Moving Stories: Visualization, Mise-en-scène, and Native American Fiction

Abstract

M o v i n g S t o r i e s : V i s u a l i z a t i o n , M i s e - e n - s c è n e , a n d N a t i v e A m e r i c a n F i c t i o n J o h n P u r d y Concurrent with the growth of criticism as a field of study and applica­ tion, in the United States there was an increasing discourse centered on the canon of American literature. W hile it may be argued that this has been a perennial discussion, in the twentieth century it brought to the fore works by authors who define ethnically, and the expansion of the number of visions of the country and the voices that carry them has been, once again, an invigorating influence on the production of works of literature and the critique of them. The “expansion of the canon” has also spawned an ancillary discussion of how texts may or may not differentiate themselves ethnically. Heated debates about “authenticity” (cultural and/or ethnic verisimilitude), “authority” (who is authorized to speak from a specific cultural or ethnic perspective), intellectual property rights, and the appropriateness of applying Western theory to nonWestern texts enlivened the latter decades of the century and continue to shape the ways we think and talk about texts and the meanings they may provoke. None of this is news, of course, to those who have been engaged in or by the debates. However, one still wonders. Despite attempts to draw lines and categorize narratives, in particular fictional narratives, is there anything inherent in them that one may point to as a truly remarkable ethnic marker, specifically in those works that are written in English for a wide, multicultural audience? In her provocative essay from the 1970s, “A n Old-Time Indian Attack,” Leslie Marmon Silko, the Laguna Pueblo author, suggests that there are significant differences between works of art produced by Native and non-Native artists. Furthermore, she argues that writers should stay within their own cultural frameworks when creating them: Since white ethnologists like Boas and Swanton first intruded into Native American communities to “collect” prayers, songs and stories, a number of implicit racist assumptions about W e s t e r n A m e ric a n L it e r a t u r e 41.2 (S um m er 2006): 177- 2 0 0 . 1 7 8 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 6 Native American culture and literature have flourished. The first is the assumption that the white man, through some innate cultural or racial superiority, has the ability to perceive and master the essential beliefs, values and emotions of persons from Native American communities. (211) The conjoining of culture and text is significant, for Silko’s critical eye next focuses upon two non-Native authors whose works— employing Indian “content”— won Pulitzer Prizes: Oliver LaFarge for his novel Laughing Boy (1930) and Gary Snyder with his poetry collection Turtle Island (1975). There are several issues that form the complex matrix of her argument, some of which anticipate and provide contexts for the canon debates that resonate with her broadside (and are noted above); however, despite her attempts to articulate and specify these two literary works’ shortcomings, one must still ask of texts that identify as “N ative,” no matter who writes them, what makes them culturally representative, or not. More specifically, what in them carries and reveals “the essential beliefs, values and emotions of persons from [their respective] communities ”? This would imply, in the case of LaFarge and Snyder, the beliefs, values, emotions of an Anglo community as well. While Silko’s stance on this issue may have changed over the ensuing decades as the discourse evolved, her contentions posit an intriguing dilemma for buyers, readers, and critics of fiction; besides the crafting of characters and content (dialect, locale, etc.) that are ethnic-specific, what constitutes...