Racist stereotypes in Sausage Party

“Sausage Party”’s race problem: This “equal opportunity offender” is just plain offensive

No matter how well-intentioned, this kind of comedy only really works in a world where opportunity itself is equal

By Nico LangHumphrey also pointed to Firewater, a Native American chief played by Bill Hader, who is distressingly reminiscent of the redface caricatures in “Peter Pan.” Like the Indian Chief in the Disney feature, he speaks in “grunts and uses sign language.”

Lewis and Clark in Saturday Night Live

The May 21 episode of SNL featured another of its comedic classroom experiences. This time, some terrible white actors performed a terrible "educational" skit about Lewis and Clark:



Comment:  In the phony historical "lesson," Lewis and Clark are mostly interested in sleeping with Sacagawea. She isn't opposed to this and at one point does a sexy dance.

The skit within the sketch is definitely racist, with Sacagawea as nothing but a sex object who speaks Tonto talk. The sketch itself is borderline racist as well.

On the one hand, the actors are supposed to be buffonish, so you're not supposed to take them seriously. On the other hand, the teacher encourages them and is moved to tears by their performance. Other than Sasheer Zamata's frowns, no one is really rejecting the lesson.

This leaves viewers unclear about how accurate the lesson is. Obviously Lewis and Clark didn't want to have a ménage à trois with anyone. But was Sacagawea a sexy and savage Indian princess? No, she was a teenage girl with a husband and a baby.

Call it another example of hipster racism. The sketch kind of mocks anti-Indian racism, but also kind of supports it. If you didn't know better, you might swallow some of its points.

Not funny

For fans of SNL, the sketch also was completely unfunny. Whether it was racist or not, it should've been axed for that reason alone.

It's a good bet Fred Armisen had something to do with its creation. He may be SNL's leading purveyor of racist stereotypes in the last decade.

How do stupid things like this sketch get on the air? Because ignorant white people, many of them liberals, control the airwaves.

For more on Saturday Night Live, see Anchor Babies in Saturday Night Live and Peyote, "Firewater" in Saturday Night Live

"Indians bring firewater" in All in the Family

In The Little Atheist episode of All in the Family (airdate: 11/24/75), neighbor Irene Lorenzo attends Thanksgiving at Mike and Gloria's house. She enters with a bottle of wine, saying: How! Indians spend Thanksgiving with Pilgrims, bring firewater.She's wearing a full-length dress that looks like it could be Navajo. Also necklaces of turquoise, silver, and other beads. You can see the bit at the 14:17 mark:



It seems like Irene has some knowledge of Indians and is trying to honor them. She's pretty clearly doing an Indian thing. But the fake "How!" greeting and the "firewater" crack...ugh. Stereotype alert!

For more on the subject, see Archie Bunker on Indians.

Mike's Tribe in My Wife and Kids

I recently watched this old episode of a TV show:

My Wife and Kids: Season 3, Episode 14
Michael's Tribe (18 Dec. 2002)Michael (aka: Chief Bald Eagle) is recruited to camp out with Kady and her friends and teach them Native American lore. Meanwhile, Clare and "the new Tony" plan to stay out all night themselves: they're plotting to sneak out to a "rave."The Brady Braves blog ripped this episode apart:

My Wife and Kids "Michael's Tribe," Part IWhen he hears that his daughter’s “Indian” Princesses group will be camping at the house of a family he does not know, Michael demands that the camping be at his house. As he tells his wife Jay/Janet (portrayed by Tisha Campbell), “I’ll be the chief. I’ll watch the game and then I’ll go out there and play ‘Indian.’”And:As the rest of the episode unfolds, he shows that he is clueless about as well as racist towards Indigenous Peoples. The only clue he has is being well-versed in Hollywood “Injun” stereotypes, which suffices for the sitcom’s “Indian.”A typical example of the episode's racism:

"Michael's Tribe," Part IIMichael tells the Princesses of Claire’s plan and asks them to help make sure Claire stays “here in the village” (i.e., at home). Next, the Princesses prepare for what Bald Eagle labels as “war” while dancing senselessly and chanting “hi-ya uh-ya-ha hi-ya uh-ya-ha” with their chief. Chief Bald Eagle also leads the Princesses in a rendition of “the sacred song of our Indian People.” In unison, they sing “three little, two little, one little Indian” from the well-known Septimus Winner nineteenth-century minstrel song (and later nursery rhyme) “Ten Little Indians.”Comment:  I agree with these analyses. The episode actually was worse than the "Brady Braves" comments indicated.

Recall that this aired in 2002, or 12 years after Dances with Wolves in 1990. It's significantly worse than Running Zack in Saved by the Bell, which also aired in 1990. There's no excuse for this level of stereotyping appearing so recently.

Damon Wayans has a history of making racist and sexist comments. He was the executive producer of the show and co-wrote Mike's Tribe. There's no getting around it: Wayans is responsible for the episode's racism.

Running Zack in Saved by the Bell

I didn't watch Saved by the Bell when it was on the air. But every long-running show has to have an "Indian" episode, it seems, and Saved by the Bell had one too.

Here's the basic idea:

Running Zack (24 Nov. 1990)If Zack wants to run the track meet, he better prepare his ancestry report where he gets help from an Indian.Running ZackZack fails his family heritage presentation. Unless he can make it up, he is off the track team. His teacher Miss Wentworth arranges a tutor for Zack named Chief Henry, who happens to be a Native American. Zack soon learns about his own Native American heritage, but does not feel like going to the upcoming track rally when tragedy strikes.From what I read, fans seem to think Running Zack was one of the worst episodes ever. The whole series seems to be written for juvenile pre-teens, but I don't think Running Zack is worse than other Native-themed episodes I've seen. I'd say it's mediocre rather than terrible.

Let's go through the major plot points and compare what the critics have said:

episode #29 ‘Running Zack.’

Saved by the Bell Season 2, Episode 13: “Running Zack”

Running Zack

to my impressions.

First presentation

Miss Wentworth's students have to do a family-tree presentation, which involves talking for 30 seconds in front of the class. That's more like something you'd do in 3rd grade than in high school, but hey...this is a compressed TV sitcom, so never mind.

Zack finds an old photo of an Indian. His mother told him the Indian was a distant relative. That's good enough for Zack to base a half-assed report on.

This is roughly the rationale given by wannabes such as Ward Churchill, Elizabeth Warren, and Johnny Depp. Claiming Native ancestry based on a hypothetical ancestor in one's family lore is common. If a kid is lazy and doesn't do his homework, he could easily seize on such a story for a class report.

A couple of people said Zack is clearly Nordic (or Anglo-Saxon, or Aryan) and couldn't be Native. But he didn't declare himself to be Native because of one ancestor. He could have a distant Native ancestor in his family tree. And since the assignment apparently was to talk about one of his ancestors, he was doing what he was told.

Zack gives a perfunctory talk using Screech as his assistant. Zack draws "war paint" on Screech and gives him a toy tomahawk. Screech stands like a cigar-store Indian and talks like Tonto.



Yes, it's a stereotypical if not racist presentation. But Zack is supposed to be ignorant about Indians at this point. Since Running Zack aired two years before Dances with Wolves, and kids are still dressing and acting this way today, it's not an terribly unbelievable report. Many people, especially naive youngsters, really are this dumb and foolish.

Meeting Chief Henry

Miss Wentworth sends Zack to meet her friend Chief Henry. The critics wondered how they could've met. Perhaps at UCLA, since he said he went there. It's totally normal to meet Indians in everyday life, especially in an urban environment such as Los Angeles. The real issue isn't how they met, but why people are questioning it.

Critics also wondered about his "Chief Henry" name. Yes, it's a stereotypical name for someone who isn't a chief. But it could just be a nickname. If that were the only problem, I'd call the episode a success.

More important than these points is the overall impression Henry makes. He's played by Dehl Berti, a Chiricahua Apache actor. That's good; no redface casting here. He dresses and acts like a beach bum, not a wise elder or shaman. He punctures Zack's ignorance about Indians several times--for instance, saying he learned beading in a class at UCLA, not from his elders.

Except for the minor details noted above, and too many Native artifacts lying around, I'd say this is an above-average TV portrayal. In fact, I'm not sure I can think of a better one in a sitcom before 1990.

Zack finds his ancestor's photo in a book and goes back to Chief Henry to learn more. Again, the Indian confounds Zack's expectations. Henry gives Zack a beaded headband and the name "Running Zack" before heading out to surf.

Critics complained that Running Zack is a stereotypical "Indian name." True, but Henry knew Zack was a runner. I think Henry was playing with Zack--giving him a faux name to match his hobby. I don't think it was supposed to be a genuine naming ceremony.

Second presentation

Zack does a makeup presentation in a full buckskin costume, headdress, and warpaint. This is perhaps the most offensive thing in Running Zack. He's read the books and learned about his ancestor...but he still comes to class in the most stereotypical outfit possible? He apparently hasn't learned a thing about how Indians look.

Despite the ridiculous outfit, Zack gives a decent summary of his ancestor, who turns out to be Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. Zack names a real Indian from a real tribe and gives his real history, including his "I will fight no more forever" line.

That's a nice dollop of history for a lowbrow comedy. It's more than you'll get from most shows, even today, with their no-name or fictional tribes.

Chief Henry dies suddenly. The critics asked why. It could be anything--it doesn't matter what. The critics said Zack didn't know him long enough to grieve. True, but sometimes you can connect deeply with a person in just a few minutes. This was clearly meant to be like that.

Again, compressed sitcom. I think the episode wanted us to imagine Chief Henry had two long soulful meetings with Zack. That they didn't appear on screen is a limitation of the format.

Chief Henry's ghost

Chief Henry's ghost visits Zack while he's asleep. He's dressed in a white suit and talks about getting his wings and enjoying his afterlife. Critics said that sounded like Christianity rather than a Native religion.

True, but Henry could've been Christian or a Native/Christian blend. Again, it subverts expectations not to have Henry mouth platitudes about the Great Spirit or the happy hunting grounds.

One also could connect the ghost to the idea that all Indians have supernatural powers, but I don't think the show was suggesting that. I took it as more of a dream sequence, even though Zack seemed fully awake. I guess there was a whiff of Indians = supernatural, but not enough to bother me.

Other aspects of Running Zack were arguably worse than the Native storyline. Screech's malapropisms and misunderstandings are stupid rather than funny. Jessie's stalking Lisa because Lisa's ancestors were slaves and Jessie's were slavetraders is also stupid rather than funny. No one feels incredible guilt because a few of their ancestors did something bad hundreds of years ago.

Let's sum it up. First presentation: Intentionally racist and bad. Meetings with Chief Henry: Good. Second presentation: Bad looks, good words. Meeting with Chief Henry's ghost: Not bad.

On a scale of 1-10, I'd call that a 5 or 6. Which means mediocre, not terrible.

Overall, Running Zack was poor, but not because of the Indian bits. I think those were some of its more interesting parts. I'd give the episode a grade of C or C-, not an F.

A 21st-century Peter Pan

The Racist History of Peter Pan's Indian Tribe

Even in the early 20th century, though, critics saw Tiger Lily and her fellow "Picaninnies" as caricatures

By Sarah LaskowMore recently, though, directors who take on Peter Pan have tried to update these ideas, a tiny bit. Hook, the 1991 Robert Zemeckis movie, leaves the tribe out altogether. When the British director Tim Carroll staged Peter Pan for the Stratford Festival in 2010, he turned the tribe into Amazons.

"The role of the Indians in the play is to be both exotic and a bit savage," he wrote in an email. "But the use of the term (and the stereotyped language) could only cause offense to a North American audience. It seemed to me that 'Amazons' was a neat way of killing two birds with one stone: as mythic warriors they satisfied the 'exotic and savage' criterion; but it also allowed me to cast a group of women."

2015's Pan, a film that imagines Peter's first years in Neverland as an orphan kidnapped by pirates and forced to work in a mine, made a similar choice. The film features Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily but dresses her tribe in a sort of outlandishly bright array of pinks, purples, browns and bright blues that manages to be fantastic enough that no one would ever confuse this tribe with an American Indian tribe.

NBC's 2014 version of the 1954 musical is going in the opposite direction, in search of something like authenticity. Unknown actress Alanna Saunders, whose paternal heritage has distant ties to the Cherokee nation, will play Tiger Lily, and the song "Ugg-a-Wugg" was updated to include actual Native American phrases. Perhaps these changes will keep today's directors from looking, in another hundred years, like purveyors of crude racial stereotypes; perhaps they'll seem just as clumsy as Barrie's original conception of the tribe's relationship to Peter—"We redskins—you the great white father."Updating the original

“We had to replace the lyrics ‘ugg-a-wugg’”: Meet the “Native American consultant” who worked on NBC’s “Peter Pan”

Salon talked to Jerod Tate about how NBC smoothed over the musical's un-p.c. edges

By Erin Keane[T]hen the really big thing that we worked on was the replacement of [the lyrics] “ugg-a-wugg.” Just a little background: In general, what we all know is that the Indian tribe that’s represented in Peter Pan was influenced by knowledge of Northeast Indians of the United States. So we’re talking Iroquois, Huron, Wyandotte, Algonquin, these kinds of cultural regions. So what I did was I set out to find a replacement word for “ugg-a-wugg” that was literally a Wyandotte word.CTC conjures a 'Peter Pan' for the 21st century

As NBC prepares to screen the musical this week, Children's Theatre is working on an update that may become the standard.

By Rohan Preston“What’s appalling about ‘Peter Pan’ is that everyone else in the play speaks perfect English, but when it comes to the Native Americans, the tribe, it’s the ‘ugga wugga’ song, which is made-up gibberish in the third person,” said playwright and choreographer Larissa FastHorse, a Lakota who grew up in South Dakota. “The play puts Native Americans in that realm of the fantastical, as if we were extinct. But we’re here, alive and creative, not better or worse than anyone else.”

FastHorse consulted with the Children’s Theatre, which plans to stage “Peter Pan” next spring and which wrestled with how to portray Tiger Lily, an Indian character, and the tribe. Artistic director Peter Brosius worked with director Peter Rothstein and new play director Elissa Adams to make changes to the script in consultation with some Indian artists.

They came up with an idea to change the tribe into a group of powerful, diverse girls known as the Pounce. They are a counterpoint to the show’s famous Lost Boys.

Theater officials were at first fearful that the licensing company would reject the suggested changes. Instead, Music Theatre International, which controls the performance rights of “Peter Pan,” is considering adopting them for all future productions that it licenses.Comment:  Let's look at possible changes:

1) Omitting the Indian tribe altogether may be the best solution. It's not critical to the story; it can be replaced by a few individuals or nothing.

2) Changing the tribe to primitive people in multicolored feathers doesn't address the "exotic and savage" issue. That isn't a goal, it's a problem. Yes, some indigenous people still go half-naked and hunt with spears, but they're likely to watch TV or log onto the Internet after a day in the jungle. Equating them with fairies and pirates from a couple of centuries ago will always be stereotypical.

3) Changing the tribe to Amazon women or "a group of powerful, diverse girls known as the Pounce" is better--if they don't look primitive and indigenous. Why not dress these women like warriors from Wonder Woman's Paradise Island--in full armor? Or as gang members from a West Side Story-like background?

4) Like Tonto and Turok, Tiger Lily is an iconic, if minor, Native character. Indians have so few roles that it's a shame to lose one. Producers should think about keeping her Native--but only if they solve the "tribal" problem.

If Tiger Lily isn't leading an Indian tribe, she obviously doesn't need to be Native. But if her "tribe" is a group of girls like the Pounce, she still could be indigenous. There's no reason a brown-skinned woman shouldn't lead a multi-ethnic society.

For more on Peter Pan, see Peter Pan's Racist History and White Tiger Lily, Aboriginal Chief?

Peter Pan's racist history

The Racist History of Peter Pan's Indian Tribe

Even in the early 20th century, though, critics saw Tiger Lily and her fellow "Picaninnies" as caricatures

By Sarah Laskow[I]n the play, as one New York Times reviewer wrote in 1905, "Mr. Barrie presents not the pirate or Indian of grown-up fiction but the creations seen by childish eyes."

In practice, that meant portraying the fierce tribe that lives on Neverland in a way that even in the early 20th-century looked like a caricature. As The Times of London wrote:

"...the Never-Never-Land is peopled by Red Indians and Pirates, who lose no time in showing us that they know how to 'behave as sich.' [sic] The Red Indians always lay their ear to the ground, then give vent to unearthly yells, and prepare for scalping somebody—a Pirate, for choice."

At the time, this portrayal wasn't controversial. But while much of Barrie's original work is just as delightful today as 110 years ago, Tiger Lily and her tribe have become a problem for contemporary productions. There's no real reason for a tribe of Native Americans—"not to be confused with the softer-hearted Delawares or the Hurons," Barrie wrote—to live on Neverland, where they are impossible to excise from the story. But it's almost as impossible to depict them in a way that's not offensive.

In the play, Peter refers to the tribe as "piccaninny warriors," and in Peter & Wendy (Barrie's book-long adaptation of the story, published in 1911), they are introduced as the "Piccaninny tribe"—a blanket stand-in for "others" of all stripes, from Aboriginal populations in Australia to descendants of slaves in the United States. Barrie's tribespeople communicate in pidgin; the braves have lines like "Ugh, ugh, wah!" Tiger Lily is slightly more loquacious; she'll say things like "Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him." They call Peter "the great white father"—the name that Barrie had originally chosen for the entire play. A tom-tom pounded in victory is a key plot point.

"It was a popular fantasy trope," says Anne Hiebert Alton, a professor of English at Central Michigan University and the editor of a scholarly edition of Peter Pan. "Barrie was telling the story in the very early 1900s, and so part of it, I think, was: this was a good story, this'll stage well. He was very Victorian—and that's the age when British people were still proud to brag that the sun never set on the British empire."Comment:  For more on Peter Pan, see White Tiger Lily, Aboriginal Chief? and Tiger Lily in Peter Pan: An Allegory of Anglo-Indian Relations.

White Tiger Lily, Aboriginal Chief?

A new image of actress Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily has people wondering:

Eric Haywood ‏@Eric_Haywood
Something’s odd about this new Peter #Pan movie, but I just can’t put my finger on it. #TigerLily



Here are some excellent analyses of the ongoing problems with the upcoming Pan movie:

Rooney Mara's Tiger Lily Could Not Be Less Native. That's a Problem.If this new Tiger Lily is not a person of color, why is her dad so dark?

A poster and movie trailer for Pan, the Peter Pan prequel planned for a summer 2015 release, is giving the public a first glimpse of actress Rooney Mara in the role of Tiger Lily, a Native American character in J.M. Barrie's 1904 play. The visuals have reignited the controversy that broke out in March over the casting of Mara, a non-Native actress, in the role. Reporting on the choice touted the film's "multi-racial" world and "a very different [Tigerlily] than was originally imagined."

But there was concern and even outrage over Mara's casting. An online petition was started to urge Warner Brothers to "Stop casting white actors to play people of color!" On Twitter and other social media, many people voiced disappointment in Mara for accepting the role.

In our our earlier coverage of this issue, we saw two possible explanations of the casting choice. One was simply the old Hollywood practice of casting white actors as Indians—the traditions of "whitewashing" (casting well-known white actors in Native roles to ensure ticket sales) and "redface" (white actors playing Indians, often by invoking common stereotypes) that have been common from the silent-film era up through Johnny Depp's Tonto in 2013. We entertained another explanation, though: that the filmmakers, concerned by the racist portrayal of Natives in Peter Pan—and it's really bad, particularly in the 1953 Disney film—were trying to avoid repeating it. After all, many ICTMN readers have commented that the character of Tiger Lily is an inherently racist creation, and that Mara might as well take it because no self-respecting Native actress should have to reinforce the stereotype for the sake of a blockbuster credit.The image seems to suggest Mara's Tiger Lily is not Native. Aside from the actress's own physical appearance, there's a touch of tartan in her costume; Tiger Lily is the daughter of the Chief in the original story, but it looks to us like this Tiger Lily's dad might be less of an Indian chief and more of a Scottish or Irish chieftain. There is a big, big problem with this reading, though.

The Chief in Pan is played by Jack Charles, a famous Australian Aboriginal actor. Here's what he looks like:The choice to cast Charles as the Chief supports the worst-case scenario theories about this whole mess. Charles clearly signifies that the tribe in the film (originally the "Pickaninny Tribe" in J.M. Barrie's play and book, let's not forget) is non-European in nature. How or why does he have this white, Irish-looking daughter? It's hard to avoid drawing the conclusion that the filmmakers feel people of color are good for supporting roles, but a lead actress must be white. If the filmmakers wanted to avoid the racist attitudes behind the Tiger Lily and Chief characters, and cast a white actress to create a new, stereotype-free Tiger Lily, why is her father the Chief so iconically ethnic? If Tiger Lily's ethnicity doesn't matter, then go ahead and cast Rooney Mara, and give the character a dad who looks like he could have fathered her, given what we know about genetics. Casting a white actress as Tiger Lily to sell tickets but an Indigenous Australian as the Chief to keep the racial other-ness in the original story just isn't right. Rather than an attempt to rehabilitate a problematic character, it is what concerned petitioners originally feared: simple and unsubtle whitewashing, based on the belief that the film would not succeed with a Native actress in a Native role.

And yes, we're braced for the "revelation" of the plot twist that Mara's Tiger Lily came to Neverland from England before Peter did, and was adopted by the Chief. We can see that one coming a mile away. That doesn't negate the cynical nature of Mara's casting, just shows the filmmakers felt they had write an explanation into the storyline.Worshiping whites

From Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature blog:

How 'bout we all pan NBC's PETER PAN and Warner Bros PAN, tooThe trailer for the new movie due out next year has a scene where Pan is on the floor, spears aimed at him. It looks like he's about to be killed, but an older man (which I imagine the script says is an elder or maybe Tiger Lily's dad) stops them. In his hand is a necklace of some sort that Peter was wearing. The man says:
"The little one. He wears the pan."

Here's a screen capture of that scene in the trailer:The trailer cuts to Tiger Lily, played by Rooney Mara, who says: "The Pan is our tribe's bravest warrior."

Here she is in that moment:Her line (Pan is our tribe's greatest warrior) points right at the foundation for Barrie's film. Indians who worship whites. That's not ok. It was't ok then, and it isn't ok to give that racist garbage to kids today. Right?

Some of you know that there was a lot of discussion when Rooney was selected as the actress for the part. Many people said that a Native actress ought to be cast instead of Rooney. I disagree with that idea, too.

Fixing the words in the song, and/or casting a Native person in that role does not change the point of view(s) on which the story rests. These are, through and through, "the white man's Indian." There is no fixing this story or any production of it so that the Native content is authentic.

Attempts to do so remind me of the many schools that sought/seek to make their Indian mascots more "authentic" so that they could keep objectifying Native people, using their ideas of who Native people are for their own purposes.

Can we just let that stuff go?Comment:  Even if all the "tribal" actors are white, the feathered costumes make them look tribal. Mara's ridiculous headdress makes her look tribal. That plus the spears make the tribe look primitive and savage. Even if they're white, they're strange and exotic--exactly what you don't want to see in a depiction of tribal people.

The "bravest warrior" line may be an exception. But if the creators are sticking to the original story, it suggests a huge problem. Tiger Lily starts as a helpless damsel in distress; she ends up worshiping Peter Pan. Here's a key passage from the original book:

Peter Pan--Chapter 10One important result of the brush [with the pirates] on the lagoon was that it made the redskins their friends. Peter had saved Tiger Lily from a dreadful fate, and now there was nothing she and her braves would not do for him. All night they sat above, keeping watch over the home under the ground and awaiting the big attack by the pirates which obviously could not be much longer delayed. Even by day they hung about, smoking the pipe of peace, and looking almost as if they wanted tit-bits to eat.

They called Peter the Great White Father, prostrating themselves [lying down] before him; and he liked this tremendously, so that it was not really good for him.

"The great white father," he would say to them in a very lordly manner, as they grovelled at his feet, "is glad to see the Piccaninny warriors protecting his wigwam from the pirates."

"Me Tiger Lily," that lovely creature would reply. "Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him."

She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but Peter thought it his due, and he would answer condescendingly, "It is good. Peter Pan has spoken."

Always when he said, "Peter Pan has spoken," it meant that they must now shut up, and they accepted it humbly in that spirit; but they were by no means so respectful to the other boys, whom they looked upon as just ordinary braves. They said "How-do?" to them, and things like that; and what annoyed the boys was that Peter seemed to think this all right.If there's even a hint of white-worshiping tribespeople in the Pan movie, look out.

For more on Peter Pan, see Tiger Lily in Peter Pan: An Allegory of Anglo-Indian Relations.

Betty Boop in Rhythm on the Reservation

This cartoon has the usual compendium of racist stereotypes. The worst may be the Tonto talk, the teepees, and the complete ignorance of modern life. This cartoon was set in 1939, when Indians were wearing Western clothes, working in factories, and enlisting in the military. They weren't dressing in buckskins or blankets and beating tom-toms.

Stereotypical Studi in Planes: Fire and Rescue

The reviews for Disney's Planes: Fire and Rescue all seemed to agree on one thing:

The most WTF moments of kids' flick Planes: Fire & Rescue Windjammer (Wes Studi), an Apache helicopter, speaks in a broad, Native American accent and, fireside, tells a confounding legend about coyotes and a car that ate its own tires. The insensitivity of the stereotype aside, does this mean that at some point in Cars/Planes history, a bunch of imports chased the native vehicles off their own land?Planes: Fire & RescueThere’s a female air tanker named Lil’ Dipper, and a character that surprised me to see. He’s called Windlifter, an old fire truck that does this Native American broken English voice. It’s strange that we keep talking about the Washington Redskins changing their name because it’s offensive, but there’s a character like this in a Disney movie.REVIEW: "Planes: Fire & Rescue"Windlifter’s pseudo-Native American mumbo-jumbo comes across as distatefully stereotypical.Comment:  I gather the helicopter's name is Windlifter, not Windjammer.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Playing Indian in Lassie

The Land Grabber episode of Lassie (airdate: November 22, 1959) opens with Timmy playing "Indian." He wears a headband with a single feather. He has spots on each cheek, two stripes on each arm, and a V on his chest.

He does a fake bird call to summon Lassie. Then he "stalks" his father Paul, shooting a suction-cup arrow into the truck Paul is loading.

The following exchange ensues:PAUL [raises hands]: Me surrender.

TIMMY [dances around Paul]: Me want'um scalp! Me want'um scalp! Me want'um scalp! Me want'um scalp!

PAUL: Okay, me surrender!

RUTH [approaches, laughing]: Listen, you cowboys and Indians. You'd better watch the time.

PAUL: That's right! We've got the church supper tonight.

TIMMY: Oh, boy! A church supper!

PAUL: I'll be in as soon as I get these tomatoes loaded. I've gotta get 'em ready to get to market tonight.

RUTH: Oh, Paul, do you have to drive them in tonight?

PAUL: We've got bills to pay, remember?

RUTH [chuckling]: I wish I could forget.

RUTH [to Timmy]: All right now, big chief. Uh, please put'um heap big bow and arrow away and wash'um dirt from face.Comment:  You can see several Tonto-style stereotypes here. This is what people thought Indians were like in 1959.

And not much has changed. I doubt the average American would object to this, or even notice anything wrong, in 2014.

Tonto's craziness justifies crow headdress?

Johnny Depp's Tonto supposedly is half-crazed because of a childhood trauma. Does that excuse the bird on his head and other oddities?

*** spoiler alert ***

I saw The Lone Ranger so you don’t have toI think this was the “twist” everyone kept telling me would “explain everything.” Saginaw’s character tells the LR about how, as a child, Tonto showed the bad guys where all the silver was, in exchange from a pocketwatch from “Sears and Roebuck” (a weird detail that stuck out–product placement? ha). The bad guys come back and murder his entire village to keep the location a secret–of which they show the aftermath. They show the village burnt to the ground, dead women and men everywhere, and then Tonto picks up his dead raven from the rubble and stripes his face with the soot. Saginaw tells us all this (starting with “many moons ago”–I kid you not) and that now Tonto is a “man apart (or departed? I can’t read my notes. It was dark.)” and has basically gone crazy and taken on this “Wendigo hunter” thing as a means to cope with what he did. So, I think this whole thing was supposed to excuse his crazy antics and look, because his own people don’t endorse it. But I’m pretty sure most movie audiences aren’t going to pick up on that nuance.I'm not buying the movie's excuse that Tonto isn't right in the head. Fact is, there's almost always an excuse for the uncivilized or savage Indian:

The hunter is trapped in a world of dinosaurs, so of course he's a savage Indian.

The white man killed his wife and children, so of course he's a savage Indian.

The burial ground is haunted, so of course he's a savage Indian (ghost).

The military veteran was traumatized by war, so of course he's a savage Indian.

The tribe was cursed by an evil shaman, so of course he's a savage Indian (werewolf).

What do these tropes have in common? The Native character is uncivilized or savage every time.

Sure, there's a reason, but the reason is an invention to justify the savagery. It's not historically or culturally valid. Whether they're Native or not, half-crazed people don't act out their mental problems by wearing strange headgear.

In short, we want a character who isn't a half-naked warrior in facepaint and a (crow) headdress, not another excuse for the same old stereotypes.

Commenters debate issue

A debate on this issue in the comments section of this posting:karen
In Thomas King's Inconvenient Indian he discusses the portrayal of "dead Indians" (preferred) and the avoidance of any decent, realistic representation of live, modern-day Indians. This is the reference I am making in the above comment. I stand by my comment.

RapidDescent
Why on earth would the movie have any representation of modern-day natives when the movie itself doesn't take place anywhere near present day? The framing device, that is decidedly locked in place in the 1930's fair--in a tent, no less--isn't exactly the best place to feature anything of the sort.

It is your peragotive to be offended, if you want, but I hope you realize that it's not because of the movie--it's because you're looking for excuses to be offended.

Terrie_S
And you seem to be looking for reasons to excuse the problems with the movie. You can't defend writer choices with the in-story justification, because the writers CREATED that justification. Maybe they came up with trauma reason after they decided that Tonto would speak broken English (problematic), or maybe they decided to have Tonto speak broken English because they wanted a way to show he was traumatized (not as problematic, though, psychologically, that doesn't make any sense), but either way, they made the CHOICE to have the main Indian character speak broken English when there was no objective reason to do so.

Terrie_S
Let's back up. Everything we see in a movie is a deliberate choice on the part of someone. Some choices are required by the story. If you're going to make a movie about the Lone Ranger, there are somethings that are objectively required for it to be the story of the Lone Ranger. You need the white horse. You need Tonto. You need the Ranger. You do not need a senile old guy in a fair tent. You don't need a narrator who casts himself in a supporting role. You don't need broken English. All of those are deliberate choices by the writers, the actors, the director, etc. The decision to have Tonto speak in broken English was obviously not driven by a desire for historical accuracy. Otherwise, someone (not the Comanche, but someone) if not multiple someones would speak Spanish. So you can't defend that choice by pointing to history. Nor can you defend it based on Tonto's trauma history, because 1) that history is another deliberate choice by the writers, not an objective requirement of the story and 2) it is not the only way to show a trauma history. IMO, it is a very bad way of showing such.

The fact that people who claimed they were trying to challenge stereotypes instead made a movie full of them shows the problem with these pervasive images. When this is all they see, they are unable to imagine anything else.What's the alternative to an aged Tonto narrating the story from his point of view? It would've been easy to have a modern Indian--Tonto's grandson or great-grandson--serve as the framing device. But that wouldn't have conveyed the same message about the tragic, vanishing Indians.

As Terrie S. said, having Depp play a sideshow freak in the 1930s was a choice, not a necessity. This choice "solidifies the continuing views of Native peoples as lesser, as relics of the past, as disappearing, as roadblocks to 'progress.'"

Depp's Tonto = sidekick?

The debate continued with a similar issue:Terrie_S
Since I was replying to your comments on his speech, that's why I focused on his speech. It's not my main concern, its simply the topic of the discussion. And I'd say Tonto's still a sidekick. Maybe not as low ranking, but still a sidekick. I would argue that, in some ways, this is worse, because Tonto is the one telling the story, yet is not the focus of the movie. He casts himself in the supporting role. This is not the story of how Tonto, with the help of a white guy, got justice for the slaughter of his people. It's the story of how John Reid, with the help of a crazy Indian guy with a bird on his head, became the Lone Ranger. Which would be fine, except that, again, this is apparently how Tonto himself thinks of his own story--that it's the story of someone else.

RapidDescent
No, that is not fact, that is how you want to view the story--which is simply inaccurate. Tonto tells the story exactly how it happened in his view. He is never a sidekick--he even has a big scene where he SMACKS DOWN Reid and calls him out for being a coward. He SAVES Reid not once, not twice, but three times in the story. He has his own story of vengeance come to a close because he managed to work together with a person he initially didn't want to work with.

To call him a sidekick is to knowingly tear down the character to make a point in an argument that is only created by you.

Terrie_S
He can do all those things and still be a sidekick. After all, DC gave Robin leadership of the Titans, with his own stories and moments of awesomeness but he was still Batman's sidekick. Understand, I'm looking at this from a meta, narrative level, not the level of character actions. The story starts with John Reid on a train, setting in motion the events which will result in him meeting Tonto. From a narrative perspective, this places Tonto's story subordinate to his. This is something that (again, narratively) is very hard to avoid. The movie Rush Hour is a good example of how writers might try to avoid this in the buddy movie--start with one character, but have the story take places on the other character's home territory. But that's not an option here, so one story must be given more weight than the other and the writers chose to give more weight to Reid. And, by using the framing device they did, they gave that view to Tonto. Ironically, it would have not been an issue had they dropped the framing, but they didn't make that choice, so that's simply a case of what might have been. Which leads me back to what you said.

Tonto does not tell the story as how it happened in his view, because Tonto does not exist. The writers and actors and directors made all those choices. They are the ones who made the choice to have a movie where a Native character tells a story that follows the arc of someone else. They made the choice to make Tonto, narratively, the sidekick and to combine that with the choice to make him the "narrator" of the story.

Terrie_S
My most basic problem with the movie is this: Depp talked about wanting to move Tonto and Native characters out of the role of sidekick, yet when the character of Tonto has a chance to tell the story, it's the story of... the white guy. The character casts himself as the sidekick. And we, the audience, are told this from the get-go. Most stories that use the framing device of "And it was told by X side character" reveal this at the end, which makes us relook at what we've just seen, read or heard, to reconsider that "side" character or wonder if what we've been told is reliable. But we're not given any of that, so the framing device just reinforces all the issues of the movie.To reiterate the point, you can justify anything within a movie's "logic." The black guy had to die and the woman had to be taken hostage because they were the only characters available. These things "had" to happen so the white guy could be the hero.

But again, these are choices by the creators, not immutable facts. If you look for and find an excuse to portray a savage Indian, you're not giving yourself a valid out. You're still portraying a savage Indian. And that's still stereotypical if not racist.

Review of Lone Ranger: Vendetta

The Lone Ranger: VendettaThe Masked Man in a brand-new adventure! From out of the past comes a mysterious killer systematically murdering anyone with a connection to the Masked Rider of the Plains former identity. When all signs point to Butch Cavendish, a man long dead, The Lone Ranger finds himself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the life of his faithful Indian companion hanging in the balance!Some reviewsThe single best Lone Ranger story ever!, May 23, 2012
This book is amazing. Simply amazing. Long-time Lone Ranger fans will appreciate that Mr. Hopkins keeps the characters intact here, while putting a more adult spin on the legend. This is what the movie should be like. Sadly, Howard is no longer with us, but this book is, arguably, his crowning achievement in his excellent body of work. I encourage anyone who loves a good Western and the character of The Lone Ranger to go purchase this book immediately!

What the new movie should be, but most assuredly won't, May 28, 2012
This book was amazing! An earlier review described the tone of this story very well, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that the tone works extremely well. Now, die-hard fans might be bothered by the fact that Tonto doesn't speak in broken English, but I personally think I would've been more bothered if he had. It may be true to the source material, but it has such negative overtones that it would have been a distraction.But:Good, but ending was rushed, March 12, 2013
Great theme and good reading. However, after a consistent pace, the ending was way too rushed. Too mature for children.

Hi YO So So !!, March 5, 2013
In an attempt to take away some of the straight shooter, super clean heroics of the original, the character becomes somewhat pointless to the story. I found myself at the end of the story asking what the Lone Ranger really did here and the answer is not much.

A pleasant read but unsatisfying to a true fan.Rob's review

I'll have to go with the negative reviews on this one. Vendetta was mildly enjoyable but ultimately unsatisfying.

The villainness was the most interesting character. She was the kind of sociopathic serial killer we see in modern fiction, but not in Westerns. She'd sleep with anyone, then kill him (or anyone) if he looked at her wrong.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto seem two-dimensional to me, at best. At least Tonto is more or less a full partner to the Ranger, not a sidekick. Still, it's the Ranger's story, so Tonto gets less exposure, as usual.

Apparently this Tonto is the original Potawatomi version. He does have a couple of good moments.

At one point, they're sitting by a campfire at night. The Ranger asks Tonto what he sees in the flames, leading to this exchange:TONTO: I see ghosts, Kemosabe.

RANGER: Ghosts?

TONTO: The ghosts of the Bodéwadmi, the keepers of the fire. They ride with frozen thunder across the black sky forest, the way they once rode the trails and plains. Proud. Free. The world closed in on them and now they are nearly gone. I feel their isolation, their separation from the soil and the lands. They scream their silent pleas to Kichimanido.This may be the longest speech Tonto has ever uttered. It's also the first time I recall his referring to his particular culture, not a generic culture. It's noteworthy for both reasons.

Tonto's background

A posting explains that Bodéwadmi is the Indian version of the Anglicized name "Potawatomi." So Tonto is really talking like a Potawatomi, for once.

“Bode wad mi” PotawatomiThe Potawatomi “Bode wad mi” are one of the three original tribes of Michigan. The Potawatomi “Bode wad mi” along with the Odawa/Ottawa and the Ojibwa/Chippewa are known as the people of the Three Fires. They call themselves Anishinabe. The Potawatomi “Bode wad mi” are the “Keepers of the Fire.”

On August 29, 1821, the Bode wad mi, Odawa and Ojibwa ("The People of the Three Fires") held council with representatives of the United States government and signed a treaty, which left them only five reservations, and certain land grants in Michigan. Many were moved to Oklahoma and Kansas territories. Those who would not leave were driven out by military force or hid away from the government. Small bands traveled to Northeast Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Canada.

All of the Anishinabe (Bode wad mi, Ojibwa and Odawa) lived in the eastern part of North America. After various wars and migrations, the tribes moved to the Great Lakes Area. The oldest brother, Chippewa (Ojibwa), was given the responsibility of Keeper of the Faith. The middle brother, Ottawa (Odawa), was the Keeper of the Trade, and the youngest brother, Potawatomi, was responsible for keeping the Sacred Fire; hence the name, "Keeper of the Fire."

Long ago, the Potawatomi depended on nature to survive. They lived a nomadic life. They hunted, fished, grew crops and gathered food to eat. After they were forced onto reservations, they lived through years of poverty. At times during the early 1900s, they hardly had enough to eat.

The early Potawatomi people were a part of the Eastern Woodlands group of Native Americans. By many accounts, the people were fairly short with a stocky build. They were a fun-loving people who enjoyed practical jokes. Women were modest in both the clothes they wore and in their actions. The men and women both normally wore their hair long. During times of war, the men shaved their heads except for a small scalp lock on top. Women usually wore their hair in a single braid down their backs.

The Potawatomi’s love of nature and family was at the center of their way of life. This is evident throughout their early history, through their spiritual lives, and in all other areas of their village life such as their food, clothes, homes, tools, and transportation.

The Potawatomi people wore clothing that was very simple. During the summer, the men often wore clothes made out of red or blue cloth. In the winter some wore decorated buffalo robes. To keep warm during the winter, men wore leggings made of buckskin or cloth. They also wore these for special dances. When playing games like lacrosse, men wore breechcloths and deerskin moccasins.

After the hunters returned with the animals they had killed, the hides would be removed and then women would prepare the hides so that clothing could be made from them. Much of the Potawatomi clothing was made from these hides.

Women wore knee length dresses with petticoats underneath. They sometimes wore bonnets or scarves on their heads. They made their skirts and sleeveless dresses so that they draped over their shoulders and were held in place by a belt at their waist. If they needed to sew pieces together, they used thread made from plant fibers or strips of hide tied in place. These clothes were often decorated with different designs using porcupine quills or beads.

Men and women greased their hair and painted their skin for special occasions. Men tattooed their bodies with different designs.

You can see that Tonto doesn't look much like this description of Potawatomi men. But the main point is that the Potawatomi have a distinct culture that isn't Lakota, Apache, or anything else. And for the most part, the original Tonto and this Tonto aren't wildly inconsistent with Potawatomi culture.

The Great Spirit

As for Kichimanido:

Legendary Native American Figures: Gitchi ManitouTribal affiliation: Ojibwe, Algonquin, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menominee, Kickapoo, Sauk-Fox, Mohican, Mohegan, Shawnee, Cree

Alternate spellings: Gichi Manidoo, Gchi Mnidoo, Kichi Manido, etc.

Gitchi Manitou is the great creator god of the Anishinaabe and many neighboring Algonquian tribes. The name literally means Great Spirit, a common phrase used to address God in many Native American cultures.

As in other Algonquian tribes, the Great Spirit is abstract, benevolent, does not directly interact with humans, and is rarely if ever personified in Anishinabe myths--originally, Gitchi Manitou did not even have a gender (although with the introduction of English and its gender-specific pronouns, Gitchi Manitou began to be referred to as "he.") It is Gitchi Manitou who created the world, though some details of making the world as we know it today were delegated to the culture hero Nanabozho. "Gitchi Manitou" (or one of its many variant spellings) was used as a translation for "God" in early translations of the Bible into Ojibway, and today many Ojibway people consider Gitchi Manitou and the Christian God to be one and the same.

Gitchi Manitou is the great creator god of the Anishinaabe and many neighboring Algonquian tribes. The name literally means Great Spirit, a common phrase used to address God in many Native American cultures.I'm not sure Tonto has ever referred to the "Great Spirit" or "Creator" before. I'm pretty sure he's never referred to Gitchi Manitou before. So that's another first.

There's even a partial explanation for what Tonto is doing in Texas. His people were driven into Oklahoma and from there he roamed the Southwest. None of this is in the Lone Ranger mythos, but we can imagine it.

That one paragraph is about all the culture Tonto expresses, so it isn't much. But compared to other versions of Tonto, it's a step forward.

Tonto talk

As you can see from the quote above, Tonto's speech is more or less normal. Later, he notes how he speaks "Tonto style" intentionally--to fool the white man into thinking he's dumb. That's a brilliant explanation of Tonto's speech pattern. All future creators of Lone Ranger stories should adopt it immediately if they feel the need to make Tonto sound "tonto" (Spanish for "dumb").

Unfortunately, the villainess captures Tonto and uses him to lure the Ranger. It isn't Tonto's fault; he's rescuing someone in a hotel room when she stumbles across him. But we end up in the same place as so many other Westerns--with the white man as the hero who has to save his Native friend, sidekick, or maiden.

In short, I'd give this book about a 7.0 of 10. Unless you're a Lone Ranger fan, you can safely skip it.

For more on Tonto, see Skyhawk: Depp Dishonored Indians and 33 Tonto Comic-Book Covers.

Ranger too racist to reboot

Spoiler alert as critics rip the whole "Lone Ranger" concept as arguably racist and unworkable:

Johnny Depp’s Tonto: Not as Racist as You Might Think. But Still Kind of Racist

By Aisha HarrisOn more than one occasion, Reid refuses to kill Cavendish when he has the chance, wishing instead that he will face the “full extent of the law.” Tonto, on the other hand, fully understands the way things work in the wild west—and he becomes frustrated each time John assumes this noble posture. The script takes a risk in addressing the line between savagery (historically attributed to Native Americans) and civilized morals (commonly attributed to whites). The Lone Ranger believes that “an eye for an eye” is a primitive approach to justice—even as he continuously fails to vanquish his enemies in any other way. “This is not justice,” he chides Tonto, when refusing to shoot Cavendish for the second time. “I am not a savage.” When Tonto responds by deeming him a “white coward,” the modern-day audience is meant to side with him rather than the Lone Ranger.

But the filmmakers ultimately can’t resist making the white man the hero of this story. Even though Tonto is the driving force for the majority of the movie, the Lone Ranger gets the pomp and circumstance from both the innocent citizens of Colby, Texas, and the film’s creators, in the end. This is to be expected: It is, after all, called The Lone Ranger. But when the Lone Ranger finally fulfills the role he was “destined” to play, it comes seemingly out of nowhere, nearly two hours into the 149-minute film, and feels completely unearned. Tonto, for all of the filmmakers’ evident intentions, becomes by the finale a less egregious rendition of Bagger Vance and countless other “mythical” minority characters, devoted to building up the courage and strength of the heroic white leads.

On a scale of 1 to The Searchers, The Lone Ranger rates at about a 4 in terms of its depiction of American Indians. Is it blatantly racist and shameful? No. But the filmmakers don’t succeed in their effort to have it both ways. Depp’s attempt to be a “warrior” role model to all the American Indian kids lucky enough to watch him save the day fails—and for the simple reason that the original material is too entrenched in an essentially racist ideology. While the attempt to humanize Tonto—to turn him into a complicated, fully realized, respectable character—seems noble, and maybe even a step above what we normally expect from Hollywood, the movie doesn’t make a strong enough case for bringing him back from the past in the first place. The spirits of certain cultural figures are probably better left alone.With or Without Johnny Depp as Tonto, ‘The Lone Ranger’ Was Too Racist to Reboot

By Jason BaileyTonto, as played by Depp, is a collection of mannerisms and affectations, but not a character. He maintains the most culturally damaging element of the role, his definite article-free dialogue, with lines like, “Do not touch rock. Rock cursed.” But to offset that, he’s made the brains of the duo, the brilliant tracker and wise man, in order to do all that saluting and wrong-righting that Depp envisioned. But this is also a Disney summer tentpole flick, aimed to entertain, so laughs must be garnered by also making Tonto a standard-issue Depp buffoon in the Captain Jack mold—or, more accurately, in the style of Depp fave Buster Keaton, whose comic Western The General is all but remade in the film’s climax.

So, which is he? A broad stereotype, a noble shaman, or a comic charlatan? Depp doesn’t know; he’s a gifted performer but an undisciplined one, and Verbinski isn’t much for laser focus either, as the 149-minute running time makes clear. This is an actor who Disney is paying, as he has said, “stupid money,” so when he sees a white artist’s painting of an imaginary Native American and decides that’s how Tonto’s gonna look, well then, that’s how Tonto looks.

But the problem with The Lone Ranger—aside from it being lumbering, overlong, unfunny, and frequently dull—is that its script is no less confused about how to represent Native Americans than Depp is. They’ll dramatize a violent, terrifying Comanche raid, and exploit all of that loaded imagery, as long as it turns out that the “Indians” were actually masquerading white thugs. They’ll create a Tonto who “trades” feathers for the rings off a dead man’s fingers, as long as he’s given a sentimental backstory. And then they’ll send out their marquee leading man to explain how he’s pretending to be a Native American to “give some hope to kids on the reservations. They’re living without running water and seeing problems with drugs and booze. But I wanted to be able to show these kids, ‘Fuck that! You’re still warriors, man.’”

But the question remains: why bother? The fact is, sometimes time passes, and cultural norms change, and certain characters or tropes or texts just become too antiquated. The Lone Ranger left this viewer with a feeling weirdly similar to the aftertaste of Michael Radford’s 2004 Merchant of Venice (the Pacino one): like maybe we just don’t need to tell this story anymore, since it—though a classic, and an important piece of literature, etc. etc.—is deeply, unavoidably, problematically anti-Semitic. And the makers of The Lone Ranger find themselves in a similar conundrum, left twisting their narrative into pretzels in order to balance out the inexorably stereotypical nature of what is now its primary character. You can’t help but wonder why Depp and Verbinski didn’t just say to hell with this mythology, and start fresh with the Butch-and-Sundance-runaway-train-Western they so clearly wanted to do instead.

The Real Problem With a Lone Ranger Movie? It's the Racism, StupidIn a long interview posted to the Moviefone Canada site, Jesse Wente of the Toronto International Film Festival grants that those involved with the film may very well have intended to empower Tonto, but ended up with a character that is less progressive than the Native sidekicks played by Chief Dan George in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Gary Farmer in Dead Man (1995). And ultimately, Wente said, there is just a problem with the traditional Western. "Because of the nature of the Western, its ties to the idea of nationhood, particularly in the U.S.," he said. "These stories were, with Manifest Destiny, fundamental nation building [myths] for the U.S. If you think about the classic era of the Western, from the early '30s to the '50s, it came when the States was still a very young country and still needed to tell itself the story of its own origins, and this was the story it told. Unfortunately, it was told at the expense of the first inhabitants of this land because it altered the history, the truth of what happened. To me this film recalls a lot of those issues."

An article at Time.com suggested that "the issue isn’t so much the casting as it is the character." Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations pointed out that Tonto is, unfortunately, one of just a few Native people--real or fictional--that non-Indians know of. The risk is that his quirks or character traits may be applied to an entire race: "Without an accurate pop-culture idea of a real-life Native American in moviegoers’ heads, Tonto is less of an individual character than he is a key piece of the popular image of a large and diverse population. The stereotype is particularly detrimental for its fantastical elements, [Keene] believes: when a real group of people seems as mystical as say, werewolves, in every pop-culture depiction of the group, it gets hard to pay any attention to the real people who are alive today and have real issues and achievements of their own."

In a piece for Slate entitled "Johnny Depp’s Tonto: Not as Racist as You Might Think. But Still Kind of Racist," Aisha Harris was more forgiving than others, but still couldn't get past the limitations of the source material. "Depp’s attempt to be a 'warrior' role model to all the American Indian kids lucky enough to watch him save the day fails—and for the simple reason that the original material is too entrenched in an essentially racist ideology."

It appears that, despite the filmmakers' intentions, The Lone Ranger did not reinvent Tonto or the Tonto-Ranger dynamic--and perhaps it's because America has simply moved on. Is there any reinventing of Uncle Remus from Song of the South, or Chop Chop from the old Blackhawk comic books? Arguably not. While a Native actor such as Adam Beach (often mentioned as a better fit for Tonto) might have been a more pleasing casting choice, in this case Depp's insistence on playing Tonto actually saved a Native actor the awkwardness of trying to sell viewers a story they were never going to buy.Tonto WTF?!

By Annalee NewitzNow that we've all had time to digest the appalling mess that was The Lone Ranger, we need to talk about Tonto. Johnny Depp managed to create a character who is a horrifying mashup of Jar Jar and Jack Sparrow. What the hell happened there? Spoilers ahead.

It's hard to deny the similarities between Tonto and Jar Jar—both are clownish sidekicks to the true heroes of their stories, barely able to string four words together. But once in a while, they blunder their way into saving the day. Critics pointed to Jar Jar's accent and behavior as mirroring stereotypes of Caribbean people; still, it was possible for George Lucas to argue that sometimes a Gungan is just a Gungan. Obviously, nobody can make that argument with Tonto. Jar Jar is a racial stereotype by inference, while Tonto is pure, uncut racial stereotype.

Just in case you didn't get the stereotype message, though, the movie opens with an aged Tonto at 1930s sideshow, standing in a diorama labeled, "The Noble Savage in his Native Habitat." OK, thanks movie. This bit, and Tonto's frequent "stupid white man" comments, are supposed to make us think the movie is somehow in on a joke about racism with us. We can all just wink and nudge each other over how ridiculous those "noble savage" stereotypes are, right? Because nothing really proves that white people "get it" more than updating a racist Indian character invented in the 1930s with a white actor in facepaint and feathers, and having him speak in broken English to a dead crow.And:This movie is neither a media meta-commentary, nor a tale of how people cope with tragedy through laughter. It's just a really awkward attempt to preserve the campy tone of the 1950s Lone Ranger TV series, while also inserting all the things that white liberals learned from watching Dances with Wolves.

So to return to my earlier question: How the hell did this happen? It's 2013 and we're still making movies where white guys play dumb Indians in a mythical version of the American west? I suppose picking Depp for Tonto is one way that this movie benefits from modern political transparency. It's more honest to have a white guy playing Tonto since the character is such a white fantasy of Indians anyway.

Ultimately the lesson I would take away from The Lone Ranger is that some stories just can't be rebooted. I'm reminded of King Kong, another famously racist story from the 1930s, full of ooga-booga natives and big black monkeys who are obsessed with teeny white ladies. Peter Jackson's reboot of King Kong was filled with the same kind of race fail as The Lone Ranger. There is just no way to contort those old-school racist adventures into fun, contemporary action movies. Their narrative foundations are built on stereotypes and social assumptions that don't work in the present day. Maybe they can be revived as dark satire, like Dead Man or Django Unchained—but even then, the risk of fail is pretty high.

There are already many reasons why the reboot frenzy in pop culture is impoverishing our abilities to tell fresh, challenging stories. But when a movie like The Lone Ranger gets remade like this, with its Tonto stereotype intact, we don't just starve ourselves creatively. We starve ourselves politically too.Comment:  The 2003 WB Lone Ranger movie and the Dynamite Lone Ranger comic-book series weren't bad. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility of successfully rebooting the franchise.

But the formula will always be "white guy saves the day and preserves the status quo." He'll always be fighting "bad guys" while the US Army is hunting and killing Indians around him. That's a problem.

You might have to destroy the concept in order to save it. For instance, as I said before, make Tonto the Lone Ranger and the white guy his sidekick. Or make the Ranger a freedom fighter against the government, the Army, and the railroads destroying the Indians' way of life.

But then it wouldn't be the Lone Ranger everybody--well, a few people--loves. That's a problem too.

For more on Johnny Depp and Tonto, see Tonto = Captain Jack Sparrow and Depp Justifies Tonto's Stereotypes.

Tonto = Captain Jack Sparrow

More reviews and analyses of The Lone Ranger--focusing even more on Tonto and its other racial problems:

‘The Lone Ranger’ Is an Epic Train Wreck

By Anne HornadayA draggy reboot of the franchise Western that started as a radio series before it became a movie serial and then a hit TV show, this mishmash of styles, genres and tonal shifts makes for a dizzying pastiche best described in terms of the many movies it references throughout its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, from Little Big Man, Buster Keaton’s The General and the Monument Valley-set canon of John Ford to Dead Man, Rango and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Those last three, of course, starred Depp himself. And it turns out that The Lone Ranger may best be understood and appreciated as one long, baggy homage to Depp, who addresses the myriad personae that have made him the world’s biggest movie star, especially the tattooed, bejeweled bohemian primitive that defines his off-screen look as well as the punched-up version when he plays Jack Sparrow.

As Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s perennially stoic and monosyllabic sidekick, Depp both challenges and indulges in the caricatures that made Jay Silverheels’ TV character such a lightning rod for Native American outrage. Depp plays Tonto as a sly, sarcastic spirit warrior, continually mugging and making with subtle put-downs of his earnest but dim crime-fighting partner. But his guttural pidgin English, elaborate war paint and the ridiculous dead crow he wears as a headdress suggest that, for all his desire to give Tonto the dimension and dignity he was robbed of for decades, Depp owes his own dubious debt to the Noble Savage stereotype he claims to critique.Movie review: Wild, wild mess

By Chris WilliamsDepp's Tonto is basically Jack Sparrow with less drunken poetry and more racist subtext. Initially, it appears that this Tonto is going to be a skilled warrior, but it's soon revealed he's an outcast from his tribe, thought to have a screw loose as he talks in halting, stereotypical speech, feeds a dead crow on top of his head and tries to make trades with everyone. Only when he shuts up and Depp has the opportunity to display his talent for physical comedy does he earn a chuckle; for the rest of the movie he's either doing wide-eyed double takes or setting race-relations with Native Americans back 100 years. There was a time when Depp was one of our most respected actors, but lately he surrounds himself with directors he feel comfortable with, and that insulation makes his formerly lovable tics feel stale.The Lone Ranger

By Ilan Preskovsky[T]hen there is the Tonto problem. The film has a number of notable actors providing solid, if undistinguished, support throughout but the film's main "actor in a supporting role" is obviously Captain Jack Sparrow. Tonto, you see, isn't played by the amazingly versatile Johnny Depp who, over his three decades in the business has amassed at least a dozen truly spectacular performances, which have in turn established him as one of the very finest actors of his generation.

No, he's played by Captain Jack Sparrow who may have been a breath of anarchic fresh air in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film but wore out his welcome within minutes of turning up in its first sequel. You can paint him white, put a dead bird on his head and give him an "Injun" accent but, make no mistake, this is Captain Jack doing his best to further wreck the reputation of the man we once knew as Johnny Depp.Johnny Depp’s Tonto Isn’t Offensive, Just Weird, Says the Director of the American Indian Museum

By Kevin GoverMr. Depp chose to have his Tonto speak in a rather solemn baritone that is too reminiscent of Tonto as played by Jay Silverheels in the television series. Though Mr. Depp’s Tonto engages in complex dialogue at times, he inexplicably reverts to Pidgin English at other times. It was unnecessary and rather annoying.

And there are problems with many of commercial accoutrements to the film. The “Lego Lone Ranger Comanche Camp” includes a Tonto figure, a canoe, and a “scorpion launcher.” Children are unlikely to discern that real Comanche villages had none of these. Also troubling is the Tonto costume for boys. Though the film makes clear that Tonto is eccentric and does not dress like most Comanches, a child will not likely understand. These are not trivial matters, and I hope that Disney will stop this sort of thing. Children get very little accurate information about Indians in their formal educations, and Indian people seem always to be fighting a wearying battle against lies and stereotypes in the popular culture.Tonto: A Misguided Friend of the Indian

By Chris EyreJohnny Depp's "Tonto" resembles nothing that is Native American in reality, not his talk, not his crow on his head, not his face paint or his Potawatomi language "Kemosabe," spoken by a fictional Comanche character. Depp's Tonto is an entertaining farce. It's an idea audiences world-wide own through Hollywood invention and appropriation. The Lone Ranger's storyline, its characters and its ideas are not based in historical fact or related to Native America or its contemporary progressive people. Period.In 'Lone Ranger' Times, There Were No Female Indians. Wait, What?

By Nancy Marie MithloIf you want to move the dialogue on race forward, even and especially in the entertainment industry, you’ve got to include women–behind the scenes and on camera. For all of his apparent good will to erase stereotypes, Mr. Depp is not the individual who can change centuries of bias, hate and discrimination. In fact, no one man can accomplish this, but I’m pretty confident a Native woman could. Why? Because the male warrior in conflict with Western civilization simply supports the values he apparently challenges. But that’s another article.Comment:  Oops! Critics are blue-faced and Disney is red-faced because Depp is white-faced in The Lone Ranger.

Maybe Johnny Depp misheard Disney. When they said they wanted another Sparrow, he thought they meant a bird on his head.

For more on Johnny Depp and Tonto, see Ilsa in a Bird Hat, Depp Justifies Tonto's Stereotypes, and Geronimo in a Crow Headdress?

Critics agree: Lone Ranger is bad

The first Lone Ranger review I read wasn't too bad:

The Lone Ranger: movie review (PG-13)It's all too much and not enough—a succession of disparate, can-you-top-this episodes inelegantly piling up like skidding cars on a freeway. And that's not even taking into account the action scenes.

2 of 5 starsBut then the critics got serious:

The Unforgiving: Ten Savage Disses of 'The Lone Ranger'The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, opens tomorrow. It has been, quite easily, the most debated piece of entertainment in Indian country for the past year. But among critics, there is little debate: This, they say, is not a good movie. At the review-agregating site Rotten Tomatoes, which provides a rating based on critical consensus, The Lone Ranger enjoys a 17% approval (and falling—it started the day with 20%). Ranger's box-office competition is faring much better: Despicable Me 2, also opening tomorrow, scores 80%, while the top three earners in theaters now, Monsters University, The Heat, and World War Z, enjoy respective 78%, 62%, and 68% favorable ratings.

It seems to happen every year: Critics so gleefully attack one particular film that it seems almost a contest to see who can deliver the best zinger. Here are some of the nominees.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: "Even Johnny Depp can’t save the day":

"Director Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger is for anyone who thought the Native American guy from the Village People and a western-wear model would make the perfect blockbuster-action team."

Two Jews on Film, StarPulse.com: "Johnny Depp Is More Jack Sparrow Than Native American Warrior Tonto":

"At times [Johnny Depp] sounded like a bad Catskills comedian instead of a Native American warrior."

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: "The Lone Ranger: Hi-Yawn Silver, Awaaaay!":

"Depp's presence in the movie actively undercuts our investment in the Lone Ranger as a character, much less as a hero. Imagine Christopher Nolan casting Joan Rivers as Alfred in the Dark Knight movies so she could follow around Batman and make jokes about his ridiculous outfit."

Bob Mondello, NPR: "A Familiar Wild West, But The Guy In The Mask? Who's He?":

"The script fancies itself a critique of capitalism, a manifesto on manifest destiny, and a saga about silver mines and the slaughter of Native Americans. All very admirable, if not a great fit for scenes that involve Depp communing with snaggle-toothed cannibal bunny rabbits and taking a runaway train ride or six."

Drew McWeeny, HitFix: "Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski Fail to Bring The Lone Ranger Back to Life":

"At two-and-a-half hours, it may be the single most punishing experience I've had in a theater so far this year. ... Let's be clear: this is a terrible film by any standards. ... When you cut from the violent genocide of an entire Indian tribe to a wacky scene with Silver the horse standing on a tree branch and wearing a cowboy hat, it's pretty clear you have no idea what story you're telling or why. ... Someone needs to drag this thing out behind the barn and put a silver bullet in its brain."Blame Depp

More negative reviews, with the emphasis on how poorly Depp portrayed an Indian:

Lone Ranger is Johnny Depp's tribute to shitty superhero origin filmsDepp puts a lot into doing his clown-face over and over again, as he tries to forcefeed a dead corvid, and meanwhile his comic timing is slowed down to a crawl as the movie lurches from scenes of mass slaughter to wacky "we're robbing a bank for justice" montages.

The expectation of wackiness and hijinks and amusement-ride fun revolves around Depp—so his mumbling, alienated performance is a crucial part of siphoning the fun out of the movie.Cowboys and Idiots[Depp's] caricature is about as nuanced as a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon, set within a film that makes a white hero out of the plight of Comanche people (the Lone Ranger is honored for eventually saving the silver that more evil white men were attempting to steal).

His one-liners were largely met with awkward silence in the New York screening that I attended. They’re dumb one-liners, and Paula Deen just happened. Tonto repeatedly showers the dead bird on his head in birdseed and at one point wears a paddy hat to impersonate a Chinese railroad worker. That this is The Lone Ranger's most interesting character should speak volumes about how uninteresting this movie is.Review: How Bad Is The Lone Ranger? Even the Horse Is LousyAfter years of fools like me swearing by Johnny Depp's genius, it's come to this: a 50-year-old being paid millions by Disney to wear Kabuki-for-idiots makeup topped off by a dead bird on his head. Can Depp possibly be serious when he talks in interviews about the importance to him of The Lone Ranger doing right by Native Americans? His Tonto is a minstrel act, pure and simple. At times, his cutesy reaction shots remind you of the way old-timey directors used to insert cutaways to the family Scottie covering his eyes with his paws or cocking his ears in perplexity.Doug George-Kanentiio: Tonto lives up to name in Lone RangerNothing makes sense in the film from the stunning lack of historical accuracy to the silly action sequences, the simplistic dialogue or the physical settings.

At one moment the characters are in the dust plains of what is supposed to be Texas then riding through Arizona’s Monument Valley before having their ranches burned in what looks like the high mountain meadows of the Canadian Rockies.

Tonto is placed in a diorama at the beginning of the movie, a take off on Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” but without the acting. Is he Ishi, the last of his tribe, or a 120 year old man trolling for peanuts and cracked corn? There are scenes with cannibalistic rabbits, a horse which licks up scorpions before donning a white cowboy hat, a bad guy ripping out a human heart before eating it and a prostitute who has a hollow ivory leg containing a double barreled shotgun.Norman Patrick Brown rating for Lone Ranger: 'Seven Burnt Frybreads'This almost a quarter of a billion dollar slapstick "native" pirate of my beloved Canyon De Chelly and Monument Valley made me kinda sad. It was not funny, what I disliked about the movie was everything, its premise and its fantasy script of non-native writers who romanticized what probably they always wanted to write "a western," all with spiritual Indian speak with spirituality, and made up history to make up for the use of native imagery and profit.That's seven out of eight "burnt frybreads" where eight is the worst, I think.

And from Micah Ian Wright, a Native screenwriter:OMG, The Lone Ranger was the worst movie I've seen in years. Bloated, meandering, and bloodthirsty. Who was this for? Because it SEEMS like it's for 12-year-olds, but it's far too bloody and violent for anyone under 14. I read that they spent $220 million making this and it doesn't show. They built miles of train tracks ad two locomotives but ALL of the trains look like the fakest CGI. Oh, and it fails the Bechdel Test HARD. Avoid at all costs. Unless you love famous white actors performing cringeworthy wacky slapstick redface. Heap Big turd, this movie am!Mixed to positive reviews

There are some mixed to "positive" reviews. In general, they say the movie is a big shambling mess, a pastiche of past Westerns, winking at the conventions it subverts, with lots of comic moments. In other words, Pirates of the Comanche.

‘The Lone Ranger’: Bizarre blockbusterWhile I laughed a few times and was engaged by the Rube Goldberg quality of a number of the more over-the-top action sequences, and thought Depp was reliably droll, particularly in his conversations with the expressive white horse (probably played by several animals, I'd reckon) who will come to be called Silver, I have to admit that my direct experience as I left the screening was a hard-to-shake "what the hell was that?" feeling.

Three of five stars.Hero Rides Again, With Big Boots to FillIn the end, though, “The Lone Ranger” can’t quite pull off the daredevil feats it has assigned itself. This is an ambitious movie disguised as a popcorn throwaway, nothing less than an attempt to revise, reinvigorate and make fun of not just its source but also nearly every other western ever made. In trying to balance grandiosity with playfulness, to lampoon cowboy-and-Indian clichés while taking somber account of a history of violence, greed and exploitation, it descends into nerve-racking incoherence.The Lone RangerLuckily, "The Lone Ranger" is more than the sum of its references, because Verbinski and his screenwriters wind them around the core of a vision. This is a story about national myths: why they're perpetuated, who benefits. As we watch this story unfold, we're not seeing "reality," but a shaggy, colorful counter-myth, told by a "Little Big Man"-looking elderly Tonto to a white boy at an Old West museum in 1933 San Francisco. Old Tonto is a "Noble Savage" in a glass case, surrounded by a Monument Valley diorama whose color and texture prepare us for the CGI-infused storybook landscapes of the film itself. Tonto wants to stop that boy from swallowing the official version of How the West was Won, and from reflexively trusting authority of any kind, ever.

3 1/2 of four stars.“The Lone Ranger”: Rip-roaring adventure meets dark political parableI can already tell I’m going to be a lonely voice on this one, so let me be clear: “The Lone Ranger” has significant problems, including the pairing of Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer as Tonto and the Lone Ranger, which never pays off the way it’s presumably meant to. Verbinski veers back and forth between hard-hitting, often violent dramatic episodes and the low-key, farcical relationship between his two leads, and the effect can be disorienting. Conventional wisdom has already decreed that this movie is a flop, and so be it–don’t let me stand in the way of some satisfying groupthink. Still, I halfway believe that the discordant qualities of “The Lone Ranger” are intentional–and I know for sure that it’s an ambitious and inventive film that’s always trying to tweak formula and play with audience expectations. If anything, it’s overstuffed with imagination and ideas, and when it comes to Hollywood movies I very much prefer that to the default setting. See it with an open mind, and you may well be surprised.Review: 'The Lone Ranger' Is A Fun Summer Ride[The movie is performing poorly at the box office] Which is all a shame, because it’s a wonderful movie. Let me be honest and tell you up front, I originally was excited when I first heard about the film, but as more news came out the negative press coverage sank my hopes. By the start of this week, I didn’t even plan to see it in theaters, and felt it probably wasn’t going to be very good. However, the review over at Salon said a few things that got me interested enough to reconsider seeing it in theaters. But I still went in with low expectations, and I thought the best case would be that it was a mixed bag filled with more “bad” than “good.” Most likely, though, I thought it was going to be awful.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be funny, exciting, heartfelt, and just full of real joy and great entertainment. I’m an overall fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, having loved the first film and really liked the second, then been okay with the third but disappointed with the fourth. Well, The Lone Ranger isn’t quite as awesome as the first POTC movie, but it’s better than the sequels of that series, if you want a quick comparison. If you at any point were interested in a Lone Ranger movie, or saw the trailer and thought you might be entertained by this film, then there’s a very strong chance you’d like it or even love it. If the main reason you’d skip seeing it is the fact the reviews are so negative it sounds like a disaster, then you should see it because those reviews aren’t remotely accurate in reflecting the actual quality of the film.Plus a smattering of other positive reviews:

The Lone Ranger's Lonely Defenders: Critics Ride to the Maligned Blockbuster's RescueThe reviews for The Lone Ranger are in, and by and large they're pretty dire: Criticwire's C average is the only place the movie musters a passing grade. But a small handful of prominent critics have made a strong case for the movie's virtues, going so far as to suggest that those who pounced on the film this week will be eating their words in the not-too-distant future.Most moviegoers are fans of the Pirates movies. These movies are lightweight entertainment, instantly forgettable fun. I can't remember anything from them except Capt. Jack's attitude.

Despite critics saying this movie is different, it sounds like more of the same. The Pirates movies subverted the conventions of pirates and The Lone Ranger subverts the conventions of Westerns. Ho-hum. Subversion isn't anything new, so the question is how well the movie does it.

Let's say The Lone Ranger almost as good as a middlebrow Pirates movie. Is that a real recommendation? I'd call that more of a failure than a success. If you can't make a blockbuster that wows audiences and critics with $225 million, give the money to someone who can.

Then there's the whole issue of the message The Lone Ranger sends about Indians--which is a different matter from the movie's quality. I don't hear anyone saying it portrays Indians as well-rounded, complex characters who deserve to star in more feature films. It seems to be a failure in that regard too.

For more on Johnny Depp, see New Tonto as Racist as Old Tonto and Videos Rip Johnny Depp's Tonto.

Adrienne Keene reviews Lone Ranger

Spoiler alert! Don't read this if you don't want to know what The Lone Ranger is about.

Here's Adrienne Keene's take on the movie. She's as reliable as me on the subject of Native stereotyping, so you can take her criticisms to the bank.

I saw The Lone Ranger so you don’t have toThe very first scene we are presented with an image of a Native person, in a museum–which presumably we’re supposed to critique, but there’s no questioning of Tonto’s position there. To me it reinforces the idea that all the Indians are dead, relics of the past, which is actually a theme throughout. This Indian is so silly and backward he trades a dead mouse for a bag of peanuts, doesn’t even know how to eat peanuts, and is feeding a bird, but it’s dead. Even the child knows that’s wrong. So this is the “new” Tonto? Definitely an improvement, amiright? (That was sarcasm. In case you missed it.)

Here’s the part you wanted to hear about, and I’m trying to think of the best way to frame it. Despite the Comanche involvement in the film, there’s still a lot of problems with conflating all Indians together. First off, we’re in “Texas,” except Texas is set in the iconic Monument Valley–Navajoland. Tonto from the start talks about being a “Wendigo hunter” and that the bad guys are “Wendigos” and that “nature is out of balance.” Wendigos are a Eastern Woodlands (Algonquian/Cree/Ojibwe) thing. Though they did get the stories kinda right, despite it being the completely wrong region/tribe. I’m not trying to argue that the movie should have been 100% “authentic”–whatever that means–but to tout your Native involvement and have a central plot point be totally wrong just felt weird to me.

Also general Tonto comments: Depp’s “accent” is hilariously inconsistent, and whenever he has more than a few words to say, it would veer into an almost stereotypical Italian-sounding thing, and for not speaking English, his vocab is great. He’s also very much the mystical-magical-Indian, an early scene shows him in jail making his bird come alive by singing and flapping his arms, he talks to the horse (and the horse talks back), he talks about LR being a “spirit walker,” etc.

After a false start where we see Rebecca (Lone Ranger’s love interest and his brother’s widow) protecting her homestead from raiding Comanches complete with war whoops and flaming arrows–but wait, they weren’t really Indians, it was Cavenish’s (the bad guy) men just playing Indian, we finally get to meet the Comanche camp after they capture the LR and Tonto. Here’s where we get to see the Native actors involved in the film, and the first glimpse of any Indians besides Tonto. Guess what they’re doing? Preparing for war, dancing around a fire, of course. Lots of yelping, lots of drumming, lots of masked, painted, and darkened Native faces.

Skipping forward, we watch the Comanche attack come over a hillside in the shadows, you know what it looks like, and there’s a moment as a viewer of “ohhh damn, watch out you silly railroad and calvary dudes, you’re about to get owned by some Comanches!” because they look so intimidating and like there are far more of them then the white guys. But no, the Cavalry mows them down with an early machine gun, and we watch as all of the Comanches are slaughtered, including a close up of Saginaw getting stabbed.

It’s very much a Guns, Germs, and Steel type moment–even though the Indians outnumber the whites, they’re not technologically advanced enough to win, and they are too dumb (or full of backward “honor”) to realize they’re headed for a death trap.

Finally we come to the end of the story. Tonto finishes telling it all to the little boy in the museum, and we see that he has put on a suit, holds a suitcase, and places a bowler hat over his crow (which he has continued to “feed” throughout the film). The boy gets momentarily distracted, turns back, and OMG again, Tonto’s gone! In return, a (live) crow flies out of the exhibit and at the screen. Then we cut to credits. Then, a few minutes later, we see Tonto wandering off into the vastness of Monument Valley, hobbling along, carrying his suitcase. He continues to walk, back to the camera, for the next 10 minutes as the credits go on, and on, and on. I guess we’re to assume his time as a “Noble Savage” has passed, and he’s returning to his unbridled wilderness, alone–but dressed as a white guy this time? This, like most of the movie, didn’t make any sense.

My theater had a bunch of kids in it. I kept thinking about what images they were leaving the theater with–and that left me upset and worried. Now an entire new generation is going to play the Lone Ranger and Tonto at recess, thinking Indians talk in incomplete and inconsistent pidgin English, think all Indians are dead, and that it’s ok to dress as an “Indian” for Halloween. While this might be a flash-in-the-pan film, it solidifies the continuing views of Native peoples as lesser, as relics of the past, as disappearing, as roadblocks to “progress.” Tonto might have been less of a sidekick and running the show, but in the end, the LR gets the girl and the glory, and Tonto ends up in a museum. How's that for a re-imagining?Comment:  Here's the beautiful Comanche territory in Texas per The Lone Ranger. Because all Indians are the same and live in the desert wilderness. In fact, I think I can see the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Apache from here.



For more on Johnny Depp, see Critics Agree: Lone Ranger Is Bad and New Tonto as Racist as Old Tonto