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Speaker 1: this epic superhero franchise.
Speaker 3: From the nods to the comics to the electrifying performances.
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Speaker 3: earn their wizards, and I think we've made a good
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Speaker 3: like five stars or spar because every character deserves their
Speaker 3: moments in the spotlight.
Speaker 4: Oh, Kyle, you know, speaking of spotlights, did you know
Speaker 4: that the term advertisement actually comes from the Latin advertire,
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Speaker 3: Hold on, that's where you're wrong, extremists, Shane.
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Speaker 2: Enough said, I hope you like Mustard Bye.
Speaker 6: Ever, wonder where the devil got his horns?
Speaker 2: How about those clove and hoovers for that pitch for
Speaker 2: it an angel?
Speaker 6: No, he was a snake.
Speaker 2: No, he's the great red drag. No, he's the beast.
Speaker 6: He's the Prince of this world, Prince of Darkness, believes
Speaker 6: the Prince of dark Good Morning, Star lovelyi'es One of
Speaker 6: my names is Lester Ryan.
Speaker 2: Clark, and I sometimes go by Keenan Dias and.
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Speaker 6: What comes to mind when I say Lucifer?
Speaker 2: How about Satan? What about just the Devil?
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Speaker 2: Take a guided tour with Dante through the Nine Circles
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Speaker 2: FM and join us in the Die of Discussion.
Speaker 6: Love and His is wah, didn't Alphatino play him in
Speaker 6: a movie?
Speaker 7: Sure, there wasn't.
Speaker 2: Robert didn't. Theres one that was Elizabeth.
Speaker 6: He go down to Georgia and some.
Speaker 5: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends say,
Speaker 5: we're bringing an episode that was actually intended to go
Speaker 5: out a few weeks earlier, around the time of Thanksgiving
Speaker 5: here in the United States. We had a couple of
Speaker 5: technical delays on my part, so it's a little bit
Speaker 5: past topic, but we still think it's something that's relevant
Speaker 5: and we want to talk about, and that's a topic
Speaker 5: of indigenous Native representation in the stories we love. Riki
Speaker 5: has been trying for a little while to get me
Speaker 5: to watch the movie Pray, a movie that I was
Speaker 5: a lot more interested in kind of the fact that
Speaker 5: existed than the movie itself. And I'll talk more about
Speaker 5: that as we get into it and our discussion of
Speaker 5: that movie, which, for those who don't know, it is
Speaker 5: a a Predator style movie. It's very much in the
Speaker 5: It is a part of the Predator franchise with very
Speaker 5: much a Predator character, but it's set in what would
Speaker 5: become the United States that at that point, the native
Speaker 5: territories that the French were starting to encroach on in
Speaker 5: the seventeen sixties. And and most of the cast and crew,
Speaker 5: and most of the cast and and people worked on
Speaker 5: the movie are themselves Native and and so we're going
Speaker 5: to talk about that. We're also going to talk about
Speaker 5: some other instances of Native American representation and movies, both
Speaker 5: good and bad, including Dances with Wolves, which is a
Speaker 5: prettyseminal work in terms of like a marker of you know,
Speaker 5: how was representation like at the time that that movie
Speaker 5: was made in the eighties. And we'll talk about that
Speaker 5: and the good and the bad and some of the
Speaker 5: other things that came around it. But Ricky, let me
Speaker 5: just start by giving you a chance to say hello
Speaker 5: and then asking you kind of why was Pray a
Speaker 5: movie you were so excited for me to watch and
Speaker 5: talk about?
Speaker 8: Well, hello, Matthew and listeners. Yeah, I mean for me personally,
Speaker 8: I love horror as a genre, and the Predator franchise
Speaker 8: is a science fiction horrorcore and I've been watching these
Speaker 8: movies for a while and then mostly aren't good, especially
Speaker 8: when when you get into the crossover Alien Aliens versus Predator.
Speaker 7: Prey is arguably.
Speaker 8: The best movie in the franchise, you'd have to put
Speaker 8: it up against the original Predator, and it shares like
Speaker 8: a mood to it, yeah, right, whereas a lot of
Speaker 8: the other ones just become gunfests and stuff. There's a real,
Speaker 8: like one v one like warrior battle element to Prey
Speaker 8: and the original Predator, you know, once you get down
Speaker 8: to just Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, and so, like I watched
Speaker 8: it as a Predator franchise movie, I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: like this, this is like taking the franchise back in
Speaker 8: a good way in my opinion. And then on top
Speaker 8: of that, the way that they presented the protagonist and
Speaker 8: the way that it's just feels genuine, I think is
Speaker 8: what really struck me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely hear that. I want to talk about
Speaker 5: those elements. I'll just start by saying a little bit
Speaker 5: about the movie myself. I think I was able to
Speaker 5: watch this and go a this is one of the
Speaker 5: best examples I think of this genre, not just Predator itself,
Speaker 5: but the whole like, you know, a single monster against
Speaker 5: a single you know, protagonist chasing each other through through
Speaker 5: an environment. And I'm so happy it got made and
Speaker 5: I'm so happy for the incredible representation and answer what
Speaker 5: that means for Hollywood. And I still don't like Predator movies,
Speaker 5: because I got to the end of it and I
Speaker 5: was like, that's it was like if someone made like
Speaker 5: the absolute best cream of mushroom soup that you could imagine.
Speaker 5: I would admire the cookery, I would admire how good
Speaker 5: everything is, and I still wouldn't like cream of mushroom soup.
Speaker 5: But I think I was able to really appreciate, like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 5: they're doing these things with the genre that I think
Speaker 5: you're right both really honor the genre and and don't
Speaker 5: change it, but also say like, look, if this is
Speaker 5: about an alien, aliens would have come to indigenous peoples
Speaker 5: as well, you know, certainly in our own mythos of
Speaker 5: like you know, there's lots of Native communities that have
Speaker 5: myths of beings from other worlds that come. It's not
Speaker 5: just like white people or you know, whatever it is
Speaker 5: that have those kind of ideas. So yeah, I'm and
Speaker 5: we're not here to talk about the quality of the movie.
Speaker 5: I think I can easily acknowledge that, Like I think
Speaker 5: the acting, the cinematography, the way the drama was done
Speaker 5: is far better than any of the movie is probably
Speaker 5: including the Arnold one, although that does have a special
Speaker 5: place in my heart, both because in Arnold Schwartzen and
Speaker 5: Carl Weathers and as someone who was a lover of
Speaker 5: the Box the Rocky movies. That was kind of the
Speaker 5: merger of my two favorite you know, steroid laden men
Speaker 5: with incredible muscles movie franchises.
Speaker 8: And the classic arm clasp that has been memified, and
Speaker 8: I think a lot of people don't even recognize or
Speaker 8: remember that that's where for a while, like I didn't.
Speaker 8: I was like, wait a minute, what is this from?
Speaker 8: Like this is familiar, and there's a scene where Arnold
Speaker 8: and Carl Weathers clasp their arms in greeting, and yeah,
Speaker 8: and that has become the iconic image.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's funny. I didn't even realize that it is
Speaker 5: from this, but you're right, And i'ld say one of
Speaker 5: the things I think is a little bit ironic because
Speaker 5: actually on a different podcast that talked about the Original
Speaker 5: Predator a couple of months ago, I think here on
Speaker 5: the it was the Next Real Film podcast, that original
Speaker 5: movie does something that is kind of like it is
Speaker 5: very cynical but kind of brilliant of Hollywood in that
Speaker 5: they do want to have a big gun fest, and
Speaker 5: they do want to have, you know, our American heroes
Speaker 5: going and killing the commies. But also this was the
Speaker 5: late eighties when we're supposed to maybe not be so
Speaker 5: quite gung ho about it. So forgive me spoilers for
Speaker 5: a movie that's forty years old, thirty years old. There's
Speaker 5: an early scene in which the heroes go and because
Speaker 5: they're supposed to be an American basically like gi you know,
Speaker 5: commando unit, and utterly wipe out this community of locals.
Speaker 5: And I don't think they ever quite tell you what
Speaker 5: Latin American probably Central American nation it is. But this
Speaker 5: is at a time when US troops were fighting in Honduras,
Speaker 5: in Guatemala, in Nicaragua, in Panama, like, so it is
Speaker 5: one of those places probably, and it may will be
Speaker 5: that they identify it. I don't remember. And so you
Speaker 5: get the scene of kind of horrific slaughter that probably
Speaker 5: is an eight year old. I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's great. And then later we realized that the the
Speaker 5: Carl Weather's character is a CIA operative who actually had
Speaker 5: fooled Arnold Schwarzenegger into thinking that these were communists, and
Speaker 5: actually it was just like a Native community in this
Speaker 5: Latin American country that wasn't fully on board with what
Speaker 5: the right wing government was doing or some it was
Speaker 5: some kind of political machinations. So you both got to
Speaker 5: have the look, let's cheer as the Americans go and
Speaker 5: shoot them all up, but then have the moral purity
Speaker 5: of oh but no, actually this was American CIA doing
Speaker 5: bad things, so it's okay. So I just wanted to
Speaker 5: gott to ethically highlight that, both because of the hypocrisy
Speaker 5: there and the citicism, but also because it was almost
Speaker 5: I don't think it's ever named, but that was almost
Speaker 5: definitely a native, like an indigenous community within the Latin
Speaker 5: American country that gets slaughtered. So, pulling us back to
Speaker 5: the movie Prey itself, let's talk about the representation. Tell
Speaker 5: us more about kind of like who is who is
Speaker 5: the protagonist and and what went into making this movie.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so the main protagonist, the character's name is Nauru
Speaker 8: and she is played by Amber mid Thunder, who is
Speaker 8: already maybe or is on the verge of stardom. She
Speaker 8: was also in the Avatar live action as the Princess
Speaker 8: of the North, and I think she's in She's in
Speaker 8: a bunch of upcoming projects and it just seems like
Speaker 8: on the verge again, like if not already a star
Speaker 8: and absolutely like this. This movie Prey was released in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty two and I think has really put her
Speaker 8: on the map. The other primary actor is Dakota Beavers,
Speaker 8: who plays Tabi, her brother, and there are a bunch
Speaker 8: of other and they are both Native American.
Speaker 7: People. Let me see, I have the specific so.
Speaker 5: Command they're both part of the Commanche nation.
Speaker 8: The characters, yeah, the characters are Commanchi, Ambram, mid Thunder
Speaker 8: is listed is a bunch of things, primarily Navajo, because like.
Speaker 7: This heritage is like not just a set.
Speaker 8: Try right, Like there's at this point because of what
Speaker 8: has happened historically, there's been a lot of crossover.
Speaker 7: Dakode of Beavers is.
Speaker 8: Okay O Wingey Pueblo, and I hope I have pronounced
Speaker 8: that accurately.
Speaker 7: And then the other.
Speaker 8: Important person I think in all of this is one
Speaker 8: of the producers of the movie. Jane Myers is Commanchi
Speaker 8: and Blackfoot, and I feel like her role in this
Speaker 8: is as important as the performers, if not more so,
Speaker 8: just just from a like authenticity standpoint, right, Like she
Speaker 8: was there to make sure that everything looked right, sounded right,
Speaker 8: that it was authentic to like the commanche experience right,
Speaker 8: and put you know, if she wasn't aware herself, like
Speaker 8: putting the the people in charge, like in touch with people.
Speaker 8: And I believe this was filmed in Central Canada on
Speaker 8: native land there and they they went through the proper
Speaker 8: steps and honored the people in the land and did
Speaker 8: a commencement upon starting the filming. So like all of that, right,
Speaker 8: like showing respect to the people that you're portraying, I
Speaker 8: think is as important to the process as like using
Speaker 8: native representation in the cast.
Speaker 5: I think that is so important, especially because not only
Speaker 5: is this about like it's one thing to do that
Speaker 5: in a modern day story, but this is specifically about
Speaker 5: a story about Native people, the Kamanche people in this story,
Speaker 5: and it's set in seventeen nineteen, where so not only
Speaker 5: are you studying a people that is so rarely studied,
Speaker 5: but also the history of it. You know, it's not
Speaker 5: just like this person can say, oh, my lived experience
Speaker 5: as a commanche person today is this. It's that we're
Speaker 5: talking to people who have really studied the history and
Speaker 5: I think it's particularly important because one of the plot
Speaker 5: there there are white folks who are coming into the land,
Speaker 5: but it's set in seventeen nineteen. This is just when
Speaker 5: initial contact between the in this case it's French fur
Speaker 5: trappers and the Native folks, you know, has maybe started
Speaker 5: in the last like thirty to fifty years. And I
Speaker 5: say that because I mean, we don't have many white
Speaker 5: people's histories of like history is written by white people
Speaker 5: of what these folks were like, and the ones we
Speaker 5: have are probably incredibly untrustworthy. So we're going to do
Speaker 5: this is about the study of you know, we're what
Speaker 5: are the native historians, what are the people who've been
Speaker 5: studying this community? Not this community through the eyes of
Speaker 5: the white people, because like there is that contact with
Speaker 5: the French trappers that becomes a major plot point. But
Speaker 5: for Marg's part, this is about a community that is
Speaker 5: fairly untouched by by the white folks who have come
Speaker 5: to their continent.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and that's I think for me, as someone who
Speaker 8: obviously is not Native, like I don't know for certain,
Speaker 8: like how authentic this is, right, Like I have to
Speaker 8: as an audience member, you have to take some of
Speaker 8: it on trust. And the fact that certain people are
Speaker 8: involved in this I think gives me that trust. And
Speaker 8: I don't know, I think that's really important because a
Speaker 8: lot of the other like primary people I believe are
Speaker 8: are are white. But again, like the positioning of Jane Myers,
Speaker 8: who's like evolved in a lot of Native movie like
Speaker 8: Native centric movies and TV shows like that to me
Speaker 8: is like okay, like you are putting someone here specifically
Speaker 8: like to do a thing that is very important right
Speaker 8: for this project. And I don't know, I it's very difficult, right,
Speaker 8: Like we as audience members, I don't it's it's always
Speaker 8: hard to say, like what is good and what is
Speaker 8: bad representation. You have to listen to the people, and
Speaker 8: for the most part, like the people, like the Native
Speaker 8: reviewers and critics have said like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is good.
Speaker 8: And one of the things that we didn't mention yet
Speaker 8: is that there is a dubbed version of this movie
Speaker 8: available that is dubbed.
Speaker 7: In Comanche, right, And.
Speaker 8: What I have read is that this is the first
Speaker 8: time ever in movie history that that has been done.
Speaker 5: That That's what I've read as well, and that originally
Speaker 5: Hulu didn't think that because this is produced by Hulu,
Speaker 5: I believe, and they did not think that that would
Speaker 5: be necessary, but that that was requested by a lot
Speaker 5: of people, and so they wanted putting that out. And
Speaker 5: even in the the English language version, which one I
Speaker 5: saw and I'm presuming you saw there are there is
Speaker 5: a lot of command she spoken. They switch it. Instead
Speaker 5: of making a movie that's mostly subtitled, they have those
Speaker 5: the characters who are who are Commanche speak in English
Speaker 5: for audience recognition, but even in that one, you'll hear
Speaker 5: some of the Commanche language.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and that's just like a movie conceit right, like
Speaker 8: right for us as primarily English language speakers, Like we're
Speaker 8: putting out a movie where they speak in English, right,
Speaker 8: But to have that Comanche dub available, I think is
Speaker 8: I mean, it is like by de Finish, groundbreaking. But
Speaker 8: I also think that it is very important.
Speaker 5: M h. I can see that.
Speaker 8: And again, like this is a kind of schlocky sci
Speaker 8: fi horror franchise and they have done what, in my opinion,
Speaker 8: is like one of the most important you know, native.
Speaker 7: Representation and things in movies in years is really interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think it's so true. And you you
Speaker 5: you were kind of alluding to this, but I just
Speaker 5: want to like outright state you know, there there are
Speaker 5: times where between you or I are one of our guests,
Speaker 5: we have a voice on this podcast from the community
Speaker 5: that is represented in something that we're talking about. That's
Speaker 5: not the case today. So I don't want to speak
Speaker 5: completely fore you, but I know myself, I don't have
Speaker 5: any you know, connection to Native American communities whatsoever in
Speaker 5: my own family heritage. And I think that the point
Speaker 5: you make that this was one episode where part of
Speaker 5: why we took our time with it is we didn't
Speaker 5: want to just watch them movie and talk about it.
Speaker 5: We both wanted to do a lot of research on it.
Speaker 5: We both wanted to read a lot more about it
Speaker 5: because I do. And one of the things I think
Speaker 5: that makes this even more complicated, and you've seen in
Speaker 5: terms of like some of the debates that happen over
Speaker 5: the you know, things like sports mascots that are considered
Speaker 5: by some people to be racist, like the former name
Speaker 5: of the Washington football team and things like that, myself
Speaker 5: being one of the one who thinks that they're racist.
Speaker 5: To be clear, because as you mentioned, like the who
Speaker 5: is in what Native tribe or Native community has become
Speaker 5: very convoluted, in large part due to American colonialism and
Speaker 5: the kind of the intentional division of tribes. But also
Speaker 5: there's become a very politicized idea of who is or
Speaker 5: who is not part of one political group or another.
Speaker 5: And so, for example, like you have people who are
Speaker 5: part of the officially recognized by the United States government
Speaker 5: organization of like I think in the case of Florida
Speaker 5: State University, the Seminole, that those ones are saying they
Speaker 5: have no problem with Florida State. Those are the ones
Speaker 5: who are also getting paid quite a lot by Florida
Speaker 5: State and others who are against it. I can't claim
Speaker 5: to comment on which side is which there and which
Speaker 5: one is right or wrong, but I'm just saying that
Speaker 5: it gets a lot more complicated than just being able
Speaker 5: to find one person who says, oh, hey, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: I'm fine. I thought this movie was fine, or I
Speaker 5: thought this movie was racist or whatever it is. And
Speaker 5: in this case, though is as far as I can see,
Speaker 5: and I think this is what you're saying as well.
Speaker 5: It's not just like, oh, we found one commentator. It's
Speaker 5: fairly universal among both like historians of all backgrounds but
Speaker 5: also people of the native communities that are being represented
Speaker 5: here who talk about the authenticity of this movie really
Speaker 5: meaning something and it being real.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely, Like that's that's what I mean. Is like
Speaker 8: you have to have some trust, right as an audience member,
Speaker 8: because we don't have that experience, So pay attention to
Speaker 8: the people who do have the experience and what they say,
Speaker 8: like whatever it is right, Like there are a lot
Speaker 8: of issues in the world where you and I want
Speaker 8: to care about things, but we don't know what the
Speaker 8: right thing is sometimes, so we have to listen and
Speaker 8: pay attention and to me a like just baseline as
Speaker 8: a movie, as a as a fan of horror, this
Speaker 8: was an amazing movie. Like it was just well filmed,
Speaker 8: like well acted, the action sequences were good, all of
Speaker 8: that m and on top of that, to layer what
Speaker 8: they have done to present the Comanche people in you
Speaker 8: know again, like what we believe is an authentic portrayal
Speaker 8: in this movie is just like doubly good.
Speaker 5: No, you're right, that really means a lot. And for
Speaker 5: folks who want to learn more about this, And so
Speaker 5: if you allow me to do a brief transition here
Speaker 5: into the keeping the lights on part of the podcast.
Speaker 5: There are some great books on commanche history, including one
Speaker 5: by the cultural consultant for this movie, a guy named
Speaker 5: Jimmy Arterberry was the one of the research historians that
Speaker 5: was very involved in the making of Prey. He has
Speaker 5: a book that he worked on called The Commanche Maker
Speaker 5: The Commanche Marker Trees of Texas. That's a very specific
Speaker 5: one about the marker tree tradition. But there's a number
Speaker 5: of other great books on commanding history that are often
Speaker 5: referenced in terms of discussions of this book, in terms
Speaker 5: of discussion of this movie, I'm going to put the
Speaker 5: notes into the show notes because if you want to
Speaker 5: get those books through bookstore dot org, you can throw
Speaker 5: a little bit of money back to the back to
Speaker 5: us and making this podcast. But even better, I think
Speaker 5: one of the best ways to listen to books is
Speaker 5: books on tape audiobooks because they're not really on tape anymore,
Speaker 5: but you know, you get to listen to a book
Speaker 5: while you're doing a road trip, while you are doing
Speaker 5: the dishes, if you want something to listen to while
Speaker 5: you're wrapping present this holiday season. And you can buy
Speaker 5: individual books through audible dot com, but you can also
Speaker 5: get a yearly membership. Yearly membership means you get access
Speaker 5: to a lot of books for free. You get at
Speaker 5: least one credit for a book once a month, and
Speaker 5: that can be for like a ten dollars book or
Speaker 5: a forty dollars book, doesn't matter, it's one credit. This
Speaker 5: is a great thing to get for yourself, but also
Speaker 5: make a wonderful gift. I think it's about one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty dollars for the year. You can buy it
Speaker 5: monthly installments and if you buy it through our link,
Speaker 5: you will get and if you buy it and if
Speaker 5: you buy it through our link, not only do you
Speaker 5: get this great product that can be a great gift
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Speaker 5: the podcast. The link is in the show notes. If
Speaker 5: you go to true Story dot fm, slash Ethical Audible,
Speaker 5: you'll get access to it. You won't see anything on
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Speaker 5: Makes a great gift. Another thing, and I'm mostly can
Speaker 5: talk about this on the Star Wars podcast, but I
Speaker 5: can happily announce it here as well. We are now
Speaker 5: being sponsored by Level up Lightsabers. Level Up Lightsabers is
Speaker 5: where I got my lightsabers. They're fantastic company. Neighborhood Master
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Speaker 5: give some thoughts to that. Now back to our episode.
Speaker 5: All right, welcome back. Thank you for allowing us to
Speaker 5: teeth the lights on a little bit. One other piece
Speaker 5: of representation to this movie. I think that also should
Speaker 5: be named. And then I'm curious your thoughts on Riki,
Speaker 5: because you know the genre better than I. Not only
Speaker 5: is this the first Predator movie with a native protagonist,
Speaker 5: but also the first woman as a protagonist. The movie
Speaker 5: Predator does not the original movie does not come anywhere
Speaker 5: close to the Bachtel test. I think there's literally like
Speaker 5: one or two women in the village who gets slaughtered,
Speaker 5: and otherwise it's just a tale of boys being boys
Speaker 5: out in the jungle. And I understand, certainly of the
Speaker 5: eighties action movie genre that was fairly common. I know that,
Speaker 5: like you know, in it's not always the case in horror,
Speaker 5: but often in horror, if there's a woman protagonist, she's
Speaker 5: much more of the like scream and run away and
Speaker 5: have to fight when she has to fight, and that
Speaker 5: people like you know, Ripley and Alien are less common
Speaker 5: for you, like, how did it fit or kind of
Speaker 5: seem like it was standing out for the rest of
Speaker 5: the genre of having to be a woman character and
Speaker 5: a fairly young woman who is seen by her own
Speaker 5: community as not being the one people are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: she should go out and do our hunting. She's our
Speaker 5: best warrior.
Speaker 8: I believe you're wrong on the Predator franchise. I want
Speaker 8: to say Alien Versus Predator. The first one had a woman,
Speaker 8: you know, that was a very ensemble cast that gets
Speaker 8: whittled down. But the final girl is the they are
Speaker 8: called in horror, like Slasher Horror was a black woman,
Speaker 8: I believe, Okay, but in general, yeah, like it's it's
Speaker 8: often male dominated.
Speaker 7: There was another one.
Speaker 8: I can't remember what all of these movies are called,
Speaker 8: because they're like.
Speaker 5: They didn't stick out to you, a cinematic genius.
Speaker 7: Well, no, they have like similar names. Okay, here's.
Speaker 8: Here Predator, Predator to Alien Versus Predator, Alien Versus Predator, Requiem, Predators,
Speaker 8: the Predator, and Pray. So they've like taken a very
Speaker 8: fast and the furious right tack to naming these movies,
Speaker 8: and that's why I'm like, I can't keep track of
Speaker 8: like what order they are and which one is specifically
Speaker 8: which right.
Speaker 5: What I read was that this was the first one
Speaker 5: with a female lead. But it may also be that
Speaker 5: they're thinking of the Alien Verse, Predators, its own franchise,
Speaker 5: or you know, who knows how they're categorizing that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but also like this is why, like I categorize
Speaker 8: this as horror, Like a lot of these movies go
Speaker 8: into much more action, but this this to me, like
Speaker 8: and the final girl thing like that is a horror
Speaker 8: staple versus like action movies like Arnold Schwarzenegg or Sylvester
Speaker 8: Stallone type things. So in the realm of horror, like
Speaker 8: the protagonist being a woman and being a strong woman
Speaker 8: is not.
Speaker 7: At all an unusual thing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you talked about them screaming and running away, like
Speaker 8: that's kind of like a first act thing, but the
Speaker 8: final act will you know, when they become the final girl.
Speaker 8: They these horror protagonist women do take agency over the
Speaker 8: situation and defeat you know, the slasher or whoever through
Speaker 8: some clever means.
Speaker 7: It's not you know, it's not an accident.
Speaker 8: And the original Terminator too, like took a similar path
Speaker 8: of like horror Slasheress where Linda Hamilton Sarah Connor like
Speaker 8: Reese was was down for the count and she took
Speaker 8: agency of the situation and killed the terminator.
Speaker 5: Right, Okay, that's yeah, I think. I mean, I'll admit
Speaker 5: I don't know as much about the horror movie genre
Speaker 5: as I do, like say, action, I think, I like,
Speaker 5: I've often heard the first of the alien movies referred
Speaker 5: to and maybe the second one often referred to as
Speaker 5: horror and that and I think what I often heard
Speaker 5: is that Sugewarney Weaver's character, ripley Is is kind of
Speaker 5: an anomaly in the genre. But it sounds like maybe
Speaker 5: it's not. And so I was thinking of those terms.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's not quite as quite as out there, but yeah,
Speaker 5: that could dectually makes sense.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, like.
Speaker 8: Gosh, like the Halloween franchise, Jamie like, for example, yeah,
Speaker 8: like Jamie Lee Curtis, Like she made her name originally
Speaker 8: as a scream queen, right, like right that the screaming
Speaker 8: is iconic.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 8: Even at the end of the first movie she defeats
Speaker 8: Michael Myers and and now like she's just completely become
Speaker 8: like badass grandma every thing. And again, like that's similar
Speaker 8: to the turn that Sarah Connor took in the franchise,
Speaker 8: like she was the damsel in distress. Like through ninety
Speaker 8: percent of the first movie, right, and but then in
Speaker 8: terminated to Judgment Day, she was she was buff, and
Speaker 8: she knew how to, you know, use all the guns
Speaker 8: and everything, and and was like the Prepper basically.
Speaker 7: In that in that movie.
Speaker 5: And I think this leads to another thing I really
Speaker 5: appreciated about this movie, Pray. I think, especially when it
Speaker 5: is white people trying to tell a movie about another culture,
Speaker 5: where they're trying to be like, Okay, we don't want
Speaker 5: to be racist about this anymore, but you often can
Speaker 5: go kind of where it becomes almost kind of noble
Speaker 5: savage or you know, some other kind of idealizing a
Speaker 5: culture to the point of where you're still not really
Speaker 5: looking at it. You're looking at it as though, like, oh,
Speaker 5: we white people are so bad, so everything of this
Speaker 5: other culture must be great and wonderful and perfect. And again,
Speaker 5: I think this is a story told by people in
Speaker 5: the culture, and the fact is that she's treated in
Speaker 5: very sexist ways by her community, you know, like the
Speaker 5: guy Warriors, You're like, no, you're just a scrawning girl.
Speaker 5: You can't go out and hunt with us. And I
Speaker 5: like that, you know, because I like this kind of
Speaker 5: reminder of like, yeah, sexism is sexism, and it's very
Speaker 5: tied up white supremacy to be sure, but also it's
Speaker 5: gonna happen in these other communities, you know, and like it.
Speaker 5: Not that I like seeing that kind of bad thing
Speaker 5: and it's not like horrible, but it's just generally like
Speaker 5: the there's at least one guy who really kind of
Speaker 5: rips her and someone else he's like, no, no, you
Speaker 5: have to be protected, And it just was nice that
Speaker 5: they're not. They weren't to say like everything is perfect
Speaker 5: and wonderful here. It was just saying like, yeah, this
Speaker 5: is the culture and what it was like in the
Speaker 5: early seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But by the end of the movie, again, like in
Speaker 8: kind of typical slasher final girl way, you know, she
Speaker 8: comes back with I think the scalp of the predator
Speaker 8: and her drive is like.
Speaker 7: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, they accept it.
Speaker 8: Seems like they were going to accept her as a
Speaker 8: leader or you know, like a hunter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I admit, because I'd heard so much about this
Speaker 5: being a kind of like pre white people culture contact community,
Speaker 5: I was a little surprised at the inclusion of the
Speaker 5: French Canadian characters in it. What did you think of
Speaker 5: their role in the movie, and like why was it necessary?
Speaker 8: Uh? Yeah, I'm not sure what they're there for. I
Speaker 8: kind of maybe to like be bad mm hmm, like villain,
Speaker 8: like both villain bad but also.
Speaker 7: Incompetent, right right.
Speaker 8: In order to make Nauru to elevate Hers as the
Speaker 8: as the final girl, right right, Like in Slashers, you
Speaker 8: have to have other characters acting in not smart ways
Speaker 8: and get killed by Jason Vorhiz or who with Michael Myers, Like,
Speaker 8: oh well, yeah, like they're they're done for. And that's
Speaker 8: why I like this character is better.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's probably mostly that it's a way
Speaker 5: to provide more bodies. It's a way to provide an
Speaker 5: like I think one of the hard parts of making
Speaker 5: a movie like Predator, which part of why I don't
Speaker 5: always love it but many people do, and that's awesome,
Speaker 5: is when there's only one antagonist, they don't have henchmen
Speaker 5: that you can have like small victories during the course
Speaker 5: of the movie to get like a high. They don't
Speaker 5: have like you know, other plots you can and can
Speaker 5: escape from, especially when this one, like it just wants
Speaker 5: to kill you. I think they're mostly there as a
Speaker 5: plot device because in the movie what ends up happening
Speaker 5: is that the French fur trappers capture them, and so
Speaker 5: it provides an escape opportunity and also a kind of
Speaker 5: moment of them want them being smart enough to figure
Speaker 5: out how to hide from the predator when the French
Speaker 5: are not what I did think it was a It
Speaker 5: felt to me like it was thematic though, in because
Speaker 5: this is about a community that has been largely untouched
Speaker 5: that is now beginning to be invaded by people who
Speaker 5: see them not as fellow human beings, not as fellow
Speaker 5: sentient life, but just as you know, potential slaves or
Speaker 5: potential sexual objects, or potential whatever. And I think that's
Speaker 5: for me, at least, the message I got of it
Speaker 5: was that that's very much how the predators see things
Speaker 5: as well. You know that the predator is also something
Speaker 5: who's not seeing that like, oh this is fellows aient life.
Speaker 5: It's oh, these are just animals for us to hunt
Speaker 5: and pray and have enjoyment from. Uh that maybe maybe
Speaker 5: reading too much into the movie, and maybe right, we
Speaker 5: just needed some more short of bad guys so that
Speaker 5: we could see how cool the predator was and not
Speaker 5: think it was one of our heroes getting killed, but
Speaker 5: that was definitely something I took away from it.
Speaker 8: I also think that there's something there's a through line
Speaker 8: in the franchise of technology, like human technology not.
Speaker 7: Working or being enough true.
Speaker 8: Right, Like in the original one, Arnold's commandos have machine
Speaker 8: guns and they fire blindly into the forest when they think,
Speaker 8: you know, they're being followed by the predator, and they
Speaker 8: miss because he's invisible, and it shows like the the
Speaker 8: futileness of these modern weapons. And at the end, Arnold
Speaker 8: defeats the predator with like maybe like a machete and
Speaker 8: like setting a trap.
Speaker 7: With the like logs.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I believe is what happens, like a sharpened log
Speaker 8: like he walks them.
Speaker 5: And they defeat. He also defeats him in part because
Speaker 5: he realizes that his vision is infra red and he
Speaker 5: covers himself in mud.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so uses the predator's own technology against him, which
Speaker 8: is even more stark in Prey, right, literally using the
Speaker 8: predators like laser be mask thinking above against it. So
Speaker 8: I think that's part of it, is like showing that
Speaker 8: the French have this over alliance on firearms and how
Speaker 8: ineffective that.
Speaker 5: Is, right, Yeah, I think it's definitely the case, and
Speaker 5: just kind of this is just none about the reputation all,
Speaker 5: just like a cool thing. This Predator's tech is not
Speaker 5: as quite as high tech as the Predator that we
Speaker 5: see in the Arnold Schwarzenegger and those movies, which because
Speaker 5: this is three hundred years earlier and clearly they're an
Speaker 5: alien race that is much more advanced. They have the
Speaker 5: ability to travel between the planets and the stars. But yeah,
Speaker 5: he doesn't have quite the same tech that they do
Speaker 5: three hundred years later, which made sense.
Speaker 8: It's a great attention to detail, ye for the curators
Speaker 8: of the franchise, and I'm really excited about the franchise.
Speaker 8: Like a lot of franchises kind of stumble through their
Speaker 8: sequels and they get worse and worse, and it reaches
Speaker 8: a point where you have to have some kind of
Speaker 8: reset of quality otherwise you're just gonna go away, you know.
Speaker 8: Like the Leprechaun franchise has just like disappeared pretty much,
Speaker 8: although they keep trying, like they get worse and worse,
Speaker 8: so I kind of hope they stop trying. Jason, Like
Speaker 8: Friday the thirteenth, we haven't had one in a while.
Speaker 8: That's also like mired in like legal copyright issues.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was gonna say, like, I don't think
Speaker 5: there's anyone who thinks Nightmare on Elm Street twelve or
Speaker 5: you know, Friday the thirteenth nine is as good as
Speaker 5: the originals, you know, like.
Speaker 8: But there are there are like functional resets where the
Speaker 8: quality goes up, and that often leads to a resurgence.
Speaker 8: I really hope that this is the beginning of that
Speaker 8: for this franchise, and that they are able to do
Speaker 8: some things and maybe this is the answer, right, like
Speaker 8: having like historical dramas with a predator, like a predator
Speaker 8: versus a European night or a Japanese samurai. Yeah, the
Speaker 8: type of thing, Like I don't know, like maybe that's
Speaker 8: where they need to go.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it could be kind of great if it was
Speaker 5: just like, all right, we're gonna go to like you know,
Speaker 5: Middle Ages, Japan, We're gonna go up against like a
Speaker 5: Zulu warrior in like the seventeen hundreds or something like that,
Speaker 5: you know, go to someplace in Africa, like, yeah, that
Speaker 5: could be a lot of fun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because the modern version got really tired because it
Speaker 8: was just like more guns, like and then ending up
Speaker 8: with the same like we're gonna beat it with a
Speaker 8: knife and like trickery, let's just take away the machine
Speaker 8: guns at this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's true. I think it's true. So
Speaker 5: let's switch gears a little bit. Because as part of
Speaker 5: our conversation about this movie, you know, got us talking
Speaker 5: about the sort of broader topic of indigen presentation, and
Speaker 5: it's one that I've talked about a lot, particularly in
Speaker 5: the movie regarding the movie Echo or the TV show Echo,
Speaker 5: which I really felt connected to because of the amputation representation.
Speaker 5: We did an episode about that about a year ago,
Speaker 5: which is actually any broadcast in a week or so
Speaker 5: because we're taking a couple of weeks off around the holidays,
Speaker 5: so you'll get to hear that episode. But Riki, as
Speaker 5: you and I were talking about this, we were also
Speaker 5: talking about kind of like how does this movie compare
Speaker 5: to the history of looking at a history of way
Speaker 5: Native Americans have been presented in cinema, in TV and
Speaker 5: things like that. And obviously it's a very very awful
Speaker 5: history of that with like the John Wayne Westerns and
Speaker 5: Native Americans always seen as this like incredible stereotypical, very
Speaker 5: little authenticity, just like you know, stealing children and killing
Speaker 5: women and needing a John Wayne cowboy to go to
Speaker 5: deal with them. But we were talking about like some
Speaker 5: better examples that aren't prey but at least are like
Speaker 5: steps along the journey, and you mentioned dances with wolves,
Speaker 5: and I was quite surprised because I think I, like
Speaker 5: a lot of people remember dances with Wolves as an
Speaker 5: example of Hollywood getting Native representation wrong. And I'll talk
Speaker 5: more about why that is in terms of how I
Speaker 5: remember it, but you really kind of offered me a
Speaker 5: very different way of understanding it looking at it and
Speaker 5: went back and watched it, and you kind of convinced me.
Speaker 5: So tell me more about kind of how you see
Speaker 5: dances with wolves in this story of like in the eighties,
Speaker 5: native rep was definitely not where it is today and
Speaker 5: even today still has a long way to go, but
Speaker 5: the dancing with wolves can actually be seen is kind
Speaker 5: of a positive step on this journey.
Speaker 8: Yeah, for me, Like I used the phrase you're wrong earlier,
Speaker 8: but this is like there's a podcast called You're Wrong
Speaker 8: About that deals with like things we think we remember
Speaker 8: about society or media or whatever, and I really think
Speaker 8: like we're all wrong about Dances with Wolves, and I
Speaker 8: blame James Cameron, as I do for a lot of things.
Speaker 5: And let me just give a quick reminder to those
Speaker 5: who either sought many many years ago, or have never
Speaker 5: seen it, or just don't know about it. Dances with
Speaker 5: Wolves was a Kevin Costner movie that was very critically
Speaker 5: acclaimed at the time, but has since been viewed very critically.
Speaker 5: It's about him as a white officer in the Union
Speaker 5: Army who, after the war gets assigned to a post
Speaker 5: way out in what is now Colorado at that point
Speaker 5: is still very much kind of really on the border
Speaker 5: of Native Territory and the United States Territory, and through
Speaker 5: to a couple of bureaucratic mishaps, he's entirely by himself,
Speaker 5: and he winds up basically getting adopted by a local
Speaker 5: Native community and falling in love with a white woman
Speaker 5: who is also adopted by them because a different Native
Speaker 5: community had killed their parents, and he learns to speak
Speaker 5: their language and become a part of them, and eventually
Speaker 5: like stand up against the Union soldier, the American soldiers
Speaker 5: who actually come to try and like defeat this group.
Speaker 5: It's gotten remembered, though it was very much a let's
Speaker 5: have a story about Native folks by telling a story
Speaker 5: about a white person who becomes part of them. And
Speaker 5: I think therefore has often been seen as like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's not good representation. It's a story about a white
Speaker 5: guy who hangs out with them, so that kind of
Speaker 5: frames a little bit. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 5: of other concerns about it, both legitimate and maybe not
Speaker 5: so much. But with that, let's talk now, Riki about
Speaker 5: how you see it.
Speaker 8: So just to clarify, like when I say I blame
Speaker 8: James Cameron, I don't. I'm not like strongly like against him,
Speaker 8: like I enjoyed Terminator too, I enjoyed Aliens, like He's
Speaker 8: made some good movies. What I'm referring to, obviously is Avatar,
Speaker 8: the blue alien movie, not The Last Airbender, and he
Speaker 8: was the writer director of that movie, and it has
Speaker 8: been mostly derisively called Dances with Wolves in Space or
Speaker 8: Dances with Wolves with aliens.
Speaker 7: Right people, Yeah, And.
Speaker 8: I think that that is a somewhat accurate description of
Speaker 8: the movie, but also does a disservice to the original
Speaker 8: Dances with Wolves in comparison, because I think what Avatar
Speaker 8: does is much much worse than like how Dances with
Speaker 8: Wolves was portrayed Native people and was received at the time,
Speaker 8: and the impact it had on the industry, and so like,
Speaker 8: I think a lot of our collective memory is like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: like Avatar was Dances with Wolves in space, and like
Speaker 8: Avatar did this thing poorly.
Speaker 7: Hence Dances with Wolves did this thing poorly.
Speaker 8: And I think that that is just like completely wrong
Speaker 8: on multiple levels.
Speaker 5: I think I hear what you're saying. I will say
Speaker 5: that I think there's a longer history in between Dances
Speaker 5: with Wolves and Avatar. We've talked about the movie The
Speaker 5: Last Samurai, which feels very similar, and you know, but
Speaker 5: in that one, it's Tom Cruise who gets captured by
Speaker 5: a samurai community in the nineteenth century and then becomes
Speaker 5: one of them and becomes even better than any of them.
Speaker 5: And that movie was often referred to as Dances with Samurai.
Speaker 5: So I don't think it's just in Cameron, but yeah,
Speaker 5: there's this movie has become a touchstone of oh yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just one more white person goes off to be
Speaker 5: with this alien, exotic community and and and becomes the
Speaker 5: exemplary member of them. But I think the kind of
Speaker 5: what we're getting to, is that that dancing with wolves
Speaker 5: actually isn't that that that that is a very real
Speaker 5: trope that happens in Hollywood, But Dancing with Wolves in
Speaker 5: some ways really subverts that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And obviously, like I have feelings that I will
Speaker 8: probably talk about for the Last Samurai as well, and
Speaker 8: part so let's let's like set the the timeline. Dances
Speaker 8: with Wolves was in nineteen ninety, the Last Samurai was
Speaker 8: two thousand three, and then Avatar was two thousand and nine, right,
Speaker 8: So that's like that's the that's the progression. And I
Speaker 8: do think like part of it is because Avatar was
Speaker 8: or still is the number one grossing movie of all time,
Speaker 8: right that it had such an impact on the movie
Speaker 8: industry that year and was talked about and everyone watched it.
Speaker 7: So that's part of it.
Speaker 8: Why it is framed in this way, or like why
Speaker 8: we remembered in this way and don't remember the Last
Speaker 8: Samurai as much, I think culturally is that just like
Speaker 8: Avatar was culturally huge, and then so in that discussion,
Speaker 8: like Dances with Wolves gets compared and that's why it
Speaker 8: gets it. It gets remembered in this way. I think
Speaker 8: without Avatar, if it was just the last samurai. Would
Speaker 8: we have a better memory of dances with wolves just
Speaker 8: because the last samurai didn't have that cultural impact?
Speaker 7: Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean I think I heard the term like seven
Speaker 5: years into beet was referred to as dancing with the
Speaker 5: namai lama, like dancing with lama Like I definitely heard
Speaker 5: that term in any other cases. But either way, let's
Speaker 5: get into why is it you see dancing with wolves
Speaker 5: as a more positive example of representation, Still not great
Speaker 5: compared to something like Prey, but at least a lot
Speaker 5: more positive than some of the other examples we're talking about.
Speaker 8: So yeah, I did like a deep dive into the
Speaker 8: cast the Dances with Wolves. And this is another situation
Speaker 8: where obviously Kevin Costner is the main star, like he
Speaker 8: was the writer, director, and it's all about him.
Speaker 7: But you look at this cast and you have.
Speaker 8: Like all of the native people that he comes into
Speaker 8: contact with are being played by native performers, right, And
Speaker 8: some of these names, like Graham Green is the most
Speaker 8: prolific of them, Like he got an Oscar nomination for
Speaker 8: his performance in this movie as Kicking Bird, did not win,
Speaker 8: but he went on to be in a lot of stuff.
Speaker 7: What I have here is he was in The Green Mile.
Speaker 7: He was in.
Speaker 8: Diehard three, like the two most prominent ones that I
Speaker 8: came across, but like a huge resume before this movie.
Speaker 8: He's a Canadian actor. Before this movie, he was in
Speaker 8: seven TV shows that I've never heard of because there's
Speaker 8: a CTV and three movies. And then became became a star, right.
Speaker 7: Wes Study, who.
Speaker 8: Plays a character that is only listed as toughest Pawnee.
Speaker 8: That was the try that was opposing them in the movie,
Speaker 8: opposing like the protagonist tribe.
Speaker 7: But Wes Study.
Speaker 8: Was only in one movie prior to Dances with Wolves,
Speaker 8: although it seems to have been a prominent one because
Speaker 8: several other of the actors were in this movie. It
Speaker 8: is called Pow Wow Highway, produced by George Harrison of
Speaker 8: all people. And then after this movie, Wes Dudy went
Speaker 8: on to be in Last of the Mohicans.
Speaker 5: Right where he played Magua, which in both of those
Speaker 5: movies there's kind of like the good native tribe and
Speaker 5: the bad one, and in both he's the chief of
Speaker 5: the bad one. Yeah, which is kind of an interesting
Speaker 5: thing all to itself. But moving on, he's.
Speaker 8: Kint like villain face because he was also in Geronimo.
Speaker 8: He was in the Street Fighter movie with John Claude
Speaker 8: van Dam playing Sagat a villain, which is like weird
Speaker 8: because he's supposed to be tie. But that's another problem,
Speaker 8: you know, we have with the industry. But west Study
Speaker 8: was on a New York Times list of twenty five
Speaker 8: greatest actors of the twenty four century so far. In
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen, he was honored by the Motion Picture Academy for.
Speaker 7: An Honorary Award.
Speaker 8: And so again he was in one movie prior to
Speaker 8: Dances with Wolves and has gone on to become this
Speaker 8: this performer.
Speaker 5: And he does not have a huge part in this,
Speaker 5: but I will say another movie watch at some point.
Speaker 5: I don't know how good it's considered to be on representation,
Speaker 5: but the movie of Dances with the movie of the
Speaker 5: Last the Mohicans that he starts, he has a much
Speaker 5: bigger part in that's Daniel de Lewis stars in is
Speaker 5: phenomenal and he is phenomenal in it.
Speaker 8: So and I'm arguably like auditioned for that movie via
Speaker 8: this role, right like this party, like the Leader of
Speaker 8: the Enemy yep. And the third major one that I'll
Speaker 8: mention is Rodney A.
Speaker 7: Grant played Wind.
Speaker 8: In his Hair, who is Kevin Costner's best friend. Has
Speaker 8: the very emotional thing at the end where he's standing
Speaker 8: up on the cliff as there as they're leaving the tribe,
Speaker 8: and he's like, I am Wind in his Hair, like
Speaker 8: Dances with Wolves is my friend, Like the very emotional farewell.
Speaker 8: Rodier Grant was in two movies prior to this to Dances,
Speaker 8: and then went on to be in the drama mo
Speaker 8: movie again, and then was in twenty two episodes of
Speaker 8: a TV show called Hawkeye, interestingly starring Lee Horsley and
Speaker 8: Linda Carter wonder Woman.
Speaker 7: So from an.
Speaker 8: Acting perspective, like this movie gave people a chance and
Speaker 8: gave them a huge platform. Like Kevin Costman was a
Speaker 8: star at this point, right like nineteen nineties, right after
Speaker 8: like all like a field of dreams and he was
Speaker 8: a star, which is arguably like why he got to
Speaker 8: make this movie. And you know he put himself in
Speaker 8: the center of it, yes, like a kind of white
Speaker 8: savior ish, but use that platform to elevate these performers,
Speaker 8: these native performers, and put them on the stage with
Speaker 8: him and let them shine and then they went on
Speaker 8: to have these amazing careers and so that to me
Speaker 8: is like how I view the impact of this movie is, Yes,
Speaker 8: I think some aspects of it have aged poorly, but
Speaker 8: I think things everything should age poorly. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 8: what progress means, is that we get better and we
Speaker 8: get a movie like Prey where now the protagonist is
Speaker 8: a Native performer.
Speaker 5: Right, well, because it's that like I think Dances with
Speaker 5: Wolves is a movie made by white people for white people,
Speaker 5: with the help of members of the Lakota community, and
Speaker 5: and that's a step towards Prey, but it's it's you know,
Speaker 5: it's obviously al ways behind. Just say a couple of
Speaker 5: other things in the representation in it. The Lakota language
Speaker 5: is what it's used among the people who Kevin Costner
Speaker 5: is with. They're referred to as both the Lakota and
Speaker 5: the Sue. And there's some debate around that because Sue
Speaker 5: is actually there's someone would understand it is that Sue
Speaker 5: is a word for snake and was used as like
Speaker 5: kind of a negative term others used for the Lakota.
Speaker 5: That that's kind of a complicated issue. The person who
Speaker 5: worked with them on the language was a person named
Speaker 5: Dorris Leader Charge, who was a Lakota language expert. It
Speaker 5: is a simplified version of Lakota, I think, because it's
Speaker 5: supposed to be more historically accurate, but it's one that
Speaker 5: sounded very weird to modern Lakota speakers, and so there's
Speaker 5: there's some question of that, Like, yeah, it definitely seems
Speaker 5: like they were trying to you to be more authentic,
Speaker 5: and the visual prepresentation was considered far more authentic than
Speaker 5: a lot of the kind of stereotypical Hollywood stuff up
Speaker 5: till that point. Not perfect by any means, and reading
Speaker 5: through it, I read because again, as you said, the
Speaker 5: best people to listen to are experts within those communities.
Speaker 5: I was surprised that there were a lot of folks
Speaker 5: who had very including from the Lakota Nation, a lot
Speaker 5: of folks who had very positive memories of this movie,
Speaker 5: as like, yeah, it wasn't great, but it was a
Speaker 5: good step forward in part because of what you said
Speaker 5: I mentioned before, like the horrible history, even like in
Speaker 5: those john Ford movies, not only was it horrible representation
Speaker 5: of Native Americans, but most of the time it wasn't
Speaker 5: even Native actors playing those roles, so it was often
Speaker 5: like white people in red face or Mexicans or someone
Speaker 5: like that. So it's a step forward to the acting.
Speaker 5: It's a step forward with with other things like that.
Speaker 5: I will say, just as my own bit of it,
Speaker 5: you know, I kind of representation that it really aged
Speaker 5: badly is that the movie starts with Kevin Costner in
Speaker 5: a Civil War battle learning that they might amputate his leg,
Speaker 5: him immediately deciding that he should try to kill himself
Speaker 5: because obviously having his leg amputated is the worst thing
Speaker 5: that could possibly happen. And then when a general like
Speaker 5: sees that he did something great, him being like, you
Speaker 5: don't amputate my leg. Don't let them take my leg.
Speaker 5: As someone has had of my leg amputated, it's not
Speaker 5: actually the end of the world. Ah. So I just
Speaker 5: kind of wanted to push that forward. But also, obviously
Speaker 5: I didn't have my leg amputated in the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 5: It was probably much worse than etc. But it just
Speaker 5: as a disabled person that scene did not age well. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but Avatar is also horrifically ablest because the guy. The
Speaker 5: whole point is that the guy can't ignore his wheelchair,
Speaker 5: so that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 9: I want to go I want to go back to
Speaker 9: the thing about the language, because like we mentioned that,
Speaker 9: you know, not the mixing of like tribes and stuff
Speaker 9: like historically, right, So like this movie, the Lakota Graham
Speaker 9: Green is from the Oneida tribe.
Speaker 8: Rodney Grant is Omaha west Study who plays the Pawnee
Speaker 8: as Cherokee.
Speaker 7: So like part of the problem is.
Speaker 8: You cannot I don't know if ken right, but they
Speaker 8: didn't get all, you know, all the right people.
Speaker 7: So to speak.
Speaker 8: But what I did read related to your language thing
Speaker 8: was that one I can't I don't have the exact reference.
Speaker 8: But one of the actors who was called upon to
Speaker 8: speak Lakota Lakota Sue, almost got cut from the movie
Speaker 8: because he couldn't get it right and he had to
Speaker 8: like practice.
Speaker 7: Real hard to get it right. And then and then
Speaker 7: they let him have the speaking roles.
Speaker 8: So that at least speaks to some dedication to an authenticity, right, Hey,
Speaker 8: like if you can't do this right, like we can't,
Speaker 8: we don't want John screen for this.
Speaker 5: And one of the people who speaks the language fairly well,
Speaker 5: because I imagine he worked with it and could afford
Speaker 5: to have. You know, the best tutors in the world
Speaker 5: is Kevin Costner himself. There's a lot more native language
Speaker 5: used in this movie than there was in Prey. Clearly
Speaker 5: the actors in Prey I think wouldn't have had trouble
Speaker 5: with that language. But I did think that was interesting
Speaker 5: to watch when I'm thinking about these two movies and
Speaker 5: how much it involved. Also both Kevin Costner and the
Speaker 5: actress whose name I forget but who plays the sort
Speaker 5: of white woman who's part of the community, Mary McDonald,
Speaker 5: Mary McDonald, thank you. She also speaks Lakota in the movie,
Speaker 5: so it's interesting stuff. Yeah. So I just thought it
Speaker 5: was interesting watching it again. Like the other thing that
Speaker 5: I read that I thought was a really interesting commentary
Speaker 5: on it, and I'll see if I can find this
Speaker 5: article is written by native author. I mean, he talks
Speaker 5: about how this is a big step forward, but it
Speaker 5: still has a fundamental problem and I hadn't seen it
Speaker 5: this way, but it made a lot of sense, which
Speaker 5: is he said that this is something you start seeing
Speaker 5: around this time where it's a movie about how there's
Speaker 5: you know, white people are wrong and treat the people
Speaker 5: of whatever community it is badly, but always that there
Speaker 5: is a good white person or maybe a couple of
Speaker 5: good white people, and a lot of bad white people,
Speaker 5: and also that they're is good members of the other
Speaker 5: group and bad members, and that the way the Lakoda
Speaker 5: and the Pawnee are positioned really falls into that of
Speaker 5: there's a lot of like, well, not that, oh, your
Speaker 5: ideas of the natives are wrong, but your ideas of
Speaker 5: the natives are right in the Pawnee, but not all
Speaker 5: of them are like that. And I thought that was
Speaker 5: really interesting analysis of like, yeah, like there's a way
Speaker 5: in which this is taking step forwards but also some
Speaker 5: like sort of reaffirming a lot of problematic thoughts about
Speaker 5: these things.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's the thing is like I've tried to look
Speaker 8: up like what the most famous or like best movie
Speaker 8: about natives in the nineteen eighties was just to see like, okay,
Speaker 8: like what happened before that, because I talked about what
Speaker 8: happened after that, which is like these people got a
Speaker 8: lot of roles, like dance. Last of the Mohicans was
Speaker 8: also like a huge Oscar movie.
Speaker 7: And all that.
Speaker 8: In the eighties, Like the best I could come up
Speaker 8: with a movie called Wind Wind Waker, I believe, or
Speaker 8: Walker I'm sorry, I don't have the exact title. And
Speaker 8: in that movie, the protagonist who is supposed to be Native.
Speaker 7: Was played by a white guy.
Speaker 8: So that's like that that's what was going on before
Speaker 8: Dances with Wolves, and I agree, like there are problems
Speaker 8: with it, but it was, in my opinion, a huge
Speaker 8: step forward, right and in terms of representation.
Speaker 5: And I'll say I think one of the other movies
Speaker 5: that's often cited as you know, not perfectly any means,
Speaker 5: made by Robert de Niro and starring Val Kilmer, but
Speaker 5: still a good step in a good direction, is a
Speaker 5: movie called Thunderheart, which is kind of it's a modern
Speaker 5: day story about a white detective working with a Native detective,
Speaker 5: and it touches on a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 5: led to Wounded Me in nineteen seventy three, which is
Speaker 5: a big h you know, kind of Native group fighting
Speaker 5: for their rights and really gotten, really complicated things. And
Speaker 5: that movie I think is very much made possible by
Speaker 5: Dances with Wolves and try to be fairly authentic to
Speaker 5: you know, that community in the nineteen seventies, and the
Speaker 5: main Native character is played by Graham Green, So I
Speaker 5: think that's that's that's move I thought on for Suger
Speaker 5: reference that I often think of as the other great
Speaker 5: kind of nineties native representation for its time. And definitely,
Speaker 5: like I think, if Dancing with Wolves doesn't get made,
Speaker 5: Thunderheart absolutely does not get made.
Speaker 8: Yeah, like say with Last of the Mohicans, I think
Speaker 8: that was just like two or three years later, and
Speaker 8: obviously like there's a certain cynical money grab element to that, right,
Speaker 8: It's probably like they saw the success and like, well,
Speaker 8: why don't we try to make one?
Speaker 5: And I think, I mean because that's based on a
Speaker 5: Nathaniel Hawthorne novel that's hundreds of years old. But I
Speaker 5: I think there had been an earlier version of Last
Speaker 5: of the Mohicans that probably is very much of the
Speaker 5: John Ford kind of idea of natives. And and you know,
Speaker 5: Last Mohican is still story about white people, but better
Speaker 5: than other stuff that Now. I really want to go
Speaker 5: back and watch that movie because I remember it as
Speaker 5: being just a really wonderful love story and adventure movie. Uh,
Speaker 5: and it was one of father's favorite stories. My father
Speaker 5: used to read that story to me as a kid.
Speaker 5: Not he wasn't reading nothing of Hawthorne to me, but
Speaker 5: he had like a kid's version of it. But now
Speaker 5: I'm kind of curious and nervous to go back and
Speaker 5: watch it and be like, oh, okay, yes, some parts
Speaker 5: of this age pretty well, or oh, oh no, this
Speaker 5: is a movie that you've stayed where it is. Have
Speaker 5: you seen it in any kind of recent history.
Speaker 7: Last of the Mohicans?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I don't even remember if I've actually seen
Speaker 8: the movie.
Speaker 7: I remember scenes, so maybe.
Speaker 8: Like I saw parts of it on TV right back
Speaker 8: in the day.
Speaker 5: The Daniel day Lewis Stay Alive, I Will find You
Speaker 5: was certainly a very memed uh common for a long time.
Speaker 5: So well, I think we've had a lot to say.
Speaker 5: This is you kind of mentioned that there might be
Speaker 5: a word for you to say about Last Samurai, and uh,
Speaker 5: do you want to say anything about that now or
Speaker 5: do you want to say that actually for our bonus section?
Speaker 8: Well, I don't know, like what I what I want
Speaker 8: to say, I think importantly is that obviously, like these
Speaker 8: issues aren't solved even today, right, And part of the
Speaker 8: reason they aren't solved is like history happened, and you know,
Speaker 8: the United States of America was built on stolen land
Speaker 8: and there's no way to fix that. But taking steps
Speaker 8: in movies and representation and like how we portray history
Speaker 8: is important. And as I've talked about, like with the actors,
Speaker 8: like giving people from those communities the opportunity to represent
Speaker 8: themselves is important.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 8: And just like giving voice like one of one of
Speaker 8: the things. And when I say it's not solved.
Speaker 7: Like there was that there was that Lone Ranger movie.
Speaker 7: I don't know if you saw.
Speaker 5: This, Johnny Depp as Tanto.
Speaker 7: Yes, that was what like five years ago or something.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So it's it's like we we talked about it,
Speaker 8: like how bad it was. It's still happening, yeah, And
Speaker 8: that's kind of the depressing part of it is like
Speaker 8: that that's just ridiculous, right, like that that movie should
Speaker 8: be lambastard for that to do that in this age.
Speaker 7: There was.
Speaker 8: The character chakote in Star Trek Voyager.
Speaker 7: Yep, uh, just terrible. Like I have this information pulled
Speaker 7: up here.
Speaker 8: They had a I'm using air quotes here now, this
Speaker 8: is very important. They had a quote Native American heritage
Speaker 8: consultants on call for Voyager to try to give authenticity
Speaker 8: to the character of chacote H his name was Jamake Highwater.
Speaker 8: He was a white guy faking his way. He was
Speaker 8: born Jackie Marx. He was exposed to have zero native heritage.
Speaker 5: Was he? I thought he was Mexican, which which is
Speaker 5: decidedly not Native, but also not white.
Speaker 7: I've like maybe mixed, okay.
Speaker 8: I believe like one of the things I saw reference
Speaker 8: was Irish Okay, but probably he probably had some non
Speaker 8: Irish heritage to have darker skin to be able to.
Speaker 7: Play this role. And there's a role like he's playing
Speaker 7: this role.
Speaker 8: He scammed people. He you know, he got he got
Speaker 8: these jobs as a consultant. And it's like, no, I mean,
Speaker 8: even if I'm gonna be generous and say, even if
Speaker 8: you are an expert in the field and the study
Speaker 8: of the history, let's someone from that culture do that
Speaker 8: job specifically.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think that's really true. And I think
Speaker 5: and and well, I had not heard quite so much
Speaker 5: about the actor himself. Uh, And I think that he's
Speaker 5: certainly opened some some some criticism. Let's be clear that
Speaker 5: the writers were not, you know, hiring all the cultural
Speaker 5: consultants like the There's a number of stories involving him
Speaker 5: and his connection to his people, and and and and
Speaker 5: Native communities that are just the worst parts of Like, uh,
Speaker 5: there's a scene in the TV show Echo, Uh where
Speaker 5: one of the characters in the Native community runs a
Speaker 5: kind of tourtois store and and there's a scene of
Speaker 5: like these two white people who are like, oh, yes,
Speaker 5: we're looking for crystals to to, you know, engage our spirituality.
Speaker 5: And it's clear that they know nothing about Native actual
Speaker 5: spiritual practices, and the guy selling them stuff is perfectly
Speaker 5: happy to sell them a rock and be like this
Speaker 5: is fifty dollars because it you know, making fun of that.
Speaker 5: And I feel like the white people who come into
Speaker 5: the show to the story and that show could have
Speaker 5: easily been the writers of Star Trek, Like it very
Speaker 5: much feels like white people writing about Native American spiritual
Speaker 5: vision quests that for Chakoda to go on. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you're right, yeah.
Speaker 8: And this is Star Trek, like a beloved franchise that
Speaker 8: celebrates diversity, and they got it wrong in a very
Speaker 8: embarrassing way. And if you've seen if you've seen Prodigy,
Speaker 8: like I think that they are kind of redeeming Chacote's
Speaker 8: character and that and trying to do right on the
Speaker 8: wrongs that we're done on that on Voyager, So that's
Speaker 8: at least something good that's coming out of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But and we're going to talk a bit more
Speaker 5: about this in the a section for members, We're going
Speaker 5: to talk a little bit more about you know, obviously
Speaker 5: we're here talking about Native Americans, and I think that
Speaker 5: there's there is truth to the idea that indigenous communities
Speaker 5: around the world are treated badly and that their media
Speaker 5: and culture is often used by non indigenous communities for
Speaker 5: the benefit of them. But I also don't want to
Speaker 5: paint with I think it's easy to say, like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, like the the the issues that you know,
Speaker 5: people in the Lakota community in the United States and
Speaker 5: the people in you know, a Native community somewhere else
Speaker 5: in the world are the same. In our bonus member content,
Speaker 5: we're gonna talk a little bit about both good and
Speaker 5: bad examples of how other Native communities have been treated
Speaker 5: in some of the media we care about. And of
Speaker 5: course you can become a member for just five dollars
Speaker 5: a month fifty five dollars a year you get access
Speaker 5: to those We're finally starting in January gonna be starting
Speaker 5: to do our Superhero Ethics full but bonus member episodes.
Speaker 5: We're gonna be looking at some of kind of like
Speaker 5: the core questions of what Superherothics is all about and
Speaker 5: doing those on a monthly basis. Those will be free
Speaker 5: episodes for members. You get free bonus content, but of
Speaker 5: course you have to help keep the lights up, lights on,
Speaker 5: and keep us funded and all those kind of good things.
Speaker 5: But so just and closing before we get to that
Speaker 5: member content, Riki, do you want to talk to just
Speaker 5: about what what are your thoughts as Japanese Americans as
Speaker 5: a person who enjoys a lot of the media on
Speaker 5: the movie The Last Samurai and how does it differ
Speaker 5: from Dances with Wolves.
Speaker 8: Here's the thing. I enjoyed The Last Samurai when I
Speaker 8: watched it in theaters, and I wanted I did watch
Speaker 8: it in theaters.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a it's a well.
Speaker 8: Made movie and is well well acted as well, and
Speaker 8: so like it's it's hard for me to kind of
Speaker 8: balance that with like, well, like what are they doing here?
Speaker 8: And like so comparing it to Dances with Wolves, I
Speaker 8: think there's a different difference of because you mentioned to me, like, well,
Speaker 8: like in Dances with Wolves, like oh sorry, The last
Speaker 8: Samurai allowed ken Watanave to become a star, right, which
Speaker 8: is which is one true like from a like.
Speaker 7: Western Hollywood perspective, because.
Speaker 8: He was already a star in Japan, right, like a
Speaker 8: huge star, as was Hiroki Sanada, who is like a
Speaker 8: secondary character in the movie.
Speaker 7: Like they were both established stars.
Speaker 8: So to me, like that's the difference of like Dances
Speaker 8: with Wolves gave these opportunities to people who you know,
Speaker 8: Graham Greenen was probably the best known from from in Canada,
Speaker 8: but otherwise just like really elevated people who had no.
Speaker 5: No platform, right well, and part of that dancing with
Speaker 5: what I connect the two movies. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people can two movies because they're about white people
Speaker 5: engaging in a non white community and then kind of
Speaker 5: the quote unquote going native, which is itself a very
Speaker 5: problematic term, but you're right, like like there is a
Speaker 5: Japanese media industry in the way there isn't for uh,
Speaker 5: you know, the Lakota people.
Speaker 8: Or and I'm absolutely appreciative that you know, more people
Speaker 8: have gotten to experience can want to Nave and Hi
Speaker 8: like the latter, especially like he's an absolute treasure.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 5: It's like each row coming to the United States, like
Speaker 5: it's a much better it's a much bigger career opportunity.
Speaker 5: But it wasn't like he couldn't.
Speaker 8: Play yeah yeah exactly. And then like there's just other
Speaker 8: kind of details that as you as you look into them,
Speaker 8: they become more problematic or they like they age poorly,
Speaker 8: like Dances with Wolves was filmed in the American West
Speaker 8: right right, like it is authentic filmography to the place
Speaker 8: right and it's beautiful, Like the cinematography is beautiful. I
Speaker 8: believe that was one of one of the Oscars that
Speaker 8: it won, uh yeah, Best Picture, Best Director, Screenplace, Cinematography,
Speaker 8: Sound Film, Editing, music, where it's Oscar wins. The Last
Speaker 8: Samurai quite a few of the like outdoor like the
Speaker 8: beautiful cinema cinematography. Portions of The Last Samurai were filmed
Speaker 8: in New Zealand, which is beautiful, like as we know
Speaker 8: from Lord of the Rings. But it gives you that
Speaker 8: like itch of like why like Japan is beautiful in itself.
Speaker 7: Now it's possible that they just.
Speaker 8: Like couldn't find the right location, like part of the
Speaker 8: reason a lot of stuff gets filmed in New Zealand.
Speaker 8: Is because it's empty of like human civilization, where it's.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of the parts of Japan, like a
Speaker 5: feudal Japan have been urbanized and things like that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so, like especially for two thousand and three, like nowadays,
Speaker 8: you could probably film in Japan and just like cgi
Speaker 8: like modern buildings out true, right, like that that's the
Speaker 8: thing like so, but then it's like, what's the authenticity
Speaker 8: of that? And that's kind of brings to mind Avatar, right,
Speaker 8: like the cinematography is all fake. Yeah, and again, like
Speaker 8: that's why I think Dances with Wolves is still so
Speaker 8: important and should be remembered better is that they gave
Speaker 8: that authenticity to the place.
Speaker 5: I think that's really true. And I also just add
Speaker 5: one other thing that for me, at least as a
Speaker 5: person who let me back it up, I think all
Speaker 5: that's true, and I think, to me, there's one other
Speaker 5: factor that is to me fairly damning for Last Samurai,
Speaker 5: which to say again as someone who I really enjoyed
Speaker 5: the movie, Like, I think the fight scenes are great.
Speaker 5: I think it's beautiful. I think Tom Cruise can be
Speaker 5: a really good actor at times, and I thought he
Speaker 5: was very good in this, But the movie is set
Speaker 5: against the backdrop of the Meiji Restoration and a civil
Speaker 5: war within Japan. That sets the movie very much as
Speaker 5: this is the last remembrance of beautiful you know, authentic
Speaker 5: quote unquote the way white people will say it feudal
Speaker 5: Japan against the evil Western industrialists, and that's very much
Speaker 5: the way the movie sets it up, and that like
Speaker 5: the Samurais have this beautiful way of life, but the
Speaker 5: Westerners want to bring in capitalism and modern armies and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. And yeah, I saw that as a
Speaker 5: beautiful story until I watched Keenshin.
Speaker 7: I was gonna say that, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Movies and TV shows that that we've talked about a
Speaker 5: lot that's set in this same time period, but tensions
Speaker 5: on the side of the restoration, and it caused me
Speaker 5: to do a lot more like digging into the history
Speaker 5: of this time. I think, like any historical period, finding
Speaker 5: saying like these people are good and these people are
Speaker 5: bad is is It's much more nuanced and complex than that.
Speaker 5: But certainly it felt very much like if you really
Speaker 5: understand the history of that time, for as Samurai to
Speaker 5: sort of state so clearly, these are the good guys
Speaker 5: and these are the bad guys, is very much a
Speaker 5: Westerner trying to take on elements of a history that
Speaker 5: they do not understand and simplify it to tell their story,
Speaker 5: which I think is kind of like one of the
Speaker 5: worst kinds of cultural appropriation and non representation. So that
Speaker 5: you're go ahead.
Speaker 8: Well, I just want to make sure people know, like
Speaker 8: you're talking about Roni Kenshin, which is a manga anime,
Speaker 8: and there were a couple of live action movies, Japanese
Speaker 8: live action movies that are available on.
Speaker 5: Netflix, yep. And we've done a number of episodes about
Speaker 5: different of the movies and the anime and stuff like that.
Speaker 8: And I'm glad you brought that up because the way
Speaker 8: the Last Samurai presents the conflict is that the Meiji
Speaker 8: government is like all modernized. They have you know, they
Speaker 8: have guns, they have gatling guns. And then the other side,
Speaker 8: the Samurai side, are.
Speaker 7: On horseback, right like drawing their swords.
Speaker 8: And as you said in Kenshin, like both sides have
Speaker 8: both yeah, like there are sorts, there are swordsmen on
Speaker 8: both sides, There are you know, are guns on both sides.
Speaker 8: So like it wasn't it wasn't as like from a
Speaker 8: governmental like historical perspective, yes, it was like modern versus traditional,
Speaker 8: but from a warfare perspective it was pretty even.
Speaker 5: Right in Kenshin, there's a long like there's a long
Speaker 5: plot line. I think it's in the second of the
Speaker 5: live action movies where where the the non industrial side
Speaker 5: has a battleship and it's like a nineteenth century like
Speaker 5: you know, top of the line battleship.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so that's where The Last Samurai like presents this
Speaker 8: very romantic sized version of history of like the samurai
Speaker 8: and their last charge. Right, It's like, well, that's not
Speaker 8: and then I also like, who.
Speaker 7: Is the last Samurai?
Speaker 8: That Tom Cruise.
Speaker 7: That's kind of sucky.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I think you can read it as it's
Speaker 5: about what Ken Wannabe's character, but you know, like yeah,
Speaker 5: it could go either way.
Speaker 8: And the fact okay, and this is like my biggest
Speaker 8: issue from a historical perspective, like comparing it to Dances
Speaker 8: with Wolves and Dances with Wolves. Kevin Costner's character observes history, right,
Speaker 8: and maybe there's a bit of white saviorness in that
Speaker 8: he convinces the tribe to move and he saves.
Speaker 7: Their lives perhaps or at.
Speaker 8: Least like delays the inevitable of the encroachment of white
Speaker 8: settlers in terms of the impact on that tribe. But
Speaker 8: in the Last Samurai, Tom Cruiser's character survives the final battle,
Speaker 8: brings the sword wat A's sword to the Emperor and
Speaker 8: convinces the emperor to change his policy by reminding him
Speaker 8: of like the Samurai spirit and to like stand against
Speaker 8: stand against you know, the United States or don't you know,
Speaker 8: don't forget the Japanese Yamato spirit type of thing, and
Speaker 8: like that's like the most white savior bullshit of all
Speaker 8: time in my opinion, Like for for these movies, like
Speaker 8: maybe Avatar is worst because he's literally the chosen one
Speaker 8: and can and pilot or ride the dragon thing, right,
Speaker 8: Like that's kind of similar. But that's where I like
Speaker 8: Tom Cruise's character like changes history. Yeah, by convincing the emperor.
Speaker 5: It really is. I think the white savior complex is
Speaker 5: so important there as is this idea that echo actually
Speaker 5: that TV show does highlight a little bit, which is
Speaker 5: this idea that often because of this and because like
Speaker 5: I said, of like you know, go on Ikeia and
Speaker 5: you are not Akia, but go on like a lot
Speaker 5: of like Christmas websites and you'll find a lot of
Speaker 5: like this is me, you know, authentically Navajo made or
Speaker 5: authentically made by the indigenous people of uh. There's actually
Speaker 5: a great line of Fight Club about Indigenous made by
Speaker 5: the hard working indigenous people of wherever, Like no one cares,
Speaker 5: it's just this white idea. And and I think this
Speaker 5: is an echo. It might have been another TV show,
Speaker 5: but again in that kind of like the the Chochke's store,
Speaker 5: the tourist store, the white folks come in and and
Speaker 5: and like the I think it's it's it's the uncle
Speaker 5: or the grandfather of echo. He changes the way he
Speaker 5: speaks to speak more of the kind of like you know,
Speaker 5: white man say, you know, like the kind of like
Speaker 5: oh yeah, Western idea, white man's idea of what it
Speaker 5: should be. And there's a moment where like his cell
Speaker 5: phone goes off and they give him dirty looks because
Speaker 5: they're like, you're not supposed to have cell phones. You're
Speaker 5: supposed to be our image of like perfected, authentic you know,
Speaker 5: history that we want to romanticize and experience, but still
Speaker 5: have our cell phones. And to me that very much
Speaker 5: felt like last Samurai of you know, we want to
Speaker 5: be able to while being participants of the capitalist culture
Speaker 5: that helped to end this. We still want to be
Speaker 5: able to romanticize that without remembering as we talked her
Speaker 5: intention that part of the samurai spirit that they were
Speaker 5: overthrowing was the ability to kill anyone who you thought
Speaker 5: was disrespecting you as a samurai. Like it was not,
Speaker 5: you know, the perfect romanticized thing.
Speaker 8: So, and the thing is like, from a historical perspective,
Speaker 8: the last samurai is probably just like some general or
Speaker 8: prime minister in the Meiji government because again, like it's
Speaker 8: it's not like they waged a war on all samurai.
Speaker 8: It was just like these these particular ones in certain
Speaker 8: provinces that didn't want to go along with this, right,
Speaker 8: But like plenty of samurai did, and they got positions
Speaker 8: in the government because.
Speaker 5: Among the things were often some of the most educated
Speaker 5: people in the country at that time.
Speaker 7: So rich or rich, Yeah.
Speaker 5: That too, that too. All right, Well, this has been
Speaker 5: a fantastic conversation. I'm sure it's a topic response. We're
Speaker 5: going to return to a lot more people. As always,
Speaker 5: I would love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback,
Speaker 5: things you liked, things you didn't like, whatever you had
Speaker 5: to say about it. We will have all the informations
Speaker 5: on in our show notes, as well as information about
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Speaker 5: But for everyone else, we have spoken.
Speaker 8: I'm the last Samurai.
Speaker 5: I'm funny.