King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water remains a veritable treasure trove of clever, thinly-veiled allusions to socio-political and pop culture figures and events, playing on a web of intertextual knowledge for an enriched, heightened multi-layered literary experience. This is arguably never more the case than in the novel’s excerpt of characters reading and watching Western novels and films (pg. 207-219) – a veritable ‘supercut’ of characters weaving their own personal histories in an out of the experience and nostalgia of collectively watching and reading pulp Western novels and archaic Western films. As Charlie puts it, many of the above are pretty “standard stuff” – but King is also careful to unpack the seductive allure of the tacky, stereotypical pop culture presented, and that, no matter how monolithically rooted in stereotypes and tropes the Western is as a genre, there can still remain a sordid, seductive pleasure in participating in the culture industry and consuming its familiar, hackneyed narratives (even for audiences being most directly targeted and harmed by said stereotypes). Fittingly, Alberta, who spends her days lecturing on the horrors of Indigenous history, is the character who has the least patience for the televised Western – but even she is sucked into having its images hyperbolically grafted onto her dreams after idly flipping past the Western on TV.
In hyperlinking King’s narrative ‘supercut,’ I hope to further King’s practice of establishing a grander and richer sense of making meaning, the immeasurable interconnections of narrative and engaging with imbedded stereotypes across a variety of media (appropriately, it is hard to distinguish between the scenes in Eli’s Western novel and the film that the majority of the other characters passively flip to). Poignantly, for Charlie, this intersection between fiction and reality, past and present, and the overlapping impetus for real life experience manifests in a pointed nudge towards his character arc of finding meaning in reconnecting with his father by coming face to (racist prosthetic-covered) face with his father appearing in a derogatory, demeaning role in an old Western – a role that Portland himself would consider a high point of his life. King narratively alternates between Charlie’s flashbacks to the Western he is dozing off to – and, in an almost Birth of a Nation homaging feat of cross-cutting, the ‘soldiers’ in the Western ‘win’ in tandem with Charlie’s flashback of Portland being defeated (on and offscreen) by colonizing force. The conflation is unmistakable: the jingoistic frontier mythology of ‘cowboys win; Indians lose’ has ingratiated every permutation of Western culture, and will prove insidiously hard to unlearn, no matter how toxic.
The following hyperlinks show my attempt to unspool King’s myriad of references and intertexts in the aforementioned segment. Enjoy!
“Portland”
Currently understood as a hip, fairly ‘white’ American city, Portland, Oregon still heralds the 9th largest population of Indigenous peoples in the country, with nearly 60,000 people and 130 tribal affiliations. King’s employment of an American city as name (instead of the eponymous Canadian provincial ‘Alberta’ for one of the novel’s primary protagonists) not only aligns Portland with the ‘Americanization’ of his sadly thwarted career playing Indigenous stereotypes in Hollywood, but to the novel’s overarching theme of Colonization erasing any Indigenous past – as happened in Portland, Oregon, as around the province – in favour of being re-branded and reinterpreted in a post-colonial context.
“Remington’s”
A tacky cowboy restaurant that King (circa Charlie) describes as “Disneyland with food” – fittingly named after a firearms company, thereby directly homaging the automatic weapons that helped colonizers massacre and displace Indigenous communities throughout the lands now colloquially understood as North America centuries ago. Completing the demeaning circle of harm, Charlie and Portland work at Remingtons dressed not as cowboys, but as almost cartoonishly stereotypical ‘Injuns’ – so mired in embarrassing, stereotypical tropes that Portland reminds Charlie to “Remember to grunt […] The idiots love it, and you get better tips.”
“Sitting in front of the television”
King frequently employs this image of an Indigenous person, usually a man, passively transfixed by the television, as an instant cypher for depression, and in evoking the particular state of Indigenous people being overwhelmed and despairing in the face of centuries of compounding adversities impeding them from enjoying proper quality of life – as Portland does while defeated at numerous points throughout his stilted acting career, as depicted here.
“Four Corners”
The geographic intersection between four US states – Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado – and an area famous for being the ancestral homes of numerous Indigenous tribes, including the Anasazi, Navajo, Hopi and Ute. In a further in-joke, Remington’s (firmly affiliated with Colonial ‘white culture’) is located in a gentrified neighbourhood, while the neighbouring ‘Four Corners’ (which King codes affiliated with Indigenous life experience – effectively the homes and communities that European settlers would displace with their Remingtons) is painted as being in a much more downtrodden, underdeveloped and low-income area, thereby further reinforcing the ideological power discrepancy.
“As long as the grass is green and the waters run”
As Flick puts it, the statement is rampant with sarcastic sociopolitical intent, both recalling flowery language used in land treaty agreements used to displace and marginalize Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. The romanticized wilderness language is further ironic, Flick articulates, in the fact that Colonial development resulted in untold environmental harm, thereby endangering the qualifiers articulated in the statement itself (158).
“Doris”
A possible reference to Doris Day, singer and actor famous from the 1950s onwards, who starred in several canonical Westerns, including Calamity Jane (1953), The Ballad of Josie (1967).
“Blue shirt and a red bandana”
An iconic cowboy look, pioneered by John Wayne in numerous films, and referenced in numerous contemporary cultural intertexts, including Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Charlie’s idolizing this look reinforces King’s overarching theme of the pervasive pleasure of participating in the culture industry, even at the expense of one’s own culture, history, and the systemic oppression of it.
“John Wayne”
Arguably the most iconic star of Western cinema – who, as Flick points out, increasingly has his hyper-masculine star identity conflate with being a swaggering, “injun-hating screen cowboy” (147). Further melding the layers of fiction and real life, King has Wayne actually cross paths with Charlie at Remington’s – a pristinely sour image of the quintessential fake movie cowboy lording over an actual Indigenous person disguised as a microcosmically fake ‘Injun.’
“Soldiers and peace and love”
King furthers his curt commentary on the dissonance between sweet, seductive language used by military authority figures in oppressing minority communities – primarily American Indigenous communities in this example.
“The white woman on the television began singing a song”
Many western films, such as Cat Ballou (1965), were also musicals, and used as vehicles to further star personas – often at the expense of trivializing their plots (and further indignantly reinforcing the harmful ideologies depicted therein).
“Straight from engagements in Germany, Italy, Paris, and Toronto, that fiery savage, Pocahontas!”
‘Pocahontas’ – arguably the most iconic figure of Indigenous people in Western pop culture (thanks largely to the 1995 Disney film, and, more recently as a tactic of racist and spectacularly crass, lowbrow bullying by President Donald Trump towards Senator Elizabeth Warren) – was a member of the Pamunkey tribe in Virginia. According to, in part, historical fact and Colonial legend, Pocahontas was married to Englishman John Rolfe, renamed ‘Rebecca,’ and paraded around England as an almost diplomatic mascot for English gentility – and, more harmfully, a symbol of the propensity of English culture to ‘civilize’ Indigenous cultures and people. King’s snide treatment of ‘Pocahontas’ as a faux-touring striptease act echoes the theme of ‘Pocahontas’ being a sleazy traveling act paraded around for ‘viewing pleasure.’
“[Portland] was wearing a black mask and he had done something to his nose and had painted it red. He looked silly”
Portland’s mask and red nose encapsulate many of the most harmful cartoonish ‘Injun’ racial caricatures. The abhorrently stereotypical costume is reified by Portland’s portrayal of the ludicrous stereotypes of Indigenous and First Nations people as ‘savage,’ ‘lusty,’ or almost feral. Portland’s degradation is calcified by this embarrassment being the only employment he can find as an actor, caricaturing his already caricatured early work portraying stereotypical ‘Native Chiefs’ in early Hollywood westerns – a final splash of salt in his irreconcilable wound.
“John Wayne took off his jacket and hung it on a branch”
Clear foreshadowing for the jacket the four elders later gift to Lionel, tenuously revealed (in the magic realism spirit of the novel) to have been Wayne’s actual costume piece. The jacket is similarly aligned with George as well, a similar brash, uncouth white character who occupies a similarly antagonistic and faux-superior role towards Indigenous communities, attempting to disrespectfully photograph the Sun Dance at the novel’s climax.
“On the bank, four old Indians waved their lances. One of them was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt.”
More foreshadowing that the four elders can somehow hop between the worlds of Western fiction and the ‘real world’ of the novel. Their ‘spying’ on Lionel specifically watching the film alludes to their eventual intervention into trying to ‘fix’ his life. Lionel, fittingly, is oblivious to this, ignoring the amazing rupturing of the fourth wall by plunging his head into his chest in existential despair, ignoring the film.
“Today is a good day to die.”
A phrase commonly attributed to Crazy Horse before the battle of Little Big Horn – but considered by many to have originated by a different Indigenous speaker at a different battle. Regardless, the phrase is now so imbedded into the cultural lexicon that it has become coopted by the Die Hard franchise – as inglorious a fate of sordidly ironic cultural appropriation as any.
“Iron Eyes”
A clear, tongue-in-cheek allusion to ‘Iron Eyes Cody’ – an Italian-American actor who gained consistent work as an actor by impersonating First Nations and Indigenous characters in Westerns and comedies. C.B. – Portland’s actor friend – is clearly patterned after Cody.
“Iron Eyes Cody” – or, as his birth certificate would have it, the Italian ‘Espera DeCorti.’ One of Hollywood’s most famous ‘Fake Indians,’ and genesis for King’s ‘C.B.’
“Bursum.”
In creating Bill Bursum, Lionel’s boss at the video store, as Flick notes, “King combines the names of two men famous for their hostility to Indians” (148): Holm O. Bursum, New Mexico senator, who proposed the “Bursum Bill” – a piece of legislation designed to irrefutably lend colonists “squatters’ rights” on Indigenous lands, and Buffalo Bill Cody, purveyor of the infamous sideshow exploiting First Nations people as carnival entertainment – a clear predecessor for the kind of shill, hack entertainment and dismissive superiority towards Indigenous people championed by Bill Bursum in King’s novel. Bursum’s being aligned here with John Wayne having a jingoistic victory over the Indigenous characters in the Western movie that unites all the characters is a clear conflation of white privilege trampling over Indigenous rights, both crowing proudly while doing so.
WORKS CITED
A Good Day to Die Hard (film). Dir. John Moore. Twentieth Century Fox, 2013.
Barber, Sally. “Native Cultures of Four Corners, Arizona.” USA Today. Web. Accessed on March 17, 2019.
Cat Ballou (film). Dir. Elliot Silverstein. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1965.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (Summer/Autumn 1999): 140-172. Web. Accessed on March 15, 2019.
Hamilton, E.L. “The True Story of Pocahontas.” The Vintage News. Web. Accessed on March 17, 2019.
“Iron Eyes Cody.” IMDb: The Internet Movie Database. Web. Accessed on March 17, 2019.
Jurassic Park (film). Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures, 1993.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 1993. Print.
Krieg, Gregory. “Here’s the deal with Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage.” CNN. Web. Accessed on March 16, 2019.
Osife, Maiya. “The roots of Portland’s Native American community.” Metro News. Web. Accessed on March 16, 2019.
Pocahontas (film). Dir. Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg. Walt Disney Pictures, 1995.
Remington Arms. Web. Accessed on March 16, 2019.
Takatoka, as told by Lee Standing Bear Moore. “Today is a Good Day to Die.” Manataka Indian Council. Web. Accessed on March 17, 2019.
“What was the Bursum Bill?” Study.com. Web. Accessed on March 17, 2019.
hi Kevin,
Great blog once again. You did a great job of honing in on the Western subplot/subtext in King’s novel. I was particularly impressed by your understanding of the references beneath “Portland’s ” name and the juxtaposition you make with “Alberta”. It is a very interesting argument that Portland might represent the ” the theme of Colonization erasing any Indigenous past…in favour of being re-branded and reinterpreted in a post-colonial context.”
Are you suggesting that assimilation in the United States is being compared to the Canadian (or specifically the Alberta) context ? Does Canada represent a different paradigm or possibility than the pathetic and offensive version being perpetrated by our neighbours across the border?
The other question I have for you is regarding King’s ultimate strategy for overturning the classic Western (Hollywood) narrative of ‘cowboys win; Indians lose’ by retelling the story with the Iron Eyes leading a successful charge back at the advancing Cowboy forces. What is your take on this solution? Is anything actually achieved when the same dichotomy is being reinforced (albeit with a new hierarchy)? Or is this a necessary first step in the decolonization process (first disarm and then engage in deeper conversations and negotiations) ?
Hey Laen,
Thank you so much, once again, for your kind words and keen analysis alike! Interestingly, despite the fact that I saw fit to notice the alignment between Portland and Alberta, I didn’t specifically tease it out into a ‘Canada vs. US’ dichotomy in terms of King’s treatment of the two, and their affiliated metaphoric significance in terms of both countries’ treatment of their respective Indigenous communities and presence – though, now that you’ve teased this out, this seems like an obvious shortfall on my part! D’oh!
I mostly saw and understood Portland as a microcosmic signifier for the role of Hollywood as the largest and loudest bastion of pop culture and ideology, and how cataclysmically destructive similar stereotyping maneuvers in the film industry have been for Indigenous communities over the past century (and, although it’s more of a canonical text for anti-African American racism and the Klu Klux Klan in the States, I really do think King’s subtle winks at Birth of a Nation are no accident in terms of driving this point home). Portland (the character) seems like the quintessential example of hitting rock bottom in terms of any shred of pride or dignity in his cultural identity – his narrative ‘high point’ is when he’s gainfully employed cheerfully reinforcing harmful racist stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, and he’s eventually so chewed up and spat out by the American film industry that he’s reduced to reinforcing cartoonishly awful stereotypes in a strip club – then eventually a broken man who would give anything to be able to resume his old role of playing embarassingly stereotypical roles once again. If I were to contrast his character with Alberta specifically, it’d certainly be worth articulating the amount of strength and resilience Alberta has a character (her last name, ‘Frank,’ is certainly no coincidence) – in this excerpt alone, she’s the only character who rolls her eyes and turns off the Western on TV, and she’s consistently painted by King as similarly steadfast, assertive, and self-reliant throughout the novel. Is that King being patriotic, by contrasting the fall and resistance of his respective US and Canadian character surrogates? I’m still not entirely sure – and I certainly don’t think that he’s insinuating that the postcolonial cultural environment is any better for Canadian Indigenous communities than it is for American ones (more on that on Nolan’s post after this). If anything, I would say that the indirect relationship between Portland and Alberta reflects King’s ongoing commentary about the harmful role that mass media and pop culture play in reifying harmful stereotypes, and that the best way of resisting and refuting these may be, like Alberta, to simply abstain from participating, and switch the damn thing off, guilty ‘bag of chips’ allure of the pop culture texts and all.
In regards to your second point, are you referring to the point later in the novel where the four Elders ‘re-write’ the Western’s climax, and have John Wayne get shot, and Iron Eyes’ forces finding an unscripted triumph? If so, I think that King would certainly agree with your latter take on this. I don’t think King sees the shooting of John Wayne as an ‘eye for an eye’ situation of ‘violence begets violence’ so much as balancing the scales – that, if there are going to continue to be harmful, stupid, stereotypical Westerns reinforcing monolithic archetypes out in the world, there should at least be some where the Indigenous characters get a win for a change. The corresponding inspiration that watching the revamped movie seems to have on the Elders’ ploy to ‘fix up’ Lionel in his defeated passivity seems very deliberate to me. If pop culture galvanizes self-image, then the revamped film isn’t as much a case of disarming as balancing the scales – a reclamatory moment where viewers from oppressed communities can – briefly – share in the intoxicating feeling of what it feels like to have pop culture back you as a winner. It’s a bit of a clumsy comparison, so please forgive me, but my thoughts stray to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which brazenly re-writes the Second World War as a more definitive victory against the Nazis for Jewish characters elevated to active, heroic mercenary roles. My guess is that King would stipulate that the ‘disarming’ process you refer to, while unquestionably necessary, comes with a bit of pop culture kickback in conjunction with it – or, at least, he playfully toys with this idea throughout GGRW at any rate.
Phew – long reply here, but thanks so much for your thought-provoking remarks! Cheers! 🙂
Hi Kevin,
You have an abundance of great observations in this post. To expand on Laen’s comment, I would like to address your consideration of Portland and Alberta and their allusion to city names. Specifically, I would like to join in on Laen’s comment “Does Canada represent a different paradigm or possibility than the pathetic and offensive version being perpetrated by our neighbours across the border?” Even though Canada might not have made the same amount of “pathetic and offensive” Westerns as the United States, I think it’s important to understand that our current treatment of indigenous populations is equally (if not more so) problematic. Canadian racism often hides behind being our smiling and apologetic faces. For instance, over 80% of reserves in Canada have a median income below the poverty line. (https://globalnews.ca/news/3795083/reserves-poverty-line-census/). Even though I can’t find the same statistic for American reserves, here is an article arguing that the racism towards Indigenous people in Canada is worse than in the states. https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-2/. When we look at Alberta and Portland specifically, one report found that “Alberta remains to have the largest gap between the rich and the poor of all the provinces, with the richest 1% earning 46 times the poorest 10% of the provincial population, relative to other Canadian provinces.” https://edmontonsocialplanning.ca/index.php/resources/digital-resources/a-espc-documents/a06-newsletters/a06g-reports/1059-alberta-child-poverty-report-2018. And Oregon also has one of the largest income gaps compared to other states. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/05/08/which-town-your-state-poorest-list-financial-hardship/581103002/. Along with wealth inequality, maybe there are some other similarities. Are there any tribes that extended from Alberta to Portland?
I was also wondering if the reputation of Alberta and the reputation of Portland (as a province and as a city) affected your interpretation of the characters? For me, Portland has always felt more progressive than Alberta. In Portland, I usually hang out with hippies and hipsters in communes and breweries. In Alberta, I hang out with riggers at saloons. Of course, this is just my personal experience, but it definitely affected my initial impression of the characters.
Hi Nolan,
Thank you so much for this incredibly insightful and in-depth reply. I’ll piggyback off my response to Laen here by saying that I didn’t make quite as much of the dichotomy between Portland and Alberta as you two did, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a really important shortfall in my more Hollywood-centric take on this section of the novel. So, thanks for helping to properly tease that out here!
As I briefly touched on above, I certainly think there’s no question that Canada’s ongoing, consistently poor treatment and abuse of our Indigenous populations is very much on par with their comparable situation in the United States (as your myriad of statistics ably reinforce) – and, having read enough of King’s writing for this course, and interviews encircling it, I think he would very much agree. It is interesting that ‘Portland’ the character seems so much a cipher for the Californian ‘failed actor’ experience – I’ve found myself wondering if ‘Portland’ needed to be clearly labelled as from somewhere that isn’t a titan of the film industry so as to show its inextricable draw to people throughout the country, and how universally destructive a force it can be.
It’s very interesting that you tease out the general stereotypes of people from Portland and Alberta – which, although broad, I’m sure few would dispute. It’s also interesting, in this regard, that neither Portland or Alberta exemplify said stereotypes of their eponymous geographies in their personalities. I can easily see this as another maneuver of King’s trying to dismantle imbedded expectations, and challenging readers to engage beyond the signified, even when directly provoked otherwise. Still, I think it’s clear that King’s rationale behind the naming of these two characters remains one of the novel’s most fascinating challenges and mysteries. I thank both you and Laen for teasing it out and extending the discussion so eloquently!
Hey Kevin, Great hyperlinking. I really appreciated how you made it highly consumable for the reader, rather than having each hyperlink embedded in a larger piece of writing. I was able to really focus on the extremely detailed hyperlinks you chose, rather than feel deeply integrated into the story, as I do when I read GGRW. Not only was your framework effective, I really enjoyed taking a deeper look into the meaning of the more mundane names, such as through Remington. The section you chose offered a lot of insight into King’s intent and research. Thanks for the refreshing approach and insightful findings!
Lexi
Hi Lexi,
Well thank you very much! I really appreciate your kind words, and am glad you enjoyed the post’s structure. This is more how my brain works, and was the best way of ensuring I didn’t miss any hyperlinks as I worked through the section chronologically, so I’m glad it paid off in reading experience. Cheers! 🙂
I also agree that Kevin did a great job of formatting this post.
Hello Kevin,
I enjoyed your blog and you seemed to really grasp the concept of how to answer the question from the assignment much better than I did.
I was unaware of Portland having one of the largest populations of Indigenous people in the United States.
My question is quite different, Portland is known for being one of the most progressive cities in America and they also have one of the best hockey programs in the Canadian Western Hockey League. Their team logo is depiction of an Indian Head that a few have described as racist. http://www.golocalpdx.com/news/native-american-activists-slam-winterhawks-logo-as-racist https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2017/04/portland_winterhawks_should_sp.html
I would have to agree with this sentiment. The has been rise of objection to racist sports team names and logos over the years. Examples such as the Cleveland Indians who recently ditched their “Chief Wahoo” logo after the Toronto Blue Jays would not allow the team to use it in Canada. The is a step in the right direction, but the Cleveland team still uses the “Indians” name. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/mlb/indians-chief-wahoo-toronto-1.4814728
Canadian broadcasters even refrain from using the word “Indians”during broadcasts and only refer to the team as Cleveland.
The Washington Redskins have also been criticized for their name and logo but have not made any changes to either. The Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL also use an “Indian head” logo that has gone unchanged in their almost century old franchise history. The Portland Winterhawks logo is a replica of the Blackhawks logo.
My question is rhetorical but I would like to know what you think. Should the Portland Winterhawks come out and make a huge change to their logo? As a progressive and leading city in the United States, it would make sense that Portland could instigate a change to the use of these racist logos in sports and pave the way for sports teams transitioning from racist logos to creative logos.
What do you think?
Thanks
Maxwell