Wednesday!
Aug. 14th, 2019 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby Just finished: Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel. I saw this in a bookstore and debated buying it vs. getting it out of the library. I did the latter (no room for new books chez Tabby). This was the wrong decision. I should own it. You should too, at least if you live in Canada. I am an unabashed Chelsea Vowel fangirl from listening to Métis In Space, the podcast she does with Molly Swain, so I kind of figured I'd love it. It's basically what it says on the tin, except that Vowel is a) really good at explaining things, in particular the confusing legal morass that is Canadian law as it applies to Indigenous peoples, and b) funny as all fuck. Her humour is much gentler here than it is on the podcast but her insights are no less searing. She has a law degree and a B.Ed. and both show, as well as her background in storytelling; reading this, I learned a ton and was captivated the whole time. Highly recommended.
Currently reading The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots & Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause. I've been waiting to read this one for two years and the library finally got it in. I mean. A book about labour struggles in the Old West? Sign me the fuck up. The rugged individualist heroes of American mythology were actually underpaid workers who on various occasions banded together to try to improve the conditions of their labour. I'm pretty much obsessed with Westerns (albeit not American-produced Westerns; this is a post for another time) and obviously labour history is a big deal for me.
Unfortunately, the book is terribly written. Oh Verso. Hire some editors. Hire some good editors to polish what appears so far to be impeccable research into prose that is actually a non-torturous reading experience. I feel like mailing them a copy of Indigenous Writes with a note to the effect of "here is how you can cram a bunch of information that will be new to most readers into a book and make it actually fun to read." I have no issues with Lause's research or thesis, both of which are excellent, but he seems to employ this completely needless convoluted sentence structure that means I have to keep re-reading paragraphs to figure out what he meant. Which blows as as far as I know this is the only major recent book written on a subject that I find fascinating.
Currently reading The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots & Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause. I've been waiting to read this one for two years and the library finally got it in. I mean. A book about labour struggles in the Old West? Sign me the fuck up. The rugged individualist heroes of American mythology were actually underpaid workers who on various occasions banded together to try to improve the conditions of their labour. I'm pretty much obsessed with Westerns (albeit not American-produced Westerns; this is a post for another time) and obviously labour history is a big deal for me.
Unfortunately, the book is terribly written. Oh Verso. Hire some editors. Hire some good editors to polish what appears so far to be impeccable research into prose that is actually a non-torturous reading experience. I feel like mailing them a copy of Indigenous Writes with a note to the effect of "here is how you can cram a bunch of information that will be new to most readers into a book and make it actually fun to read." I have no issues with Lause's research or thesis, both of which are excellent, but he seems to employ this completely needless convoluted sentence structure that means I have to keep re-reading paragraphs to figure out what he meant. Which blows as as far as I know this is the only major recent book written on a subject that I find fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-15 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-15 05:25 pm (UTC)In terms of the most interesting subgenres:
Spaghetti Westerns: Mainly produced in Italy, and this is the biggest and most diverse category. A lot of ex-American actors and production crew involved, but critically 1) this is largely a non-American reflection on American mythology, and 2) a lot of the writers were blacklisted under McCarthyism. And a lot were blatantly Communist. So you have something like The Great Silence that is explicitly an anti-capitalist allegory and was dedicated to Che Guevara and Malcolm X.
Red Westerns/Osterns: This is one of the coolest for me—Westerns produced by the Soviet Union. The best one that I've seen is Sons of the Great Bear, which I desperately need a remake of. Like. I know who I'd put in charge of it and everything (*cough*Chelsea Vowel*cough*). It's an East German film about a Lakota guy whose father is murdered by a white criminal in league with the government that's planning to re-locate the tribe, and he goes on a roaring rampage of revenge. The POV is Indigenous and there are few, if any, sympathetic white characters. It's in redface because it was shot in East Germany with no access to Indigenous actors, but besides that it's absolutely brilliant.
Revisionist and Acid Westerns: I guess these are American-produced, but they subvert the whole idea of the American Western Mythology. One of my favourites is Walker, which is among the most interestingly fucked-up movies I've ever seen. It's about a sketchy American journalist and lawyer who decides to make himself president of Nicaragua, and gradually gets closer and closer in politics and aesthetics to what America was doing to Nicaragua when the movie was made.
There's even an amazing Canadian Western TV series, Strange Empire, which got cancelled after 1 season because CBC sucks, with a Métis protagonist played by Cara Gee and her black duster and is basically Deadwood without the dudes and swearing.