Word: tonto
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hegemonic transducer of the dismaying current events that probably led From Campaign's writers to inscribe the good-guy roles onto characters from another time. Forkner's breasts hang low. Chung makes a bombastic zephyr. Fenton and Green magically fuse the camaraderie of the Lone Ranger and Tonto with the out-of-time bewilderment of Dorothy and Toto (they even bring a pair of ruby slippers, only in this case they are neither ruby nor slippers...
...movies and on television, Indians have traditionally been cast as powerful shamans, ruthless savages or downtrodden drunks living in tar-paper shacks. Not in Alexie's world. Throughout Smoke Signals--which he adapted from his 1993 short-story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven--he doesn't just challenge stereotypes, he pokes fun at them. In his tale of two young dudes who leave "the rez" on a road trip of personal enlightenment, the characters ruminate about everything from Dances with Wolves to a native staple known as fry bread. They also shoot hoops, eat at Denny...
Sure. And writers too, of course, drawing what Hemingway used to call juice from all those ill-fitting depictions. One of the better new novelists, Indian or otherwise, is Sherman Alexie (Reservation Blues, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven). His latest, Indian Killer (Atlantic Monthly Press; 420 pages; $22), is a murderous urban legend not calculated to calm anyone's racial unease. Rage builds slowly in the heart of John Smith, a decent but troubled Native American who was taken--stolen, actually--from his 14-year-old Indian mother and adopted by well-meaning whites. Unreconciled...
Strange things were happening in the woods. Last November agent Jose Wall of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Phoenix got disturbing information from people who had been through nearby Tonto National Forest. A deer hunter said he had been stopped by a group of men dressed in camouflage and armed with guns. They warned him to turn back, saying they were "security" and hinting they were with the government. The hunter didn't believe them. But something about their eyes, not to mention their weapons, made him think arguing would be imprudent. He ran into other people...
Blake is befriended by a Native American named Nobody (Gary Farmer), but Nobody is no one-dimensional Tonto. Educated in Eastern schools, Nobody is convinced that Blake is the reincarnation of the poet, engraver and self-dubbed prophet of the same name. The remainder of the film chronicles Blake's wanderings in the wilderness and his encounters with the various outlaws and deviants who live on the fringe of America. As he wanders, the stability of his identity is more and more challenged and he begins to reform his sense of self around his experiences in the woods...