Books, Arts & Manners: Cowboyless Indians, Indianless Cowboys

The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss warns us neither to take “for granted the ‘rightness’ or ‘naturalness’ of our own customs” nor to attribute to so-called primitive societies “absolute merits such as no society can claim to possess” (Tristes Tropiques). Whereas past filmmakers used to commit the former error, the current crop of liberal cinéastes blissfully opts for the latter. In The Emerald Forest, John Boorman fiercely espouses the cause of the Indians of the Amazon rain forests, who have dwindled from several million to 200,000, and whose majestic forests teeming with rare species of animals and birds are being encroached on with alarming speed. Though I am in total sympathy with preserving the people, fauna, and flora of the Amazon basin, I can also see why Brazil would build such a hydroelectric dam as is being constructed in the movie under the supervision of an American engineer, Bill Markham.

When members of the Invisible People, as the tribe calls itself, abduct Markham’s small son, Tommy, the father vows to find the boy, and after a decade’s search does so. Tommé, as he is now called, is the adopted son of Wanadi, the chieftain/shaman of the IP, and the two save Bill from another tribe, the Fierce People, who are hunting him for sport. The boy has turned Bill into Daddé, his internalized father, while considering Wanadi his real one. Markham has many unusual experiences among the Indians, and he and Tommé become close again, but Tommé, naked and painted like the rest of the IP, will not return to Belém, the city that for Bill is civilization, but for the Indians part of the Lost World.

JS

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John Simon

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The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss warns us neither to take “for granted the ‘rightness’ or ‘naturalness’ of our own customs” nor to attribute to so-called primitive societies “absolute merits such as no society can claim to possess” (Tristes Tropiques). Whereas past filmmakers used to commit the former error, the current crop of liberal cinéastes blissfully opts for the latter. In The Emerald Forest, John Boorman fiercely espouses the cause of the Indians of the Amazon rain forests, who have dwindled from several million to 200,000, and whose majestic forests teeming with rare species of animals and birds are being encroached on with alarming speed. Though I am in total sympathy with preserving the people, fauna, and flora of the Amazon basin, I can also see why Brazil would build such a hydroelectric dam as is being constructed in the movie under the supervision of an American engineer, Bill Markham.

When members of the Invisible People, as the tribe calls itself, abduct Markham’s small son, Tommy, the father vows to find the boy, and after a decade’s search does so. Tommé, as he is now called, is the adopted son of Wanadi, the chieftain/shaman of the IP, and the two save Bill from another tribe, the Fierce People, who are hunting him for sport. The boy has turned Bill into Daddé, his internalized father, while considering Wanadi his real one. Markham has many unusual experiences among the Indians, and he and Tommé become close again, but Tommé, naked and painted like the rest of the IP, will not return to Belém, the city that for Bill is civilization, but for the Indians part of the Lost World.