Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

Has anyone else seen "Spirit"? How about a critique? I took my 9 year-old
son to see it last week. He liked it (despite the Nahuatl blood running
through his veins). We did a critique. The movie is billed as "sympathetic"
to the fate of Native Americans vis a vis their treatment at the hands of
the military. My impression was that this was at best just another
depiction of the "noble savage" and, at worst, racist stereotyping and a
veiled attack on Native Americans. I asked my son to list qualities of the
whites and Native Americans depicted in the movie. The Native Americans
were shown as unproductive, idle, part of nature (by implication
unchanging) and dreamers of "freedom" (a dream shared with wild mustangs).
Whites were productive, workers, planners, organizers, dreamers (of a
technological future). The white soldiers are depicted as cruel and savage,
except at the end of the movie, when they appear to accept and forgive
Spirit's and Little Creek's escape (for the time being?). Seeing the movie
in the context of U.S. history, it is easy to draw conclusions concerning
the qualities of winners (whites) and losers (Native Americans).
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the protagonist is a horse (Spirit) and
that his sidekick is the Indian.


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.