The Wacky World of TV Tropes

What makes all the mythical, romantic, and stereotypical notions about American Indians so potent and wide spread in modern America?

While there are many answers to this question, one of the most important is simply this: sheer and utter ubiquity.  In almost every form of popular media from television to film to literature to advertising, we are constantly being bombarded with the same creative devices over and over again.  Over time they work their way into our brains and take on a whole new life as tropes.

One of the best websites out there for understanding the power of popular media in shaping the American consciousness is TVtropes.org.  This website is a constantly expanding wikipedia style encyclopedia of tropes from creative works as diverse as video games, theater, music, and new media.  It's tongue and cheek brand of humor and casual tone certainly makes for some entertaining reading.

tvtropes.org

But what exactly is a trope you ask? Here is the working definition from the website:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them."

The website includes innumerable examples relevant to Drawing on Indians and I have excerpted some of them here.  Be sure to click on the link and  scroll down to see just how ubiquitous these tropes are across the media world (and feel free to add any new ones):



Indian Burial Ground

"A common cause for supernatural goings-on in America, commonly seen in movies: A house is haunted or Cursed due to being built on an Ancient Indian Burial Ground. The disturbed spirits of the ancients of the land then enact their bloody vengeance against those who wake them by turning off the lights, making hooting noises, creating flies and maybe, if they feel up to it, killing people."

Noble Savage

"A character who is portrayed as nobler or of higher moral fibre than the norm, due to their race or ethnicity, which is that of a barbaric or savage tribe. (Often regarded as living the Good Old Ways). The savages in question are quite often American Indians, so you could probably call them Mary Sioux. Rare nowadays, except as a Sci Fi alien- though it has made something of a comeback with the idea of Magical Native American people being more in tune with nature than the greedy white people."

Going Native

"There are plenty of people who believe that modern life is rubbish and would like to escape it and go live off the fat of the land. The Going Native trope plays to this fantasy by having a character lifted out of his typical environment and thrust into a new one, only to become a part of that new world. "

Injun Country

"American Indians (also Red Indians, Native Americans, Amerinds, or First Nations) discovered America by walking across a gigantic land bridge from Russia into Alaska. For a few thousand years they just took up space until Europeans rode massive wooden buckets across the ocean and crashed into the eastern shore. After a friendly 'getting to know you' dinner party, the killing started, and lines were drawn between the Civilized World and Injun Country."

Magical Native American

"After centuries of various atrocities (smallpox, Columbus, Custer, the Trail of Tears) perpetuated against "the savages", white people finally came to realize that Native Americans have rich identities and cultures. Furthermore, Native American tribes have their own rich and varied beliefs, many of which hold close to the idea of the value of everything on the earth...Of course, many non-Natives, especially those Hollywood types, saw a complex faith with a focus on ritual and spirits and broke it down to "magic." So, whenever someone needs to bring in a spirit guide, or magical superpowers, they bring in the Magical Native American."

Badass Native

"Indigenous people tend to be, well, poor. Indigenous people also have a tradition of war, unlike the rest of the world. So of course they're badasses. No matter what era, you're in, if you live in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, or Australia, indigenous people will be badasses. Rarely seen in the rest of the world, though. The American version of the Badass Native has costuming and prop elements as well. Note that this is Always Male, will often be magical. Overlap with Noble Savage."

 Mighty Whitey 

"A common trope in 18th and 19th century adventure fiction, when vast swathes of the world were being explored and properly documented by Europeans for the first time, Mighty Whitey is usually a displaced white European, of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative. Extra points if he woos The Chiefs Daughter along the way."

The Chief's Daughter

"Even in Darkest Africa, Injun Country, or the land of Wild Samoans, Everythings Better With Princesses. The Chief's daughter, in her Fur Bikini or Braids Beads And Buckskins, is often the first to greet or trust Mighty Whitey during his visit to the strange new land. She'll be inexplicably beautiful by Western standards with just enough racial traits to be exotic, and will be a Noble, Nubile Savage compared to the rest of her Barbarian Tribe, and a Friend To All Living Things."

Mayincatec

"Under Hollywood History, all historical Central/South American nations are lumped into one exotic and barbaric people: the Mayincatec, featuring aspects of the Maya, Inca and the Aztecs, plus many others. It's a salad of exciting bits from all their histories, with a topping of myth and fiction. And the dressing is blood."

Pocahontas

Want to see these TV tropes in action?  Well, there isn't a better example out there than the famously flawed 1995 Disney animated film Pocahontas.

One of the best critiques is from regular TVtropes.org contributor The Nostalgia Chick.  Her silly comments and sharp wit add a touch of humor to what could otherwise be a very dry subject.  She also created a video critique of Pocahontas which you will find below:



Part 1 of 2:




Part 2 of 2:  (scroll ahead to 3:38 for the most disturbing Disney movie line ever)




To conclude as only The Nostalgia Chick can:

"And hopefully now we're all a little less educated on our own history. And the movie leaves us with questions like, 'Why are there moose in Virginia? Where did all those majestic cliffs go in the interim 500 years? Why doesn't listening with one's heart bridge language gaps anymore? Why does Pocahontas lack a real nose — was she really fathered by Lord Voldemort?' Really, it's best not to think about it — the great mouse in the sky certainly doesn't want you to."

For more on Pocahontas, check out this previous post:

Portraying Pocahontas: or the Not-So-Modern Origins of the "Sexy Indian Princess"


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Portraying Pocahontas: or the Not-So-Modern Origins of the "Sexy Indian Princess"

One of the single most pervasive and harmful facets of the 500 year history of "drawing on Indians" remains the sexual objectification of Native women. It's an important issue that can often be lost in the sea of appropriation and faulty information that sadly marks the modern state of Native representation in the wider American culture. But it's an issue that rears its ugly head every October 31st.

"Sexy Indian Princess" anyone?

This issue is in fact part of a larger trend that extends beyond Native communities. Throughout American history, women of color have always been treated as the racialized sexual other for the white male majority.

As Whitney Teal writes in her article One Woman's Costume is another Woman's Nightmare at the Women's Rights section of Change.org:

Consider the "Chiquita Banana" stereotypes of Latinas, oversexed black Jezebels, or the seemingly pliant and sexually subversive Japanese geisha. All of those stereotypical costumes correlate with a tame, sexually pure image of white women, like the European colonist with her full-length skirt, the Scarlett O'Hara on the plantation. Of course, there are also sexy stereotypes for white women, but most aren't ethnicity-specific and most people don't routinely lump all white women into one category.

The fact that Native women are most commonly assaulted by non-Native men is not surprising to me, but does add a historical slant to the idea of how harmful cultural appropriation can be for women. Historically, men have used the implied "natural" sluttiness of women of color as justification for rampant rape or not-really-consensual relationships with women of color, particularly Native women who came into contact with colonists.

Many modern issues for American Indians have roots that run deep in American history. This issue is no different. Reading various articles and comments about this matter, I was reminded of a particular chapter in a particular book that shows just how far back this problem goes.

Camilla Townsend is a history professor at Rutgers University where she specializes in first contact interaction between Native people and Europeans. In 2004, she published Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma which discusses the earliest interaction between the English colonists and the Indians at Jamestown.

Before I even read the book, I fully expected to learn about this early interaction and see how it set the stage for Native-Western encounters in the ensuing 400 years of American history. What I did not realize was how important the previous 100 years were for the English colonists who left England that fateful December of 1606. Long before they set foot in the muddy tidal flats of the James River, these earliest “americans” already had an idea of Native women fixed fast in their minds.

The motley band of one hundred and forty four Englishmen who landed in Virginia in 1607 were far from uneducated. The history I learned growing up had me believe that these English gentlemen shunned hard work in favor of fruitless gold prospecting, all while stumbling about and starving in this "savage new land." While it is true they faced many obstacles, they at least had done the required reading before they left.

The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589)

Indeed, it is the overview on New World literature available to the English colonists that makes Professor Townsend's book so compelling. It is in her description of these sixteenth century works that the origins of the “sexualized Indian” becomes so abundantly clear.

She writes of lurid tales of an exotic land spreading throughout Europe within the first few years of Columbus' arrival in the Americas. From the earliest illustrations, America was routinely depicted as a naked Indian woman, a metaphor not lost on the Spanish conquistadors who conquered the “virgin” lands of the New World. Even the English described the Indians in and around the failed Roanoke colony as sweet and welcoming, “devoid of all guile and treason.” (p. 28)

These works inspired hundreds if not thousands of Englishmen to risk their lives and money to journey to this land of “opportunity.” Native women were portrayed as not only accessible but willing. It was seen as practically divine mandate that these Englishmen sow their seed in the new world both literally and figuratively.

As Townsend writes:

“There is no question that John Smith and his peers- those who wrote such books, and those who read them- embraced a notion of an explorer as a conqueror who strode with many steps through lands of admirers, particularly admiring young women... the colonizers of the imagination were men- men imbued with almost mystical powers. The foreign women and the foreign lands wanted, even needed, these men, for such men were more than desirable.” (p. 29)

European men fabricated the “New World” into a perfect masculine fantasy where savagery and sexuality mingled together in a myriad of tantalizing forms.

As the title of Townsend's book suggests, a certain young Indian girl entered the equation as soon as the Englishmen arrived. Today, she stands tall as the embodiment of the sexualized Indian princess who threw herself upon the white man John Smith in order to save his life. It is also a story that bleeds more fiction than fact.

Townsend brilliantly puts Pocahontas, the woman and the myth, in their historical context:

“Pocahontas, we must remember, was a real person. She was not always a myth. Long before she became an icon, she was a child who walked and played beneath the towering trees of the Virginia woods, and then an adult woman who learned to love-- and to hate-- English men. Myths can lend meaning to our days, and they can inspire wonderful movies. They are also deadly to our understanding.” (ix-x)

The tale of Pocahontas and John Smith came to prominence thanks to Smith's publications. He happily describes the young thirteen or fourteen year-old Pocahontas in alluring terms, “nubile and sexy” joined by other naked young women. (p. 74)

The Abduction of Pocahontas (c.1618)

In reality, she was a mere ten or eleven years old. A young girl who tried to live an ordinary life in extraordinary times.

All of the depictions of Pocahontas and Smith since their real-life encounter have only served to transform the historical reality of statutory rape into something not only palatable but pleasing for readers and movie audiences alike.

One only needs to look at the more modern depictions of Pocahontas to see this myth in action:

"Pocahontas" (c.1848)

"Pocahontas" (c.1883)

Pocahontas (1995)

The New World (2005)

A young attractive teenage girl tantalizing the white man.  Not the normal eleven year old girl of history.  In essence, the myth and not reality.  And sadly a myth with very real consequences even today.

Reading the various articles about sexual violence against Native women, the countless problems with sexy Indian costumes, and the historical insights on Pocahontas really made me sit up and think this Halloween.

I hope it does the same for you.



For more information:

Native American Women and Violence at NOW

Indian Women as Sex Objects at Blue Corn Comics

Pocahontas Bastardizes Real People at Blue Corn Comics

The Pocahontas Myth at Powhatan Renape Nation

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