Still don't understand why Stands With a Fist, a woman raised from childhood like any other Lakota woman
(like the one played by Tantoo Cardinal)
had messy hair (the #1 source of mine and Delyriam's jokes.)
According to Random Internet Dude McDonnell chose the 'do herself because it was realistic in re. how your hair would look on the windswept prairies. I would add--realistic if you have Anglo hair that knots easily, like mine. In which case, all the more reason why I would always wear my hair in braids! If you had smoother hair, you'd probably still braid it most of the time, because it's painful and obnoxious to have hair whipped in your face!
But the proof is in the photographic record anyway, so McDonnell doesn't need have theorized.
They obviously did it to make her look more contemporary, or more white, or whatever. She even has layers and bangs lol. And for heaven's sake, to anyone out there with pioneering grandmothers from the prairies, did they leave the sod roofed cabin looking like this either? Of course not! No one wore their hair this way except us! In 1990, the year the movie was made, the year I graduated high school.
Stands With a Diploma
(Same haircut as Mary, but combed.)
This isn't a deep point. But it was just as annoying in 2011 as it was 20 years ago and therefore merited a post. Heh!
8 comments:
I loved this movie. I'm glad I didn't get caught up in her hair or any other discrepancies because it might have ruined it for me.
I just thought she looked beautiful.
I thought the movie got the point across that we treated the First Nations people cruelly and that we judged them savages when, in fact, it was us who were the uncivilized barbarians.
Exactly!
When I read your post title I thought oh please tell me she is liking mmd's cut in sneakers and not that awful rats nest from dances with wolves! her hair looked ridiculous. she would have been given some sort of grease to smoosh it down into a tidy braid I'm sure. i doubt the native americans would've put up with such slovenly wild-woman-of-the-forest locks on their adopted kindred.
JJJ - The movie came out the very semester I was taking "Indian and Inuit Views" at college, lol. So I must admit I've never seen it without that critical framing--we discussed it in class. I do think it gets across the point you say. And it gave work to a lot of aboriginal actors! And nice that they didn't speak English etc. It's definitely guilty of some other things, though. ...Want me to shut up about them? lol
Lora - So funny, when I wrote that her hair is "the man" I meant it in a pejorative sense, as in: The Oppressor. But when I read the title just now, I was like--it sounds like I'm complimenting her hair, and very awkwardly too! X-D
Yes, the clichés and weaknesses and anachronisms in Dancing With Wolves are multitudinous ... but I still like the movie. I like the characters and their struggles to deal with over-arching evils of cultural annhialation ... and the themes of personal community and friendship transending all this and providing our only hope for a future beyond all this kind of ethno-centric, EMPIREs of This World thinking.
And of course ya gots ta love the Wolfie and his representation of the spirit of Wild in all of us, longing for community, reaching out and making ourselves vulnerable in the process... and his tragic end that we all fear for ourselves.
You take some very nice symbolism from the wolf but AHHH THE WOLF! I specifically didn't watch that part, and I STILL can't stop thinking about it all week and getting sad. Even thought it DIDN'T HAPPEN CAUSE IT'S JUST A STORY!!!!
I hate movies with animals in them. Hate them. This should be reason enough for Dances With Wolves to be condemned.
HI. I was looking for clearer and better pictures of Stands with a fist's hair and came across your post. I knew a native American woman whose husband died. It is the native American's custom to cut their hair after their husband dies. As you can see in this cut scene, she did have longer hair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eECcmwAZCyw#t=171.9502884
Enjoy
In the book, she cut her hair in mourning. It's explained that it just stubbornly refuses to grow past her shoulders after that.
In the book, she cut her hair in mourning. It's explained that it just stubbornly refuses to grow past her shoulders after that.
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