This week I'm featuring "Injun Trouble". As you can tell from the logo above, this one was made long past the heyday of Merrie Melodies. Released on 20 September 1969, "Injun Trouble" marked the end of the line for theatrically-released cartoon shorts for Warner Brothers. It was also the last Cool Cat cartoon, the last Seven Arts Productions-Warner Brothers cartoon, and director Robert McKimson's last for the studio. This short was apparently never shown on television here in North America. I'm not sure if it's because of its portrayal of Native Americans or if this is because it is just so awful. Created in 1967, Cool Cat spoke like a beatnik and, perhaps because of this, hasn't dated well.
It begins with CC cruising in his trademark buggy and some Indians spying on him from afar.
Looking in his rearview mirror, CC notices that he is being chased by an Indian on horseback.
The guy's fate takes a turn for the worse at a makeshift bridge where he is left grasping onto his horse's tail as the horse hangs from the cliff's edge. His equine partner kicks him down the cliff leaving the horse to yell for help. (Honestly, the only part of this cartoon was seeing the horse kick the guy.) CC obliges only to look back and see his buggy rolling down an incline. Having saved him, the horse then kicks CC back into the driver's seat. At this point, the short becomes a series of unfunny sight gags that seem completely thrown together for no other reason than the necessity of getting something into the theatres.
The first bit of unfunniness comes when CC is driving along and sees a sign saying "Watch for Falling Rocks".
He stops, pulls out a pair of binoculars, and…well, you know what happens.
The next couple minutes is taken up by similar scenes repeated involving CC driving along only to find his path blocked by an Indian attempting to pull off a subterfuge or just plain acting goofy. To start, a man and a portly woman flag CC down.
He stops only to have the man give him his wife and then run off. In his best beatnik accent, CC yells, "Indian giver!" We then cut to an Indian attempting to paint a red ring on his tepee. It isn't even so he gives up and throws the bucket up in despair only to have it land on his head. Another cut and we see the Indian paint a face on a metal bucket. He puts it on his head, turns to the camera and says, "Me pale face." Laughing maniacally, the guy proceeds to hop up & down.
The next scene sees Cool Cat holding a long bow and pointing an arrow into the sky. Why he would be doing this is unknown. I guess it's because it gives him an opportunity to quote Longfellow. CC shoots the arrow, turns to the camera, and quotes the great poet: "I shot an arrow into the air; it fell to earth, I knew not where".
A rather irate Indian then steps into the frame and utters, "Well, me know!" and punches our hero out like a light.
A typewriter used to send smoke signals puts the words "Cool Cat go home" into the air. Meanwhile, still cruisin' along to a hip beat, CC is flagged down by a very comely Indian woman.
CC pulls over and the woman says to him in a most sultry voice, "I hear you like to Indian wrestle, Tiger." Indeed he does. So she makes a signal and out pops a very large figure from behind a rock who proceeds to pounce Cool Cat.
Once again CC is driving along and once again he is flagged down, this time by an Indian who looks a bit like Mr. Magoo. CC slams on the brakes and stops just in front of the Indian who asks, "Why?" Perplexed, Cool Cat asks, "Why? I thought Indians always said 'how?'"
Breaking into his best Groucho Marx, the Indian replies, "Me know how. Now I wanna know why" and walks off leaving both CC and the audience mystified.
The final inanity out in the desert comes when yet another Indian is standing in the middle of the road and causes CC to stop. He tells our protagonist, "Here, hold 'em shirt." The Indian then takes off his shirt and hands it to CC who is, again and like us viewers, completely flummoxed. "Groovy, man. But why?" asks CC.
The Indian then jumps on his horse and says, "Me want ride bareback."
At this point the action moves out of the desert as CC cruises into Hotfoot which is, a sign assures us, a "real jumpin' town".
A ruffian marches in, cozies up to the bar, and pounds his fist causing CC's mug of root beer to fly up into the air and onto CC's head. The man then calls for a sarsaparilla. With his drink out of the way, he then challenges Cool Cat to a game of cards only to lose to the tiger. This stroke of luck backfires for our hero as the man also carries a 6-shooter. CC proceeds to pull a pair of scissors out from nowhere and cuts his outline from thin air and retreats into it.
With a final "Cool it now, ya hear?", CC ducks his head into the outline and is gone.
As I noted above, "Injun Trouble" is a genuinely bad cartoon. There's nothing creative about it and, except for the horses, there's nothing particularly funny here. Scenes that have little relation to one another are just slapped together for no reason. But it isn't the poor quality of the short that keeps it from being shown on television, it's the portrayal of Native Americans.
"Injun Trouble" and its version of Indians is very much rooted in the stereotype of them as being savages. Albeit goofy savages, but savages nonetheless. There's all the trappings of the stereotype – the war cry, smoke signals, the squaw, etc. "Injun Trouble" was released in 1969, the year in which Warner Brothers' stopped making cartoon shorts, something it had been doing for about 40 years. Concomitant to this decline was the rise of the American Indian Movement, an activist group, as well as more assertiveness generally on the part of Native Americans. Plus an awareness of Native Americans and their plight began to seep into the consciousness of white America and Canada.
AIM was founded in 1968 in Minneapolis as a response to police brutality. The group gained wide recognition when it seized the Washington D.C. office of the Bureau of Indian affairs in 1972. Another episode etched in the public conscience too place three years later when Leonard Peltier was arrested after a shoot-out with the FBI and his story remains a cause celeb.
Even though we have politically correct terms today, American Indians still suffer from stereotypes and remain at the fringes of popular culture. From the start, Hollywood was keen on portraying Indians as savages which stood in contrast to the civilized white man. The 1970s saw the rise of the noble savage, a sentimental image of Native Americans as standing outside of Eurocentric culture and "being one" with nature. From what I can tell, this is still the preferred portrayal of the American Indian and, with a few exceptions, they don't get much screentime even today. Outside of the screen, stereotypes of alcoholism and casinos seem to dominate.
Hollywood has traditionally portrayed Native Americans in the context of the western genre where they confront the white man. But documentary cinema began to give a broader and more realistic view of Native Americans in the mid-1960s. Anthropologist Sol Worth and his assistant John Adair were studying the Navajo when they made the decision to give their subjects motion picture cameras and teach them how to use them as well as edit what they shoot. The results of this experiment are found in Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. While I'm not sure if any of the films are generally available, I have seen some clips. I recall one which involved a man walking to his friend's home. Now, in conventional film narrative, this is the time for an ellipsis so that a half hour walk only takes up a few seconds of screentime. But the Navajo filmmaker basically portrayed a half hour walk with a half hour of screentime. The journey held significance just as did the destination.
The work of Worth and Adair influenced the National Film Board of Canada which created the program Challenge for Change in 1967 to address the social milieu of the time. One of the more well-known creations of this program was You Are on Indian Land which documented a demonstration by Mohawk Indians in Ontario.
All things considered, "Injun Trouble" was probably only slightly out of step with the times upon its release in 1969. On the one hand, Cool Cat spoke in hipster slang. On the other, its portrayal of Native Americans is classic Hollywood stereotyping. America was still a few years away from seeing an Italian guy posing as a Native American shedding a tear on their TV screens. Can anyone a bit older than myself comment?
"Herr Meets Hare"
"What's Cookin' Doc?"
"Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears"
"All This and Rabbit Stew"
"Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time"
"Uncle Tom's Bungalow"
"Frigid Hare"
"Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips"
"Africa Squeaks"
"Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat"
There is a cartoon called "The Door," was made by Campbell-Silver-Cosby. Cosby is by Bill Cosby. The Door has Native Americans, and the company was independent.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check that out. Does it depict Native Americans poorly?
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