3] What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?
When approaching any creation story, I must take a minute (of course immediately after writing those words I then stand up – pour a cup of coffee, switch seats and settle in – a literal and figurative minute), because creation stories to me (even our own scientific story of creation, the Big Bang), always feel a little dissociative. They always seem to be out of my language: they are expressing ideas that I can barely grasp. It seems, at times, I can barely hold onto the size of the world, for a new discovery can make a city that feels so small seem, once again, endless. In elementary & high school, they showed us a video from 1968 to try to put the size of life on this earth into perspective, I’m sure others of you have watched it: The Cosmic Zoom. (The National Film Board of Canada produced that 8 minute bad boy). So, I would say that I have an understanding of that concept. Of the largeness of this specific galaxy. However, to then take that concept and apply it to how the UNIVERSE began – that is just so beyond my understanding. Like I can look at renderings of the big bang and say “ah, yes, I understand” but it has this largess behind the idea. So much so that thinking of the big bang (hell – even thinking about dinosaurs) feels like thinking about the surface of the moon being like cheese.
All of that is to just put into perspective how other worldly and bizarre all creation stories/myths/etc seem (to me). Fundamentally, I can believe them but not without this separation between my existence and these ideas. Simplified: all stories of creation feel like myths to me, even if I know that they are “fact.”
Tom King really plays with these ideas of creation in Green Grass, Running Water. They exist in two planes, one foot at the start of life on earth, reflecting all creation, and another foot in the recent past, showing the shadows of all of the issues that effect us still. He weaves pop culture representations of Indigenous people throughout these stories. Importantly, King does not name the Indian women after the Native sidekicks – instead, he gives them the names of the leading men (and they are usually men). They are given positions of “white” authority; however, in all of their tales, their renaming of themselves does not affect the militaristic reaction that they are received with.
Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman.
Ishmael! says a short soldier with a greasy mustache. This isn’t an Ishmael. This is an Indian.
Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman again.
All right, says the short soldier. We know just what to do with unruly Indians here in Florida. And the soldiers drag Changing Woman down a dirt road. (GGRW 225)
The authority of the names of these white, leading men still does not give them the authority to walk their own path. The idea of being both Indian and Ishmael is impossible, the two are mutually exclusive to the soldiers, to the enforcers of controlling standards.
This inclusion of contemporary pop-culture is one of the most dissociative ideas for me in relation to his creation myths. The constant root to the present is hard for me to then reimagine as a “creation” story; however, it certainly does reflect the contemporary effects that these stories and names and characters still have on us. The idea that these past-pop culture icons can still evoke righteous principles, even with their outdated morality is both frightening and important to remember.
Works Cited:
Curious Curious. “Cosmic Zoom (High Quality)” YouTube. YouTube, 02 Sept 2008. Web. 8 Aug 2015. <URL>
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins P, 1993. Print.
Wallace and Gromit. “A Grand Day Out – Landing on the Moon – Wallace and Gromit.” YouTube. YouTube, 30 Apr 2015. Web. 8 Aug 2015. <URL>