Dead Men (1995)

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).

The film is not made solely to display Blake’s journey across the country. The point is not that he dies. We see the worst of the Europeans hunt Blake and Nobody. Cole Wilson murderers the other members of his posse for insulting and annoying him, and proceeds to eat one of them. Once he finds that Blake is out of his reach on a sea canoe, he murders Nobody out of spite. We see the best of Native Americans. Nobody attempts to save Blake’s life, guides him to the sea, and barters for a sea canoe for him. We also see the commonplace views of the time. Nobody is not even considered human despite his ability to read and write. From the west coast to England herself, he is an animal to the white men. He is property. Thus we understand a minority perspective.

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