![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicNext-to-last RSL audio book available from the county library consortium, and this time we have lots of topics to cover.
The Light in the Forest (Conrad Richter, 1953; recorded 2000)
The Setting: Mid-Atlantic America, 1600s.
The Story: Fifteen-year-old True Son was kidnapped from a white settlement at the age of four and raised among the Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) Indians by the chief of the tribe, whom he loves and respects and strives to emulate. When the encroaching whites demand in exchange for peace that the Indians turn over all abductees, no matter how deeply they have become integrated into their new cultures, True Son finds himself torn from his Indian family and forced back to his "hometown," where his white parents and extended family try to reintegrate him into "civilized" culture. Stripped of his Indian garb, forbidden to practice his Indian habits, stubborn, impatient, murderously angry and longing for his home in the forest, True Son, now called John Cameron Butler ("Johnny"), must learn to live among the people he only knows as his enemies.
You might think you know where this is headed: Johnny will learn that white people aren't as bad as he's been brought up to believe and that his Indian people are just as guilty of crimes against the other; he will start out rebellious and homesick but gradually, grudgingly, become acclimated to his new home and discover what benefits white society has to offer; he will, as his elder white male relations hope, fall for a local girl and forget about trying to run away; or perhaps, with his unique double background, he will not only overcome his own prejudice but will teach tolerance to one or both groups.
The book resisted all but one of these paths. In fact, it turned out to be a surprisingly bleak story. From the moment he steps into his new home, Johnny's white family tries to rid him of his savage upbringing and doesn't want to know anything about it—least of all his bigoted Uncle Wilsie, leader of a tough pack of local men known as the Paxton Boys who are notorious for having murdered and scalped a group of Indian men, women and children. Johnny refuses to speak English or change his clothes until threatened. A translator/guard from the regiment is assigned to him for several weeks to make sure he doesn't escape. After the man leaves, Johnny tries to ride off to a nearby mountain but is caught. Cooped up, homesick and without an ally other than his innocent and friendly younger brother, he eventually falls ill.
Only when his cousin Half Arrow arrives does he muster the strength to run away, and even then it's under a pall of grief: one of the Paxton Boys has killed Half Arrow's traveling companion and True Son's friend Little Crane, so the boys knock out and try to scalp Wilsie on their way out of town to avenge Little Crane's death but are forced to flee without their trophy when a servant discovers them.
After several months spent hunting and fishing and "becoming men" together in the woods, True Son and Half Arrow return to their village, where they are given a mixed reception; people are glad to have True Son back, but many are angry over Little Crane's murder. A war party sets out for the white town to collect scalps in honor of their lost boy. True Son learns after a raid along the way that his people do sometimes kill children, and with little regret. This disillusioning knowledge prompts him to betray his people and save a boatload of whites (among whom are several women and children) from an attempted ambush in which he is supposed to play the "white" bait. The furious Lenape men put True Son on trial, and only his father's intervention prevents them from burning him at the stake; instead, they agree to cast him out. His father tells him that if they ever meet again, it will be in battle, and one will be forced to kill the other. Then they leave him.
Thus, instead of bridging the gap between his two peoples, True Son/Johnny is left alone, belonging to neither side. The book ends on the boy standing in the middle of the river separating Indian territory from white, his face half in charcoal and half in chalk, wearing a too-small woman's blouse and too-long men's pantaloons, abandoned by his solemn Indian father and disgusted with his soft white one.
Comments: The lack of resolution was jarring, but on reflection it was an effective way to end the story. True Son/Johnny's inability to assimilate into either culture mirrors the Indians' and whites' inability to coexist in peace. Likewise, knowing how the settler/native conflict turned out in American history (Richter wrote the book in the '50s), we can surmise that True Son doesn't find a happy ending beyond the last page.
As a people, the Lenape in the story are depicted in a highly idealistic manner. It can be blamed partly on the main character being an inexperienced fifteen-year-old. But it also functions well as a metaphor, a representation of what we have lost in our contemporary society. Richter's Indians live in harmony with nature, eat when they're hungry, hunt only what they need, spend most of their time outdoors, bathe in rivers, know the healing and poisonous properties of the vegetation around them, wear loose and comfortable clothing, and are tanned, fit and healthy. All of these qualities are contrasted with those of the white settlers. Though both peoples are shown to suffer from disease, questionably effective medical treatments, and their share of moral flaws (gluttony and senseless violence among the whites, scalping and a certain amount of misogyny among the Lenape), the Indians are held up for admiration, making it all the more tragic when True Son falls from their grace.
RSL's reading: He sounds young again in this book, and rather like Eric Stoltz, which I forgot to mention in re: The Short History of a Prince. Soft and boyish, his voice suggests throughout the book that he's barely restraining some intense emotion, whether it's fury or or frustration or exuberance. It's a good fit for the character.
It was also lovely to hear RSL say all the Lenape words, especially the long, quick, tripping phrases with the soft "ch," as he/True Son waxes poetic about the wilderness. (I wondered whether he had help or just sounded convincing because of his confident pronunciation. A dialogue coach was credited at the end, so I think it was both.) As soon as I get the hardware and/or software to record audio clips from cassette tapes to my hard drive, you are all in for a series of treats.
* * *
While stuck in traffic last Sunday night coming home from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
michelle_nine's wedding (!!), I played some of the more intimate boy/boy scenes in The Short History of a Prince for synn. In the context of other roles he has played, it prompted her to ask after RSL's sexual orientation, which got us talking about whether one can or should speculate on an actor's orientation based on the parts (s)he takes and conviction with which (s)he portrays his/her characters, and whether the actor's previous roles influence a viewer's/auditor's interpretation of a current one.
I admit that since RSL read Walter so convincingly in Short History and infuses so much subtext into (House/)Wilson, among other things, it was easier to consider the possible homosexual subtext in the months True Son spends with Half Arrow in the woods, or the scenes in which the slightly older translator/guard Del Hardy shares his bed. It also raises the question of whether RSL chose to read The Light in the Forest in part because of the boy's sexual ambiguity, or if he read it in such a way to emphasize that ambiguity, or if it's all a big contrived coincidence and I should shut up now.
* * *
Curious about what sort of scholarship has been done on the book, I Google-Scholared it and found an excellent article from the Journal of American Popular Culture by Jeffery P. Dennis called "The Light in the Forest Is Love: Cold War Masculinity and the Disney Adventure Boys" (2004). Dennis writes about how in the 1940s and '50s, the Disney company, reacting to a post-WWII emphasis in America on heterosexual masculinity, shifted traditional cinematic depictions of adventurous male adolescence from pairs of boys enjoying intimate homoromantic bonds and ignoring girls—in essence, buddy films with young protagonists—to individual boys pining for or being seduced by girls while restricting relationships with other males to carefully-distant friendships or rivalries, with the filmmakers relegating homosexual behavior to quirky side characters or creepy/threatening villains. One of Dennis' examples is the film version of The Light in the Forest, which Disney apparently adapted in 1958 and completely changed around so Johnny falls for a coy servant girl and turns his back on his (primitive/homosexual) Indian heritage to be with her.
It's an easy and fascinating read, especially if you're interested in film, queering texts and the buddy genre. The Light in the Forest stuff is mostly discussed in the James MacArthur section if you want to skip down, but I really recommend reading the whole thing.
* * *
So then I picked up the film version to see what Dennis was talking about. The adaptation wasn't so bad in the sense that much of it stayed true to the book: True Son (a Wentworth Miller-reminiscent James MacArthur) is traded away to the whites for peace, he goes through culture shock, he escapes to his people with Half Arrow, and he's cast out after giving the ambush party away. However, he then returns to his village, where he shacks up with the neighbors' coy servant girl on a mountain his father "bought" for him. Book!True Son scoffs at the whites' pretensions to land ownership, but movie!True Son is thrilled at the prospect of having a patch of wilderness all to his very self. He also comes off as more shy and awkward in the movie than furious and stubborn. Book!True Son had to be tied up on the journey to town and guarded day and night for weeks lest he run off; movie!True Son just looks resigned and snaps at people.
The film also featured a plodding romance between Del Hardy (Fess "Davy Crockett" Parker) and the town minister's daughter (Marian Seldes), who didn't exist in the book, thus heterosexualizing the biggest male threat to True Son. The other threat, Half Arrow, ceases to be a candidate for a romantic partner for Our Hero when he displays a bloodlust for scalps that True Son balks at. Half Arrow, incidentally, was played by a Hispanic kid with an accent no-one bothered to hide; but that is a discussion for another day.
And then there were the scenes I'd expected in the book that never came. There's the grudging acceptance of white society and earnest interest from his family: While making Johnny read from the Bible to teach him about the proper Christian God, Mrs. Butler listens to her son explain the multitude of Lenape words for "the great spirit" (which he did in the book, to no avail), tries them out herself, and then tells him that the words are beautiful; pleased, Johnny resumes reading with more enthusiasm. There's the confrontation with drunken Uncle Wilsie, resolved via a fistfight that Johnny wins with Del Hardy's help. There's the local white girl he falls for for no real reason. At the end, he and Shenandoe actually skip off hand-in-hand toward "his" mountain into the sunset.
What struck me the most about this little exercise—book, article, movie—is how much Disney, perhaps as much as or more than Hollywood in general, has shaped my expectations of how stories are told. Richter didn't sink into predictable plots or contrived endings; the movie did. I didn't realize where those expectations came from until Dennis pointed out what was going on and I saw how Disney twisted Richter's story into what we expect from a mainstream narrative today.
The Light in the Forest (Conrad Richter, 1953; recorded 2000)
The Setting: Mid-Atlantic America, 1600s.
The Story: Fifteen-year-old True Son was kidnapped from a white settlement at the age of four and raised among the Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) Indians by the chief of the tribe, whom he loves and respects and strives to emulate. When the encroaching whites demand in exchange for peace that the Indians turn over all abductees, no matter how deeply they have become integrated into their new cultures, True Son finds himself torn from his Indian family and forced back to his "hometown," where his white parents and extended family try to reintegrate him into "civilized" culture. Stripped of his Indian garb, forbidden to practice his Indian habits, stubborn, impatient, murderously angry and longing for his home in the forest, True Son, now called John Cameron Butler ("Johnny"), must learn to live among the people he only knows as his enemies.
You might think you know where this is headed: Johnny will learn that white people aren't as bad as he's been brought up to believe and that his Indian people are just as guilty of crimes against the other; he will start out rebellious and homesick but gradually, grudgingly, become acclimated to his new home and discover what benefits white society has to offer; he will, as his elder white male relations hope, fall for a local girl and forget about trying to run away; or perhaps, with his unique double background, he will not only overcome his own prejudice but will teach tolerance to one or both groups.
The book resisted all but one of these paths. In fact, it turned out to be a surprisingly bleak story. From the moment he steps into his new home, Johnny's white family tries to rid him of his savage upbringing and doesn't want to know anything about it—least of all his bigoted Uncle Wilsie, leader of a tough pack of local men known as the Paxton Boys who are notorious for having murdered and scalped a group of Indian men, women and children. Johnny refuses to speak English or change his clothes until threatened. A translator/guard from the regiment is assigned to him for several weeks to make sure he doesn't escape. After the man leaves, Johnny tries to ride off to a nearby mountain but is caught. Cooped up, homesick and without an ally other than his innocent and friendly younger brother, he eventually falls ill.
Only when his cousin Half Arrow arrives does he muster the strength to run away, and even then it's under a pall of grief: one of the Paxton Boys has killed Half Arrow's traveling companion and True Son's friend Little Crane, so the boys knock out and try to scalp Wilsie on their way out of town to avenge Little Crane's death but are forced to flee without their trophy when a servant discovers them.
After several months spent hunting and fishing and "becoming men" together in the woods, True Son and Half Arrow return to their village, where they are given a mixed reception; people are glad to have True Son back, but many are angry over Little Crane's murder. A war party sets out for the white town to collect scalps in honor of their lost boy. True Son learns after a raid along the way that his people do sometimes kill children, and with little regret. This disillusioning knowledge prompts him to betray his people and save a boatload of whites (among whom are several women and children) from an attempted ambush in which he is supposed to play the "white" bait. The furious Lenape men put True Son on trial, and only his father's intervention prevents them from burning him at the stake; instead, they agree to cast him out. His father tells him that if they ever meet again, it will be in battle, and one will be forced to kill the other. Then they leave him.
Thus, instead of bridging the gap between his two peoples, True Son/Johnny is left alone, belonging to neither side. The book ends on the boy standing in the middle of the river separating Indian territory from white, his face half in charcoal and half in chalk, wearing a too-small woman's blouse and too-long men's pantaloons, abandoned by his solemn Indian father and disgusted with his soft white one.
Comments: The lack of resolution was jarring, but on reflection it was an effective way to end the story. True Son/Johnny's inability to assimilate into either culture mirrors the Indians' and whites' inability to coexist in peace. Likewise, knowing how the settler/native conflict turned out in American history (Richter wrote the book in the '50s), we can surmise that True Son doesn't find a happy ending beyond the last page.
As a people, the Lenape in the story are depicted in a highly idealistic manner. It can be blamed partly on the main character being an inexperienced fifteen-year-old. But it also functions well as a metaphor, a representation of what we have lost in our contemporary society. Richter's Indians live in harmony with nature, eat when they're hungry, hunt only what they need, spend most of their time outdoors, bathe in rivers, know the healing and poisonous properties of the vegetation around them, wear loose and comfortable clothing, and are tanned, fit and healthy. All of these qualities are contrasted with those of the white settlers. Though both peoples are shown to suffer from disease, questionably effective medical treatments, and their share of moral flaws (gluttony and senseless violence among the whites, scalping and a certain amount of misogyny among the Lenape), the Indians are held up for admiration, making it all the more tragic when True Son falls from their grace.
RSL's reading: He sounds young again in this book, and rather like Eric Stoltz, which I forgot to mention in re: The Short History of a Prince. Soft and boyish, his voice suggests throughout the book that he's barely restraining some intense emotion, whether it's fury or or frustration or exuberance. It's a good fit for the character.
It was also lovely to hear RSL say all the Lenape words, especially the long, quick, tripping phrases with the soft "ch," as he/True Son waxes poetic about the wilderness. (I wondered whether he had help or just sounded convincing because of his confident pronunciation. A dialogue coach was credited at the end, so I think it was both.) As soon as I get the hardware and/or software to record audio clips from cassette tapes to my hard drive, you are all in for a series of treats.
* * *
While stuck in traffic last Sunday night coming home from
michelle_nine's wedding (!!), I played some of the more intimate boy/boy scenes in The Short History of a Prince for synn. In the context of other roles he has played, it prompted her to ask after RSL's sexual orientation, which got us talking about whether one can or should speculate on an actor's orientation based on the parts (s)he takes and conviction with which (s)he portrays his/her characters, and whether the actor's previous roles influence a viewer's/auditor's interpretation of a current one.I admit that since RSL read Walter so convincingly in Short History and infuses so much subtext into (House/)Wilson, among other things, it was easier to consider the possible homosexual subtext in the months True Son spends with Half Arrow in the woods, or the scenes in which the slightly older translator/guard Del Hardy shares his bed. It also raises the question of whether RSL chose to read The Light in the Forest in part because of the boy's sexual ambiguity, or if he read it in such a way to emphasize that ambiguity, or if it's all a big contrived coincidence and I should shut up now.
* * *
Curious about what sort of scholarship has been done on the book, I Google-Scholared it and found an excellent article from the Journal of American Popular Culture by Jeffery P. Dennis called "The Light in the Forest Is Love: Cold War Masculinity and the Disney Adventure Boys" (2004). Dennis writes about how in the 1940s and '50s, the Disney company, reacting to a post-WWII emphasis in America on heterosexual masculinity, shifted traditional cinematic depictions of adventurous male adolescence from pairs of boys enjoying intimate homoromantic bonds and ignoring girls—in essence, buddy films with young protagonists—to individual boys pining for or being seduced by girls while restricting relationships with other males to carefully-distant friendships or rivalries, with the filmmakers relegating homosexual behavior to quirky side characters or creepy/threatening villains. One of Dennis' examples is the film version of The Light in the Forest, which Disney apparently adapted in 1958 and completely changed around so Johnny falls for a coy servant girl and turns his back on his (primitive/homosexual) Indian heritage to be with her.
It's an easy and fascinating read, especially if you're interested in film, queering texts and the buddy genre. The Light in the Forest stuff is mostly discussed in the James MacArthur section if you want to skip down, but I really recommend reading the whole thing.
* * *
So then I picked up the film version to see what Dennis was talking about. The adaptation wasn't so bad in the sense that much of it stayed true to the book: True Son (a Wentworth Miller-reminiscent James MacArthur) is traded away to the whites for peace, he goes through culture shock, he escapes to his people with Half Arrow, and he's cast out after giving the ambush party away. However, he then returns to his village, where he shacks up with the neighbors' coy servant girl on a mountain his father "bought" for him. Book!True Son scoffs at the whites' pretensions to land ownership, but movie!True Son is thrilled at the prospect of having a patch of wilderness all to his very self. He also comes off as more shy and awkward in the movie than furious and stubborn. Book!True Son had to be tied up on the journey to town and guarded day and night for weeks lest he run off; movie!True Son just looks resigned and snaps at people.
The film also featured a plodding romance between Del Hardy (Fess "Davy Crockett" Parker) and the town minister's daughter (Marian Seldes), who didn't exist in the book, thus heterosexualizing the biggest male threat to True Son. The other threat, Half Arrow, ceases to be a candidate for a romantic partner for Our Hero when he displays a bloodlust for scalps that True Son balks at. Half Arrow, incidentally, was played by a Hispanic kid with an accent no-one bothered to hide; but that is a discussion for another day.
And then there were the scenes I'd expected in the book that never came. There's the grudging acceptance of white society and earnest interest from his family: While making Johnny read from the Bible to teach him about the proper Christian God, Mrs. Butler listens to her son explain the multitude of Lenape words for "the great spirit" (which he did in the book, to no avail), tries them out herself, and then tells him that the words are beautiful; pleased, Johnny resumes reading with more enthusiasm. There's the confrontation with drunken Uncle Wilsie, resolved via a fistfight that Johnny wins with Del Hardy's help. There's the local white girl he falls for for no real reason. At the end, he and Shenandoe actually skip off hand-in-hand toward "his" mountain into the sunset.
What struck me the most about this little exercise—book, article, movie—is how much Disney, perhaps as much as or more than Hollywood in general, has shaped my expectations of how stories are told. Richter didn't sink into predictable plots or contrived endings; the movie did. I didn't realize where those expectations came from until Dennis pointed out what was going on and I saw how Disney twisted Richter's story into what we expect from a mainstream narrative today.
