of society” (Berkhofer, 97), and has the mountain pass, his only way out and Berkhofer’s “thin, easily broken link” (97), blocked by masses of snow. When it comes to character design in the Western, Berkhofer distinguishes between three main categories: First, there are the pioneers venturing into the new world, pushing the frontier of civilization, the “agents of civilization” (Berkhofer, 97). Opposing this group, Berkhofer has “the outlaws or the Indians” (97), whereas the third character category, the hero, “frequently represents some blend of both sides” (Berkhofer, 97). Applying this classification to The Last Samurai, everything falls into place – with slight adaptation. We find the modernists, embodied in the aristocrats trying to work the Western spirit into old Japan. We find the traditionalists, maintaining the outlaw position in an Empire which is being opened up to the future. And we find Algren, gradually migrating from category one to category two, who in the end finds himself in the position of the hero, representing “the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new” (Samurai). Even more than being a Western, The Last Samurai above all displays every single feature of a literary genre which is rooted much deeper in American culture and literature than the Indian flics of the 20th century: the captivity narrative. In their extensive survey of the Indian captivity narrative Kathryn Derounian-Stodola and James Levernier, supported by a selected bibliography by Alden T. Vaughan,83 boil down the classic captivity narrative to “a single narrative whose primary focus is to record the experiences of individuals of European or African origin who had actually

82 83

Cf. Berkhofer, 97. Cf. Vaughan, ed. Narratives of North American Indian Captivity: A Selected Bibliography.

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been captured by American Indians” (9). For Gordon M. Sayre, who put together a compendium of various American captivity narratives, a captivity narrative works multidirectional “[a]s realistic chronicle of frontier life, as ethnographic exploration of native cultures, or as pulp melodrama of ripped bodies and hairbreadth escapes” (4). Comparing these patterns with The Last Samurai, the story of Nathan Algren – the necessary geo- and ethnographical corrections taken – squares. But what makes the captivity record of Captain Algren even more interesting for the purpose of this thesis, is the mythological framework behind it all. Derounian-Stodola and Levernier identify certain “markers for decoding the social issues underlying the archetypal pattern of capture, initiation, and return” (40-41). In our case, the social issues lying behind the captivity narrative of Captain Algren are without any doubt closely connected to the motives behind Algren’s going Native. One example would be the spiritual enlightenment which Algren experiences during his passing from one culture to another. Arriving in Japan as a narrow-minded Indian fighter with full-fledged war paranoia, he finally ends up as an even-minded, almost stoic Native gallant, dwelling in the paradisiacal scenery of a mountain village. In order to master this journey successfully, Algren has to pass certain stages, some of which coincide with motives and milestones of his going Native. As the example of Dances with Wolves illustrates, the hero, in order to become receptive to the influences of the new world, will purify his mind and shed his former existence in a ritual-like act immediately preceding his Native renaissance. In his essay on ritual acts like blood-drinking and scalping in captivity narratives, Richard Vanderbeets also brings up the topos of the hero’s spiritual renaissance and explains that the core meaning in narratives of the like is that of the Hero embarked upon the archetypal journey of initiation. The quest, or ancient ritual of initiation, is a variation of the fundamental Death-Rebirth archetype and traditionally involves the separation of the Hero from his culture, his undertaking a long journey, and his undergoing a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance to knowledge. (553) Though in Nathan Algren’s case the circle of “separation, initiation, and return” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 40) is only completed hypothetically,84 Vanderbeets’ archetypal version of this journey “from ignorance to knowledge” 84

In the final voiceover, interpreter Simon Graham (played by Timothy Spall) tells the audience that Algren might have returned to the peaceful village and found his peace with the woman he had learned to love.

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(Vanderbeets, 553) is made perfect at any rate. Likewise, Algren’s journey into the heart of wild and untamed Japan reminds of Greg Garrard’s definition of the American pastoral, a key element of American ecocriticism, mostly identified by an “underlying narrative structure, in which the protagonist leaves civilisation for an encounter with non-human nature, then returns having experienced epiphany and renewal” (Garrard, 49). Now that The Last Samurai has been identified as both, a Western and a captivity narrative, we have to excavate the features which designate this epic as a story illustrating the going Native myth. Luckily, the hints and clues are more than evident. Already James Hoberman wrote in one of the first reviews of the movie that the plot is arranged around the “confrontation between a white European male and his aboriginal Other, and their mutual transformation” (C63). Again, all we have to do is to apply the methodology of going Native to the altered cultural background. Berkhofer’s notion of the different characters of the Western has shown that The Last Samurai does not lack the general ethnic disposition necessary to harbor the staging of the going Native myth. In fact, the fitting character profiles did not even have to be designed specifically for this purpose. Edward Zwick and his co-writer John Logan just had to locate the story of The Last Samurai at the right point in history, in a time heavy with a certain political air, an atmosphere of change – then the question of ethnicity or geography makes no difference. In The Last Samurai we find ourselves in late 19th-century Japan, and it was this very age which was shaped by confusion and radical transformation more than any other epoch in the history of this country. In the Meiji period (1868-1912) the nation tumbled into an obsession with everything modern, progressive, and Western, and seemed to turn its back on the traditional side of Japan. Naturally not all parts of the population wanted to follow this trend blindly, and of course some of the rebels were part of the social class which came to be known as the symbol of the old, traditional Japan and genuine Japanese culture – the ancient warrior caste, the samurai. In his briefing of the contemporary political situation of Japan upon Algren’s arrival, Mr. Graham explains: “The emperor is mad for all things Western and the samurai believe it’s changing too fast. It’s like the ancient and the modern are at war for the soul of Japan” (Samurai). This gradually vanishing social class, the samurai, and above all their rigid moral and social codes, was what the bewildered population of Japan was beginning -93-

to long for. And the idea of a healthy and familiar Japan now slowly fading was what author, economist, and samurai Nitobe Inazō had in mind when in 1899 he wrote Bushido: The Soul of Japan, one of the most influential masterpieces of Japanese literature. In an elaborate study on the gradual self-alienation of the Japanese culture, Patrick Hein provides a compact sketch of the scenario which Nitobe had to face and how he dealt with it: [T]he Meiji restorators identified themselves and competed at the same time with a West looking down on them and the rising influence of a merchant and military class desperately trying not only to distance itself from the past but to reinterpret it and suit it to its needs. In this atmosphere of change for the sake of change, reevaluation of the past and transition to something proclaimed to be more scientific, rational, objective, Western, and modern Nitobe stuck to his native and authentic values and principles. (Hein, 41-42) It was in Bushido that a dream of Japan was rendered which served people as a point of reference in times of upheaval and disorientation. In the preface to a German edition of Nitobe’s classic, Hannelore Eisenhofer explains: Das Ideal des Bushidō, das Nitobe Inazō hier so eindringlich als die ‘Seele Japans‘ vermittelt, war ein Wunschtraum, der kaum noch realisiert werden konnte. Und dennoch hält sich dieses Bild, das er seinerzeit vermittelte, auch heute noch hartnäckig in westlichen Vorstellungen von einem Japan, das es so nie gegeben hat und nie geben wird. (9) What Eisenhofer is paraphrasing here is more or less the fundamental concept of the Golden Age, which we have already located in various epochs in the history of mankind and – even more important – which forms the basic idea behind the concept of primitivism. And primitivism, in turn, is harboring the practice of going Native. The myth of the golden age is a nostalgic statement of man’s orientation in time, an attempt at transcending the limits of history. Since it concentrates mainly upon a prehistoric epoch, a foreworld once perfected and now lost, its usual corollary is a recoil from the belated decadence of the present epoch, whenever that may be. (Levin, xv) Japan, back then, was confronted with chronological primitivism in its essence, and the “foreworld once perfected and now lost” that Levin (xv) speaks of above, were the glorious pre-industrial times when the samurai marked the epitome of military nobility. But the virtuous warriors were clearly vanishing in the face of the onrushing Western civilization, and thus they soon found themselves in the same position as the Native Americans did in America in the preceding centuries. On top of that, this social class, slowly passing before the eyes of modern Japan, had always been -94-

labeled noble – an attribute which the American Natives were not granted until they finally were on the verge of disappearance. Even more so, the samurai codex had always favored a rather stoic attitude, stemming from Confucianism, and the concept of honor was held in high esteem. No wonder, actually, that the sword-wielding samurai all of a sudden became the noble savages of passing old Japan. Speaking of passing, late 19th-century Japan was confronted with a similar kind of depression as America was in the face of the closing of the frontier around the same time. Both societies were disquieted by the impending loss of a distinguishing cultural feature, the only difference was that the Americans had a more or less concrete idea of what to pine for, i.e. the frontier, whereas the Japanese could only bemoan the demise of their traditional cultural values. Therefore, Eisenhofer, describing this phenomenon from a non-American perspective, is perfectly right: “Die Verklärung der Vergangenheit ist nicht allein ein Privileg Japans, sondern in allen Kulturen anzutreffen“ (7).

4.4. Dances with Tigers The tiger’s eyes are like my own, but he comes from a deep and troubled sea. (Katsumoto, The Last Samurai) Apart

from

the

movie’s

protagonist, Captain Nathan Algren, there is one character in The Last Samurai who seems to be even more crucial to the illustration of the going Native myth than the cultural turncoat himself. It is the utterly noble-minded samurai leader, Katsumoto (see Fig. 16), impersonated in an impressive performance by the Japanese actor Ken Watanabe, whose imperturbable presence sets a singular counterpoint to Tom Cruise’s Algren. Although Cruise, often being criticized for throwing too much of his persona into the roles he plays – which generally results in blatant overacting – in The Last Samurai manages to give his Algren a humble and respectful aura of awe for this other culture, Watanabe’s monolithic magnanimity outshines even this.

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Despite the fact that there is a classical love story woven into the sociocultural setting of The Last Samurai, Katsumoto, being the catalyst and facilitator for Algren’s going Native, is the one “who captures the American’s heart” (Hoberman, C63). And, apart from the character of the Meiji emperor, he is also modeled on a real historical figure, Saigō Takamori, who in literature actually goes by the moniker of The Last Samurai. Patrick Hein takes the same line in his description of Saigō Takamori and his political legacy: A poor man attached to strong individual guiding principles who felt his deep loyalty to the person of the Meiji emperor not in any imaginary sense as obedience to a distant symbol but in a real sense, Saigō may be considered the last living example and archetype of Samurai behavior. (39) The above description of Saigō is more or less a periphrasis of what Algren writes into his diary, after he has got to know his benevolent captor Katsumoto a little: “I am surprised to learn that the word samurai means to serve, and that Katsumoto believes his rebellion to be in the service of the emperor” (Samurai). In fact, Katsumoto’s rebellion is nothing more than the desperate attempt to save Japan’s Native ways from the all-devouring abyss of Western culture. Therefore, in a way, Katsumoto becomes the one who goes Native, or rather stays Native, while everything around him begins to sway. As a consequence, Algren’s fascination with the noble samurai lord Katsumoto is what makes him blindly follow this man – even till death. But not only Algren falls in love with the other culture’s peculiarities. Contrary to his evident renunciation of Western ways and despite the fact that he originally captured the American to learn about his new enemy, Katsumoto cannot deny a certain interest in Algren’s stories. “Like all the Japanese that Algren meets, the noble, English-speaking Katsumoto seems to be fascinated by American Indians,” adds Hoberman (C63), and this curiosity about the Native Americans is a further aspect which opens the door for a mutual cultural exchange between the two warriors. In consequence, they end up as what Leslie Fiedler would refer to as “the Good Companions in the Wilderness” (50). This concept, as said before in section 2.5.1., is one of four basic myths that, according to Fiedler, have shaped the West.85 This “spiritual marriage […] of male to male” Fiedler (163) finds primarily realized

85

Cf. Fiedler, 49-120.

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in the union of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook, calling it “the archetypal equivalent of WASP assimilation to the world of the Indian” (163). Apart

from

the

special

relationship of the two main characters, The Last Samurai comprises further defining

elements

of

Fiedler’s

conception of the West. Being a “Runaway Male” (Fiedler, 50)86 by some means, Algren in the end is allowed to find his “Love in the Woods” (Fiedler, 49)87 spiritually fulfilled in his profound friendship to Katsumoto, and physically as well as emotionally fulfilled in his alleged relationship with his hostess Taka. Both relationships serve as major indicators of Algren’s descent into the mystical world of secluded old Japan. Katsumoto’s connection to Algren is even depicted as determined by fate, for the very first scene of the movie shows Katsumoto meditating in the wilderness, visualizing a white – yes white – tiger (see Fig. 16 above). This epiphany is then reawakened as Algren and Katsumoto first meet on the battlefield in the misty woods (see Fig. 17).88 The fact that Fiedler’s notion of the West and Zwick’s samurai epic in parts seem to go hand in hand is no coincidence at all. Just like Fiedler put the bond between the warriors in the wilderness in the center of his illustration of the spirit of the West, Hein – in his subchapter “The power of (male) friendship”89 – informs us that, among the samurai, “[r]eal and true friendship was highly valued: the goal of friendship was […] to maintain a lifelong strong alliance between equals built upon strongly shared convictions” (38-39). That is because the samurai “had either to rely

86

Cf. “The Myth of the Runaway Male” (Fiedler, 50). Cf. “The Myth of Love in the Woods” (Fiedler, 49). 88 It is already in this first scene that the viewer can feel director Zwick’s tendency to spell every little hint out to his audience. There is hardly any instance in The Last Samurai where Zwick lets things take their course and relies on his viewers’ imaginative abilities. Thus, he does not hesitate to lay the voiceover of a roaring tiger over the scene where we see the samurai flag shooting back and forth, in this way telling the audience that Algren must be the tiger that Katsumoto is writing about in his poem. Peter Reiner from the New York Magazine diagnoses roughly the same when he credits Cruise for really getting across his Algren as a war-troubled drunkard: “We don’t register Algren’s need for redemption as simply a plot device. He looks genuinely stricken by his past—so much so that it wasn’t really necessary for the director […] to periodically insert flashbacks to Algren’s Indian horrors. Zwick […] is better when he’s working without a highlighter” (Rainer, “Zen Palette”). 89 Cf. Hein, 38-39. 87

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on their inner guiding virtues or on the opinion and advice of very close friends when considering issues of social order, morality or right behavior” (Hein, 38). It is such a friendship that Algren and Katsumoto seem to share, and before long they both amble through the idyllic scenery of the Japanese countryside and exchange their thoughts like the philosophers of ancient Greece. This is about the time when Algren’s fascination with this extraordinary culture is enkindled. “Soon the soundtrack is awash with Kevin Costnerisms of Algren’s diaristic observations,” Hoberman (C63) satirizes not without good reason. The transformation has begun.

4.5. From Indian Fighter to Native Lover Just tell me one thing: What is it about your own people that you hate so much? (Colonel Bagley, The Last Samurai) The truth is, by the time Katsumoto and Algren begin to take their walks through the village, Algren’s transformation has not only begun – in fact it is already in full swing. The moment when Algren’s destiny begins to change or, as he himself puts it, “his destiny is revealed” (Samurai), is to be sought earlier in the movie, on the cold, hard mattress floor of Taka’s house.

4.5.1. Cold Turkey As we have heard before, Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai both share certain distinguishing features which characterize them as genuine going Native narratives. One of these features is a general layout geared to distinct genre conventions like, for example, Vanderbeets’ Death-Rebirth-cycle described above.90 In Dances with Wolves, Lieutenant Dunbar had to experience his near-death in the field hospital and survive the suicide attempt on horseback in order to let go of his former existence and emerge as a new person – the cultural half-breed Dances With Wolves. Like Dunbar before, Algren has to undergo purgatory – although in Algren’s case it should rather be labeled cold turkey. After being defeated in battle by the seemingly superhuman samurai and being taken to the mountain refuge of Katsumoto, Algren spends his first few days (or even weeks) fighting the ghosts of

90

Cf. Section 4.3. and Vanderbeets, 553.

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his past. Laid out in a darkened chamber, i.e. a prison cell with walls made of moveable wooden panels, Algren is left alone with his demons and has to confront penitence, pain and nocturnal perturbation on his own. Over and over again the visions of the past come to haunt him in flashbacks and nightmares – distorted images of the slaughtering committed among the Native tribes under his General Custer – and he yells the name of

both

his

tormentor

and

his

tranquilizer into the dark (see Fig. 18): “Sake! Sake!” (Samurai). From time to time the sliding door of his cell seems to open automatically and grants Algren a glimpse of the calmness and peace of the outside world – his light at the end of the tunnel. In order to rise as the New American Adam in the true idyll of this hidden mountain paradise, Algren first must “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23.4).91

4.5.2. Purging the Nation After this rather unorthodox initiation ritual – his spiritual cleansing and rebirth – Algren takes his first steps in a strange new world, and these steps lead him away from what he struggles to leave behind. Algren may be no Runaway Male in the Fiedler sense of the word, but he certainly is an escapist – forced to escape, actually, but an escapist all the same. And as such he naturally becomes the top candidate to go Native in this Eastern epic, for escape is to be found among the purest impulses behind this phenomenon, as we have already heard. Nevertheless, Algren shows great reluctance

to

inhale

the

cultural

abundance that he encounters.

He

appears to be a foreign body in this otherworld. The very picture of Algren shuffling through the picturesque village with this certain air of disbelief and disrespect strengthens this assumption. And the faux pas of covering the 91

Cf. The English Standard Version Bible.

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meticulously polished wooden floorboards and unstained mats with mud from his boots rounds off the image of the insubordinate and ruthless American soldier (see Fig. 19). But how is he supposed to know? Algren is alien to this culture, just like this culture is alien to him, and in the beginning there is little receptiveness on his side. Quite the opposite is represented by Katsumoto. He displays an apparently unquenchable thirst for knowledge of this other culture. He seeks Algren’s company and tries to engage him in “conversations” (Samurai). “Read a book,” Algren dismisses Katsumoto’s wish to get to know each other (Samurai). “I would rather have a good conversation,” replies the samurai lord with stoic calmness (Samurai), corresponding to Eiko Ikegami’s description of traditional samurai conduct: “In medieval Japan, the ‘action’ of a warrior was the most eloquent visible presentation of his internal quality” (278). And yet Katsumoto does read a book, Algren’s sketchbook, carefully wrapped up in finest Native American textile. Algren’s unwillingness to be open to the impressive splendor of Native Japanese country life is firmly tied to the general role that Algren plays in the first few chapters of the movie. Like a stock character from the “War-Painted Years” (Singer, 16) of western filmmaking,92 Algren is the All-American Indian fighter, a “true American hero” (Samurai), as has been said before. “Algren is never less than American,” states Hoberman, “[h]e’s always willing to fight […] and he teaches the village kids baseball” (C63). And being such an Indian fighter, he drags along a fair share of emotional affliction, for he seems to bear this heavy cross of historical guiltiness for the whole of America. The goal of this adventure is – of course – to free Algren from this burden, to make him break out from the prison of his own mind, and finally to purge his vexed warrior soul, just like Lieutenant Dunbar had been purged among the Sioux tribe. If Dances with Wolves already “purge[d] white America of its responsibility for the terrible plights of Native Americans, past and present” (Huhndorf, 4), The Last Samurai does even more so, on a much bigger scale. Whereas Dances with Wolves’ Dunbar is only allegedly associated with a so-called Indian fighter,93 Algren is the Indian fighter par excellence. Being the henchman of one of the most infamous 92

Also see the whole chapter on the “War-Painted Years,” in which Beverly Singer thoroughly enrolls the history of Native American exploitation and stereotyping in the early days of the Western movie genre. Cf. Singer, 14-22. 93 In fact, the only time Dunbar fights and kills Native Americans in Dances with Wolves is to protect his Sioux brothers from the savage Pawnee.

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figures of the so-called Indian Wars, United States Army officer George Armstrong Custer, Captain Algren has won his spurs in several battles against Native Americans and is then hired by the Japanese emperor’s ambassador Omura because of his expertise in the art of tribal warfare. Algren’s art is for sale, the only thing that changes for him is the ethnic group he fights. And soon Algren turns from an Indian fighter to an indifferent Native fighter, as he coldly expresses himself: “You want me to kill Jappos, I’ll kill Jappos. You want me to kill the enemies of Jappos, I’ll kill the enemies of Jappos. Rebs or Sioux or Cheyenne. For 500 bucks a month I’ll kill whoever you want” (Samurai).

4.5.3. A Heavy Cross Despite this rude display of cold-heartedness, Algren’s past continues to haunt him. Actually, there are two distinctive elements in The Last Samurai which identify him as the Indian fighter he was made to be. First of all, there are his nightmares, constantly following him, even across the Pacific Ocean. These nightmares become the manifestation of the guilty conscience of White America, the reason why Algren goes Native, and, thus, one of the main motifs in The Last Samurai: redemption for the bloody conquest. Algren suffers agonies of shame, day and night, and though he makes a show of his coldness and insensitivity, he still is not able to leave it all behind. Admittedly, it seems to be a brilliant example of tragic irony that Algren’s mental and physical self-destruction is facilitated by the very drug which has become infamous as the sedative of the Red Man: firewater. Algren is a dipsomaniac, an alcoholic, he is a drinker. He tries to forget what he has done to the Native American population by (ab)using the substance commonly known to be used by Native Americans to forget what the White Man has done to them. Priceless! The second element which establishes Algren’s identity as an Indian Fighter is the sketchbook in which he has carefully collected drawings of his alleged enemies, pictures which speak of a warm-heartedness and awe that actually drops the first hint at Algren’s later destiny. These charcoal sketches of Native life serve as the first topics to engage Katsumoto and Algren in their conversations (see Fig. 20). Their talks become the uniting element of the two cultures, the cradle of their mutual cultural exchange. On the one hand, the sketchbook is introduced as a means of strategic warfare, a tactical device which Algren has developed himself, showing his -101-

enemy in every detail. On the other hand, Algren’s drawings reveal such empathy and understanding of Native American culture that they could make this ragged Civil War vet another George Catlin. One fact that is not questioned a single time in The Last Samurai is that Algren

carries

along

his

Indian

sketchbook everywhere he goes. If this chapter of his life torments him so much and he obviously does everything to numb this stinging pain, why would he still carry around these writings and drawings? For the sake of simplicity one could argue that these sketches represent the tangible memories in Algren’s mind, his guilty conscience, in short. Whether he does the cynic stooge at a rifle advertising campaign in San Francisco or wastes away in solitude and isolation at the other end of the world – his memories are always with him and so is his sketchbook. Algren is the audience’s point of reference, an American Everyman, and thus reminds the viewer of the troubling past that the average American should be aware of.94 Soon after Katsumoto and Algren have shared in their contrasting cultures for the first time, the expected roles begin to interblend. Apart from Katsumoto’s childlike fascination for Native American warriordom, it is his unique admiration for General Custer that particularly strikes in the beginning. “He killed many warriors. […] So he was a good general,” concludes Katsumoto (Samurai). “No, he wasn’t a good general. He was arrogant and foolhardy. And he got massacred because he took a single battalion against 2000 angry Indians. […] He was a murderer who fell in love with his own legend,” warns Algren in return (Samurai). But is not he the corrupted and tough Westerner who is to be taught humanity amidst this idyllic paradise? Yes and no. Just like Katsumoto, Algren is a noble savage to a certain degree: noble, because he did not fail to recognize the blindness which drove men like him and Custer; savage, because he still practices the art of warfare. But Algren is fully aware of his bitter fate: “I have been hired to suppress the rebellion of yet 94

In Manifest Manners, a thorough survey of the misrepresentations and myths that have led to the contemporary notion of Indianness, Gerald Vizenor explains that “[t]he Civil War has become one of those simulations in movies that abates the loathsome memories of more recent wars, and hastens the disabused heroes to discover their honorable pluck with native warriors” (6). Thus, the Civil War in motion pictures is introduced as one of the vehicles to water down the problematic history of the modern age by simply having the combat-weary veteran go Native.

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another tribal leader. Apparently, this is the only job for which I am suited. I am beset by the ironies of my life” (Samurai). But in the end, Algren switches - from killing Indians to killing time. And the reason why he can spend his days carelessly in this exotic exile is because Katsumoto has taken his sketchbook from him – and thus his guilty conscience. It is in this remote village in the wilderness that Algren learns to breathe, laugh, and live again. No agonies whatsoever, no dehumanization through industrialization, no “materialistic desacralization” (Ostwalt, 211). I have never been a church-going man and what I have seen in the field of battle has led me to question God’s purpose, but there is, indeed, something spiritual in this place. And though it may forever be obscure to me I cannot but be aware of its power. I do know that it is here that I have known my first untroubled sleep in many years. (Algren, Samurai) 4.5.4. Cherry Orchard Revisited Not only in terms of redemption does The Last Samurai seem to be an extension of the motifs already presented in Dances with Wolves. In parts, Zwick’s epic goes beyond the scope of Dances with Wolves, and thus becomes a kind of aemulatio95 of Costner’s masterpiece. One example would be the farewell scene of Costner’s Western epic, showing Dances With Wolves handing back the pipe to Kicking Bird while telling him that he had never smoked it. There is a similar farewell in The Last Samurai, when Katsumoto returns Algren’s sketchbook in the cherry orchard, right before they leave to take Algren back to Yokohama after the passes have opened again (see Fig. 21). Katsumoto gives Algren his freedom and escorts him back to civilization, but not without first marking an important stage in Algren’s process of going Native: “When I took these you were my enemy,” Katsumoto sanctions the transition from friend to

95

In his ars poetica, the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus explains the importance of not just imitating original texts, but ameliorating them. Cf. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Ars Poetica, Verses 119-52. Of course, this spirit was rejuvenated in the Early Modern period, and Jan-Dirk Müller and Ulrich Pfisterer put forth the idea of the aemulatio as a so-called Epochensignatur of this era. See Müller and Pfisterer, 1-190.

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foe (Samurai). But just because Algren is no longer Katsumoto’s enemy does not mean that his journey is already complete. Contrary to Dances with Wolves, it here is the wise Native who gives the cultural token back to the apprentice. The motif of the return to the original society thus is of much more significance in The Last Samurai. Put to the very end of Dances with Wolves, the farewell scene is embedded in the middle of The Last Samurai, leaving the main characters with enough time to correct the obvious mistake of saying goodbye. Already in Dances with Wolves the viewer cannot help but refuse to accept Dunbar’s decision to leave the Sioux in the end – after more than three hours of going Native propaganda and a transcultural rollercoaster ride through thick and thin. Zwick’s vision reaches beyond this point. In his farewell scene both men, Katsumoto and Algren, know quite well that it is not the right decision to separate, but it appears that the rigid corset of their social codes forbids them to express their true sentiments. However, soon afterwards they will be united again. 4.6. Staging the Myth – Cinematic Devices Now that the basic framework for Algren’s apostasy from Western values has been laid, this section shall be dedicated to the actual technical realization of his going Native. On the one hand, this will include the visible rhetorical devices of The Last Samurai, as it were, but at the same time it will involve a closer examination of the transformation of Algren’s persona which is implemented through cinematic artifice.

4.6.1. Colors and Geometry As regards visual art work, the scenes immediately succeeding Algren and Katsumoto’s farewell in the cherry orchard are of particular expressiveness. Also Richard Schickel, in his review of The Last Samurai for Time Magazine, states that “[b]y way of contrast, there is a handsome geometric austerity to the way Zwick and his director of photography, John Toll, show court life and intimate life in a Japan trembling on the brink of modernity” (“Found in Translation”). At this point of the plot, Algren has more or less completely indulged in Katsumoto’s world, and the fact that he is about to leave it all behind forever is ostensibly startling him.

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When Katsumoto and his men escort Algren to Yokohama, the whole city seems to be in excitement. As the group of riders slowly makes its way through the agitated streets, the air is laden with visual overtones clearly alluding to a classic Western showdown. Katsumoto and his riders undeniably resemble a bunch of outlaws, their earthcolored vesture is warring with the plain black Western suits parading the streets (see Fig. 22). Even the sky above the city streets is overcast with countless telegraph poles and wires, leaving no doubt that modernity has hit Japan with full force (see Fig. 23). However,

the

cold

face

of

modernity awaits Algren when he returns to the parade ground of the emperor’s army: howitzers, and many of them. The first one to receive him is his Western nemesis, Colonel Bagley, explaining in every single detail how lethal and merciless the newest killing machines of the army are. “I need a bath,” Algren replies, echoing his former hostess’s words, “He smells like the pigs” (Samurai). Back then, Taka was referring to the stench coming from the soldier’s ragged trooper uniform, now it is Algren’s turn to yearn for cleansing again. And though his uniform may have been washed over the past year, he seems irritated by the aura clinging to every thread and every seam of this Western identifier. “After living with those savages, I can only imagine,” comments Bagley (Samurai), and Algren’s despising look immediately reveals his true emotions. Bagley’s words ruthlessly put Algren back to reality, and the sheer geometry and symmetrical lines of the next shot give proof to the fact that this part of Japan has nothing to do with the meandering brush stroke of nature so visible in the edenic mountain village where he has been dwelling for so long. Algren’s view of the exercising troops is just a calculated gathering of squares, rectangles and cones, quite the opposite of the soft textures of nature he has come to love (see Fig. 24 and 25).

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Also, the use of color in The Last Samurai is a powerful method to illustrate the contrast between Algren’s new-found Native paradise and the other Japan on the way to modernity. At about the same time when Algren is horror-stricken at the view of the imperial army, Katsumoto is meeting the emperor himself. Among the monarch’s entourage he stands out like a black cat in a bed of lilies – and that despite the fact that he is wearing his most sumptuous kimono so far. The five geishas who are accompanying the two men clearly mark the height of Japan’s newly gained artificiality and unnaturalness in terms of vesture, displaying colors which could not be farther from the warm and earthy tones the viewer has experienced before, while following Algren through the noble wilderness of Japan’s mountains. And all of a sudden, Algren’s furtive glances at Taka and the other villagers flash up again in strong contrast to the strident costume of the geishas at the emperor’s court (see Fig. 26 and 27).

In this respect, Zwick has managed to transfer the concept of the locus amoenus,96 which seems so essential to the general idea of going Native, to the quiet mountain paradise of Katsumoto. Not only does this place fulfill all the prerequisites already established in antiquity – as there are lush oases of silence and freedom, soothing rivulets and inspiring views all around – Zwick has also managed to devote

96

For a more detailed discussion see section 2.5.1.

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this special place its original purpose: here Katsumoto finds peace of mind and indulges in his poetry – typically in the cherry orchard. Back at the court the viewer is confronted with another polarized and thus polarizing character, Omura, the emperor’s disseminator of Western values. Omura is Katsumoto’s and Algren’s fiercest political opponent and the most obvious Japanese advocate of the go West spirit. Accordingly, he is the first one to recognize that something in Algren has changed after he has returned from his initially involuntary stay in the mountain exile. Being asked by Colonel Bagley and Omura to share his experiences and reveal some of the data he was able to collect on the spot, Algren tries to follow in his former footsteps: “As you said, Colonel, they are savages with bows and arrows” (Samurai). The reduction of the noble samurai caste – in this case to bow-bearing savages – parallels the generalization that Native Americans have experienced in the 20th century. From the 1950s onward, but especially in the heyday of the Cowboyand-Indian era, filmmakers all too easily fell back on what Ralph and Natasha Friar aptly refer to as the “Instant Indian Kit,”97 a rudimentary set of features allegedly making up a Native American character in a Western movie. Nevertheless, the emperor’s counselor Omura is not that easily taken in by Algren’s derogatory remarks about Katsumoto and his men. Remembering Algren’s stunning demonstration of unrestrained alcoholism at their first meeting in San Francisco, he is at first quite startled to find Algren turning down his offer of a glass of whiskey. Disconcerting. Then, Omura also demonstrates intriguing understanding of how Algren’s general attitude may have been altered over the past year. He concedes that the ways of the samurai “have great appeal” (Samurai), just like Dunbar in Dances with Wolves once discovered that the “Indians have a great pull” (Dances). And despite the political enmity towards Katsumoto, Omura speaks of the samurai leader as “an extraordinary man” (Samurai). Nevertheless, Algren tries to hide his new love for Japanese Native ways in another wonderfully trivial platitude: “He is a tribal leader. I’ve known many of them” (Samurai). But at this point of the plot the viewer already knows that Algren’s words are just empty clichés. Too far has he pushed forward into the hidden paradise; for too long he has been savoring the formerly forbidden fruit of freedom and peace of mind. And what awaits Katsumoto in the New World? Only death. Logically, there is only 97

Cf. Friar, 223-27.

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one way out – back to paradise, back to the primitive – and now it is Algren’s duty to take his mentor there. 4.6.2. Wild in Woods98 – First Contact In a story of mutual exchange and understanding the first contact between the representatives of the two cultures will, as a matter of course, deserve particular attention. In The Last Samurai this confrontation takes place when the imperial army of the Meiji emperor is led by Algren to fight Katsumoto and his renegade samurai warriors for the first time. At this stage of the plot, the prototypical role of Algren has already been well established – partly because of his cynical performance in the introductory scenes,99 and partly because of the scenes immediately preceding the clash of the opposing forces. In these scenes the viewer follows Algren to the training camp of the emperor’s army. Together with his comrade Zebulon Gant, Algren is in charge of making the newly dressed up troopers fit to face the samurai. From counselor Omura we learn that actions need to be taken, because Katsumoto has recently attacked the railroad at the border of his province. Of course Katsumoto, self-proclaimed guardian of the old ways and always true to type, aims to strike at the root of the problem, symbolically trying to break the Western spirit’s metal spine, winding endlessly through country. And Omura cannot help but acknowledge Katsumoto’s clever tactic: “We cannot govern a country in which we cannot travel freely. He must be stopped now” (Samurai). Also Algren unwittingly gets himself prepared for what is to come. Just like predecessor John Dunbar in Dances with Wolves he has to let go of his former self in order to be able to adapt to his new cultural harbor. This happens in stages. One of these stages is Algren’s suicidal fit on the army’s parade ground, when he tries to prove the rest of the commanders that the troopers are not ready to meet the Native insurgents. “Fire! Utte!” Algren commands (Samurai) and makes use of the Japanese language for the first time to order the intimidated private to shoot him. And although Algren 98 99

Cf. Dryden, 1.1.1. 209: “When wild in woods the noble Savage ran.” See section 4.2.

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seems to know that the soldier will miss, the whole scene arrangement is quite reminiscent of a firing squad. “Shoot me, damn it,“ he hisses (Samurai). It sounds like a wish (see Fig. 28). This suicidal act bears a resemblance to Dunbar’s initiation rite, who sought death in enemy fire – and in friendly fire as well. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a seminal work in the field of crosscultural comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell collects different versions of archetypal heroic myths and divides them into their essential parts. One of these parts is the hero’s “Crossing of the First Threshold” (Campbell, 71).100 On his journey the archetypal hero has to transcend the limits of the world as it is known to him, leave his “present sphere, or life horizon” (Campbell, 71) and confront the dangers “beyond the protection of his society” (Campbell, 71). But Campbell also puts forth that this journey does not necessarily lead the hero elsewhere, for the passing of this threshold can also be “a transit into a sphere of rebirth” (83) and “a form of selfannihilation” (84). “[I]nstead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again” (Campbell, 83). Dunbar and Algren, however, accomplish both goals of Campbell’s archetypal myth: they go beyond the limits of their society and metaphorically annihilate themselves in order to be born again. And just like Dunbar once rose all naked and clean from the pond near Fort Sedgwick, Algren’s catharsis and renaissance is also soon to come.101 Only then is he able to let go of his former identity. “[H]e sheds it, as a snake its slough” (Campbell, 85). What follows the scenes in the training camp is the actual confrontation of the warring factions, staged in a dark and gloomy wood. This sequence seems to serve a special purpose, as it particularly aims to expose the modernists’ impotence in the face of their Native enemies. The first ones to experience the unearthly power of Katsumoto’s samurai forces are the imperial troopers led by Algren. Being unprepared to face up to this superior enemy, they are visibly unable to cope with the situation and tremble with their stomachs in knots.102

100

Cf. Campbell, 71-82. See section 4.5.1. 102 In fact, the major part of the Japanese characters favoring the modern, Western ways is depicted in a kind of unfavorable way: First and foremost the Meiji emperor, who is but a marionette of unscrupulous counselors, saying of himself that he needs “advisors who know the modern world” (Samurai), but in the same breath confesses, “I am a living god – as long as I do what they think is right” (Samurai). In addition, consultants and officials like Omura are fleecing the empire with no respect for tradition, and the faceless crowd of Westernized soldiers is led like lambs to the slaughter. 101

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A

noteworthy

example

of

this

almost

exaggerated display of Western inferiority to the Native modus vivendi is General Hasegawa. Once a samurai just like Katsumoto, he now makes the impression of an old man squeezed into a trooper costume (see Fig. 29). Though Hasegawa assists Algren in planning the campaign against the Native rebels, a deep admiration for Katsumoto still shows through in his words. He, being first-hand informant to the bringers of the modern age, leading an army equipped with the most recent killing devices, tells Algren that “Katsumoto no longer dishonors himself by using firearms” (Samurai). And interpreter Graham adds that “to those who honor the old ways, Katsumoto is a hero” (Samurai). That Hasegawa is one of those who honor the old ways becomes obvious in his reaction to the devastating result of the first battle in the woods. Still being samurai under his uniform, he settles on the only way to reclaim his honor, i.e. his greatest good, by choosing to take his life through seppuku, the ritual selfdisembowelment. Algren, who is being carried away in this very moment, becomes witness to the decapitation of Hasegawa through Katsumoto’s sword and is struck with the highest possible grade of detestation for this outwardly savage practice. Only after having gone Native and having learnt the way of the samurai, he internalizes the moral codes and virtues of his target society. And in the end he becomes the one who pays his last respects to Katsumoto by assisting him in leaving this world. Another character who adds to the dismal picture of Westernized Japan in this first confrontation is one young anonymous non-commanding officer of the imperial army. Being inferior in equipment, tactics, and strength, he draws the only possible conclusion – he turns his back and leaves the battlefield behind. But the young soldier reappears much later in the movie, in the final battle scene. He stays uphill and watches the samurai army being executed by the howitzers from a distance. Nevertheless, in the end he becomes the one to initiate modern Japan’s final bow to its traditional ways by literally kneeling down to the heroism and sense of honor of his cultural predecessors (see Fig. 30). And finally, all of the soldiers salute their – so to speak – Native counterparts (see Fig. 31).

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General Hasegawa, the young anonymous officer, the hordes of nameless Japanese soldiers – all these characters serve to establish a rather negative view of the new, Western Japan. In their uniforms they seem like puppets dressed up by their government. Next to the samurai warriors in their splendid harnesses, the strained bodies of the army soldiers in their bluish uniformity strongly remind of George Catlin’s dual portrait of Assiniboin chief Wijún-jon going to and returning from Washington (see Fig. 32). According to Robert Berkhofer, this painting illustrates “[h]ow civilization destroyed the noble Indian, if it did not kill him” (88). And taking a closer look at the scene of the first contact, we discover that it brilliantly displays the basic features which according to Berkhofer define the Western genre. The battlefield in the misty forest is the point where “civilization encounters savagery, on the frontier of White expansion” (Berkhofer, 97). Furthermore, it is here where we find our vanishing race, the samurai caste, being pushed to the edge of existence by the onrush of Western and White civilization. If the chronology of The Last Samurai was to be compared with the history of the conception of Native Americans as it was delineated in this thesis, the first battle in the woods would mark the stage of condemnation and misrepresentation. As the samurai approach through the patch of mist, the imperial troopers wince at the bloodcurdling war cries, uttered in the most savage manner. When the fog opens and the warriors finally appear, god-like and mysterious, it seems as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse themselves rushed at the trembling soldiers (see Fig. 33). On top of that, Ujio, the fiercest of Katsumoto’s warhorses, is carrying a helmet which makes -111-

him look like the devil in the flesh, coming from the mist to descend upon the troopers. The metamorphosis of the time-honored samurai warrior into the aforementioned bogeyman could not have been staged better. Towards the end of the scene when Algren and Katsumoto meet for the first time, Algren performs the dance with the tiger standard and proves that he – though tired of being alive – is ready to fight for his survival to the last breath. And while defending himself against several enemies at once, Algren is being scrutinized by Katsumoto with both admiration and disbelief. Clearly, in this scene Katsumoto realizes that Algren is “a special White man” (Dances) – just like Kicking Bird has once labeled Lieutenant Dunbar while he was dancing with the wolf – and he spares his life. In this way Katsumoto is depicted in both extremes of his persona, a noble savage to the core. Noble in the first place, for he is a fusionist of the cultures, seeing something worth saving even in his bitterest enemy. But then, as Algren is carried off, he appears as a savage, a merciless butcher to Algren’s eyes, as he seconds General Hasegawa at his seppuku. But the deeper Algren plunges into the Native world of Japan, the more Katsumoto’s savage side seems to disappear.

4.6.3. Costume = Custom Taka: Japanese men do not help with this. Algren: I am not Japanese. (Samurai) In Playing Indian, one of the few book-length studies on transcultural phenomena connected to the Native American world and the essential function of going Native for the American identity, Philip J. Deloria postulates that “[c]ostume and disguise […] can have extraordinary transformative qualities” as it “readily calls the notion of fixed identity into question” (6-7). Since the breaking up of fixed identities lies at the core of The Last Samurai, the transformative qualities of costume are of essential significance in the picture.

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In The Last Samurai clothing becomes one way to visibly indicate Algren’s going Native. He starts out as an alien stroller in the Japanese village, leaving mud stains on the floor, wearing his loosely fitting uniform, quipping at the traditional Japanese vesture of his guard: “I know why you don’t talk. You’re angry. You’re angry, because they make you wear a dress” (Samurai). Algren neither shows respect for nor understanding of the other culture, until he starts his conversations with Katsumoto and opens his eyes – as his diary entries reveal: I continue to live among these unusual people. I’m their captive, in that I cannot escape. Mostly I’m treated with a kind of a mild neglect, as if I were a stray dog or an unwelcome guest. Everyone is polite. Everyone smiles and bows. But beneath their courtesy, I detect a deep reservoir of feeling. They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline. (Samurai) It is about this time in The Last Samurai that Algren’s advances towards his captors become clearer and clearer, and the passion he develops strongly reminds of Lieutenant Dunbar’s gradual immersion in the Native American world. We can see Algren breathing deeply while taking a bath in a hot spring; we watch him showing some interest in Japanese craft, ceremony, and calligraphy, and we catch him trying to take part in the warriors’ sword fighting routine. But the most spirited leap towards the other culture is his first donning of traditional Japanese garb. With almost puerile pleasure he discovers the kimono next to the harness of the warrior he killed in battle. What follows then is one of the most popular clichés which countless numbers of martial arts movies of the 1970s, first and foremost the famous Bruce Lee movies as well as the Kung Fu television series, have inflicted upon contemporary popular culture – karate moves (see Fig. 34). Whenever a scent of Asian culture and tradition needs to be produced, karate moves seem to be the way to go. Although Algren is supposedly just imitating the movements of the warriors he has been observing for so long during his walks through the village, he appears to the audience as an ordinary 21st-century-American who just put on a kimono for the first time. And this must have been the impression which was sought by director Zwick; this was the scent of Asianness to be conjured up. How -113-

do you turn a European American into an Asian the quickest possible way? Obviously you put him into a kimono and let him chop the air with his bare hands – cliché-ridden but effective. In a world overflowing with pop culture platitudes, karate moves actually happen to be one of the first connotations which are associated with the East; a display of going Native appealing to the lowest common denominator. But it works. Of course it works. It already worked with Kevin Costner dancing around a campfire in the most Indian-like manner, uttering war- or whatsoever-cries to make the audience believe that now he is living true Indianness – now, as he performs the most Indian thing for a European American to do; a really powerful platitude, again. In The Last Samurai it even works out for the Native taste. What immediately follows the scene described above is that Higen, the elder son of Algren’s hostess Taka, gets ready to bow to Algren as he spots him sporting traditional garb, performing martial arts mimicry. In this way he shows the same respect for Algren that he would show for any other member of his society. He acknowledges Algren as one of them, and Algren also tries his first bow. From thereon Algren wears the kimono day in day out. He gets absorbed in everyday village life and directs his attention to more and more aspects of this unknown territory. First: the language. After being provided with a modified Japanese version of his Western name, Algren is about to master the Japanese language, and he turns out to have an able mind for foreign languages. Again, this particular ability makes him especially prone to going Native. And actually, Algren’s companion Zebulon Gant has already pointed out his comrade’s linguistic skills shortly after their arrival in Yokohama: “The captain will be speaking the lingo in no time. You should hear him blather on in Blackfoot” (Samurai). How important it is for Algren to be able to communicate becomes especially visible in the scene when he plucks up his courage and tries to apologize to Taka for killing her husband. This act of remorse, on the one hand, clears the way for further feelings to be exchanged between the two; on the other hand, it puts Algren in the position to do penance – allegedly for the first time in his life. The fact that he is able to actively repent what he has done to Taka, and her husband respectively, becomes a substitute for the unatoned crimes he has committed in the Indian wars. Thus, this purging of the soldier’s conscience becomes one essential function of his going Native. -114-

Another scene that we have learned to be very crucial to any story of a White Westerner going Native is the massacre scene. The Last Samurai also features a fullfledged massacre, but again, with slightly inverted roles. In analogy to Dunbar’s only fit of violence in protecting his tribe members against the raiding Pawnee, Algren proves himself a worthy clan member as he saves the life of his captor Katsumoto when he is attacked by ninja assassins sent by Omura. The look the two men exchange after having struck down the enemies says more than a thousand words. Katsumoto is about to fully accept Algren as a samurai warrior in his family. Little wonder the subsequent farewell in the cherry orchard deeply moves both of them. But not much time passes until they meet again. Back in Yokohama, when Algren heads to the emperor’s palace to help Katsumoto escape his dreary fate, the fighting skills he was taught by his unapproachable opposer, the grim Ujio, definitely come in more than handy. Although Algren is attacked by four enemies at once, they do not stand a chance against his martial arts and his meditative visual perception (see Fig. 35). A victory for the Native way, and yet this whole picture is to be relativized a few scenes later. Despite the fact that the samurai’s teachings have led Algren to such superior fighting power, in the end the American soldier remains the one to lead Katsumoto’s army in the final battle. Algren maps out the fighting strategies and knows when to attack. He even falls back on a battle tactic used by the famous Spartan warriors at the pass of Thermopylae, a move deeply anchored in Renaissance thought, paying tribute to chronological primitivism. And finally, this American soldier named Algren is the one to survive Katsumoto, his mentor, and helps him regain his honor. Despite all the movie-length propaganda for and devotion to Native ways, the fact remains that Katsumoto and his men obviously need a “true American hero” (Samurai) to be able to face the onslaught of Western modernity. This, again, raises the problem of the White hero. Just like Huhndorf already criticized Dunbar’s part in Dances with Wolves,103 the very pattern is repeated in The Last Samurai. Although being intended to downscale the all-devouring force of Western civilization and 103

See section 3.3.2. and Huhndorf, 3.

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stand up for Native ways, the final scenes again reassure White racial hierarchy. On top of that, the advocates of modern Japan finally go down on their knees before Algren and his fellow samurai warriors. So, in the end, Algren gets recognition from both, Natives and newcomers, traditionalists and modernists. After all he is a hybrid provided with only the best features of the two worlds.

4.6.4. Native Knighthood Algren’s definite integration into the Native world is actually completed before he goes into the final battle discussed above. This last and most crucial stage of his transition is again divided into four parts, or stages, which are represented by the four main characters who shaped Algren’s life in the village. The first stage is Algren’s conversation with Higen, his youngest tutor in the mountain refuge, on the eve of the battle. During Algren’s time in captivity, Higen facilitated his Native conversion in many ways. He was the one who never seemed to judge Algren for what he had done to his father; he was the first one to bow to Algren and accept him as an equal, and he became Algren’s language instructor and thus provided him with one of the most powerful instruments to go Native. As Higen realizes that Algren is about to go into battle against the Westernized army, he wants to know why. And Algren’s answer is less an explanation for Higen than an explanation for himself, as his facial expression reveals: “Because they come to destroy what I have come to love” (Samurai). From Taka he learns, then, that Higen does not want to lose Algren just like he has lost his father. Hence, Algren has already been adopted as a family member by the boy and become a substitute father. Taka herself marks the second stage of Algren’s final transformation. On the day of the attack of the imperial army she leads Algren into the room where her husband’s belongings are put up. Telling him that it would honor the family if he wore her husband’s armor, she silently and solemnly puts the different layers of the harness on Algren’s body. Through this ritual-like act Taka also makes the foreign warrior one of her own kind, one of her society, her family. Just like he somehow became the boy’s stepfather, he now becomes Taka’s new partner. This replacement of single family members may seem odd to our contemporary conception of morality, but from Kathryn Derounian-Stodola and James Levernier we learn that adoption of captives among Native Americans served as a way “to replace tribal numbers diminished by war and disease brought on by white colonization” (5). And -116-

they add, “[s]o common was this practice that adoption into the tribe, rather than torture or death, was the fate that most captives could reasonably expect” (5). Keeping this fact in mind, the whole story of Algren’s gradual growing into Taka’s family not only serves as a model for going Native, but also respects the genre conventions of the American captivity narrative. The third stage awaits Algren right after he leaves Taka’s house in full armor – the fierce Ujio. Ever grim, he rushes at Algren like so many times before, when he tried to shatter every single one of Algren’s advances towards his society with his wooden sword. But this time is different. With due air of respect Algren notices that Ujio does not approach to make him pay for wearing the samurai armor, but to check the proper fit of the harness (see Fig. 36). Ujio’s short nod then tells Algren that now also his most adamant enemy within the samurai clan has accepted him as a fellow warrior. And he proceeds to be knighted a Native by his former captor, then teacher, and now friend. Katsumoto, imposingly positioned in front of the whole samurai army, marks the final stage of Algren’s Native evolution. In a scene which again strongly reminds of Dunbar’s and Kicking Bird’s farewell in Dances with Wolves, the samurai lord hands over to Algren a newly forged samurai sword, which carries a significant engraving. “I belong to the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new” (Samurai), Katsumoto translates. It could not have been put better. Now Algren not only represents the perfect blend of Asian and American, but also serves as the prototype of tradition combined with modernity. His journey seems to have come to an end. “They say that a samurai’s sword is

his

soul”

(Samurai),

interpreter

Graham’s words echo softly in this scene. Katsumoto

literally

gives

Algren

a

samurai soul and thus bestows native knighthood upon this alien warrior (see Fig 37.).

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4.7. A Small Measure of Peace Captain Nathan Algren’s journey into the heart of feudal Japan certainly is a moving one. Commercially intended to be nothing but a blockbuster movie, I have tried to demonstrate that The Last Samurai works just as well as a storybook example of the going Native myth. Any criticism spawned by the subjective perception of the performance of single actors – first and foremost the polarizing Tom Cruise himself – may be dismissed for the sake of objectivity, and in doing so we get a genuine going Native story which brilliantly displays all the essential features of the genre. Algren is made find redemption twice – first in his inclination towards ruthless self-destruction, later in the ability to repent the wrongs he committed. This fact is even sanctioned by Katsumoto himself when before his death he says, “You have your honor again. Let me die with mine” (Samurai). Algren’s renaissance also happens on two levels. The physical regeneration at the beginning of his stay in the village clears his body of the strains of the past, whereas his spiritual rebirth fosters his inner transition to the Native world. He gets carried away with the way of the samurai, bushido, so that in the end Algren himself is the one to teach the emperor a lesson in humanity, honor and loyalty. He strives to conserve the old ways by renouncing his former society in order to protect another. And he tries to break the wave of modernity, in whose wake he was actually taken to the shores of this foreign culture. Algren is an escapist in some respects as he manages to escape the part of him which clings to the Western world. And, though it might be a reason to disapprove of the motion picture, Algren reinforces what is actually to be subverted in the movie – White superiority. He becomes a samurai warrior in the end, but still he remains the White male hero. This fact seems to be the central problem of The Last Samurai. Why would a 900-year-old culture need a wrecked suicidal Civil War trooper to defy modernity? Opposing the howitzers and Gatling guns of the imperial army, the samurai warriors really look like “savages with bows and arrows” (Samurai), as Colonel Bagley condescendingly characterizes them. Nevertheless, it seems as if under Algren’s leadership they can face the army as equals – and claim moral victory, at least. Regarding the fact that director Zwick seems to have made an effort to cast a slur on everything Western, Algren’s superiority stands out even more. The White characters as a whole are rendered stubborn, hard-hearted, and ravenous. All of the westernized Japanese characters appear to be immoral, corrupt, and dubious – -118-

especially ambassador Omura and his shady attendants. The emperor – as has been said – is just a puppet on a string; all ceremonial seems artificial and sterile – although these have already been the rules of conduct at the emperor’s court long before Western modernity has invaded the country. Particularly in the scene of the final battle Zwick endeavors to underline the mercilessness of the West. When the Gatling guns start to rotate, the director silences the epic orchestral theme and the only thing the viewer hears is the mechanical clatter of the killing machines unsparingly mowing down wave after wave of the samurai attack. Suddenly, America’s soaring spirit of progress is boiled down to the coldness of a machine. And last but not least even the emperor himself, after being presented with Katsumto’s sword and enlightened by Algren’s words of newly gained wisdom, delivers a speech which sounds like the last lines of an anti-modernist epic poem. “I have dreamed of a unified Japan, of a country strong and independent and modern. And now we have railroads and cannon, Western clothing. But we cannot forget who we are or where we come from” (Samurai). Maybe this was slightly too much. Another dilemma of The Last Samurai is raised by Karsten Fitz, who examines the movie’s adequacy in a non-American environment.104 As with Dances with Wolves, the picture’s target audience clearly is intended to be from the American cultural background, since it addresses age-old predicaments like the bloody conquest of the West, the loss of humanity and naturalness through omnivorous industrialization, and the fading of a fundamental part of the American society – the Natives. Fitz elaborates: The Samurai became for Algren what the Sioux became for Dunbar in Dances: a projective surface. Both Algren’s and Dunbar’s modern crises are cured by living in these ancient ‘other’ cultures. Like Dunbar, Algren literally becomes the last surviving Indian/samurai at the end of the movie. (75) Taking the above into consideration and focusing his research predominantly on German viewership, Fitz doubts that “a German popular audience, due to the Winnetou-syndrome largely desensitized to acknowledging cultural and historical contexts when it comes to Native Americans, still ‘see[s]’ the deferred projection of Indianness onto the samurai” (75).105 104

Cf. Fitz, 74-75. With the term Winnetou-syndrome Fitz alludes to the fact that in the famous screen-adaptions of Karl May’s novels the character of Winnetou is “perfectly fulfilling all the expected stereotypes of what an Indian is supposed to represent according to the German popular imagination” (Fitz, 68). And 105

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Though Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai share their common features in many instances, they differ in the way the stories of the neo-Natives are resolved. Whereas Dances with Wolves and Stands With A Fist have to leave their tribe in the end, Algren’s life is supposed to continue in the Native world. This ending logically requires that Algren’s sanctuary in the mountains will remain untouched by the malign forces of the new Japanese empire. A Hollywood ending straight from the picture book (see Fig. 38). Thus, Algren’s going Native eventually turns out to be “the small measure of peace that we all seek, but few of us ever find” (Samurai).

this figure is a one-dimensional hero, “exceptional in all categories: morality, reliability, loyalty, courage, military excellence, language and social skills” (Fitz, 67). Needless to say that this Winnetou character has little to do with the troubled history of the Native American that has been laid down in the first few sections of this thesis.

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5. A Glimpse of the Future: James Cameron’s Avatar 5.1. Onward to New Horizons “When I was lying there in the VA hospital, with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I was free” (Avatar). The story of Avatar begins where all good going Native epics begin: At the end – with a radical decision to be made. In Dances with Wolves John Dunbar’s decision was not to end up as a war invalid in the field hospital but to end his life, which in the end made him “see the frontier before it’s gone” (Dances). Captain Algren in The Last Samurai chose the life of a military instructor in Japan over the doubtful existence as a puppet for a gun company in San Francisco, and in the end was allowed to have his “measure of peace, that all of us seek, but few of us ever find” (Samurai). In the beginning of Avatar, Marine trooper Jake Sully is confronted with a comparable abyss. The “big hole blown through the middle of [his] life” (Avatar) is a war injury leaving him paraplegic and unable to carry out his ordinary army duties. The decision he makes is to undertake the journey to Pandora, a gigantic planet with an Earth-like ecosystem and vast sediments of precious minerals, floating somewhere in distant space. After Earth has finally been bled dry in a fit of blind consumerism, earthlings have found a new host to grind their teeth into by the mid of the 22nd century. But unfortunately history repeats itself, and the newly found paradise is inhabited by an indigenous people, a transfigured version of the Native Americans, primitivistic and perfectly in tune with nature – the Na’vi. In order to exploit the planet in a kind of peaceful manner – at least a little more peaceful than America’s West was won – alien bodies are grown in test tubes, referred to as avatars. By linking their minds with these in vitro bodies, humans are able to walk among the autochthonous people discreetly and sweet-talk them into leaving the areas where the very-hard-to-get Unobtainium (yes, it is actually carrying this name) is found. In short: Peaceful expansion for geo-political reasons, second try. Thus, humans go Native the quickest way possible, and paradoxically it is technological progress which facilitates this journey straight back to primitivism. They go Native, but not to go AWOL from their own society, but to clear the path for this very society. Not all of them, of course, since there is a group of die-hard scientists who in fact really seem to be interested in sharing in the alien culture and collecting data. It all amounts to the following simplification: “Science is good, but -121-

technology is bad. Community is great, but corporations are evil,” as David Denby aptly postulates in his review of Cameron’s box-office hit. And he continues that “‘Avatar’ gives off more than a whiff of nineteen-sixties counterculture, by way of environmentalism and current antiwar sentiment” (Denby). The figurehead of these good-natured scientists is Dr. Grace Augustine, who in the beginning is not really in favor of jarhead Jake Sully, who replaces his deceased twin brother in her Avatar program. Since Jake has got the same DNA structure as his brother, he is the only person able to link up with his brother’s avatar, and he thus gets the chance to dive into a new world full of exuberant flora, exotic fauna – including four-legged horses, primeval flying dragons, and enormous dinosaurs – and not least cat-like humanoids of ten feet height and a shiny bluish skin color. While soundly sleeping in a casket-like container filled with green jelly in Dr. Augustine’s laboratory, Jake Sully can romp around in the amazingly lush forest of Pandora – like a gigantic blue monkey, able to walk, able to run, able to jump and climb and just move. And, able to find a new existence in the end. But Avatar not only makes its protagonist’s dream come true. Also script writer and director James Cameron has fulfilled a long-cherished dream with this movie project. The idea for the movie started to germinate in Cameron’s mind soon after the success of Dances with Wolves in the early 1990s, but he had to wait until film technology and special effects were ready to keep pace with his exuberant vision. Until now, Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time. Partly because Cameron has reached never-before-seen dimensions of cinematic picture power, partly because – being of major importance for the scope of this thesis – the movie deals with contents which are deeply rooted in American history, culture and literature. Going Native in the 22nd century – even in 3D.

5.2. The Extraterrestrial West “The West is There [sic], just beyond the frame which marks the edge of the known world,” concludes Douglas McReynolds (47) in his short treatise on the myth of the West in Western movies. After the frontier had been closed, the edge of the known world had disappeared. The West had to be sought elsewhere. Edward Zwick found his West – geographically speaking – in the East. What made a realization of the myth of the West in post-feudal Japan possible was the cultural setting of this time and place, leaving Japan on the verge of a new age. Just like Costner in Dances -122-

with Wolves had eulogized the beauty of a fading world, Zwick had celebrated traditional cultural values of old Japan in the Last Samurai. What the creators of both movies, however, could rely on, was a certain degree of prior knowledge of the historical and cultural background on the part of the audience. This made it easier for the directors to sell their glorification of the going Native myth and their approval of bygone values to the public. In terms of selling points James Cameron did not really have to worry, for his update of the going Native myth came with an armada of breathtaking visual techniques and revolutionary cinematic artistry. But still, in order to make the message accessible to the viewers, he had to gear his space epic of clashing cultures, warm-hearted Native warrior princesses, and fearless all-American heroes to standards which the ordinary movie-goer could relate to. Thus, two questions are left hanging in the air: Which standards did Cameron fall back on, and what is the message behind it all? The trick was to make the audience feel comfortable even in “the most hostile environment known to man,” as Dr. Grace Augustine (Avatar) dishearteningly

describes

Pandora.

Thus, Cameron used models as familiar and old as the American nation itself. Models, the ordinary American has grown-up with. And not long after Jake Sully’s landing on Pandora, when we see a juggernaut-like steam shovel drive by, having its wheels studded with wooden arrows of truly Native design (see Fig. 39), we know which model Cameron primarily had in mind. “Savages with bows and arrows,” Colonel Bagley’s words from The Last Samurai echo at the sight of this picture. It turns into certainty: Avatar is a Western. The Na’vi are the Native Americans. And the intruders, the landtakers, the cowboys are – once more – the Whites. Of course Avatar is not a Western in the strict sense of the word, but with the necessary selections made, one can put together a full-blown Western setup leaving no character or aspect of the genre to be desired.

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5.3. Native, Naïve, Na’vi The Indian is a true child of the forest and the desert. The wastes and solitudes of nature are his congenial home. His haughty mind is imbued with the spirit of the wilderness, and the light of civilization falls on him with a blighting power. (Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac) The burden of civilization rests heavily on the shoulders of Pandora’s autochthonous people, the Na’vi. Back in 1993, James Cameron’s first draft of the Na’vi must have come close to the picture which Francis Parkman draws in the quotation above. Even their name speaks of the straightforwardness of Cameron’s vision and makes it easy, also for unsophisticated viewers, to figure out the equation: Na’vi = Native. In addition, Cameron turned out to be equally unambiguous by simply calling the hard-to-get mineral of Pandora Un-obtain-ium, and by referring to the miraculously floating mountains – which let their beholders’ jaws drop with awe – as the Hallelujah Mountains. And speaking of such visual charms, even this aspect of Pandora’s wilderness seems to be covered by Francis Parkman’s description of the Native American world, as he continues, “His [i.e. the Native American’s] unruly pride and untamed freedom are in harmony with the lonely mountains, cataracts, and rivers among which he dwells; and primitive America, with her savage scenery and savage men, opens to the imagination a boundless world, unmatched in wild sublimity” (Parkman, 1). The wild sublimity that Parkman speaks of is tangible on Pandora each and every second – not least because of the fact that Avatar comes in 3D. And perhaps no character of the movie represents this natural grandeur better than Neytiri, the warrior princess who becomes Jake Sully’s tutor on Pandora (see Fig. 40). From the very first moment she enters the scene in Avatar, she emerges as a strong character. Feline and graceful, yet determined and resolute, Neytiri becomes what James Nelson Barker once described as La Belle Sauvage: A modern Pocahontas, saving her White enemy’s life by planting herself protectively in front of him. But there is more. Like Stands With A Fist happens to be Dunbar’s guide to the Native American world in Dances with Wolves, Neytiri is Sully’s mentor on Pandora. This teacher-student-relationship is -124-

even enforced by her father, the sage chief of the Na’vi tribe, and thus Sully’s introduction to the Native way even gets a somewhat official touch. A deeper feeling of affection grows from this special partnership, and Neytiri becomes Sully’s advocate and protector within the clan, even when the rest of the tribe opposes her and clearly sees through his two-facedness. And although Sully is nothing but an undercover agent infiltrating the Na’vi, he cannot resist the charms of this shimmering world. Soon he proves Dr. Augustine’s initial warning to be true: “There are many dangers on Pandora, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much” (Avatar). Sully gets to the point of no return and quickly finds himself fighting on the side of the militarily inferior Natives. Needless to say, the Na’vi at first lose this clash of the cultures. And even as they are overrun by the mechanical superpower of the skypeople, as the Na’vi call the earthlings, Neytiri gives proof of her noble-mindedness. When Jake is attacked in his most vulnerable, his human form, by his nemesis, the cold and ruthless Colonel Quaritch, the virtuous Na’vi girl once again bravely protects him and cradles his feeble mortal shell in an all too Madonna-like pose106 (see Fig. 41) – actually not the only allusion to the Bible in Avatar. But also within the Na’vi clan Jake Sully has to face his rivals. His most adamant Na’vi opponent is Neytiri’s intended husband and future clan leader Tsu’tey, who with his mistrust and implacability follows in the footsteps of the proud-hearted Wind In His Hair or the fierce Ujio. Tsu’tey is the alpha male of the tribe, so to speak, but in this case his distrust is justified – although it is mainly fired by turf war. While Jake Sully on his way to Nativeness easily passes stage after stage, Tsu’tey is always close at hand to observe everything with a set of disapproving comments and snorts of indignation. It brings joy to him, when Sully initially fails in breaking the wild horses of Pandora; he laughs triumphantly, when Sully almost gets killed in one of his first attempts to fly one of Pandora’s pterosaurs. And still Sully successfully gets through every test awaiting him and gradually advances to the center of the clan, whereas Tsu’tey gets visibly pushed out of play. 106

See the film review of Avatar by Kanda and Wagner.

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However, one of the most crucial landmarks in Sully’s going Native is the respect he earns from Tsu’tey, this greatly honored warrior. And he does not get this respect until he tames the Toruk, the mightiest flying dragon of Pandora. Thus, he becomes Toruk Makto, a messiah-like beast rider, who according to a Na’vi legend shall come to free the planet from the sky-people. And this fact takes us to one of the core problems of Avatar.

5.4. Jake Sully: White Messiah, Blue Skin Jake Sully doubtlessly is the all-American hero. He never seems to show any sign of respect of reverence for all the traditions and practices which have to be obeyed in the world of the Na’vi. It rather gives him puerile pleasure to ambitiously master the tasks which bring about his entrance into the Native world. Sully’s going Native does not seem to come from an urge to turn away from his society, nor does he ever appear to strive for simplicity and clarity. Sully acts like he is playing a game. Of course his human existence does not have to offer as much as his alien body does. In Na’vi form Sully is stong, agile, and free from the bonds of his metal wheelchair. In addition, it turns out to be an easy thing for him to outdo even the most skilful members of the tribe in every possible respect. En passant he captures the heart of the princess, tames the gigantic flying dragon, which nobody has been able to do for at least 100 years, and helps the Na’vi to triumph in the end. Picture-perfect Hollywood, some might want to think. Like David Brooks, New York Times columnist, who identifies this time-worn plot as the “White Messiah fable,” and concludes that Avatar is the hitherto most blatant variant of this tale. In Brooks’s eyes not only the American guy Jake Sully turns out to be a better Na’vi, but due to heavily-used platitudes also the Na’vi themselves appear to have as much depth as a rain puddle: The peace-loving natives are at one with nature, and even have a fiber-optic cable sticking out of their bodies that they can plug into horses and trees, which is like Horse Whispering without the wireless technology. Because they are not corrupted by things like literacy, cellphones and blockbuster movies, they have deep and tranquil souls. The natives help the white guy discover that he, too, has a deep and tranquil soul. (Brooks) This quite sarcastic, yet amusing synopsis of the plot of Avatar ridicules the conception of the movie and its director as well. Brooks thinks that the motion picture’s storyline is nothing but an irresistible crowd-puller to fuel the staging of -126-

Cameron’s special effects opera. And Cameron’s plan worked out well – the numbers do not lie. Echoing Huhndorf, who concludes that going Native sometimes undermines the very ideals it seeks to underpin,107 Brooks parades the fact that inexcusable undertones are hidden in the White Messiah fable: It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of twoedged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration. It’s just escapism, obviously, but benevolent romanticism can be just as condescending as the malevolent kind – even when you surround it with pop-up ferns and floating mountains. (Brooks) What Brooks euphemistically refers to as condescending benevolent romanticism gets termed differently elsewhere. In his review of Avatar Hamish Ford comes to the conclusion that Cameron’s “rendering of the Na’vi is not only textbook Romanticism, these very handsome ‘noble savages’ go beyond even Rousseau’s fantasies, but its truly patronising account of indigenous culture is crucially revealed when we witness its lack of intellectual and creative agency at the moment of truth: in the face of imperial human power” (Ford). But the fact that the Na’vi completely fail in standing up to the human intruders, according to Ford, is not the height of misrepresentation in Avatar. In Ford’s view, the negative climax lies in the fact that waging war is taboo unless the White hero chooses to do it: At first the more macho Na’vi warriors vow to fight when the humans threaten to destroy their forest after military patience with Jake’s ‘diplomatic’ mission has run out, but he advises everyone to leave or they’ll all be killed (thereby fulfilling his mission but with a newly ‘humanitarian’ motivation). Soon coming to his senses, he decides that fighting is indeed the answer but with a crucial difference: he shall lead the operation. As in real life, only when the English-speaking white guy decides to fight does it become a good idea – indeed morally superb. (Ford) Thus, Jake Sully may have completely turned Native and be accepted as one of the Na’vi, but ultimately his going Native went too far, and he emerges far above the other clan members. The irony is that Cameron has tried so hard to give his movie a protagonist who the public could easily relate to, but in the end it is the protagonist who makes this monolithic blockbuster totter. Actually, Cameron’s train of thought

107

Cf. Huhndorf, 5.

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is easy to comprehend – after all he just did what had already been tried and tested almost 200 years ago: James Fenimore Cooper had used an episode in the life of the American pioneer Daniel Boone for his famous The Last of the Mohicans, and if one takes a closer look, the well-known historical and heroic figure of Boone and Cameron’s protagonist Sully are quite similar to one another. “Equally

at

home

in

the

wilderness and the drawing room, Boone represented

the

archetypal

balance

Americans sought between nature and tradition.

[…]

Each

adventure

is

succeeded by a return to family and civilization, where Boone can reflect on his experiences and then apply his conclusions to further his own community’s success” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 42). Sully, then, is a Daniel Boone of the 21st century. After each of his rambles into the wilderness he returns back home to his safe steel-paneled harbor and leaves a note in his digital notebook (see Fig. 42). He is not a colonist in the original sense of the word, but a new-age hero, “whose role [is] that of mediating between civilization and savagery” (Slotkin, Regeneration, 21). But even Sully’s initial motivation behind his mediating function is just a transcript of history, because the American settler’s destiny was “not to preserve integrity of the land and its original people, […], but to wrest control of the whole environment through settlement and cultivation, through exploitation, through what we ironically call progress” (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier, 43). Thus, in furthering his community’s success Sully pursues a dual-track-policy. On the one hand, he keeps his video-log to preserve all the new insights into the world of the Na’vi for Dr. Augustine and her team; on the other hand, he uses the information he is able to gather in order to choreograph Colonel Quaritch’s raid on his own Na’vi village. 5.5. What’s in a Name? As has already been indicated, James Cameron has let names do a considerable share of explanatory work in Avatar. But apart from merely plain labels like the Hallelujah Mountains or Unobtainium, there is a deeper mythology hidden in the less obvious names of Cameron’s bizarre otherworld. One might indeed be -128-

inclined to think that the creator of Avatar was not even aware of some of the effects he would produce by the choices he has made regarding names and titles. Speaking of the latter, the modern viewer of Avatar will consider the movie’s title no great surprise, after all the cyberspace of the 21st century is bristling with socalled avatars, i.e. graphical representations of real beings in a virtual world. To borrow this term from computing may therefore appear to be an easily understandable step according to the technological standards of the present day. After all, Cameron’s avatars are human incarnations into an alien body, perfectly fitting into the world of Pandora. Dreamwalkers, as the Na’vi themselves call them, even though not a single scene in the motion picture leads to the supposition that they actually know about the newcomers’ somnambulistic secret. However, the fact that these avatars are just blue representations of their human users may in turn raise the question if the form of going Native exemplified in Avatar is a 22nd-century version of the good old Cowboys and Indians role play. Whether an alien costume – so to speak – will suffice to turn an allegedly civilized Westerner into a primitive Na’vi, is questioned by Steven Norton: While the outer form of the savage may be different from that of the civilized, underneath the surface, everyone is Anglo-Saxon; the image may be blue, but the concept is white; the signifier may say primitive, but the signified is civilization. (137) Thus, as Norton continues, “Jake participates in a Western dream motivated by dissatisfaction with a civilized state of being” (137). As a consequence, the term dreamwalker seems to fit even more. Another name used by the Na’vi to refer to the human intruders is sky-people, i.e. the ones who came from above. The fact that Cameron has made his Natives use this term to label the strangers from Earth raises the assumption that he must have had some knowledge about the actual etymology of the word avatar. Originally coming from Sanskrit, the term denotes a supernatural being descending from above, or heaven, as some may call it. In his discussion of the postmodern sujets to be found in Cameron’s blockbuster movie, Ken Hillis explains that “[i]n Hindu theology, an avatar is the manifestation, incarnation, or embodiment of a deity, especially Vishnu (the Preserver), in human, superhuman, or animal form” (Hillis). If this concept is then applied to the sky-people landing on Pandora, the term avatar suddenly takes a slightly megalomaniac connotation.

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This aspect, depicting humans as god-like saviors, is in parts reflected in David Brooks’s notion of the White messiah and criticized in Steven Norton’s analysis of philosophical subtexts in Avatar. Moreover, Norton considers the Na’vi to be “the most offensive possible amalgam of Western stereotypes concerning the primitive: they are the half naked, stone-age flower children of a lush and mythical Eden” (135). Considering this allocation of roles in Avatar, it is – according to Norton – not surprising that the sky-people do not even grant the world of Pandora a history of its own, but simply fit it into their Western timeline which has been imported from Earth: This European schema of a totalized timeline is echoed in the colonialist rhetoric of Avatar when the colonizers refer to Pandora, without any sense of irony, as a ‘New World.’ Of course, the world is only new from a specific point of view, and this point of view assumes a totalizing Western History. (Norton, 135) But a conqueror speaking the language of the colonizer, again, is no singularity. Especially in America, this very language has already been spoken since day one, for we can read in Columbus’s letter to Luis de Santangel: And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it ‘Guanahani.’ To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepción; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana, and so to each one I gave a new name. (Columbus in Baym, 35) Another very telling name to be found in Avatar is that of its main character, Jake Sully. “If ignorance or evil are ascendant on earth, the Supreme Being incarnates itself in an avatar form appropriate for fighting these blights,” Ken Hillis tells us about the deeper sense of the aforementioned Hindu concept. Bearing in mind the above deduction, according to which the dreamwalkers are to be regarded as incarnations of the god-like sky-peole, Sully’s name speaks of paradoxical irony. For what the messianic marine trooper actually does to the pristine world of paradisiacal Pandora is not saving it, but sullying it – in the truest sense of the word. Consequently, the White messiah admittedly liberates the Na’vi in the end, but he liberates them from a doom which he himself has brought upon them. Thus, whereas in Greek mythology Pandora herself released misery into the world, the roles are inverted in Avatar. Here, our world brings misery to Pandora. -130-

5.6. Going Na’vi Though the plot of Avatar may raise all of the aforementioned contradictions, it remains an intense interpretation of the going Native myth, and as such it puts every single feature of this well-known tale on display – probably even more than the other works examined in this thesis. Just like Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai could already be broken down to the “fundamental Death-Rebirth archetype” as put forth by Richard Vanderbeets (553), Avatar works on the same principles. As if he had regarded Vanderbeets’ notion of the hero’s spiritual renaissance as his master-plan, James Cameron skips from stage to stage with consummate ease, wholly embracing “the separation of the Hero from his culture, his undertaking a long journey, and his undergoing a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance to knowledge” (Vanderbeets, 553). In order to achieve spiritual renaissance Jake Sully first has to undergo a kind of physical rebirth – the transfer of his mind to the new Native alien body. He lies down in a coffin-like steel box, and again the metaphorical death of the hero marks the beginning of his journey to Nativeness. The next thing Sully sees is the often quoted tunnel of light, a bridge between the worlds. Then, for the first time, we can watch the perfect rebirth of an individual into a Native body (see Fig. 43). Awakening in sterile chamber which bears resemblance to a delivery room, Sully opens his eyes. He feels his new body, amazedly wags his toes – which he has not been able to do for years – and off he goes, out the door straight into an unearthly Garden of Eden. A short dash through the verdantly thriving fields of Pandora, digging his toes into the sand, admiring his newly found paradise. And what does the poor American Adam do next? He bites the apple – and dooms this edenic world to subjugation (see Fig. 44). Just like Adam’s eyes in the Bible are opened by eating from the tree of knowledge, Sully’s horizons are widened in Avatar, he is led to discovery: primarily -131-

self-discovery, as it is part of the going Native myth, but he is also recognized, or rather seen, by his environment. “I see you” (Avatar), becomes one of the most significant lines in the movie, and it does not simply speak of the visual act of seeing another person, but – as Sully’s fellow anthropologist Norm Spellman tells him – “I see into you. […] I understand you” (Avatar). This line grants Sully full recognition among the Native tribe and thus becomes most crucial to his going Native. Seeing, in Avatar, is “the passing from ignorance to knowledge” as put forth by Vanderbeets (553). But in order to see and to be seen, Sully first has to be separated from his original culture. This happens during Sully’s very first tour in the jungle of Pandora. He is cut off from his team, gets lost deep in the woods, and has to be saved by his guardian angel Neytiri – in Pocahontas-like manner. What follows then is the slow but steady initiation into Na’vi culture, illustrated by a sequence of tests to prove his worthiness – Vanderbeets’ “series of excruciating ordeals” (553), which may be seen in analogy to Axtell’s notion of an “educational process” designed to transform Whites into “affectionate Indian relatives” (Axtell, “White Indians,” 66). And already this process of learning shows that the Native world always is the biggest of attractions to Sully. Speaking of excruciating ordeals, the educational progress he undergoes in Dr. Augustine’s laboratory seems to be a real torture for the ex-marine, whereas the actual tests he has to pass in the woods of Pandora are nothing but leisure time entertainment. Every second he spends consciously in his mortal shell is a wasted second to Sully. He longs for his Native existence so avidly that he even neglects to take care of his human body. Sully skips meals and showers, until Dr. Augustine has to force-feed him a few morsels before letting him crawl back into his casket to awake in his Na’vi avatar again. All too soon Augustine’s words prove to be true, and Sully loves Pandora much more than his human reality. What Lovejoy and Boas describe as “[t]he love of strangeness, the desire to wander, in mind if not in body, in remote regions of space among men unlike the tedious and unadventurous old fellows one has always been surrounded by” (6) is taken on a new level by Sully. His wandering in remote regions of space happens on both levels – his human mind and his alien body. But Sully’s going Native is also to be treated differently. Before Avatar, the hero of any going Native epic was bound to certain physical limits. Protagonists of other stories may have refashioned their minds and adapted their outward appearance -132-

according to their target culture. They may have donned feathers, dressed in Native American garb, or strapped on a samurai harness. But not Jake Sully. As we have already heard he not only pretends to be one of the Na’vi, but physically becomes one of them. His first ticket to the world of the Na’vi is his Na’vi rebirth in Dr. Augustine’s laboratory. But as we have heard in the preceding section, anybody can put on this alien costume. Sully can, Norm Spellman can, also Dr. Augustine herself can – virtually anybody can go Native in this version of the 22nd century. What sets Sully apart from all the others who amble through Pandora’s forests in their Na’vi bodies, is his spiritual going Native, which is happening on an abstract level: the excruciating ordeals, the educational process, Neytiri’s instructions in cultural values and traditional practices, Sully’s passing from ignorance to knowledge, his seeing and his being seen. The benefits of this eventful procedure are revealed in the moment of truth, when the Na’vi try to save Grace Augustine, who has been lethally wounded, by transferring her mind permanently into her avatar body. Although Dr. Augustine’s understanding of the Na’vi tribes goes far beyond Sully’s knowledge of their societal and cultural peculiarities, she is not allowed to make the transition from human to Na’vi (see Fig. 45). “Grace is prepared by her scientific understanding of the world to arrive at the religious notion of ultimate connectedness; but within the film, this awareness is insufficient for her

to

pass

successfully

through

transformation to become part of the system. Grace cannot complete the rite of passage via science alone” (Kanda and Wagner). Sully, on the other hand, who has had enough time to strengthen so-called Zahelu, a mental as well as physical connection (remember the fiber cables) to – in our terms – Mother Nature, is fit to leave his human shell behind and become Na’vi through and through. This well-known image of Native tribes living in perfect harmony with nature dates back to the second half of the 20th century, when the Native American became a paradigm for counterculture and conservationist movements. “The noble savage has turned green,” Robert Whelan (19) sounded at the end of the 20th century. A decade later the noble savage has turned blue, but the green agenda still clings tightly to this image. It does so as a matter of course, some -133-

might say, after all the Native Americans have always been chess pieces in “the battle between civilization and the wilderness, […] often thoroughly depersonalized through conflation with natural forces that endangered the westward-forging pioneers” (Pearson, 89-90). The “conflation with natural forces” that Pearson speaks of above is taken all too literally in Avatar, for in this utopian version of a distant alien paradise the Natives can in fact really plug themselves into nature. But looked at from the perspective of the 21st century, where almost anything is technologically possible, the interpretation might just be right. Avatar is the new-age environmentalist world view made literal. Like the 1960s counterculture from which it springs, this world view has its strengths and its limitations. It draws our attention to the fundamental role of corporation in the destruction of the ecology. It shows the way that indigenous cultures who often have a much more sensitive relationship to their environment are thrust out of the way by giant corporations, more often than supported by military force. It is an allegory for the dispossession of many indigenous cultures around the world, both historical and present day. (Davidson, 14) What Rjurik Davidson sums up here are actually some of the main motives for going Native collected in this thesis. By adopting the nature-based ways of the indigenous culture, Jake Sully opposes the destructive force of earthly greed and spiritually and even physically merges with nature on Pandora. Furthermore, he redeems blunders of the American past, as there is the dispossession and relocation of Native people, as well as errors made in military conflict. Of course a sideswipe at the Indian Wars and their aftermath lies at hand, but Davidson draws attention to an even more immediate armed engagement: “Avatar explicitly critiques US foreign policy when it describes the military’s campaign as one of ‘shock and awe’ in which they will fight ‘terror with terror’. This is an explicit censure of the US’s occupation of Iraq: the invasion of 2003 was known as a campaign of ‘shock and awe’” (Davidson, 14). 108 Bearing this approach to Avatar in mind, it is not particularly surprising that in a movie review for the left-wing site Socialist Worker Ragesh Nao focuses on Avatar’s antiimperialist message and “its unabashed critique of corporate greed” (Nao). But although Nao is even accusing Dr. Augustine and her team of having an imperialistic corporate agenda – after all they are “employed by the same corporate entity that has hired Col. Quaritch and his trigger-happy mercenaries” (Nao) – Nao tries to protect the motion picture from being panned as a “scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy” 108

Davidson refers to Sue Chan’s article “Iraq Faces Massive U.S. Missile Barrage” from 2003, in which the American strategic concept known as Shock and Awe is described in more detail.

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(Newitz). One of the first to promote this accusation was Annallee Newitz, editor-inchief of the science-fiction web site io9.com, who remarked in a much-circulated post shortly after the movie’s international launch that “Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America’s foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent” (Newitz). She also speaks of plot parallels between Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and Avatar, and adds movies like District 9 or the 1980s sci-fi-hit Dune to the comparison, because in these movies the main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color – their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the ‘alien’ cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become ‘race traitors,’ and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. (Newitz) In the end, Newitz boils Jake Sully’s going Native down to “a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode” (Newitz). If Newitz here deliberately chooses to ignore the fact that Sully in the end really goes for the permanent culture- and body-change, remains to be seen. Maybe this Hollywood-like ending seemed too naïve to her to even comment on it. However, the last thing we learn about the sky-people is that they are finally escorted like slaves onto the spaceships they came with, in order to be deported back to Earth – which actually is soon to be uninhabitable. Tough luck. Next to them we can see some random Na’vi characters, weapons levelled. Even Sully and the peace-loving scientists have joined them, in Na’vi form but with human outfit – and do not forget the automatic firearms to add some emphasis and to complete the picture (see Fig. 46). “The strong prey on the weak” (Avatar), Sully repeats to himself after he gets informed about his brother’s violent death at the beginning of the movie. Who is strong and who is weak

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now? If this inversion of roles is really the key to the purging of historical guilt, would be another question worth examining. Have the Na’vi gone human in the end? At least for Jake Sully things have taken a turn for the better. He has become Na’vi and even clan leader. In a scene which has been taken out of the theatrical version of the movie, Jake and Neytiri find the dying Tsu’tey lying in the woods, and with his last breath he entrusts the ex-marine Sully with the leadership of the whole Na’vi clan and asks him to take his life: “I cannot lead the people. You must lead them, Jake Sully. I will be remembered. I fought with Toruk Makto” (Avatar). Given this absolution, Sully prepares for his final and irrevocable linkage to his avatar (see Fig. 47). “I guess I’d better go. I don’t want to be late for my own party. It’s my birthday after all” (Avatar), he signs out of his video log. He is born again, one last time. His dream comes true: A dream of confronting a world which is fundamentally different from what he has come to know as civilization. A dream in which he can break the chains of uniformity. A dream in which he can lay his hands upon something that is already gone and nothing but a comforting thought. A dream in which he discovers his own true self. Jake Sully can live the dream of going Native, because in Avatar it becomes a lucid dream. Thus, Jake Sully bows out with an ending to be desired, for “[o]ur truest life is when we are in dreams awake” (Thoreau, A Week, 242).

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6. Conclusion The all-embracing applicability of a phenomenon like going Native may render it a powerful means of cultural expression, yet it also makes this custom become an incomprehensible phantom, a sub-code to movements working on a grander scale. Of course, an American perspective on the marvel of going Native gives rise to the impression that it is simply a concomitant of the friction created when cultures clash. But as we turn to history, we find that this move can be detected already in the primeval beginnings of Occidental and continental culture and its renaissance in the Renaissance. There was no time in history, however, when the option of going Native and choosing a positively simpler state of being had a more tremendous impact on peoples’ mindset than in the days when the blurred images of a noble other finally clicked into place and created a new myth: Primitivist thought found a catalyst in the New World, and America could witness the idea of the noble savage grow. Carlos Rangel refers to the myth of the noble savage as “the most powerful myth of modern times” (12), and continues to explain that it responded far more adequately to the characteristic anguishes of Western European, Christian, traditional civilization than earlier myths of a related nature. The belief that man is innately good and that civilization corrupted him, that there was once a Golden Age followed by the present-day age of Bronze and Iron, would find its confirmation in the discovery of men allegedly living in a state of nature, uncorrupt and uncivilized. (12) This very myth and related ideas formed the basis for the analyses presented in this thesis; and out of the three motion pictures, primarily Costner’s devoted gaze at America’s past honored the Golden Age of harmony and simplicity. But as we have seen, the panegyric on the once Great Plains beyond the frontier was not the only item on Costner’s agenda, nor was he the first one to venture into these glorious old days. The noble savage had long since become subservient to all kinds of, so to speak, noble ideals – in this respect, Dances with Wolves almost represents a rather late eulogy, considering the multitude of movements which had followed in the wake of this famous concept in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, in the first section of this thesis, the idea of noble savagery was traced from its implementation on the new continent to its utilization and exploitation in different fields of contemporary politics and (pop) culture. -137-

Focusing on the motives and main characters of the works presented, Costner’s Dunbar in fact is the only true escapist. As a matter of course, also Algren and Sully happen to escape in a way, but only Dunbar takes this step deliberately. He wants to get a glimpse of the fading world out there in the West and in doing so displays a nostalgic kind of conservationist thought. But whereas Dunbar’s longing for purity and balance arises from a feeling of abhorrence of his own cultural and societal background, Algren and Sully more or less stumble into this secret Garden of Eden by chance. Actually, Algren’s trip to Katsumoto’s mountain refuge initially does not seem like a blessing at all, and also Sully only most reluctantly learns to love the otherworld Pandora. But once enkindled, this love burns fervently, and both Algren and Sully stand up for it with more gallantry and heart than they would have shown in their former lives. In this way they soon find themselves spearheading Native armies in campaigns against their former societies – Algren fighting to preserve Japan’s traditional values, Sully fighting to preserve his extraterrestrial locus amoenus. The main source of criticism in both movies is the leading role that the protagonists play in the Natives’ struggle for freedom. Algren’s tactical reinforcement is of benefit to Katsumoto’s crusade, as well as Sully’s role of the chosen one is a decisive factor in the Na’vi’s war for territory. But in the end the two characters remain White heroes in a White fantasy, a “White Messiah,” as David Brooks has aptly put it. And even if Dunbar is not winning wars for the Sioux and ultimately leaves the tribe for good, he still is the White main character of a “nonIndian generated document[…] about Indians” (Fixico, 3). This fact has made many critics raise their voices, and of course their disapproval is understandable and justified. Nevertheless, we must not forget that in a story about someone going Native, a non-Native hero is a condicio sine qua non. It is non-Nativeness which is to be shed by taking a step in the right direction. Whether this step leads back to nature, back in time towards a Golden Age, or back behind the front lines of the oppressed, depends on the umbrella term under which the sub-routine going Native is operating. The fact is, as soon as this step is taken, it is taken wholeheartedly. Otherwise one could not speak of a spiritual rebirth, as it is the case in Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, or A Man Called Horse. Avatar, then, presented us with the latest version of the myth, going Native 2.0., enabling the hero to transcend not only spiritual, but also physical boundaries. -138-

Taking into consideration what has been said, the initial question if a presentday individual can still get lost in the dream of going Native seems already answered. Just as easy as this transcultural phenomenon could be transplanted from the European continent to the New World, it gained admission to the great chapters of American literature and cultural history. It was there when the American captivity narrative was born; it was there, when literary history was made in the tales of Leatherstocking; it was there when people in the war-torn 20th century were longing for balance and peacefulness; and it sits enthroned on the summit of pop culture; after all the highest-grossing movie up to the present day tells no other story but one of going Native, escaping modernity, preserving what is almost lost, finding peace, and making the dream become tangibly real.

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7. References A Man Called Horse. Screenplay by Jack DeWitt. Dir. Elliot Silverstein. 1970. DVD. Paramount Home Entertainment, 2004. Avatar. Screenplay by James Cameron. Dir. James Cameron. 2009. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox, 2010. Axtell, James. Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. -----. “White Indians.” The William and Mary Quarterly: Third Series 32.1 (Jan. 1975): 55-88. Baird, Robert. “‘Going Indian’: Dances with Wolves (1990).” Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Ed. Peter C. Rollins, John E. O’Connor and Wilcomb E. Washburn. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1998. 153169. -----. “Going Indian: Discovery, Adoption, and Renaming toward a ‘True American’: From Deerslayer to Dances with Wolves.” Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the American Popular Culture. Ed. S. Elizabeth Bird. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996. 195-209. Barker, James Nelson. The Indian Princess: La Belle Sauvage. 1808. Hamburg: Tredition, 2012. Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life – 1500 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Bell, Michael. Primitivism. London: Methuen, 1972. Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1979. Brooks, David. “The Messiah Complex.” New York Times 8 Jan. 2010. NY ed.: A27. New York Times. 17 Oct. 2013. < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html?em&_r=0>. Brown, Dee Alexander. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. Buscombe, Edward. ‘Injuns!’: Native Americans in the Movies. London: Reaktion, 2006. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. “Cathay.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. 2013. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. 20 May 2013. . -141-

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Ellingson, Ter. The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001. The English Standard Version Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Fairchild, Hoxie Neale. The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism. New York: Russell & Russell, 1961. Feder, Lilian. “Marlow’s Descent into Hell.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9.4 (Mar. 1955): 280-292. Fiedler, Leslie A. The Return of the Vanishing American. London: Paladin, 1972. Fitz, Karsten. “Vanishing Indians and Whites Going Native: Screen Indians in Transnational Perspective.” Native Americans and First Nations: A Transnational Challenge. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Christian Feest. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009. 63-80. Fixico, Donald. L. Introduction. Rethinking American Indian History. Ed. Donald L. Fixico. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1997. 3-8. Ford, Hamish. “Avatar’s Left-wing Agenda is a Fallacy.” Sydney Morning Herald 6 Jan. 2010. 17 Oct. 2013. < http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/avatars-leftwingagenda-is-a-fallacy-20100106-ltv6.html>. Freud, Sigmund. “Family Romances: 1909.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume IX (1906-1908): Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ and Other Works. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage, 2001. 235-242. Friar, Ralph E., and Natasha A. Friar. The Only Good Indian…The Hollywood Gospel. New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972. Friedman, Jonathan. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage, 1994. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Grey Owl. Tales of an Empty Cabin. Toronto: Key Porter, 1998. Hazard, Paul. The European Mind (1860-1715). London: Hollis & Carter, 1953. Hein, Patrick. How the Japanese Became Foreign to Themselves: The Impact of Globalization on the Private and Public Spheres in Japan. Berlin: LIT, 2009. Hilger, Michael. From Savage to Nobleman: Images of Native Americans in Film. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1995. Hiller, Susan. The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art. London: Routledge, 1991. -143-

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8. Figures All the movie frames displayed in this thesis have been included solely for nonprofit scholarly purposes, and the paper itself is of a non-commercial, but educational nature. For the purpose of research, the stills have been taken from the DVD versions of the movies as indicated in section 7 (References). They have been included, because they are an integral part of the argument. I do not own the copyrights of these movies. I have legally purchased the DVDs and do not intend to infringe any copyrights held by the copyright owners of the relevant movies. Fig. 1: Alien Natives in Avatar. Avatar (01:02:30) ................................................... 39 Fig. 2: The Sun Dance Ritual. ) 1 Apr. 2014 .......................................................................................... 49 Fig. 3: First friendly encounter, Dances with Wolves (01:18:51) .............................. 59 Fig. 4: Creeping up on the buffalo herd. Dances with Wolves (01:48:45) ................. 62 Fig. 5: Dunbar dancing with Two Socks. Dances with Wolves (02:10:21) ............... 65 Fig. 6: The Natives watching him from a distance. Dances with Wolves (02:10:24) 65 Fig. 7: “Forgive me, Father!” (Dances). Dances with Wolves (00:09:08) ................. 68 Fig. 8: “I love Stands With A Fist” (Dances). Dances with Wolves (02:25:45) ........ 70 Fig. 9: The Spanish conquistador’s helmet. Dances with Wolves (03:00:16) ............ 73 Fig. 10: The toughest Pawnee. Dances with Wolves (00:45:08) ................................ 74 Fig. 11: Skinned buffalo left to rot in the prairie. Dances with Wolves (01:46:36) ... 77 Fig. 12: Destructive influence of Western civilization. Dances with Wolves (02:57:14) ......................................................................................................... 82 Fig. 13: The pre-industrial Garden of Eden. Dances with Wolves (02:58:15) ........... 83 Fig. 14: “I’ve never smoked it” (Dances). Dances with Wolves (03:31:28) .............. 86 Fig. 15: “A true American hero” (Samurai). The Last Samurai (00:02:00) .............. 88 Fig. 16: Samurai leader Katsumoto. The Last Samurai (00:01:09) ........................... 95 Fig. 17: The roaring white tiger. The Last Samurai (00:28:07) ................................. 97 Fig. 18: Cold turkey. The Last Samurai (00:35:58) ................................................... 99 -149-

Fig. 19: Mud stains on the floor. The Last Samurai (00:39:02) ................................. 99 Fig. 20: Katsumoto is having a good read. The Last Samurai (00:50:37) ............... 102 Fig. 21: The cherry orchard. The Last Samurai (01:11:24) ..................................... 103 Fig. 22: Escort back to Yokohama. The Last Samurai (01:14:44) ........................... 105 Fig. 23: Telegraph poles darkening the sky. The Last Samurai (01:14:04) ............. 105 Fig. 24: Geometry of the imperial troops. The Last Samurai (01:15:66)................. 106 Fig. 25: Randomness of nature. The Last Samurai (00:52:27) ................................ 106 Fig. 26: Geishas at court. The Last Samurai (01:16:47) .......................................... 106 Fig. 27: The village people. The Last Samurai (01:01:42) ...................................... 106 Fig. 28: “Fire! Utte!” (Samurai). The Last Samurai (00:21:18) .............................. 108 Fig. 29: General Hasegawa. The Last Samurai (00:15:19) ...................................... 110 Fig. 30: Kneeling down to the samurai. The Last Samurai (02:12:07) .................... 111 Fig. 31: The final salute. The Last Samurai (02:12:45) ........................................... 111 Fig. 32: Catlin’s dual portrait. 3 Apr. 2014 ..................................................................................................... 111 Fig. 33: The devil in the flesh. The Last Samurai (00:24:57) .................................. 112 Fig. 34: Karate moves. The Last Samurai (00:53:54) .............................................. 113 Fig. 35: Four at one blow. The Last Samurai (01:29:21) ......................................... 115 Fig. 36: The perfect fit. The Last Samurai (01:44:52) ............................................. 117 Fig. 37: The soul of the samurai. The Last Samurai (01:45:16) .............................. 117 Fig. 38: A small measure of peace. The Last Samurai (02:19:47) ........................... 120 Fig. 39: First impressions of Pandora. Avatar (00:06:11) ........................................ 123 Fig. 40: La Belle Sauvage. Avatar (00:36:30) .......................................................... 124 Fig. 41: The blue Madonna. Avatar (02:25:56) ....................................................... 125 Fig. 42: In the drawing room. Avatar (00:57:35) ..................................................... 128 Fig. 43: Sully’s physical renaissance. Avatar (00:16:07)......................................... 131 -150-

Fig. 44: The fall of man. Avatar (00:18:22) ............................................................. 131 Fig. 45: Augustine and her avatar. Avatar (01:54:22) ............................................. 133 Fig. 46: The strong and the weak. Avatar (02:26:41) .............................................. 135 Fig. 47: A Native birthday. Avatar (02:28:08)......................................................... 136

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9. Index

A A Man Called Horse 49, 64, 68, 138, 141 Adam 13, 65, 69, 79, 131 Algren, Nathan 51, 87-93, 95-110, 112-121, 138 alien 12, 32, 100, 113, 117, 121, 126, 129, 131, 132-135 American Adam 46, 49, 56-58, 65, 67, 99, 131, 144 American hero 56, 76, 88, 90, 100, 115, 126, 149 American literature 3, 15, 17, 30, 46, 139 American mind 5, 16, 34, 36, 41, 44, 55 American nation 1, 6, 14, 27, 28, 30, 34-36, 38, 41, 43, 87, 89, 123 Americanness 5, 44 antiquity 1, 17, 18, 26, 67, 106 assimilation 25, 56, 62, 66, 97, 135 Augustine, Grace 122, 123, 125, 128, 132-134, 151 Avatar 2, 30, 44, 46, 48, 121-132, 134-136, 138, 141-145, 149-151 Axtell, James 6, 12, 132, 141

B Bagley 98, 105, 107, 118, 123 Baird, Robert 53-57, 62, 64-66, 69, 74, 75, 82, 141 Bell, Michael 18, 20, 42, 141 Berkhofer, Robert F. 7, 8, 10-15, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 41, 42, 47, 49, 54, 80, 89-91, 93, 111 Bible 14, 99, 125, 131, 142 Boone, Daniel 128 buffalo hunt 61-63 bushido 118 Bushido 94

C Cameron, James 2, 121-124, 127-129, 131, 141, 143, 144 captivity 14-17, 40, 74, 91-93, 116, 117, 139 captivity narrative 14-16, 91, 92 Catlin, George 58, 81, 102, 111, 141, 150 Chingachgook 30, 31, 40, 97 Christian 9, 12, 18, 27, 28, 45, 49, 69, 137, 143 chronological primitivism 18, 19, 26, 57, 94, 115 Cisco 53, 60, 66, 76, 81 Civil War 53, 55, 68, 76, 87, 88, 102, 118 civilization 1, 2, 7, 11, 12, 17, 19, 29, 30, 34-36, 40-42, 50, 53, 55, 56, 58, 72-74, 77-79, 81, 82, 85, 87, 89-91, 94, 103, 111, 115, 124, 128, 129, 134, 136, 137, 149 colonization 7, 10, 116 Columbus, Christopher 6-8, 11, 51, 64, 83, 130, 142, 146

conquest 6, 9, 16, 34, 36-38, 43, 88, 101, 119 conservation 31, 42, 56 conservationist 39, 42, 56, 133, 138 Cooper, James Fenimore 30, 31, 46, 48, 80, 128 Costner, Kevin 2, 47, 53, 54, 58-60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 71, 73-75, 83, 84, 87, 90, 103, 114, 122, 137, 138, 142-144, 146 costume 106, 110, 112, 129, 133 countercultural 38, 45, 87 counterculture 122, 133, 134 cowboy 31, 53, 107, 123, 129 cross-cultural 33, 37, 39, 87, 90, 109 Cruise, Tom 95, 97, 118 Custer 88, 99, 101, 102, 145

D Dances with Wolves (movie) 2, 41, 44, 47, 50, 5356, 58, 61-66, 70-80, 82-87, 90, 92, 98, 100, 103, 104, 107, 108, 115, 117, 119-124, 131, 135, 137, 138, 141-146, 149 Dances With Wolves (name) 53-56, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 76, 85, 90, 98, 103, 143, 144 death 35, 48, 68, 96, 98, 99, 107, 109, 117, 118, 131, 135 Deloria, Philip J. 28, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42, 50, 112 demon 1, 6, 9, 10, 28, 142 Derounian-Stodola and Levernier 11-16, 91, 92, 116, 128 dichotomy 5, 11, 71, 72, 74, 75, 84 dreamwalker 129 Dryden, John 17, 108, 142 Dunbar, John 41, 47, 50, 53, 55-69, 71-82, 84-86, 98, 100, 104, 107-109, 112, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 124, 138, 149

E East 7, 8, 51, 58, 87, 90, 114, 122 ecocriticism 93 Eden 25, 83, 130 edenic 43, 105, 131 Ellingson, Ter 17, 22-24, 142 Enlightenment 20, 25, 29, 80 environment 14, 20, 23, 24, 42, 43, 83, 119, 123, 128, 132, 134 environmental 31, 39, 44, 82 environmentalism 54, 56, 57, 80, 84, 122 environmentalist 40, 43, 83, 134 escape 1, 2, 26, 27, 40, 41, 50, 79, 99, 113, 115, 118, 138 escapism 25, 37, 40, 41, 127 escapist 40, 41, 99, 118, 138

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European 1, 7-9, 11-13, 15, 19, 20, 23-26, 29, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45-47, 49, 50, 58, 64-66, 69, 70, 74, 76, 78, 79, 82-84, 88, 91, 93, 114, 130, 135, 137, 139, 143

F Fairchild, Hoxie N. 23, 143 Fambrough 59, 66, 72, 78 family romance 57 Fiedler, Leslie A. 6-10, 24, 25, 30, 32, 40, 41, 48, 50, 51, 78, 96, 97, 99 Fort Sedgwick 53, 55, 60, 61, 69, 76, 79, 81, 82, 109 Freud, Sigmund 57, 143 frontier 16, 29, 30, 34, 35, 42, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 64, 72, 78-80, 83, 87, 90-92, 95, 111, 121, 122, 137

G Gant, Zebulon 108, 114 Garden of Eden 18, 54, 58, 65, 67, 80, 83, 131, 138, 149 geographical primitivism 26, 154 going Native 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 14-16, 18-20, 25, 26, 2830, 32-34, 36-42, 44-50, 54-58, 60-62, 64, 66-68, 71, 80, 81, 83, 85, 87, 90, 92-96, 98, 103, 104, 106, 112-115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 134-139 Golden Age 18, 19, 26, 43, 94, 137, 138, 144 Graham 92, 93, 110, 117 Grey Owl 64, 72, 73, 84, 143 guilt 1, 16, 54, 75, 85, 134, 135, 136

H Hasegawa 110-112, 150 Higen 114, 116 Hollywood 53-56, 64, 75, 76, 120, 126, 135, 141, 143 Hope Leslie 79 Horatius 26, 103, 144 Huhndorf, Shari M. 5, 6, 33, 34, 36-38, 41-43, 4547, 50, 57, 76, 78, 79, 100, 115, 127, 144

I identity 6, 8, 9, 29, 30, 35, 36, 48, 50, 57, 60, 64, 68, 101, 109, 112 imagery 1, 6, 7, 25, 49 Inazō, Nitobe 94, 142 Indian 5-16, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33, 37, 39, 40-44, 47, 50, 51, 53-58, 62, 66, 69-75, 78, 82-84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 96-98, 100-103, 107, 111, 112, 114,

119, 124, 192, 130, 132, 134, 138, 141, 143-145, 147 Indianness 39, 47, 48, 50, 102, 114, 119 industrial 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 56, 59, 83, 94, 149 industrialism 42, 56 industrialization 58, 103, 119

J Japan 2, 36, 51, 91, 92-97, 100, 104-106, 110-112, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 138, 143, 144 Japanese 44, 87, 90, 93-96, 98, 100, 101, 107-109, 111-114, 118, 120, 143

K karate 113, 114 Katsumoto 95-98, 100-113, 115, 117, 118, 138, 149, 150 Kicking Bird 53, 55, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 73, 76, 81, 82, 86, 103, 112, 117 kimono 106, 113, 114 King Philip 30

L La Belle Sauvage 124, 141, 150 language 9, 24, 54, 61, 62, 70, 108, 114, 116, 120, 130 Lawrence, D.H. 6, 9, 31, 33, 35, 144 Leatherstocking 30, 31, 46, 48, 64, 80, 139 Lewis, R.W.B. 46, 56, 65, 67, 144 Little Big Man 64 locus amoenus 26, 106, 138 Logan, John 93, 144, 146

M Manifest Destiny 73, 78 materialistic desacralization 77, 78, 103 McGregor, Gaile 15, 18-29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 42 Meiji 93, 94, 96, 108, 109 Messiah 126, 127, 138, 141 modern age 1, 102, 110 modernists 91, 109, 116 modernity 33, 36, 37, 41, 42, 87, 104-106, 115, 117-119, 139 myth 2, 9, 14, 18, 22-25, 30, 36, 39-43, 46, 48, 50, 53, 54, 56-58, 60, 61, 64, 66-68, 83, 85, 87, 9396, 102, 109, 118, 122, 123, 131, 132, 137, 138 mythological 9, 11, 24, 25, 34, 53, 92 mythology 5, 9, 24, 25, 46, 109, 128, 130

N Na’vi 121, 123-133, 135, 136, 138

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naming 7, 64-66 Native American 1, 5-16, 24, 25, 28-30, 36, 38, 39, 43-48, 53-55, 58, 64, 65, 70, 72, 74, 75, 81-85, 87, 89, 100-102, 107, 111-113, 116, 119-121, 123, 124, 133, 134, 141, 143, 146 Nativeness 16, 40, 46, 50, 53, 69, 78, 84, 125, 131, 138 Natty Bumppo 30, 31, 40, 48, 97 naturalistic sacralization 78 nature 11, 12, 15, 19, 23, 26, 27, 28, 35, 37-39, 42, 43, 54, 58, 61, 62, 65, 66, 74, 76-84, 93, 105, 121, 124, 126, 128, 133, 134, 137, 138, 150 New Age 38, 42, 54 new continent 8, 15, 23-26, 34, 88, 137 New World 7, 8, 10, 15, 18, 23, 26, 28, 107, 130, 137, 139 Neytiri 124, 125, 132, 133, 136 noble savage 1, 6, 7, 17, 18, 20-29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 42, 46, 71-73, 82, 102, 112, 133, 137 noble savagery 18, 21, 22, 137

O Old World 7 Omura 101, 107, 108, 109, 115, 119 other 6-10, 12, 14-17, 19, 22, 24, 25, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 54, 55, 58, 60, 63, 70, 72, 74-76, 8183, 85, 87, 90, 93, 95, 96, 100, 102, 106, 113, 114, 119, 127, 128, 131-133, 137, 139

P Pandora 121-125, 129, 130, 131-134, 138, 150 paradise 10, 18, 69, 72, 99, 102, 106, 107, 121, 131, 134 Pawnee 41, 64, 65, 72, 74, 75, 82, 100, 115, 149 Pearce, Roy Harvey 14, 29, 145 Pilgrim Fathers 12 pioneer 10, 24, 25, 29, 30, 87, 88, 91, 128, 134 Pocahontas 30, 40, 124, 132 preindustrial 40, 83 primitivism 1, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, 57, 94, 115, 121 primitivist(ic) 20, 21, 31, 40, 42, 80, 121 progress 11, 17, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 55, 72, 88, 89, 91, 119, 121, 128, 132 Protestant 14 purging 54, 114, 136 Puritan 13-16

Q Quaritch 125, 128, 134

R rebirth 48, 69, 99, 109, 118, 131, 133, 138 redemption 16, 43, 45, 48, 50, 56, 68, 97, 101, 103, 118 regeneration 15, 42, 43, 46-48, 56, 76, 118 renaissance 48, 50, 57, 69, 92, 109, 118, 131, 137, 150 Renaissance 2, 18, 25, 26, 48, 49, 115, 137, 144 renaming 7, 50, 64, 66, 67, 81 ritual 49, 68, 69, 92, 99, 110, 116 Romantic Period 6 Romanticism 27, 35, 80, 127 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 20-22, 24, 31, 127 Rowlandson, Mary 10, 14, 15, 17, 74, 75, 142

S savagism 1 self-discovery 2, 48, 50, 132 seppuku 110, 112 settlers 1, 10, 12, 13, 15, 23, 25-27, 34, 35, 45, 46, 66, 69, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79 Sioux 6, 49, 50, 53-55, 57-61, 63, 64-67, 70, 72-81, 83, 84, 100, 101, 104, 119, 138 sky-people 125, 126, 129, 130, 135 Slotkin, Richard 14, 15, 24, 43, 46, 56, 128, 146 Snyder, Gary 44, 45, 146 society 1, 6, 11, 13, 19, 20, 27-29, 31, 32, 36, 40, 41, 47, 49, 50, 56, 58, 65, 70, 71, 76, 80, 90, 91, 104, 109, 110, 114, 116-119, 121, 126, 143 Stands With A Fist 53, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 79, 80, 120, 124, 149 stereotype 16, 53, 73, 127 stereotypes 12, 14, 16, 25, 53, 73, 85, 119, 127, 130 Studi, Wes 74, 75 Sully, Jake 121-128, 130-136, 138, 150 Sun Dance 49, 68, 149 symbol 27, 60, 93, 96

T Tacitus 17, 145 Taka 97, 98, 105, 106, 112, 114, 116, 117 Takamori 96 technology 38, 122, 126 Ten Bears 67, 68, 72, 73 The Last of the Mohicans 74, 128, 144 The Last Samurai 2, 30, 36, 44, 46, 87, 88, 90-93, 95-98, 100-104, 106, 108, 111-115, 118-121, 123, 131, 135, 138, 144, 146, 149, 150 Toruk Makto 126, 136 traditional 13, 19, 24, 41, 44, 58, 80, 93, 95, 100, 110, 113, 114, 123, 133, 137, 138 Transcendentalist 28

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transcultural 2, 16, 46, 104, 112, 139 Tsu’tey 125, 136 Turner, Frederick Jackson 34, 87, 147 Two Socks 57, 60, 65, 67, 69, 81, 149

U Ujio 111, 115, 117, 125 Unobtainium 121, 124, 128

V vanishing 6, 16, 24, 30, 32, 40, 51, 55, 56, 72, 75, 78, 89, 93, 94, 111, 143 Vietnam 41, 44

Western 6, 8, 9, 10, 17, 24, 30, 39, 41, 42, 53, 54, 69, 71, 72, 74-76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 100, 103-105, 107-111, 114, 115, 118, 119, 122, 123, 129, 130, 137, 141, 145, 149 Whelan, Robert 22, 31, 39, 42, 69, 82, 83, 133 White 5, 6, 8, 12, 14-16, 29, 30, 32, 40, 41, 44, 4749, 53, 57, 58, 63, 64, 66, 69, 71-80, 84, 85, 90, 91, 101, 111, 112, 115, 118, 124, 126, 127, 130, 132, 138, 141, 145 Wild West 89 wilderness 15, 16, 19, 24, 27, 30, 35, 36, 40, 42, 43, 58, 59, 64, 66, 71, 80, 83, 96, 97, 103, 106, 124, 128, 134, 145 Wind In His Hair 53, 58, 59, 61-63, 66, 76, 125 Winnetou 50, 119 Wounded Knee 43, 45, 141

W Watanabe, Ken 95 West 16, 24-26, 28, 30, 35, 40, 42, 43, 47, 51, 53, 58, 73, 75, 87, 89, 94, 96, 97, 107, 119, 121, 122, 138, 141

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Z Zahelu 133 Zwick, Edward 2, 87, 90, 93, 97, 103, 104, 106, 113, 118, 119, 122, 144, 146

Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache Während sich das transkulturelle Phänomen going Native für außenstehende Betrachter als bloßer Wechsel in ein einfacheres, urtümlicheres soziales Umfeld und in damit verbundene Denkmuster darstellt, erweist es sich bei näherer Untersuchung als wichtige kulturelle Praktik, die sich wie ein roter Faden durch die Amerikanische Kultur- und Literaturlandschaft zieht. Doch nicht nur auf dem Amerikanischen Kontinent war dieses Verlangen nach Natürlichkeit stets als Subroutine in bedeutenden kulturhistorischen Entwicklungen zu finden, auch in der abendländischen Zivilisation ist dieses Phänomen bereits eine jahrtausendealte Praktik. Mit dem Native American jedoch fand dieses Gedankengut, das von Europäischen Denkern auch unter dem Sammelbegriff Primitivismus zusammengefasst wurde, schließlich den perfekten Katalysator. Native Americans erschienen stets in der Rolle der Anderen, was je nach den politischen Umständen der jeweiligen Epoche zunächst als negatives, dann jedoch immer mehr als positives und erstrebenswertes Bild interpretiert wurde. Betrachtet man diese Bilder im Laufe der Jahre und Jahrhunderte, treten die Motive und Absichten zu Tage, welche mit dem Wechsel in eine rein äußerlich simplere Existenz verfolgt werden. Es geht dabei nicht nur um das Anderssein – das Spektrum reicht vom bloßen Eskapismus bis hin zu Beweggründen ökologischer oder gar philosophischer Natur. Dass diese Motive auch im auslaufenden 20. Jahrhundert sowie im 21. Jahrhundert noch aktiv waren und sind, wird dadurch ersichtlich, dass going Native auch in die modernsten Formen der kulturellen Medien Einzug gehalten hat. So legen Filme wie Der mit dem Wolf tanzt oder Last Samurai eindrucksvoll Zeugnis davon ab, welche Faszination diese gesellschaftliche Option noch heute auf den Menschen ausüben kann. Dabei versteht sich Costners revolutionärer Neo-Western als Hommage an die glorreichen Tage einer Amerikanischen Gesellschaft, die im sogenannten wilden Westen noch einen Traum vom Anderssein wähnte, der eigentlich schon gar nicht mehr existierte. In Zwicks fernöstlichem Epos Last Samurai werden sodann die geographischen Vorzeichen verändert, und doch operieren

dieselben

gesellschaftspolitischen

Mechanismen

wie

auf

dem

Amerikanischen Kontinent. Es sind Zeiten des Umbruchs, Zeiten der sozialen Krise, in denen das Verlangen nach Einfachheit laut wird.

So auch in James Camerons Avatar, dem aktuellsten Manifest für die going Native Bewegung, welches als bislang erfolgreichster Film der Kinogeschichte auf dem Gipfel der Popkultur thront und beweist, dass der Traum vom Anderssein noch lange nicht ausgeträumt ist.

curriculum vitae Persönliche Daten Name:

Michael Komjati

Geburtsdatum:

16. November 1982

Geburtsort:

Eisenstadt

Staatsangehörigkeit:

Österreich

Ausbildung Seit März 2003

Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch und UF Latein an der Universität Wien

Okt. 2002 – Feb. 2003

Lehramtsstudium UF Mathematik und UF Latein an der Universität Wien

1993 - 2001

Bundesgymnasium Mattersburg (Reifeprüfung mit ausgezeichnetem Erfolg am 18.06.2001)

1989 - 1993

Volksschule Sigleß

Sprachkenntnisse Muttersprache:

Deutsch

Lebende Fremdsprachen:

Englisch Französisch

Weitere Sprachen:

Latein Altgriechisch

Beruflicher Werdegang seit Sept. 2010

Gymnasiallehrer in Wien für die Fächer Englisch und Latein