Major Films and Minor Literatures
:45-3:54
Objective Review:
The scene I appreciated most was the conversation in which
Nobody’s backstory is introduced. Riding behind Nobody, William asks why Nobody
isn’t with his own people. He explains that his parents’ tribes disliked him
because his parents belonged to warring tribes. When he was hunting, he was
captured by soldiers and made a display in an exhibit, first in the United
States, then in England. He began to mimic the Englishmen, in hopes they would
lose interest and release him, but instead they put him in a school. Eventually
he escaped them, and he made his way back to his parents’ tribes, seeing the
horrors the Europeans had inflicted on other tribes along the way.
Reaction:
Why are gunshots so ineffective in this movie? You get shot
in the back and you turn around and shoot back. What happened to falling down
and dying? I understood Blake’s exhaustion with life and it made the
aimlessness the film began to have less strained for me. It felt very
disconnected and identity-based.
8:58-9:30
Interpretation:
There are three elements to a minor literature. First comes the deterritorializtion of a major language by someone writing in the language from a minority position. Second, the minor literature is political, “everything in them is political” says Deleuze. Third is the collective value of the minor literature. Although the writer of Dead Men is not from the First Nations, I propose that the inclusion of Native American experts during the writing of the film is enough to qualify the film as a minor literature.
The film takes our classic concept of a Western movie and
civilization and begins to deterritorialize it. Upon the opening of the film,
we are introduced to the territory of an old town in the West, dusty road,
horses and men, and gunshots everywhere. Although familiar with this terrain,
we quickly become unable to territorialize it. Between public sex, reformed
whores being bodily thrown out of bars, and the disregard for promises, we are
unable to make the connection between the “honorable” men in classic Westerns
and the men inhabiting the town of Machine.
After making the audience uncomfortable with the concept of “noble”
old Westerns, we are ushered into Nobody’s world. The writers easily explore
the common tropes of the mystic Indian and noble savage. Nobody rescues Blake, trying
to pry the bullet from his chest without thought for the waking man’s pain. He
then drags him to the west coast due to his belief that Blake is a reincarnation
of the poet William Blake. He uses drugs, calling them “the medicine of the
Great Spirit” and even leaves the helpless Blake on his own in order to induce
a vision quest. This is common territory in many Western films.
Then we begin the deterritorializtion of Native American
culture. “The first characteristic of a minor literature in any case is that in
it language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization” (Deleuze). We see soldiers knock a child unconscious and steal him away from his
people. The government then display him as though he is an animal in a zoo, and
not once does anyone pause to consider the perspective of their fellow human
being. Even once they understand that he is intelligent and enroll him in a school,
they do not consider him a human. He is still a prisoner who must escape to return
to his home. Once he returns to his tribe, he is not welcome among them because
he no longer understands their culture. They do not believe him as they might
believe one of their own, one who was trusted among them and who understands
their culture. In one fell swoop, the idea of honorable Americans and advanced
civilization back East is ruined.
The political domain has contaminated every statement" (Deleuze). Indeed, the political nature of the film is not so much implied as
it is outright stated. Not only do the white men – American and English alike –
not consider Nobody a fellow human when they trap him in a cage, but some
attempt murder by giving European diseases to the Native American tribes. When
Nobody requests tobacco from the trader, he is refused. The same request from
Blake sees tobacco produced instantly. The film is deliberately political.
Lastly, we see the collective value of the film. It is not
only Nobody who experiences the threat of the white man. It is the ruined villages
and frightened forts; the thousands of Native American children stolen from
their parents and placed in boarding schools, returned to villages that they don’t
understand and rejected by the white man already; the tribes who died on
western marches only to be ousted from the lands over and over and over again.
It isn’t one voice who protests this. In the film, we hear the collective
accounts of every Native American production, from elders’ tales to children’s
books. "What each author says individually already constitutes a common action" (Deleuze).
Caemeron Cain - http://www.mantlethought.org/philosophy/what-territory
Aejin Hwang - https://immanentterrain.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/what-is-a-minor-literature-3/
Deleuze - What is a minor literature
