h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having recently acquired a television I have note that the day time schedule on several channels is padded with old movies including many 1950's westerns - while many of these are simplistic morality tales regarding conflict between European settlers in a lawless society and a handful deal with the relationaship between settlers and native Americans in a sypatheyic (if rather paternalistic) manner, many are overtly racist, perpetuate negative sterotypes about native Americans and justify and even glorify what was in reality genocide.

Why is this deemed acceptable when worksw justifying other genocides are rightly condemned?

Should the worst of these films be left to gather dust and only be available for academic research?

In all fairness we do occassionaly see 1930's British films like the Lives of a Bengal Lancer (evidently Hitler's favourite film) but the sterotypes are so absurded and the attitudes so outmoded they are more laughable than offensive and offer an insight into a less than savoury past - do north Americans feel this way about westerns?

The few Westerns I've seen have been cowboys vs other cowboys, with the Indians* barely an incidental presence. That's problematic too, of course, but less overtly racist. Erasure of any form is not good, though.

Interesting question.

TRiG.

* I'm told this actually is the preferred term in many parts of the States.

Injuns was always my preferred term.

Most of the westerns I've seen treat the natives respectfully, but if there's a bunch of old ones which don't then they might justify being packaged for broadcast in a 'historical' slot rather than an 'entertainment' slot.

When I saw the subject line, I was hoping that this would be a discussion of my favorite Laurel and Hardy movie, "Way Out West."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Out_West_(1937_film)

Even so, there's a lot to like here. Movie "Westerns" had a built in audience because there was a sizeable demographic of viewers who had grown up in the West in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. perhaps they hadn't gone on trail drives or encountered Indians, but maybe they had older relatives who had. Even for those who had no experience of the Wild west, there were many who saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as it toured. Annie Oakley lived until about 1926. My grandmother went to see her one time. During World War I, Annie went to rhe President and offered her services in training large numbers of women in marksmanship for the war effort. (The president politely refused.) I remember watching numerous Westerns on TV in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1970s, they were waning, for a simple demographic reason: the people who grew up in the Western states in the late 19th/early 20th Century had died. The younger generations were more disposed to laughing at "comic" Westerns like "Maverick" or "Blazing Saddles". [Not that there weren't comic Westerns long before that. Consider "Way Out West," "My Little Chickadee," and "Calamity Jane." Also consider the development of singing and dancing Western shows with the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Aaron Copland had cowboys dancing in his ballets "Rodeo" and "Billy the Kid." Rogers and Hammerstein had dancing and singing in "Oklahoma," while Irving Berlin set Annie Oakley's life to music in "Annie get Your Gun."]

Sorry about the long digression. I just wanted to make it clear that there was a solid *reason* why so many western-themed shows and movies were made before 1960, and why they were far less plentiful [and more likely to be comic] after that. As for the depiction of Indians in many of the serious movies, that goes back to what it took to write a successful screenplay that studios would buy: Conflict. There's a whole scene in "Adaptation" that expounds on the necessity of conflict in screenplays. In a movie western, somebody's got to be in conflict with somebody else. In "My Darling Clementine," for instance, there's a shootout at the O.K. Corral. if cowboys are not in conflict with each other, they might be in conflict with some Indians. Did Hollywood scriptwriters really want to stereotype Indians? Well, maybe some more than others. Plus, there were different social attitudes then than there are now. In the 1940s, it was okay for white people to portray African-Americans on the radio in shows like "Amos and Andy." If Indians didn't fare any better, would that have been surprising? Even in "Annie get Your Gun," there's a song ["I'm an Indian, too"] that would be considered insulting to many Indians these days.

Anyway, the vacuum caused by the implosion of the Western genre was quickly filled by Star Trek and Star Wars and the rest of the science fiction genre. Cowboys and Indians in outer space? Heck, there's even a movie called "Space Cowboys."

starring the Man with No Name himself no less

Clint Eastwood? He was in the TV series "Rawhide," which was about a trail drive. He also had an agreeable voice, singing in the movie version of Lerner and Loewe's "Paint Your Wagon." Lee Marvin was also in that, I recall.

So many memories of TV Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. Rawhide. Maverick. Cheyenne. Wagon Train. Death Valley Days. Bat Masterson. Some of the theme songs were memorable.

"Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight?
Lonely man, Cheyenne, will your heart stay free and light?"

"Smooth as the handle on a gun.
Maverick is the name.
Wild as a wind in oregon,
Blowing up a canyon,
Easier to tame."

"Keep rollin', rollin', rollin',
Though the streams are swollen,
Keep them dogies rollin', rawhide!"

[That last one was so iconic that it even showedup in the film "Blues Brothers" when Jake and Ellwood realized that they needed a song to sing, and that was the first thing that popped into mind.

I missed most of the actual movies of that period because I was too young to go to the theaters for anything more mature than "The Absentminded professor," "Cinderella," or "Mary Poppins." I did see "Calamity Jane" on television, though. "My Little Chickadee" and "My Darling Clementine" were shown in a film class I took in the late 1970s. I saw "Way Out West" on video in the 1990s.

I note you don't claim Lee Marvin had an "Agreeable voice"

I don't remember his singing at all.

I can't watch Clint Eastwood singing in Paint Your Wagon without thinking of the Spike Milligan version:


I talk to the trees,
That's why they put me away

I haven't seen the Spike Milligan version, but i9t sounds funny. Have you heard the Flanders and Swann "Happy Song"?

The last verse is something like

"Here's a way to win renown,
Tell them as they strap you down:
Gack pht Aaaah!"

There is much more history to 'American' attitudes toward the
aboriginal tribes than is ever depicted in 20th century films.

Scalping for instance was a British practice long before
the American Revolution. Five pounds a scalp was the going
rate in the early settlements. An indentured worker who'd
agreed to settle in British North America would serve for
about five to seven years - depending on the debt for which
he'd originally been imprisoned in England.

Once he had worked off his debt and was considered a Free Man
he could 'borrow' a canoe and earn a few pounds by murdering
natives and bringing back scalps as proof for his bounty. This
was the initial investment which founded many fine upstanding
families and businesses in North America.

This 'business' of ethnic cleansing also included boarding
the natives up in their long-houses and stockades and burning
them to death by the hundreds. See the history of the Pequod,
for whom Herman Melville named the doomed ship in Moby Dick.

By the time of the War of 1812 young Americans were so filled
with fear based on falsely 'reversed' stories of the horrors
of 'the savages' that Britain was able to defeat large American
armies by allying with native tribes on the (again) false promise
of a Native Homeland once the Americans had been beaten.

British soldiers only had to yell a few 'war whoops' in the
general direction of green yankee troops to send them fleeing
for their lives. See also the 'Indian' massacre at Detroit of
that same fateful war.

Canada gave protection and sanctuary to Sitting Bull and his
tribes 'out west' after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. But then
refused to feed, clothe or house them against the cold prairie
winter resulting in their return to their southern homelands only
to be slaughtered and rounded up and put on reservations. Those
who resisted and fought to the bitter end are the basis of the
early 20th century 'injun' raiders movies.

Hollywood has never properly dealt with the ugly truth of bounties
and genocides in the first British settlements. Instead they sustain
the lie of the 'first Thanksgiving' and paint happy pictures of the
Puritan settlers and Natives sharing the harvest. The fact is the
earliest settlers knew nothing about survival, and starving to
death, they were desperately raiding native villages for food.

The Victors write the Histories.


~jwf~

There was an excellent biography of Crazy Horse a few years ago. That is the sort of story that might be made into a movie to bring a little balance to the depiction of Indians in Hollywood.

The trouble with Hollywood is that it has this insane idea that audiences want to be entertained. The information about the origins of scalping fits into what entertainment genre, exactly? Horror? In order to get the necessary conflict into the plot, would at least one character need to be *against* the practice of collecting scalps?
The burning of Indian longhouses sounds like horror, though it might be tricky to get audiences to see it as anything other than a conventional war story with the European colonists as the good guys.

>>>> In all fairness we do occassionaly see 1930's British films like the Lives of a Bengal Lancer (evidently Hitler's favourite film) but the sterotypes are so absurded and the attitudes so outmoded they are more laughable than offensive and offer an insight into a less than savoury past - do north Americans feel this way about westerns?

Haven't a clue about 65-70 year old westerns. I'm more familiar with the newer ones, starting with Silverado. I work during the day, and probably wouldn't be that interested in time-slot-filler TV programming anyway. Besides, the TV doesn't pick up anything since the broadcasters stopped sending an analog signal.

I thought this thread was about the band.

"Erasure of any form is not good, though"

Yeah, Andy Bell was only ever doing a pale impression of Alison Moyet, he was plug-ugly and a rubbish dancer to boot.

I once saw them in concert. It was very ... um ... disconcerting to see him in an all too revealing rubber dress.

Oh, you forgot the dresses.

The Village People had someone in an Indian headdress.

He was brave...

He had to be. I don't think the critics were kind to him or his group.

They're well-known here in the UK - as a camp novelty act, but you can't deny they had some memorable hits.

Not sure we can do them with smileys - may have to change the outfits:



Clearly we need more smileys.

They made a movie in the early 1980s. June Havoc [Gypsy Rose Lee's sister] was in it. It was a campy movie, and CDs of the sound track as a scarce as hen's teeth. But it wasn't hard to get a CD of their greatest hits.