1949: The association wants the Indian presented accurately. If that means the Indians must be shown winning forays against the plainsmen, a great legend will bite the dust.
Spokesmen for Redskins on the Warpath;
How Far Should Censorship Be Carried?
1949, Dec 19 The Salt Lake Tribune
Is the lusty,
rootin’, shootin’, western movie on the way out? The Association of American
Indian Affairs has launched a campaign to eliminate the Indian stereotype from
the films. If that means no more scenes of yelping red men menacingly circling
around an ambushed wagon train, we predict bad times for thousands of motion
picture palaces. And what will boys (up
to 65 years old) do for red-blooded entertainment?
The
association wants the Indian presented accurately. If that means the Indians
must be shown winning forays against the plainsmen, a great legend will bite
the dust. Oh, for the good old days when a movie was just a movie – a vehicle
for sheer entertainment. Shed a tear for the time when you could escape into
never-never land of theaters free from a tussle with a moral or a penetrating social
problem. Cannot a show be just funny, interesting or blood-curdling without
having to answer to self-appointed censors as to whether it is accurate
historically and so socially and whether it undermines the dignity of certain
groups? Film directors already have a corps of censors breathing down their
necks, insisting that this group and that be shown in the best possible light,
and the entertainment quality of the film is affected.
Seriously,
Oliver LaFarge and his committee have much on their side. Indian life and character
have been distorted theatrically and this may have helped build a barrier
between them and the rest of our national life. We would like to see a really
good picture dramatizing and revealing (no holds barred) the plight of the
Navajo. (But here white traders and government agencies might scream their
protests.) We applaud the current movies telling of the heartache and struggle
of other groups.
But
organizations eager to protect the prestige of their groups should not go so
far that they censor out truth. Censorship has a way of taking on cancerous
characteristics. Several racial and religious groups, flaunting the first
amendment, are interfering with freedom of speech and the press. There are
notable instance where they have blackmailed authors, publishers and
movie-makers into silence. Let it be said here no profession has fought harder
for rights of minorities than have writers. They have stood for civil liberties
and fought bigotry.
“When elements
in minorities demand that recognized classics and serious magazines be taken
from library shelves, that books examining their economic, religious and
political beliefs be kept from publication, the time has come for someone
analyze a shocking situation,” says Sterling North. Writing in the Washington
Post, he continued: “If a belief is tenable, then it is defendable in open
debate. And the American democratic way to resolve issues is in open print and
in the open forum. If a belief is untenable, neither dogmatic assertion nor a conspiracy
of silence will make it acceptable to men of logic. And all that an invisible
censorship can do is to create a head of steam, which, instead of escaping
through the safety valve of open expression, becomes dangerously confined and
explosive.”
The same
argument applies to censorship of the films, which, whether we like it or not,
has joined the press, the radio and television as mass communication and effective
propaganda agencies.
If Mr LaFarge
is sincere in wanting the American Indian presented accurately, all power to
him and the Association of American Indian Affairs. But if he means to follow
the lead of spokesmen for some other minorities and weed out realism for propaganda
and public relations effects, then exponents of real Americanism and those who
go to movies for the fun of it should join forces and go on the warpath.
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| 1949, Dec 19 The Salt Lake Tribune |
