Post by Miranda on Dec 11, 2016 19:41:12 GMT
I'm slightly surprised that the BBC are showing this as it got trashed in America due to Johnny Depp's portrayal of Tonto.
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-the-new-tonto-any-better-than-the-old-tonto-4833743/
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-the-new-tonto-any-better-than-the-old-tonto-4833743/
Whether Depp’s intentions will mollify critics of the film, who were out in force even before it was released, remains to be seen. Adrienne Keene, a Harvard graduate student and member of the Cherokee Nation, who runs a blog called “Native Appropriations,” said she initially was unhappy the filmmakers didn’t come up with an Indian actor to play Tonto. Depp, like many white Americans, claims some Indian ancestry, though he does not self-identify as such. But after seeing Depp’s makeup (his face is streaked with black and white paint) and headdress (a spread-winged, intact taxidermy crow), Keene says she’s glad an Indian isn’t playing the role, which she calls “extremely stereotypical.”
Although Tonto’s grammar has improved greatly since the “Me go now” dialogue of 60 years ago, Depp still reads his lines in the sententious, wisdom-of-the-elders cadences that Indians call “Tonto-speak.” “He could have treated the Tonto-speak as a joke, like the spirit-talk and the funny hat,” muses Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale. “In 2013, that could work. But by playing it straight, he gives the impression that Indians really were like that. And I’m afraid that Tonto is the only Indian most Americans will ever see.”
If he’s right, the movie might be a big missed opportunity, since “Tonto,” to Native Americans, is synonymous with ugly caricature. The word, which has no known meaning in any Native American language, means “stupid” in Spanish. And yet the character Tonto is a noble figure, even as a sidekick, brave and loyal and resourceful. The Indian actor Jay Silverheels played him with remarkable dignity on television, considering the material. In the pilot episode, Tonto rescues the Texas Ranger who is the lone survivor of an ambush by an outlaw gang. Tonto makes the mask, to conceal the man’s identity from the bandits who think he’s dead, and gives him a name: Lone Ranger.
Although Tonto’s grammar has improved greatly since the “Me go now” dialogue of 60 years ago, Depp still reads his lines in the sententious, wisdom-of-the-elders cadences that Indians call “Tonto-speak.” “He could have treated the Tonto-speak as a joke, like the spirit-talk and the funny hat,” muses Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale. “In 2013, that could work. But by playing it straight, he gives the impression that Indians really were like that. And I’m afraid that Tonto is the only Indian most Americans will ever see.”
If he’s right, the movie might be a big missed opportunity, since “Tonto,” to Native Americans, is synonymous with ugly caricature. The word, which has no known meaning in any Native American language, means “stupid” in Spanish. And yet the character Tonto is a noble figure, even as a sidekick, brave and loyal and resourceful. The Indian actor Jay Silverheels played him with remarkable dignity on television, considering the material. In the pilot episode, Tonto rescues the Texas Ranger who is the lone survivor of an ambush by an outlaw gang. Tonto makes the mask, to conceal the man’s identity from the bandits who think he’s dead, and gives him a name: Lone Ranger.
Anymore to come?
