Poe Appropriates a Proposal

07 Monday May 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Native American Issues

Tags

Alaska Natives, Betty White, Cultural Appropriation, Dance, Film, Get Low, Haida, Sandra Bullock, The Proposal

I will admit that I enjoyed the Proposal, but I’m not so sure I liked it.

Well that makes sense to me at any rate. So anyway…

There is one scene in this movie that sits in my memory like a stone in my shoe. I just don’t know what to make of it. It’s this one:

Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t no hangin’ matter as far as I’m concerned, but I have to wonder. Didn’t anybody involved in this production question the wisdom of having two women perform other people’s music and dance? First Betty White pretends to carry out a Haida ritual, adopting the stilted speech patterns of native movie characters for the entire scene. Tasked with joining her in the performance, Sandra Bullock ends up channeling Lil Jon and the East Side Boys. So, one of these women engages in faux native spirituality and the other effectively turns in a rap performance. It’s all at least a little appropriative.

It’s also more than a little cringe-worthy.

To me anyway.

I am admittedly prone to cringitude.

It’s a light comedy anyway, so I guess I shouldn’t expect them to take these issues any more seriously than the rest of the subject matter appearing in the movie. Still, I can’t help but shake my head at the apparent cluelessness.

…but then I wonder!

I come back to my original question; didn’t somebody question the wisdom of this scene? Wasn’t somebody aware that it’s more than a little odd to have two white women finding their bliss in the performance of other people’s music, dance, and ceremony. Wasn’t someone on set at least cognizant of the issue?

And then I wonder, what if someone was?

Could that have been the point?

Quite unexpectedly, the spirit of Nathan Poe haunts this scene!

The whole performance is so completely over the top, I find myself wondering if it isn’t an intentional parody of precisely the kind appropriation I’ve been talking about. Which would make it kinda cool after all.

…I still cringe.

***

I’ve looked around a bit to see if some movie reviewers can shed light on the scene, and I can’t say that I’ve found much. Newspaper Rock comments on the matter pretty directly, but he doesn’t seem to have any extra information on the production itself. The late Roger Ebert seemed perplexed by the scene, particularly insofar as it related to the Alaskan sunrise. Most reviewers seemed to skip the subject altogether. Here is an interesting blog post on the house where they filmed the movie. (I know, that’s a little left of the actual topic here, but it’s just kinda cool.) The Orlando Sentinel quotes Betty White as saying that she had to learn an ‘Eskimo’ song for the film. The Daily News has her explaining that the language was actually Tlingit. I can’t say that any of this sheds much light on the matter, but that’s about enough of this.

Ah well!

My girlfriend will be calling me ‘Danno Downer” after she reads this.

Guilty as charged.

Damn the Science Exhibit; We’re Looking at Dioramas!

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Museums

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Alaska Natives, Aleutians, Anchorage, Anchorage Museum, Athabaskan, Dioramas, Haida, Inupiat, Museums, Tlingit

I'm not sure what community this represents, but I really like the scene.

A small community on the coast.

A couple of months back I found myself in Anchorage without too much to do. On my last day down there the devil that sits on my shoulder lost a debate with the nerdy bookworm that sometimes passes for my angelic adviser, and so I actually chose to do something instructive and educational. I went to the Anchorage Museum.

Don’t be too disappointed; it was actually kinda cool. My favorite part of the museum was actually the science exhibit, much of which was interactive. sadly, I don’t think my pictures and videos did much to capture the brilliance which was that particular part of the museum. Being a museum, the place was of course full of wonderful artifacts and displays casting light on all manner of things Alaskan. Being a cruel fellow, I am not going to show you much of that.

…at least not today.

No.

Today, we are looking at dioramas. A number of these were strewn about the museum, and I managed to get few decent pictures of some. I won’t pretend that this is a complete set, so to speak, as I am pretty sure that a few of thee exhibits told my camera to screw off and I completely neglected to right those wrongs, but at any rate, these are the pics I got. Both my devil-advisor and my nerdy-near-angel hope you enjoy them.

Quick Note: rather predictably, the scenes depicting Alaska Natives seem to have got most of my attention here. Depending on how broad you want your paint strokes to be we can bundle the Native Alaska population into 3, 5, or lots of general groups. I would normally go with 5; the natives of the outer Aleutian Islands (Aleutian or Unangan, depending on who you ask); the Alutiiq (or Sugpiak) of the Eastern Aleutians parts of the Southwest coastal region; Yupiit of the Western coast, Inupiat of the Northern coasts, and Athabaskans who occupied interior Alaska. For those wondering, the Yupiit and Inupiat are the natives once commonly referred to as ‘Eskimos’, but we aren’t going to do that here. …oh, and let’s not forget the Northwest Coastal natives, who are ironically located in Southeast Alaska. When I say “Northwest Coast natives” I am referring to a common classification used by anthropologists to break the Native American population into about 10 distinct culture areas. So, ironically enough, Alaska’s Northwest Coastal natives are in the Southeast. …and if that manner of speaking seems weird, then the devil on my shoulder is well pleased.

I don’t seem to have pictures (even bad ones) for Yupiit or Alutiiq populations. I don’t know if Missed an exhibit or if I just wasn’t in a button pressing mood when I happened upon them. So, we have here representations of 3 native populations (depicted more or less as they might have lived prior to contact). I also have a few other pieces on the Alaskan Railroad, the Aleutian Campaign of World War II, and one beautiful scene of a community that I failed to identify (cause I’m a bad man).