The movie's story concerned the arrival of America’s early white settlers and its makers wanted to be historically accurate in their portrayal of the Native Americans. According to their research, however, many women of the depicted tribes often went topless. This was obviously an issue to the studio who wanted to be able to show the movie on prime time TV at some later date. The budget wasn’t large enough to accommodate the shooting of dual versions of scenes (one safe and one uncensored), a practice more common than most people realize. Wanting to allow the highly acclaimed director the freedom of his vision, the producers tried to argue that the nudity in question was minimal, usually in the background, and of the harmless anthropological type seen in National Geographic. The studio replied that backlash from Janet Jackson’s boob flash during the Super Bowl (a.k.a. Nipplegate) had created an atmosphere in which it would be impossible for them to argue this distinction to the major networks. Meanwhile, the living descendants of the indigenous tribes to be portrayed were heatedly divided amongst themselves over whether employing such nudity was in fact historical and also whether it would turn out to be exploitive regardless of being true to life or not. (Such splits and spats are not uncommon among Native Americans when it comes to their past and traditions. As one of their on-set consultants explained, “One Indian, you’ve got an expert. Two, you’ve got a conversation. Three, you’ve got a fight.”) The issue then shifted dramatically when the director cast a real minor to play the tweenage native princess about whom the story revolved.
There are strict laws and union guidelines regarding minors and nudity in American films. After studying them, it seemed not only that the underage actress could never go topless, but that she couldn't even be in the same shot as any woman who was. In order to secure funding, the producers had to make a formal agreement with the studio to deliver a TV-friendly film rated no higher than PG-13. They then discussed what all these limits meant with the maverick director. It was finally agreed to try clothed, painted, and mud-covered native women, to use tattoos and necklaces to obscure any naked breasts, to shoot any unobscured breasts using non-revealing angles, and to digitally cover during editing any nipples that still remained visible. However, the appropriately obscuring mud and paint designs found and eventually used were, by necessity and choice, inspired by those of African, not American, tribes. Thus began the compromises of historical accuracy. The director also lost a layer of complexity he had intended to inject in regards to the reactions of white Christian settlers to a bare-breasted culture. The absence of the issue was reminiscent of the lack of black people in the early days of Oregon when the state wouldn’t let them live there, not because it didn’t accept and support their emancipation, but because it was hoping to avoid the same conflicts that had just caused a long, bloody civil war. “We like you, but you’re trouble...”
Step 2: Insert into package...
Historical accuracy in films is a tricky, complicated subject. We all know not to accept movies as truth or textbooks, but the images still stick and are recalled when we picture the past. The producers did their best, and better than many would have. For instance, in a rare move, they arranged the story to be shot near its actual location (in a certain history-obsessed commonwealth about whose citizens a popular joke claims it takes three to change a light bulb: one to put the new bulb in and two to talk about what a good bulb the old bulb was). They invited various state-level organizations, university departments, historical societies, and tribal advisors to participate and witness. Every expert the director wanted, they gave him. He met with bird experts, frog experts, plant experts, bug experts, weather experts, ship experts, language experts, you name it. Unfortunately, like Bush’s war in Iraq, the stated goals and pageant of procedures became less and less relevant to the actual result as messy situations arose and had to be solved on the spot. Production in fact occurred during the budding War on Terror when our government was busy both limiting its own citizens’ rights and convincing the world its mission was to establish those same rights in the countries occupied by its troops. Similarly, the film’s script centered its themes on the winning and loss of freedom, and served to remind us that our nation was founded, just as it is apparently maintained, by interfering with and often destroying the freedom of others in order to have our own. And yet, if this particular film is any indication, we have not yet allowed ourselves the freedom to look at how freely those who lost freedom so we could gain it once lived, perhaps for the very reason that they were freer than we’ll ever be.
Or perhaps the problem is in trying to picture it. For Schindler’s List, Spielberg chose not to include in his depiction the impaled corpses that lined the paths of the real concentration camp because they overwhelmed the set with such horror that it seemed exaggerated, unreal, unbelievable, and removed viewers from absorbing the story. Maybe extremes of freedom are as impossible to accept as extremes of its opposite. Or maybe we’re simply so used to boobs being taboo we can’t be trusted not to be titillated even by a tame historical look at people who didn’t have that problem. I recall a friend of mine telling me that just once he'd like to look at his girlfriend getting out of the shower without her blushing back at him like he's leering. And knowing she's right. Then looking away... •
The Quomma's Favorite Fun But Wrong
Songs About Native Americans (MP3s):
Indian Rock by the Musical Linn Twins.
Cherokee Dance by Bob Lenards with Willie Joe and His Unitar. (Cherokee because you dance "until your face turns red.")
The Mohawk by D.C. Washington.
Big Chief Hug 'Em & Kiss 'Um by Jimmy Shaw, a.k.a. the Mighty Hannibal. ("Baby, let's sweet talk, put down tommy hawk...")
Your Squaw is on the Warpath by Loretta Lynn.
Coincidentally, I recently stopped at Loretta Lynn's restaurant in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of which stands this bison statue staring straight at the neighboring burger joint, like a Before and After diorama of white America.
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