Abstract
70 Kasdan - Tavernetti / Little Big Man The Hollywood Indian in Little Big Man: ? Revisionist View Margo Kasdan and Susan Tavernetti In Little Big Man Arthur Penn directed a film that inverts the mythologies of American frontier history usually presented in the western genre, and, in particular, the story of the westward expansion. The film combines established generic conventions—the post-Civil War period, Great Plains setting, conflict between whites and Indians—with a reconsideration of western history, a revisionist treatment of legendary figures of the time, of the western hero, and of Native Americans in a comic and ironic tone. This combination makes the film distinctive (while at the same time sows the seeds for such contemporary westerns as Dances With Wolves) . The fusion of elements in the film, including its representation of Native Americans—respectful yet satirical, convincing yet not entirely authentic— is the subject of this paper. Through the works of writers, artists, and photographers, Americans have been taught two contradictory myths about Indians. One, deriving from the Puritan fear of the uncontrolled wilderness and its inhabitants, depicts them as bloodthirsty savages. The other, which flourished in the writings of the eighteenth-century European Romantics, presents Native Americans as noble savages. In this conception, the unspoiled wilderness is a spiritual place uncorrupted by civilization; therefore, its original inhabitants are also pure and at one with the spiritual side of nature. The idealistic view was perpetuated in nineteenth-century America in such works as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's celebrated narrative poem, The Song of Hiawatha (1855). Both conceptions found a place in James Fenimore Cooper's popular novels five of which, including The Last of the Mohicans, were gathered in The Leather Stocking Tales, published between 1823 and 1841: Indians were wild, uncivilized, ferocious, but also brave, dignified, proud, and wise teachers. The visual arts of the period transformed these literary stereotypes into powerful images that helped create the basic iconography of the Hollywood western film. Concentrating on dramatic portrayals of buffalo hunts, exotic tribal dances and ceremonies, as well as on heroic portraiture of the natives, George Catlin painted romanticized scenes of Indians within landscapes reminiscent of the garden of Eden, yet in vivid, nearly "Technicolor" hues. Upon his arrival in the new world, Swiss watercolorist Karl Bodmer drafted striking panoramic views of the Margo Kasdan Ts Professor Tn the Department of Cinema it San Francisco State University. Susan Tavernetti is Professor of Film in the Department of Film/TV at" De Anza College, Cupertino, California. They collaborated on the second edition of The Critical Eye: An Introduction to Looking at Movies published by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. Film & History, Vol. XXIII, No's. 1-4, 199371 Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman) and Chief Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) are here framed together, identically attired, a sign of their kinship. Jack Crabb has become a full-fledged member of the Cheyenne and, as their spokesman, will finally tell the truth about the tribes' s culture, experiences and ordeals. Photo courtesy of the Publicity Department/Ciname Center Films. 72 Kasdan - Tavernetti / Little Big Man frontier and remarkable scenes of wild natives in the fierce Buffalo and Scalp Dances which mirrored his preconceptions of a savage America. These artists' representations of the Plains Indians were widely distributed through lithographs and aquatints. These works established the "facts" of Indians on horseback and wearing primitive costumes in ceremonies and molded that conception of them in the popular imagination. In contrast to this fabrication of an untamed yet noble people, the artists Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell introduced the "cowboy-as-epic-hero," a character-type whose role was to repress the threatening Indians and win the west. It was not until the early twentieth century when Edward Curtis posed Native Americans before his camera—recording a romanticized vision of the "noble" Indian and a vanishing way of life—that their cause was championed once again.1 Shaped by the marketplace, the popular media of the day— from paintings to photographs, from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to dime novels and illustrated magazines—reinforced this dual conception of Indians, depicting Native Americans both as scantily-dressed men with feathers in...
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