At one time during the movie, the characters who are on a quest for Twinkies stop at the "Kemo Sabe Trading Post" somewhere in Arizona. It is extremely outlandishly decorated with giant arrows in the ground, tipi-shaped buildings, wooden Indians, and giant Indian statues.
Inside, is a shop rather dense with the typical Indian souvenirs: spears, tomahawks, headdresses, tom-toms, vases and pottery, velvet pictures, and everything else like that. The characters seem to spend 10 to 20 minutes there. They don't find their Twinkies, but they trash the place for fun.
Think of Genghis Khan with the baseball bat in the sporting goods store in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." At one time, one of the characters is running through the place wearing a Plains-style head-dress wielding a spear. They smash a few Indian statues as they trash everything.
Not that significant really, but worth mentioning to you that Native-related imagery is rather pervasive for what seems like from 10 to 20 minutes of what is right now a very popular movie.
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the trading post doesn't seem that outlandish. I'm not sure any one place has giant arrows, teepees, and giant Indian statues, but it might. If you visited a tourist spot in Indian country with several such shops, you probably could find all this kitsch.
For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.
P.S. Good job writing this up, DMarks. Ideally this is what everyone should do when they send me stuff. I don't have time to see and write about everything, so help me out. Describe the thing you're submitting and tell me what you think about it.
Below: You can see a few seconds of the trading post at the 0:54 mark.
Some responses to this item on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteLisa Savy James: What is his point? This type of souvenir store is part of Americana. Are we not supposed to have anything related to Native Americans in movies at all? In fact I think the shop was chosen precisely because it represented the American heartland, and because it had the most cinematically breakable items compared to say, a Gap store.
Melvin Martin: I thought that this particular scene was a symbolic trashing of the origins of the collapsed society that America had become within the context of the film or a rather vapid reinterpretation of James Baldwin's "you've taken the best, so now take the rest."
All of the merchandise that was destroyed was foreign-made anyway.
I'm not sure DMarks had a point. My blog often documents the Native presence in pop culture without commenting on it.
ReplyDeleteBut I can guess his probable point. The movie, like most of American culture, offers no sign of real Indians. True, these kitschy trading posts remind us of Indians, but the reminders are false or stereotypical. They reinforce the notion that Indians are frozen in the past or gone altogether.
As such, they're like Indian mascots or Halloween costumes. Yes, they show us the heartland's view of Indians, but that view is wrong. So these shops and their souvenirs are problematical at best. They probably do more harm than good.
The cliché is "a bull in a china shop," Lisa, not "a bull in a trading post." A store selling porcelain, ceramic, or glass wares would have more breakable items, so I don't buy that line of reasoning.
ReplyDeleteI'm not claiming Zombieland was sending a message by busting up Indian souvenirs. The trading post probably seemed like a fun, colorful place to film. One could argue that these shops are semi-iconic if you're traveling through the Southwest.
On the other hand, the filmmakers chose the shop for some reason, so I wouldn't rule out a message. Perhaps it was a commentary on our cheap, disposable consumer culture. Or perhaps it was a commentary on the worthlessness and disposability of Indian culture. Unless there were other racial overtones, that explanation seems unlikely, but it's possible.