Margarine-alization

I like my popcorn with a little butter, or I should say, with a little butter flavored topping. I don’t know what’s in that lovely golden greasy liquid they pour over my fluffy movie snack, and I don’t care. It tastes good. Besides, I don’t want to know the reality and risk ruining my viewing experience. I know all about trans-fatty acids being worse for me than real animal-fat butter, and I know how it will all eventually clog my arteries and lead me to the number one killer of all Americans, heart disease. I know all that! But I want my damn popcorn the way I like it because I’m about to go over to the soft drink dispenser for a Coke (non-diet), and then to the candy rack for some M&Ms, and then off to a fast death on account of all this junk food! So back off me!

Did you feel it? 2008 was the ten-year anniversary of Smoke Signals; the movie that, according to many Natives, was supposed to lead a Renaissance of American Indian filmmaking, theater, and performing arts. The problem is … was … that Renaissance means revival or rebirth. But revival of what? Rebirth of what? When exactly did Native American filmmaking, theater, and performing arts have their golden age? Because I think I missed it, and so did our history books. I’ve studied D.W. Griffith’s savage Indian films and the Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows from the late 1800’s, but I haven’t come across any records saying that these films and performances were the height of Native American artistry. I have not found a single account yearning to return to the heyday of … well, anything. As a matter of fact, in all my studies I haven’t found any evidence of our great theatrical past accomplishments.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I frequently attended the Screen Actors Guild’s “Native American Caucus” monthly meetings. Wonderful actors shared their marvelous opinions about the industry and the craft of filmmaking, but mostly we sat around and drank coffee and complained about the profound lack of opportunity in feature films and network television, and how disappointing the lack of cooperation from Hollywood “A-listers” was to our plight. We did, however, talk about creating a DVD to prove to casting directors, studio executives, and production companies just what we Indians could do. I even volunteered to film and edit the project with the help of the University of Southern California film school where I was studying, but some folks took none-too-kindly to my privileged offering. They said they would do fine without my help … that was in 2001. I think they may have a completed DVD any day now.

The Sundance Institute will turn twenty-eight years old this year; they’ve had a Theatre Lab for more than eleven years. In November 2007, New York City finally launched a Native American theater project at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles, California, has been knocking out productions since 1999. Talk about Renaissance, right!?! Or maybe not … How many Rez kids, how many tribal communities, have heard of the Native American work coming out of these world-renowned institutions? Wonderful college productions are staged at institutions like the Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, but we are all still waiting for a break-out hit to drop at a Regional, Off-Broadway, or Broadway house.

I have heard our most celebrated actor and director referred to as “C-listers”; I’ve seen Native American performers show up at auditions, go into the restroom, and emerge with loosed hair, feathers, face-paint, and ribbon shirts; I’ve watched organizational support go to a novice Native American filmmaker who submitted a 14-second video, to a recently released criminal offender who found art while serving time, to a one-man show, and to a director who monopolizes opportunity. I’ve sat painfully quiet as an untrained “artist” manipulated a TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) grant application intended for cultural preservation. He spent two weeks on a rural Indian reservation mentoring middle school and high school students and, at the end of his two weeks, he invited community members to watch the videos created by their children on a bed sheet hanging from the wall of their Rec. Center. Then he rewarded himself by taking the “left-over” grant money and purchasing a trip to the south of France to attend the Cannes Film Festival … alone.

A Native American school teacher I know is helplessly watching neo-Nazism grow on her Reservation. Grumblings similar to that of Jeff Weise, the Red Lake High School shooter and a self-titled NativeNazi, are appearing in graffiti and in classrooms throughout Indian communities. This past Christmas I sent out a plea for help, advice, and possible intervention strategies to hundreds of Native American artists and educators. After all, trained theater artists know well that Greek tragedies like Medea, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Broadway’s HAIR, RENT, and Tony Award winning In the Heights confront social problems. It is the tradition of theater to bring awareness to our most desperate human experiences … but I received little response, advice, and/or reaction from our Native artists and educators about the spread of neo-Nazism on our lands. One respondent did remind me that we should be thankful Mr. Barack Obama is now president however.

I have news for Native America – President Obama is too busy with the economy, education, foreign diplomacy, and health care. I doubt he’ll tackle Native Nazism or Native American arts issues, and I don’t think he’ll be allocating any funds to the Native American superhero movie I hear talk of. The truth is President Obama has already addressed these issues in his inaugural address:

“… Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.”

Anyhoo … back to my greasy popcorn. I know I should change. I know I should pay attention to what is good for me even while I sit in the theater enjoying leisure entertainment. But I like kicking back with my feet up, you know, pretending the problems of the world don’t exist. I prefer hiding in the dark until reality passes by. It’s nice and … well … well, hells yeah, bring on the butter! Or margarine if that’s all you got.

Myrton Wesley Running Wolf (Blackfeet) received his Masters in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 2008. A tuition scholarship award winner to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts graduate in film production from the University of Southern California in 2003, his interests include the marginalization and overt romantic depictions of Native Americans in mainstream media, the cultural politics of accessibility to feature film, broadcast television, and Broadway theater, critical race theory, and religious studies. More broadly, he is interested in the transition period from 1875–1915 when the myth of Native America ceased to be anthropologic in nature and shifted to Third World politics. His final Performance Studies Masters project, titled Carlisle – a different three sisters, is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters set at the infamous paramilitary assimilation academy, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the year 1913 just prior to America’s involvement in World War I.

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