We saw 'The Revenant' this past week. It is an engrossing movie, beautifully filmed. Leo DiCaprio won a Golden Globe for his performance, and it is justly earned. The movie tells the story of Hugh Glass, a trapper and explorer. The story has been told in many ways, including two movies. Glass (1783-1833 approx), would likely not recognize his own story as told. He has become a kind of Paul Bunyan of suffering, perseverance and revenge.
The story as available on the Internet varies a great deal. Here are a couple of versions-
Wikipedia
Rosy Inn
Time
The movie's biggest departure from the 'true' story is in making the young man, of the pair of men who abandoned him, Glass' son by a Native American (NA) woman. Glass is shown in a familial relationship with this woman, living among NAs. NA help is central to his survival, and NA resentment of the plundering of their land is well represented in a smolderingly intense and moving speech.
Glass did get help from NAs, but there is no evidence of him having a son, or a relationship, with an NA woman. This entire portion of the story is an invention. In the credits there is a large thank you to the 'First Nations of America', echoed in DiCaprio's Golden Globes acceptance speech.
All this brings me to the thoughts that prompt this blog. Americans, specifically, white Americans, are immersed in guilt over the treatment of NAs during the westward expansion of the United States. This was once labeled 'manifest destiny', and a great achievement, to explore, conquer, settle and develop an entire continent. While doing this we swept out of our way the 'savages' whose civilization had preceded us. We broke treaties, we took resources. We placed the remaining NAs into 'reservations' of the most God-awful land in the US. In other words, we behaved like any other invading and conquering civilization.
There is an interesting division in how such conquests are regarded. The destruction of Rome by Germanic tribes is just history. There is no chest-beating by Germans today, no talk of reparations for descendants of the Roman people. No Swede or Norwegian hangs their head at the invasion of England, no Frenchman regrets invading England. No Anglo-saxon weeps over the destruction of Celtic life. No one sees the conquest of Mexico and South America by Spaniards as 'wrong'.
No, we are the country that agonizes over its achievements. I feel this stems from our priggish moralizing over the conquests of others. Our treatment of NAs is likened to Hitler's treatment of Jews, our reservations to concentration camps. In the moral conflict of WW2, we were clearly 'the good guys' and Hitler and Japan 'the bad guys'. This allowed us to excuse ourselves for civilian bombings and slaughter of prisoners. It left us with an irreducible problem, however. We could no longer see our conquest of the West as a 'good' thing. We are thus left forever apologizing for doing something anyone of my age was taught was Great and Good.
I am 25% Welsh. Wales has 4.8% of the population of Great Britain. 20% of Wales' population, or 1.2% of Great Britain, speaks Welsh. But Wales is just the Celtic reservation of Anglo-Saxon Angleland. The US NA population by the census was 5.4 million, or 2% of the US. I suppose I must be simultaneously outraged and repentant, depending on whether I am a victimized Celt or an exploitational White Man in America.
For me, the reality is that no one and no country is all good or all bad. The moral dichotomy of WW2 glosses over German art and science in order to make Germany Bad. Germany was good and bad at the same time, like we all are. And humans are not and never have been intrinsically peaceful. We will have to accept the violence of others if we are to accept ourselves. At what point has enough kowtowing been done, enough apologies, enough re-writing of history, whether in movies of classrooms?
Most of the time, what determines 'right and wrong' is who wins. If Germany had won WW2 Americans would have been prosecuted for the bombings of German cities. If the Celts had beaten back their Germanic oppressors we would have Celtland. If England had beaten William of Normandy we would not have had an English monarch speaking nothing but French for 200 years (something conveniently glossed over in history books, as is the fact that later 'English' monarchs of the Hanoverian dynasty spoke German as their first language).
Immersion in guilt has drowned our pride. No nation can define itself while being ashamed of itself. It's long past time to stop apologizing and own what we did violently, so that we may again be proud of what we created.
Ted
The story as available on the Internet varies a great deal. Here are a couple of versions-
Wikipedia
Rosy Inn
Time
The movie's biggest departure from the 'true' story is in making the young man, of the pair of men who abandoned him, Glass' son by a Native American (NA) woman. Glass is shown in a familial relationship with this woman, living among NAs. NA help is central to his survival, and NA resentment of the plundering of their land is well represented in a smolderingly intense and moving speech.
Glass did get help from NAs, but there is no evidence of him having a son, or a relationship, with an NA woman. This entire portion of the story is an invention. In the credits there is a large thank you to the 'First Nations of America', echoed in DiCaprio's Golden Globes acceptance speech.
All this brings me to the thoughts that prompt this blog. Americans, specifically, white Americans, are immersed in guilt over the treatment of NAs during the westward expansion of the United States. This was once labeled 'manifest destiny', and a great achievement, to explore, conquer, settle and develop an entire continent. While doing this we swept out of our way the 'savages' whose civilization had preceded us. We broke treaties, we took resources. We placed the remaining NAs into 'reservations' of the most God-awful land in the US. In other words, we behaved like any other invading and conquering civilization.
There is an interesting division in how such conquests are regarded. The destruction of Rome by Germanic tribes is just history. There is no chest-beating by Germans today, no talk of reparations for descendants of the Roman people. No Swede or Norwegian hangs their head at the invasion of England, no Frenchman regrets invading England. No Anglo-saxon weeps over the destruction of Celtic life. No one sees the conquest of Mexico and South America by Spaniards as 'wrong'.
No, we are the country that agonizes over its achievements. I feel this stems from our priggish moralizing over the conquests of others. Our treatment of NAs is likened to Hitler's treatment of Jews, our reservations to concentration camps. In the moral conflict of WW2, we were clearly 'the good guys' and Hitler and Japan 'the bad guys'. This allowed us to excuse ourselves for civilian bombings and slaughter of prisoners. It left us with an irreducible problem, however. We could no longer see our conquest of the West as a 'good' thing. We are thus left forever apologizing for doing something anyone of my age was taught was Great and Good.
I am 25% Welsh. Wales has 4.8% of the population of Great Britain. 20% of Wales' population, or 1.2% of Great Britain, speaks Welsh. But Wales is just the Celtic reservation of Anglo-Saxon Angleland. The US NA population by the census was 5.4 million, or 2% of the US. I suppose I must be simultaneously outraged and repentant, depending on whether I am a victimized Celt or an exploitational White Man in America.
For me, the reality is that no one and no country is all good or all bad. The moral dichotomy of WW2 glosses over German art and science in order to make Germany Bad. Germany was good and bad at the same time, like we all are. And humans are not and never have been intrinsically peaceful. We will have to accept the violence of others if we are to accept ourselves. At what point has enough kowtowing been done, enough apologies, enough re-writing of history, whether in movies of classrooms?
Most of the time, what determines 'right and wrong' is who wins. If Germany had won WW2 Americans would have been prosecuted for the bombings of German cities. If the Celts had beaten back their Germanic oppressors we would have Celtland. If England had beaten William of Normandy we would not have had an English monarch speaking nothing but French for 200 years (something conveniently glossed over in history books, as is the fact that later 'English' monarchs of the Hanoverian dynasty spoke German as their first language).
Immersion in guilt has drowned our pride. No nation can define itself while being ashamed of itself. It's long past time to stop apologizing and own what we did violently, so that we may again be proud of what we created.
Ted
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