Wild, Wild West And Dances with Wolves

On Sunday, I watched Dances with Wolves again to help “get in the mood” for my three classes that are using the Old West theme.

Dances with Wolves (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099348/) is probably my favorite Western in a lot of ways. It is a movie that despite its shortcomings tries hard to highlight American Indian culture and values. However, it does still rely heavily on American Indian tropes common to earlier Western literature and films, especially in its portrayal of the Pawnee as the “savage Indians” and the Lakota Sioux as the “noble savages.” Neither idea is really complicated in the movie despite the limitations of both “types.” Another non-new image in the movie is the idea of “going Indian” or “going native”—the idea that a white man fed up with the world might leave it behind (that “rugged individualism” myth of the Western) and find himself by living off the land away from civilization, a notion popular in 19th Century mythology and literature even in such tales as Huckleberry Finn, which ends with Huck heading west for just those reasons.

According to most theorists, the story of the west, even the story of America, has generally been told in two versions. The first uses words like “manifest destiny,” “exploration,” “rugged individualism,” and “fate.” The second uses harsher terms for the Europeans, considering them conquerors and focusing instead on words of colonization, words like “conquest,” “environmental disruption,” “invasion,” and “exploitation.” Neither version tells the whole truth nor demonstrates the complexity of the relationship of both peoples (native and invaders) to themselves, to the land, or to each other. This movie vacillates between both ideas but does not break free of them. Reality was neither. A more realistic portrayal or more interesting one would have broken free of both and proposed a third (or more) way to tell the story.

Having mentioned some of it less favorable points, though, I’d like to say—I like the movie. I love the cinematography and the scenes in which the humanity of the American Indians is stressed, the scenes such as Kicking Bird and his wife embracing before he leaves for war. The look into Sioux culture, even if romanticized, is invaluable in helping to understand a way of life long gone. The buffalo hunt, the dance, the romance, the stunning beauty of the American west, make the film truly enjoyable to watch.

--professorstacy