Black robe and negative representation.
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- It's a fine movie with some bad politics. I don't hate it, I hate the trend it embodies. If our cinematic climate was healthier I would not find it objectionable enough to mention.
Indian in the Cupboard might be the best example of Iroquoian representation in film. That makes me feel tired.
Link to interesting articles.
Review.
archive.org/de...
Pushback.
escholarship.o...
Response.
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On the wider historical accuracy of the film.
Black robe is a reasonably accurate depiction of the version of history presented by the Jesuit Relations, which are in essence, Christian propaganda pamphlets. They are not an accurate record of the past, rather they are an accurate record of what the Jesuits thought and felt about it.
Or, to paraphrase Roland Chrisjohn, accepting that the Jesuit relations is the stuff of which an objective view of history is to be constructed, would be like writing a history of the Jews from the Nazi propaganda.
I never really considered the whole Indian vs gangster angle, and how films are so uncharitable towards native peoples even compared to groups like mobsters. I never, as an Italian, got the impression from the Godfather that all Italians were like the crime families. It's a good point.
It's not my point. Got it from a ten year old review on some guy's blog that turned up while googling.
Literally every single Italian person in the Godfather (with the exception of Enzo and the undertaker at the beginning) are members of the Mafia. Carlo beats his wife and calls her slurs so bad that they would get my comment deleted if I repeated them here. What are you talking about? I love the Godfather, but it is not a flattering depiction of Italian Americans. And it isn't really supposed to be.
I've lurked in your channel since the beginning of the summer, but I thought I'd break my silence to say that you're doing a great job. In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting channels on RUclips.
Nice breakdown and analysis. It's great to hear people dig deeply into real history, true causes and truth like this. Widespread systemic racism in films that present Indigenous culture in a negative or ignorant light do so because the industry as a whole assumes that to step into the moccasins so-to-speak of Indigenous cultural viewpoints somehow negates the Eurocentric dominant culture...like the floodgates of guilty feelings over past wrongs and calls for decolonization would become too overwhelming. It's unfortunate, because truly, re-Indigenization is what the world needs right now.
About the closing tought on "indian atrocities always being shown when they are shown" ,
I found this exact same line of "reasoning" when talking about communist and former communist countries , i'll give a couple of examples :
I once saw a guy on a urbanist subreddit say "i live in a former soviet country they had this project in wich they placed many drinkable water fountains in many smaller towns to make drinkable water more accessible"
And like the broad idea was "hey that's a good idea , we could be asking for that today"
A guy jumped up and reminded everyone of stalin and how many pepole he killed to make that happen ...
Another example :
There was the anniversary of yuri gagarin becoming the first man in space , and so there was this history documentary on tv ,
They could have said intresting stuff about the thing :
How the rocket got made ,
How the operation was working ,
What the soviets had learned from previus failures ecc. Ecc.
It's rocket science you have a fuck lot to talk about and you'll always see this care for details in every documentary or anything really about the moon landing ...
What did they spend a lot of time talking about :
*sinister music plays*
Narrator with the most cynical voice possible "yuri gagarin got used as a propaganda piece (maybe against his will) "
Like i spend very little time thinking about a similar angle you could have taken to sour the mouth of someone watching a moon landing doc because you have two possible lines wich are very intuitive :
The moon landing happend at the same time as the hight of the civil right movment , segregation was in place , and you even get a song like "whitey is on the moon"
Wich is a much more coincise and efficient summary of the situation that i could ever make ...
And then you just look at who built the Saturn V rocket : boeing and mcdonnel douglas , they got contracted for it ...
And they where also building bombers and all kinds of weapons for the vietnam war , wich we today know , they lied in order to justify it , straight from declassified documents ...
Sorry for the lenghty examples , it's just maddening how much this shit gets propagandized ...
But yeah it's i think just discouraging different lifestyles in the end :
To use the gangster example :
Gangsters exist within american society , to criticise them would also be to criticise the white society that lead to them in some way ,
So they make up all kinds of excuses : oh it's not that gangsters are the most violent members of a group , it's that they had bad upbringings that made them cool and edgy ,
And the most gruesome parts are isolated in a few bad apples ...
We can't say "this is wrong" because then the fact we are letting it happen means we are also doing many other wrong things ...
The moicans and the soviet on the other hand ? Nah their whole social group was garbage ,
Throw it in the bin , no it doesn't matter if they had better social safety nets , or if they had good policies for orphans or single mothers ...
They where evil because they did X and they did X because they where evil ...
And so capitalism continues .
Just a tought really ...
You ever think the Tatars should have made a song bitching about the Soviets going to space while they had to rot in a desert?
Never heard of the song you referenced in your comment before, that is real interesting.
Insightful comment, thanks.
It's good to remember that humans are humans. Most people spend most of their time just doing normal people stuff. No matter what else is happening. Even in a dystopian hellhole like the Stalin-era Soviet Union, and in societies with extreme religious or ideological radicalism like Wars of Religion-era Europe, and even in societies that frequently launch brutal raids against their neighbours like the Comanches, most people still spend most of their time doing normal people stuff.
Unfortunately, we have a strong tendency to otherise and de-humanise people we, for whatever reason, don't like, or who seem too different from ourselves to really be fully human in the same way we are.
Very articulate, as usual (since you asked!). Interesting to see you doing a podcast sort of thing with a mic, and what jumps out is that while you edit yourself pretty heavily, the edit has a good rhythm. All the cuts might look a little funny, but the speech really flows nicely.
I stutter, every cut is a flubbed line. I've had a lot of practice editing around that sort of thing.
Really great video. I think this format for talking about films works really well for you - you’re not the Nostalgia Critic, you’re talking about these films more academically and sociopolitically. No need for clipshows and snappy editing.
As always your videos expose me to my own biases that I take for granted in the way I think about culture and media. I am sure that one day we will get your dream Iroquoian period drama - I’d put money towards such a project if I knew of one.
The best relationship was between the Quebecois and the natives. They portray the Catholic priest as stupid/insensitive and the natives as hostile. It's in stark contrast to the voyageurs and Ojibwe singing and dancing and getting drunk with each other. They just want to divide us.
true, there was much much mixing between the Eastern tribes and Europeans for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before the US Federal government's war of western expansion.
Weird Anti-Catholic Anti-Mohawk crossover.
I don’t think that’s fair. LaFouge is portrayed sympathetically and, while he is single minded in his mission and inexperienced early in the film, he definitely isn’t “stupid” or “insensitive.” The Algonquins are hostile to a degree, but their hostility is at least reasonably explained and balanced by Chomina’s loyalty.
@@hillbillyhistorian1863 don't be daft
Great video as usual! I did want to comment on one thing: alphabetic writing systems are not the only systems that can represent grammar! For instance, Chinese uses a logographic writing system, meaning that each character represents either a whole word or a meaningful piece of a word (for instance, the "re-" in English "remake" isn't a word on its own, but it is a meaningful component of the word; linguists call these meaningful components "morphemes". If English were written like Chinese, that "re-" prefix would get its own character). Anyway, the logographic writing system of Chinese is very much able to represent grammar. Similarly, some languages are written with a mixed logographic and phonetic system, where some characters represent words/morphemes and other characters represent sounds phonetically. Japanese is written this way (it borrows the logographic characters from Chinese, and has phonetic characters of its own). The Classical Chʼoltiʼ language (also known as Classic Maya) was likewise written with a mixed logographic and phonetic system, prior to its eradication by the Spanish (many people in Mexico and Guatemala today are working hard to revive it though, it should be said!). Same with Ancient Egyptian.
Some linguists use the term "proto-writing" to refer to writing systems which can represent meaning, but which don't represent the full grammar of the language that is being written. I am not qualified to say whether Iroquoian pictographic writing falls into this category, since I know very little about it (and sadly it seems most of it has been lost). But I just wanted to clarify that it's not the case that only alphabetic writing systems can represent grammar, logographic, syllabic, and all sorts of other systems can represent grammar too.
Not that any of this runs counter to the point you're trying to make though.
I didn't know any of that.
Thanks for the info - writing systems vary quite a lot. I do agree with Malcolm's big point, which is that if there's already a writing system then there's no "mindblowing concept shift" when another is explained. Yes, you can get a lot more fancy with it, but the game-changer with any kind of writing is being able to leave a note behind, or to leave history. To take knowledge and put it into physical form for somebody else to read much later and/or much further away.
@@Scodiddly Yes but the writing Native Americans had obviously wasnt adequte for recording history , else we wouldn't require European literature records of the region , look at Meso America European sources are rarely used because the Aztecs had writing that recorded history so we used that
@@JcoleMc It was adequate enough to record the eclipse that proved the dating of the peacemaker's coming and the formation of the confederacy. The reason it seems inadequate is that Haudenosaunee culture is not the dominant one now in the region. sadly
@@JcoleMcwell if you kill off most of the people who can read it then you have a problem. Note that most of the mayan history is not available because the Spanish worked hard to destroy the writings. You have the same problems with aztec writings, you actually only have a small subset of it.
As a Québecois let's say my people had, at the very least, a complex history with the Iroquoi and particularly Kanien'Keha Ka people. Seeing this kind of racism in movies and other kind of stories is still extremely appalling to me. To think that a whole nation was only violent, belligerent and evil is so reductive. It hurts me even more as I hear people I know have similar discourse and totally forgetting about the Great Peace of Montréal.
Humans are complex, and geopolitics are complex. To see portrayal of one side or the other as total evil is just maddening to me.
I hope one day we'll be able to make a bridge back between all the nations of the Americas and finally really make amends for the wrong doings of some of our ancestors.
7:00 I hadn't heard the word 'Pretendian' before, the context is pretty clear but I still wanted to clearly look at the definition, and I thought you might find it amusing that Ward is the first person listed on Wikipedia in the 'Notable Examples' section
Ironic since Ward is one of the few pretendians who was actually useful and worked hard for the communities he claimed.
I believe he got the most flak for his Little Eichmanns quote.
I always appreciate your insight into these matters, P.L.
As for Dances With Wolves... (been a long time since I saw it but I remember two things: the tone of anthropology, and the wedding)
When you get to "when harry met Sally" and "Indiana Jones" its so on point. A filmmakers' choice to misrepresent Indians in dramatic fashion is a deliberate one, not incidental or accidental at all.
No, I don't think it's deliberate, I think it's a problem of ideological lenses, people who do that sort of thing typically don't see how it could be an issue, they just have assumptions and preconceptions which they don't bother to question.
@@MalcolmPL I can understand that, my feeling is filmmaking is entirely composed of making conscious artistic decisions, even more specifically when making period pieces the artists involved are (at least in theory) attempting to decide what history makes the final cut, and what ahistorical material is an acceptable concession to get the story told. The filmmakers involved in Black Robe's failure to bend a film outside their own ideological goggles is, in my understanding, like being so bad at cooking to anyone watching it looks like you're deliberately ruining the food. Including the return to the village, is contrived, ahistorical and unnecessary, it's a choice I find hard to understand. I would be interested to find out more about the filmmakers themselves. I am a big fan of your channel and your content, and mean no disrespect by my long winded reply.
Thank you for this. I always wonder about accuracy in native representation when watching these kinds of movies. I'm learning from listening to indigenous perspectives that it's usually pretty awful and I would love to see more movies produced entirely by natives and see some of these stories from their perspective. You make some excellent points that I wouldn't have thought about myself but are really obvious when you point them out. Just because something may be true doesn't mean that it's the only thing that is true. We don't judge all Americans by the worst thing that America has ever done so why think that way about anyone else.
In terms of everyone was violent so everyone is equally guilty, it's like if someone broke into your house and you fought with them to defend yourself would we say that both of you are equally guilty? You were both fighting so you're the same right? Not to mention all the treaties that were broken.
Not film but I highly recommend the indigenous black metal artist Blackbraid if metal is a genre you enjoy listening to or are curious about!
Thank you Malcolm. Hollywood always has and still does see Indians as scenery and props not as people, human beings. Absolutely in contrast gangsters and outlaws are idolized by that industry.
And thank you as well for Rant: The Thrifty Indian Gene, Scientific Racism and IQ Tests. It was thought provoking. And in the same vein as Hollywood; the dehumanization of Indigenous people.
Interesting perspective. I find that I enjoy movies much more when I am able to embrace suspension of disbelief. I think you are viewing these movies on such a focused level, much more than the average moviegoer. Most if not all of the movies produced in this country are interested in making money by hitting the broadest swath of people they can. If someone were to make a movie that was completely accurate they would miss out on reaching the broader audience and no one would go see it. I would love to see movies made by indigenous people and see how they choose to portray their characters and settings. I recall seeing a movie called "Smoke Signals" years ago and I connected with it because it mirrored my own terrible relationship with my family and I admittedly did not concentrate on whether they were portraying an accurate representation of life on a reservation.
Black Robe seems to be more multi-faceted than most other historical films depicting Indigenous peoples. It's good to see cultural differences between various Indigenous peoples: Innu-Naskapi, Huron, Montagnais and Haudenoseuonee depicted and their ambivalent relationship with Catholicism. Having read Richard White's book The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region 1650-1815 four years ago, I would like to see more films depicting the complex relations French settlers and various indigenous peoples. I am not from Turtle Island/North America so my personal exposure to Indigenous American culture is limited. I will definitely read the Ward Churchill review but I am wondering whether the film's source material, the novel by Brian Moore is any better.
I really like the gangster analogy; I'll be keeping that in my back pocket for future use.
The Sopranos has a whole episode about how Colombus' legacy and Italian outrage overshadow the legitimate struggles of indigenous folk. I feel like a lot of white people walk away from that episode with the idea its cool to disparage and ignore marginalized peoples.
Thanks for making this. Black Robe is one of my favorite films, but the critiques presented here are very thought-provoking. I’ve been working on an in-depth review and might cite or respond to some of your points, if you don’t mind.
One point: I’m certain there are a lot of chuds who think that Black Robe is better than DWW because it includes indigenous villains, but I’ve never encountered any. Instead, I’ve seen many people praise Black Robe over DWW because it is something of a corrective to the White Savior-ism of the latter.
Funnily enough, Black Robe owes its existence to DWW. An adaptation of Brian Moore’s novel had been stuck in production hell until DWW came out in ‘90 and convinced studio execs that “Indian Movies” could still draw a crowd.
Thanks for making this video, Malcom, and the other videos like them. I appreciate the opportunity you grant to shake up the stagnant and violent world view the predominates north american thinking. I'm sure they're not easy videos to make, but they are certainly important.
Are there any books of Iroquois folklore you can recommend? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the stories you’ve told on your channel and would love to read more.
"Legends of the Iroquois." Is the recommendation off the top of my head.
@@MalcolmPLthank you very much!
I think when I watched Hostiles, it made so many nods in the right direction that I saw things that weren't there. I just assumed it was saying something good, but being very subtle about it. I just pieced together a version of the film in my head that aligned with my values. I think any ambiguous film has the potential to allow for that, which is a good reason to make ambiguous things. I thought about rewatching it to see how it looks to me now, but I decided I don't really give a shit.
Maybe its odd to have a race of people who are almost exclusively confined to a single genre of film.
Thanks for making me think (again!)
Great video as always. On your question as to why indigenous people don't get a better portrayal in cinema, I think it comes down to the fact that 1) for an outsider to do justice to an indigenous society from hundreds of years ago would require a ton of research and dedication that would be hard to justify economically because 2) the market just isn't big enough. I personally would love a hyper-accurate movie/show detailing every aspect of daily life in Iroquoia but I can't imagine something like that making any money unfortunately.
I feel like this gets at a more general problem with history movies as a genre. Which is that the need for movies, being a commercial entertainment products, to give consumers what they want is typically in conflict with the goal of doing good history. Good history requires empathy, and empathy is hard. All the more so when we're dealing with a society far removed from our own that challenges a lot of our core beliefs and morals. It's pretty much a given that an honest portrayal of life in any pre-industrial society would be pretty confronting to a modern audience, what with the omnipresent superstition, casual oppression, sexism, animal cruelty, and general violence. Getting past the shock of all that, to understand that these things exist for a reason (life without industrial technology is hard), and that the people who live in this society are still just people doing the best they can in spite of it all, is a tall order. Conveying that to an audience in a two-hour runtime is damn near impossible and would surely land your movie in no end of controversy. A thankless task if ever there was one.
Instead what I see most history movies do is "other" their antagonists by emphasizing and sensationalizing the ways in which these people do not conform to a modern audiences' sensibilities (as this movie evidently does). And with protagonists, just papering over any differences and turning them into modern people espousing modern values (with Indians this often means getting coded as environmentalist/hippy types a la Pocahontas). Neither is good history, but it's the easy way out, especially when you're making movies for a predominantly white audience who don't want to have to think too hard about any of this stuff.
I never thought about the racial inaceratcys of these movies i been more focused on how there getting better at making wilderness tools ,housing an living more realilistic . I think you kneed 2 make a movie i think you could combined a grate mix of grate storie with grate historically accuracy !!!
I remember hearing about this movie being great, then finally watched it as an adult after becoming really interested in native American history. I was not expecting it to be as racist as it was
Best scene is when they ask if there will be tobacco in Heaven
When the priest tells them no
The reaction is probably the most believable part of the whole film😂
Lmao fr dawg. That hit me right in the feels tbh man 💨 Didn’t he ask about women too? 😂
thanks again malcolm, your videos are seriously helpful for fixing my misunderstandings.. can you review Dead Man by Jarmusch next? I want to hear your thoughts. seriously!!
I watched Black Robe as part of a uni class on historical fiction film. I'm curious now to see if I still have my essay to see what I wrote at the time to see how much I realized as an 18 y/o white canadian settler. It's an awful film that obviously uses sex and violence for no greater framework than to offend and shock the Jesuit we're meant to take the POV. He's an outsider in this land, not because of his own cultural and religious problems/differences, but because of the irredeemable unchristian societies he's entered. No shock that it reinforces every racist. And YES!! This is the only depiction of a Mohawk village I've seen in film! All the framing and praise of it as historically accurate actively reinforces this problem by giving it a veneer authority it never deserved.
An exception to one point you were talking about may be The Revenant, though the Indians in it aren't the main focus, but it gives (albeit later on) an explanation to the aggressions of the Arikara tribesmen attacking this American trading expedition.
Few random comments from me. If you can do it so can I :)
1st: have you noticed how this channel attracts intelligent comments (except this one maybe, ha ha), not the usual RUclips crowd;
2nd: It's not true that all literature and films portray Indians in a negative light. I grew up reading novels where Indians were portrayed in a positive light. Equally fake as classical westerns, but still...
3rd: try to find a film "A Man Called Horse". Do you think it portrays Indians in a better light? Not sure how accurate it is, but holy cow it's a good film.
Please keep on doing what you are doing.
One of the positives of a channel having no mainstream appeal.
We are so ignorant about other cultures... It's insane to me.
When you think how great was the influence of the thinking of the indigenous people of the Great Lakes area on the European Enlightenment as a result of the writings of Lahontan and the Catholic missionaries, it is absolutely tragic that the West takes all the credit for its intellectual achievements, burying in oblivion and contempt those who had such spectacular contributions from a historical point of view. The myth of Rousseau's "Noble Savage" (a rhetorical exercise that has only tangential connections with any real culture) is used by all Eurocentric bigots to turn their noses up at any culture that European colonialism trampled on or took away one step away from extinction.
"1960's Western made 30 years too late" kind of describes most non-Indigenous directed US movies featuring Native people :/
Thank you for this knowledge.
nice your qouting Chrisjohn, my wife loves his work!
Great video. But I think some points may have been overlooked, I mean in the movie weren’t the Algonquins already traveling far inland and knew they’d be close to the country frequented by Iroquois warriors? Plus they were trying to explain the narrative of the priest LeBarge. Which may explain the almost absurdness in the chain of events the film follows. How far they strayed from that though is not my guess.
Lastly the renegade period lasted well into the early 1900’s out west 🌵 where certain native bands or individuals would say ‘to hell with this’ and go on the warpath. Especially when fate had forced its hands some way and they were certain white men wouldn’t try or treat them fairly in court. So to have outlaw Comanches and Kiowas on the prowl wouldn’t have been totally out of the question. Utes Navajos and Western Apaches occasionally went renegade during that same time and were seen as a threat of some kind (for whatever reason. Maybe not sending kids to school, “poaching” “trespassing” too many wives etc.) by the authorities and attacked. Blowing seemingly simple interactions completely out of the water.
Assuming that someone would assume that guns are single use items seems pretty insane and condecending to me.
Some fine insights! Really enjoyed the review.
As insightful as always,. thank you
Do you think you'd ever review the fictional Indian representation that's present in Red Dead Redemption 2? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if nothing else, because you're someone whose opinion and insight I've come to greatly appreciate. All the best!
I don't have a computer that can run it, nor the free time for open world games.
@@MalcolmPL That's understandable. Thanks for the reply, all the same!
I love that you pronounce "Joe Pesci" as "pesky", not "peshy" lol
I hadn't even heard of black robe until seeing this video.
The problem is that nothing in the United States is told from the Indigenous Perspective. It's always during and post colonial. I would love to see media that took place way before the European showed up
maybe what we need is a Coronation St for each of these societies to provide a baseline. Good talk again Malcom.
So Malcolm, if you could make a movie about the Iroquois, what would it be about?
I had to watch this for a college class and point out all the awful stuff
I remember reading the book Black Robe and thinking "damn, this french priest is racist as hell" and then the film just takes his vantage point verbatim.
I'd be curious about an adaptation of Black Robe in which the priest's racism is sequestered into an internal monologue, while the actions around him and scenes without him present reflect just how wrong he is. He thinks he has astounded them with writing, but they are actually unimpressed, he thinks they will torture and skin him but they treat him well, etc
actually no, I'd be worried viewers would, by and large, still take the french priest's perspective despite the film going out of its way to show how wrong he is
bone tomahawks a movie that pissed me off; its a horror movie where the antagonist arent human, it gave me racism ick
I like Bone Tomahawk but I can't deny that it give off that edge despite having one good nature character.
Racism and ick aside I would say that bone tamohawk just did not draw my attention or my interest even when you want to compare it to certain other things which may not have been the most flattering representations of Native Americans.
@@GaryNac right??? it was just pretty mid
Is there any Western that you think it's not racist? It's not a rhetorical question, even if it sounds like one: I'd really like to know what you think. I don't think The Searchers or Fort Apache (to name a couple of them) are racist films, and I'd say they present the natives in a pretty positive light, but maybe I'm missing something.
It kind of depends on how we interpret the question. I'm going to divide it into two categories, westerns as a whole, and cowboy and indian movies.
In terms of westerns as a whole, there are plenty that I don't think are racist, but those mostly don't feature native people in a significant capacity. For instance, Once Upon a Time in the West is a good example and one of my favourite movies.
In terms of cowboy and indian movies, I'm not a connoisseur of that subgenre it's mostly one that I try to avoid. All the ones I've seen have some problems, but racism is a spectrum, a lot of films have something iffy that just doesn't matter.
I haven't seen The Searchers or Fort Apache.
I think there is an inherent problem with the cowboys and indians genre which makes it infeasible for filmmakers to do it justice, in that the genre is in it's default form a depiction of conflict along racial lines.
In depicting a conflict between the two sides, the filmmakers generally have to pick a side to back to make the film work, film needs protagonists and villains. This puts the filmmakers in a bad situation, they pick the cowboy side, then they have a harder job not being racist, they pick the indian side they have an easier time with the race angle, but at the cost of a smaller target audience, they both sides it like in Hostiles and they end up pleasing nobody.
I think that sort of explains the trend of westerns like Dances with Wolves where there is a cowboy who lives among the indians. That way they can pick the indian side but still have a cowboy POV.
Great video, really looking forward to reading those reviews. Haavik is annoying and infuriating even in the introductory sentence to his article.
i feel like they drew very heavily from the jesuit relations when they made this movie and not alot else.
I totally get it. Your average person doesn't have the time to read a dozen books for background research, so they tend to pick one or two and run with it.
Oftentimes it's the older outdated publications as they have been cited the most simply by virtue of being around a while.
The stuff you talk about is well outside my wheelhouse, but I enjoy your passion on it. I also don't really engage much with mass market media things, for many reasons adjacent to what you speak on here. The question that came to my mind as I watched this was why not make these films independently as a cultural preservation attempt? I think I'd much rather watch a low-budget but sincere portrayal of Indian folk stories over some more super-hero drivel or hollywood produced propaganda.
I want to see how you guys stole fire from the gods, or if you guys have a hero with a lightning weapon killing a demon snake in your culture. Flood myth? Just-so story about how agriculture came to be? Good old fashioned war between two families that used to be close?
Any of those sound way more fun.
Thanks for reviewing this movie. I knew it would be painful! Do you consider the way the Kanyenkehaka treated their captives as inaccurate? Unfortunately If you want a movie to portray the Kanyenkehaka in a positive light you are probably going to have to make it yourself.
The kid part is dead wrong. Women part half wrong. The rest of it isn't wrong per say, at least not in a way that I could confidently nit pick, but it is simplified, presented out of context and relies on debatable sources.
I originally a different response, but I accidentally clicked off and lost it, so this one might be a bit less nuanced.
I don’t think you’re being fair to the negative depiction of the Iroquois. Sure, there’s some false stuff in there to make the Mohawk look more evil (like killing the kid, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he would’ve been sort of adopted in place of a deceased family member), but some of the brutality is quite true to life. I had a professor that I also assisted who focuses on early American and Indigenous studies, specifically in the Northeast. He wrote a book on the Oneida. Anyways, he had us watch Black Robe not because it is completely accurate, but it does capture some of the experiences of the time. In class he described the ritualized torture and other brutalities (not in a demonizing way, but on the reason and belief for it). When I was working for him, I had to read through the account of Isaac Jogues. Perhaps it was exaggerated for European audiences and Jogues’ martyrdom fetish, but it is nonetheless harrowing. It’s not difficult to see why they would be portrayed like that, especially since Jogues’ experiences probably inspired much of Black Robe. Due to that, I think comparing the Mohawk in this to the Comanches in Hostiles is a bit of a stretch.
I think you’re overstating the racism. Hostiles, for sure, I even left a comment on how the ending was a thematic slap in the face. I’m not saying it’s not there, but Black Robe seems far less pointed. You found the writing scene to be patronizing, but it just so happens I found it to be the most interesting scene in the movie, since I had never considered writing as reading your mind without speaking. It’s been a while since I watched it, but that’s the scene that has stuck with me the most. I can see your criticism, but it might not have been intended that way. However, I think that’s among your better criticism. But the larger issue you have is that it portrays the Mohawk extremely negatively. My response would be is that the movie is from the French perspective (ultimately probably based on Jogues), so it’s probably weirder that you’re surprised the Mohawk got portrayed in this way (Which is why your ‘When Harry Met Sally/Guantanamo Bay torture scene’ argument doesn’t make sense. I’m sure the spin-off “When Harry Met Sally in Guantanamo Bay” will have a torture scene, since that would be relevant to what the movie is about.).
I think your overall beef isn’t so much with the movie (though many criticisms are fair), but it’s with perspective. Movies which focus on Native Americans, even in a positive manner, almost always go through the perspective of a European/American, which I think happens since many of the writers and especially the audience are outsiders. To defend Black Robe in this context, the movie is about the titular “black robe”, and so presenting the biases it does makes sense. You’re not going to get a scene of a peaceful Mohawk town when the movie draws direct inspiration from a guy who was tortured and disfigured by them. Perhaps Black Robe is a symptom of a lack of native perspective, but it’s not responsible for it.
TLDR, I think you should evaluate Black Robe in its own context. You bashed it not just for its failures, but just for having portrayals you didn’t like. You seem more concerned with the fact there was a negative portrayal instead of how fair the portrayal was. The lack of positive representation, while an issue, is not the fault of Black Robe. It probably wouldn’t have made sense to have anything but a negative portrayal for the Mohawk in this context.
Damn, I should’ve just read those reviews, I spent too much time writing this.
Anyways, here’s a video idea: what sort of representation/movie ideas would you want to see? It doesn’t even have to be historical. For example, I could honestly see your retelling of how Mosquitoes came to be become a movie, it had a really interesting suspense to it. How would you choose to depict your culture if you had the resources to do so?
You mentioned that Churchill was a “Pretendian”. What does that mean? I’m thought it would be like he pretends to be a knowledgeable source when he’s not, but then you said he’s still worth listening to? Cheers!
Pretendian means someone (usually white) who is born without native ancestry but claims to be native.
@@HegelOnHisHead Ah, got it. Thanks.
gangsters are part of the modern american culture. Native Americans for better or worse are very alien to the majority of the modern American populace. To quote mlk "I Fear I May Have Integrated My People Into a Burning House" yes these portrayals of natives are awful, but maybe this isnt such a bad thing to be on the outside looking in. Italians and Irish criminals get sympathetic positive portrayals because they are now considered white. I'd argue that to the extent that black criminals are portrayed sympathetically is equivalent to the overall "whiteness" of the character. My overall point is if those natives were depicted in a positive light it would be because native people themselves have been integrated into modern American culture. Maybe it is better to watch the house burn then to fight for a place inside it. With this perspective I start to appreciate and admire some aspects of demonized characters (even if they are made up) because they represent that which the modern American psyche fears as well as its own shortsightedness and failure to comprehend that which it considers "alien".
Thanks for the video.
why are you holding the mic in your hand?
Because the stand is set up for a multi day recording project and if I move it the acoustics of the future takes won't match the previous takes
Have you seen Bone Tomahawk? That movie is the "indian movie" I'm most torn on because it's an extremely fun twist on the tired western genre but otoh that twist involves indigenous-coded literal mutant cannibals abducting white people soooooooooo
ig you *could* see it as a metaphor for the way "indian movies" turn indigenous people into nothing more than movie monsters, but I trust neither Hollywood nor American viewers to be literate enough for that.
Funny, I saw that movie as more of a tired return to form, just from a different genre.
Bone Tomahawk borrows a lot from old American pulp horror (I'm thinking mainly of Robert E. Howard). You've got the civilised whites who are up against an ancient evil beyond their ken, the indian who has assimilated enough to warn them about the evil but can only do so in a way juuuuust mystical enough to keep them from believing him, and finally the savages who were once Indians but have “degenerated” to something subhuman.
We can infer that, in the world the film constructs, eugenics is real and the hierarchy of being is actually good science rather than racist bunk. It follows that whole peoples can fall so far down the grade they become something less than human. The end result is a narrative where the white people are justified in their racist beliefs, just incorrect in the targets they projected those beliefs upon. They should have listened to the good, white-coded Indian who knew to stay away from the bad indian-coded Indians.
For some weird reason the pretendians of Quebec really love this movie.
I hope you've seen ten canoes
Have you red the account of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert? If I recall correctly he has something different to say about firearms.
Yes I have, he has nothing to say about firearms in an Iroquoian context.
Please read again
IIRC.....on more than one occasion he was asked to demonstrate some musketry. The native folks he was encountering were kinda new to the technology and were marveling at it. Hardly the behaviour of people who had guns as a common thing in their everyday lives.
You're right. van den Bogaert visits the land of the Iroquois in 1634 1635. The indigenous ppl again and again request Bogaert to fire his gun at nearly every village.@@lusolad
@@lusoladit also seems that the Dutch didn't amplify their trade of guns w the Mohawk until about 1648. Until then traders would come to the Mohawk to trade. So yeah they had them but not everyone probably wasn't completely familiar we them. The French and Iroquois both claim the Erielhonan had no guns in the 1630s. I'm not sure where this concept of unrestricted trade of guns in the 1630s comes from?
Heck. I concede I could have got that date wrong. I'm going to have to check my books for what the heck I was remembering or misremembering. Heck.
Even if I'm wrong, let's interrogate the argument and ask two questions because I think it's interesting.
In the modern world, we like fireworks. What does this tell us about modern society? Does it mean that we are unfamiliar with them? That we have very little access to them? Or does it tell us that we find loud noises exciting?
If that logic follows, then maybe he was just the fellow with powder to spare.
Let's think about it from another angle, here is a stranger coming into your village, he carries a pistol into your house. Is it not better if he wastes his ammunition firing into the air? If he can be tricked into disarming himself?
Not saying these are right. Hopefully interesting.
Unfortunately this isn’t related to the video itself but I noticed a lot of my favourite videos of yours have been removed, do you remove videos periodically when you’re unhappy with them or is it sometimes a legal thing?
I take videos down semi-frequently. Five general reasons.
One, I made a major factual error and am not comfortable with knowingly presenting misinformation.
Two, the video presented an opinion that I no longer endorse.
Three, the video got a lot of flack, which could mean I was out of line or off base.
Four, I rewatched it a year later and was repulsed by the low abysmally low quality.
Five, copyright claims.
@@MalcolmPL understandable, I do miss some of those oldies though. I saved a clip from your video about the “great men of history” because it struck me so