Yeah, Dunbar can’t be seen as a ‘White Savior’ because he fails in saving anything. He also knows he can’t save anything. All he can do is grab what humanity he can.
This. Can you imagine making a movie that offended no one? Can’t be done.
Every thing is offensive these days. My mother loves that movie and watches it all the time.I don’t see what was so bad about it. These extremely sensitive people will not stop until all forms of entertainment are bland and boring.
Coming soon to this theater: “Dances With Poles” – The story of a disillusioned Wehrmacht soldier who deserts to a small western Polish village in the Spring of 1939 and learns the beauty of the serpentine embrace of the stripper’s pole.
DWW was offensive because Costner can’t act. And because Jacob’s ladder got totally stiffed because it was intellectually superior in every way to anyone voting at The Academy.
So back to late 70s/early 80s television?
DWW is a movie I’m glad I saw in the theater, it was a great and beautiful movie IMO. People can get offended about whatever they like, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good movie.
Late 70s. Bloom County’s “Offensensitivity” strip ran on 11/14/1982.
Been a while since I saw the film - which I liked - but IIRC, a little bit of this. Kicking Bird was a pretty realized character, thanks I think to the acting of Graham Greene, but the other Lakota were a bit shallower. Still, as sympathetic as Dances With Wolves was to them, the protagonists were the two white characters. The film was the story of John Dunbar and Stands With A Fist; all the Native Americans were side characters.
Also as noted, Dances With Wolves had a simplistic good guy/bad guy dynamic between the Lakota, who were gentle and clever and honorable, versus the Pawnee, all brutal visciousness and savagery. Their portrayal was close to the old racist “savage redskins” trope.
And of course all the white characters other than Costner and McDonnell were either corrupt, brutal, stupid, or weak.
The cinematography was gorgeous, though.
Nah, some people just need to understand the world is an offensive place and get over themselves; and other people need to learn the difference between being yourself and being a dick…and not be a dick.
Because the Coast Salish were actually very early players in the continental telecom marketplace, an oft-forgotten fact.
(And also have a much more subdued Patellar reflex than some colonialist populations.)
No, it’s not.
I quite enjoyed DWW, and I appreciated the cinematography, the Native actors, and the long sections of Lakota language in the film. I don’t think Costner is a bad actor, but he is a bad narrator. DWW has a lot of narration, and his nasally voice is grating, IMO. I’m not asking him be Morgan Freeman or anything, but there is a lot of empty space between Costner and Freeman in the narrator department.
Sounds like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Both MPDG and the Lakota in DWW serve the function of making the protagonist a better person, and then drifting out of his life quietly, soon to be forgotten.
No, they didn’t drift out of his life. He left them explicitly because he had become a danger to them. He knew the army would be hunting him and when they found him, they would find the rest of the band. It was a painful parting for both Dunbar, Stands with a Fist and the band.
But yeah, there was little too much of “the noble savages helped the white man find himself” in the movie.
It’s not kneejerking to point out that tedious, outdated mix-and-match Injun stereotypes are just that.
I’m sad to see you got banned, because this is a pretty interesting point. I do recall the Pawnee being shown as one-dimensional villains, but was it so much due to their relationship with the colonizers, or just that they were villains to everyone? Didn’t they attack the Lakota unprovoked? As I recall, Dunbar kind of got caught up in the Pawnee-Lakota fight by having developed a relationship with the Lakota, but the Lakota didn’t really have a relationship with the colonizers in general. They just liked Dunbar because he was a pretty good guy.
I get this criticism, and I do see the “noble savage” trope at work. But I’m wondering how you avoid this trap. If you want to make a movie about a guy who comes to realize that he’s been fighting for the oppressors and that he’d rather live in peace, how do you do it so it’s not “guy finding himself”? Honest question. Are there examples of books, movies, etc., where this has been pulled off particularly well?
Wait, so if the Native Americans are helpful to the white man then it’s the “noble savage” trope but if they’re not it’s “typical bad Indian” trope? It can’t be both ways. Or
are the critics claiming one can’t make a movie with both peoples?
The Pawnee in the movie were villains to everyone. They attacked and killed Dunbar’s freight driver who was minding his own business at the time. They stole the guy’s mules, but a furtive discussion between the killers just before the bloodshed made it clear that one of the Pawnee insisted on the attack just to get the reputation of a badass among his fellows.
I realize it’s hardly a documentary, but the Pawnee in Little Big Man were portrayed as opportunistic bad guys as well. In the real world did they have a reputation among other NAs for being shifty jerks?