Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor

Kathi writes with wisdom and beauty. Her humanity is popcorned with panache....enough to know we are all still alive and well..no matter our sinking hearts I love her!
Grace
read Kathi Wolfe's article

This is Arthur M. at his naughtiest, and why pick only on Modigliani? I recently heard someone say that the Baby Boomer generation has produced the least lasting art or culture of any generation - how about writing about that?
Ellen Miles
read Arthur Meiselman's article

Classicism meets contemporary art. What an interesting way that the figure expresses space. The paintings feel like they are rooted in the classic tradition of Ingres and others from the French Academy yet they feel like they are expressed in a contemporary way. It's an interesting expression of figuartive work, but it's not about the figure according to the artist. After reading about the content of his work I understand how all of his art is connected using the idea of theoretical architecture. Very Interesting. It's nice to see a compelling concept expressed with technical skill.
Jamie Kallish
read Andrea Kapsaski's article

New important Stein information.It is hoped that Alenier will be included among the Stein scholars in future celebrations.
Grace Cavalieri
read Karren Alenier's article

I enjoyed your article. It brought back to mind a movie I watched several years ago where the government was suspicious of many in Hollywood being communists. Times have sure changed. I am glad to not have a way to view television and so glad I can choose the movies I want to watch. I may be living with my head in the sand to some, but for me, this is one way of keeping my self free of the lies. Thank you once again Les for bringing us yet another fine article to read and think on.
Michele
read Les Marcott's article

I particularly like what Bobkoff says about Michael Apted using suggestive imagery to face up to the ugly realities of slavery. It is so much more powerful for the viewer when our own imagination fills in the images and meaning of what is left out or only fleetingly suggested on screen. Just a few choice words evoked an emotion in me: "Chains dangling in the empty rafters of a creaking slave ship" and "glimpses of the sweating bodies of people shackled together and vomiting in the hull of a slave ship" - I could almost smell the stench. This is a great lesson for me as a fellow writer for what to strive for in my own screenplays.
Arthur Kanegis
read Ned Bobkoff's article

Stuff "poetic license." That's the term to describe when film or television producers take a book, or worse yet, historical facts, and play fast and loose with the truth to suit a lower purpose. In other words, appealing to my peers in middle-class suburbia who are the coveted demographic for said poetically licensed production because they have the damned cash to buy whatever it is they're hawking.

Yep. That's what it's called.

"Poetic license" is coming 'round the mountain once again, this time in HBO's upcoming movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, based on the 1971 book by Dee Brown. To be aired Memorial Day weekend, the film has taken the life of Charles Eastman and seasoned and spiced it to make him McTastier.

And just who is Charles Eastman? Portrayed in the film by Adam Beach, he was the Santee political activist, Dartmouth-educated doctor and cofounder of the Boy Scouts who HBO thought, in their supreme wisdom, wasn't interesting enough even though he was a political activist, Dartmouth-educated doctor and cofounder of the Boy Scouts. Apparently, that wasn't sufficiently palatable, especially to mainstream audiences whose knowledge of Native America is limited to Little Big Horn, casinos and Russell Means.

Thankfully, no references to Russell were added, ditto for casinos probably 'cause the movie is set in the 19th century. So what's left? Huzzah--let's put Charles Eastman at the Battle of the Little Bighorn! So that's what HBO did. Forget the fact that the real Eastman was attending school hundreds of miles away in Nebraska at the time.

This is what y'all call "poetic license."

According to the New York Times, the network carefully considered its decision. Daniel Giat, who adapted Brown's book for the screenplay, recently said to a group of television writers "Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project."

At least that's the truth.

Of course, apologists tell us that it's the "bigger issue" that's paramount. That "poetic license" is standard practice in adaptations; therefore adding and cutting and fabricating is just dandy and a-okay as long as it remains intellectually honest.

Intellectually honest? Not when you have a real-life person engaging in a major battle he never fought in. Intellectual honesty is when you add dialogue and scenes to flesh out the story but remain faithful to the known facts. That ain't the case here. HBO IS FABRICATING HISTORY TO APPEAL TO WHITE FOLKS.

As Bury My Heart producer Dick Wolf was quoted in the Times article, "It is a dramatization, and we needed a protagonist."

Hey, let me share something with you. As a bona fide white person, I don't need made up history to swallow what actually happened. Believe me, we CAN handle the truth and the time has come for my fellow white folks in the media to acknowledge that.

So please o' please--stop already. This has nothing to do with "poetic license" and even more so, "intellectual honesty." This has everything to do with making the lead Native character a superhero Mr. And Ms. Mid-America could love. Think Little-Spidey-on-the-Prairie.

Not to take "poetic license" here, but I bet that wasn't Dee Brown's intention when he wrote his groundbreaking book 36 years ago. Nevertheless, I'm sure my hunch is helluva lot closer to the truth than Charles Eastman wielding a tomahawk against Custer's Seventh Cavalry along a dusty Montana creek.
Carole Quattro Levine