I am now starting my three-post series (that's how I think it will go) inspired by "the slap" and our trip to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
It has been hard to get started. There are so many connected thoughts and I like my writing to be organized and flow in a logical manner. The two things that nagged at me the most were related, so they are the starting point.
In the post-slap discussions of violence at the Oscars, various people on Twitter kept mentioning that it had taken six men to keep John Wayne from assaulting Sacheen Littlefeather.
Thoughts inspired there were brought home more at the Academy Museum. In a hall with rotating winner announcements and speeches (and some Oscar gowns), I was able to view the speech.
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| Evening gown with black bodice and gold and black skirt on platform. Walls behind show videos of past Oscar acceptance speeches. |
On Twitter there had been mentions of Littlefeather not being allowed to go over one minute. As I heard her, I realized that she was not able to read all of what Marlon Brando wrote. She did say she would make it available to the press, and it can still be found:
It struck me more because for years I always remembered being told that Brando sent up a "fake" Indian.
This was the 1973 Oscars. I was one year old and should not have any memories of it. That I do indicates people talking about it years later. I don't really remember, but I suspect it came from my father at one point expressing disgust with Marlon Brando. Dad was a fan of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.
Then I remember years later reading an article about Littlefeather, who really is Indian. It might have been from around 2018 when she was diagnosed with cancer, but it could also have been back in 2015 when I was reading Ojibwa Warrior by Dennis Banks. Banks mentioned receiving aid from Brando, and felt his commitment to their cause was sincere.
There are plenty of worse things that can be said about Marlon Brando; I may get to them myself in a different post. For now, I am going to assume that at least for this his intentions were good, and his desire to raise awareness sincere.
(Whether it was an effective form of protest is a completely different question.)
Brando's speech indicates that he intended to go to Wounded Knee himself, and that was one reason for not attending the awards. Another article indicates that preparing for the awards show ended up being hurried, so he seems to have still been in California that day. Plans don't always work out.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/31/john-wayne-sacheen-littlefeather/
Regardless, I remember this pause at realizing something false repeated as fact. Littlefeather is Apache and Yaqui through her father. Why was she called fake? Were they confusing her with Iron Eyes Cody?
It might have started with John Wayne's quote about Brando "taking some little unknown girl and dressing her up in an Indian outfit." I suspect that is a way to minimize the validity of the protest, and what is being protested.
Reading about Cuba at the time of their revolution, how well off people were socially and financially seemed to directly correlate to how sure they were that the Taino were completely extinct. I would not expect more successful genocide to alleviate guilt, but what do I know?
Maybe loyalty to a system that benefits you is harder when someone the system harms is in front of you. As it is, I was writing about harmful portrayals of Native Americans in film just five years ago, so questioning the progress made over the past five decades is reasonable.
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/06/humor-me.html
Also, there is another whole discussion to be had on blood quantum ways of determining who counts as Native American, and to whom, even today. That is not the point of this post.
Remember, I said two things nagged at me. The other was that in the immediate aftermath I saw lots of people talking about Will Smith punching Chris Rock, but it not a punch.
That people now refer to it as "The Slap" is actually progress, but that difference matters, and we will get more into how that matters in subsequent posts.
For this post, it reminded me of one other thing.
Once, where there was a lot of protesting going on (but it was not George Floyd, it was before that), I was getting onto a bus and the driver advised me not to stay out too late, because there was a riot scheduled. No, what was scheduled was a protest.
We were not even at the point where Portland Police would automatically declare a riot so they could break out the tear gas then. It was just that the right had gotten to the point where talking heads were changing the use of those words: protests were riots, and protesters were rioters, and those heavily negative connotations were being accepted automatically by those who leaned conservative.
If you need examples of deceit, escalating language being used as a weapon, and of people refusing to face truth (and not even having to fight that hard to avoid it)... well, you don't need the Oscars or my memories. You might view chilling January 6th footage on one channel, and then find another channel only mentioning the hearings to call it boring and manipulative.
I maintain that truth matters.
With words being such a crucial component of communication, words matter too.
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