FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Searching for Native fact in North American fiction
Tired of improper portrayals,
Gary Farmer takes back the image of Aboriginal peoples
by Mike BellSavages: Images of Native Americans in Film
Gary Farmer at the Uptown Stage
Tuesday, January 21A very Eurocentric interviewer sits and scratches his head. On the other end of the telephone, well-known Canadian actor, director and publisher Gary Farmer is lambasting the latest Coen Brother's film Fargo for being blatantly racist in its representation of the Native American. An innocuous film, sure, but racist? To be perfectly honest, it takes several moments to even remember the presence of a Native character in the film.
But Farmer remembers. The vicious ex-con character from the car dealership who introduced the husband to the bungling kidnappers was a part that he admittedly pursued and failed to get. As an award-winning actor who has appeared in a number of films, including a co-starring role opposite Johnny Depp in Jim Jarmusch's latest offering Dead Man, his acting ability wasn't the problem. The problem was that he didn't fit the part. In fact, according to Farmer, neither did the actor who eventually landed the role.
"If we were to take a serious look how Native people were dealt with in Fargo, it's literally the route of all evil," he says from the offices of his Toronto-based magazine Aboriginal Voice.
"There were no redeeming factors about (the character), the end result was, this man is a savage. I know the actor who got the role - Steve Reevis - and I know as well that they dubbed his voice, that's not his voice. There was a particular essence of character that they went for. Even when they looked at all the Native actors in North America, they still had to manipulate the voice to create the stereotype that they wanted.
"Here we have the brightest young filmmakers in North America, very creative with their characterizations of people and very creative with their storytelling, but when it comes to Native people - they fail," asserts Farmer.
"I think unless somebody points that out to people they don't necessarily see it because they don't ever think of a film from a particular point of view or from a particular mind-set or from a particular experience in the context of modern cinema.
The presentation which he's bringing to Calgary this week aims to do just that. Titled, Savage: Images of Native Americans in Film, Farmer will use video examples to illustrate how Natives have been misrepresented in cinema through the years and how the people in charge of the film industry have failed in their one-sided telling of history.
And any Canadians who are sitting smugly in front of their television sets watching North of 60 should keep in mind that it's not just Hollywood that has re-written the facts to mesh with their narrow view of its aboriginal people. While he is working on a couple of films for the National Film Board at the moment and he has just seen a CBC project of his air, Farmer has locked horns with most of the institutions in charge of visual storytelling in this country including the NFB, CBC and most notably, Telefilm Canada.
"I took a film once to them called, 'Canada: Birthplace of Apartheid,' and they told me it wasn't true," he says incredulously. "I had research up the wazoo to show them that South Africa came to this country looked at how the North Americans were dealing with their so-called ethnics... and they went back and created their own system. The first minister of the Department of Indian Affairs was a South African.
"I have evidence, research that we spent a year doing and Telefilm with one whisk of their broom said, 'That's not true.'
"Sixty or seventy-five years of broadcasting in this country and you can count on one hand the amount of Native people that CBC or the National Film Board have taken through and showed the process of how to create cinema... and yet they have the audacity to call themselves 'public broadcasting.'
"They maintain control. They're so afraid to give us any creative power so that we can tell our stories."
Ultimately, that's Farmer's goal in life: to see Native artists articulating the Native experience. He's trying to get to the young minds before society has an opportunity to define them for themselves. He's attempting, with his films and his magazine, to wrest control of the Native image from the current spin doctors and give the opportunity - an opportunity which he stll finds himself fighting for - to a new generation. And despite his obvious displeasure at the rate in which change is taking place, Farmer is optimistic
"I'm not trying to be defensive," he explains. "What I'm trying to do is move ahead. It's about taking control of our own stories, it's about us telling the stories.
"(In the presentation) I've expanded on it to offer some alternatives. We seem to be crying out for it. I mix it with some reality on how we've been portrayed, about what the situation really is and what it means to grow up being Native in today's world. But I've started to push a little further too, to bring forth some images that Native people are creating... to show the potential. It's always been pushed at us that the great artists were from a time gone by, primarily in Central Europe, but I think the great artists here in this continent are yet to be born or are coming forth now.
"Once Hollywood sobers up and begins to see that there are so many other stories to be told.... To help people deal with a history that is yet untold will really help to open up the possibilities for the future, which I think is exciting.
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