Black Robe

Thanksgiving had been co-opted by the party good suppliers, greeting card manufacturers, and mail-order catalogs of the world, and as young intellectuals, we were afraid we'd never get it back. Our generation saw holiday seasons twisted into nightmarish marathons of brutish endurance that wasted our time and money, becoming unruly scenes that would take an army of Dr. Phil's to undo in their individual dysfunctions. 

We watched in horror as people gorged themselves on shopping and bad food, through dystopian scenes shown on our parent's evening news programs that seemed lifted from a scifi movie about the Apocalypse. People were trampled to death during buying frenzies in pursuit of the latest toy craze, like a Cabbage Patch doll. Imagine dying over THAT. Giving thanks in a meaningful way had become supplanted by something advertisers called "Black Friday", as a prelude to a Christmas that was the complete opposite of good cheer.

As we deconstructed the painful pasts of our history books, we talked about how it all went wrong, beginning with an overly romanticized version of the Pilgrims meeting the Indians for the first time, in a goofy portrayal of Northern Europeans as naive waifs somehow caught in a wintertime they'd never met, utterly dependent on the suckling teat of the local, pipe-smoking natives scantily clad in a hippie fantasy of leather headbands and groovy feathers.

It was as preposterously out-of-date as our textbooks, especially to us French Canadian kids who knew better. Their Jamestown was not our Quebecois settlement or Acadian mixed marriage, right off the boat. It was one story about one tribe meeting one group of puritanical Englanders famed for their firebrand of religious extremism that got them kicked out of Merry Old Englande. My ship-faring ancestors came here to trade and mate, hopefully at the same time. Knowing the men in my family, that sounds about right.

By contrast, in college we learned about the First Nations and their territories through the geography of who did what where, at which time. It wasn't as simple as "white man=bad, Indian=good", just a lot more honest, and why not? We were there to learn. After me and my boyfriend made fun of the wacky anachronisms in "Dances with Wolves", we'd tell them to check out a film that's been called one of the most realistic depictions of indigenous life from colonization times that's ever been made into a movie, through the eyes of a French missionary and his Huron allies. Let's just say this: the Mohegans live up to their name.

For Americans lucky enough to have First Contact stories, why not share that over the usual turkey talk this year? Instead of finding an enemy sitting across the table from you separated by a wall you built, you might find family, like we did. Blessings to you.

Apocalypto

Like media stereotypes about the "gentle hippie", Indians have to contend with a full set of deeply ingrained prejudices about every facet of their lives and appearance. Americans love Kevin Costner's white girl adopted by a tribe that bestows upon her sexy Injun magic, with her blow-dried 80s wings sprayed stiffly into place, as yet another annoying anachronism that's wildy out of place with history. But, it sure is pretty! And who doesn't like wolves? It gives you a special feeling!

Of course, media professionals have always been hip to the manipulation in Hollywood movies, which are designed to put you into a emotional space that sets you up (compulsive gambler, drinker, smoker, and/or hoarder) for a major Disney-esque shopping spree, like a supermarket that pumps out smells of fried chicken and chocolate chip cookies baking, fresh from the oven. They're extremely overworked scenarios designed to suck money from your weaknesses and vulnerabilities; an example of greed at its worst.

Enter into this toxic, European-dominated market the real and the true. I'm not a fan of Mel Gibson's public meltdowns, drinking sprees, and weird views about a made-up religion imposed upon him by his far-out, fascist, Aussie dad (notice Mel has Americanized his accent to put him at a distance from his Aussie "Mad Max" days, to sell a franchise of buddy-cop movies, like Madonna in England or anywhere in the world), but he has made some of the best movies I've ever seen in my life, including the entire "Road Warrior" series.

As someone who is very familiar with The Bible and scripture, his movie version about "The End of Days" is one of the best Apocalyptic movies I've seen, including his post-Apocalyptic work set in the aboriginal bush-land of native Australia, as the white folks revert to a bloody, animistic, murderously tribal version of themselves. In his "dog eat dog" worlds, it's every man (and woman) for themselves, and who hasn't had that said to their face by a competing employee (or so they think) while at work? The amount of overly-heightened emotionalism attached to the acquisition of resources makes the common junkie an accomplished liar, and the practiced accountant your white-collar criminal doing time in a minimum-security prison, tennis whites not included.

"Apocalypto" is THE BEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN about the massive die-off of the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs, that artfully deconstructs the passive Indian stereotype to reveal a band of blood-thirsty savages sacrificing heads to their burning demon in the sky, controlling their crops (as a stand-in for more European concepts about evil and Satan) and their destinies, in justification for murdering their own people, setting them up for the smallpox invasion of the conquering Spaniards who finished the job for them through cultural extinction.

Our hero is a gifted husband and father who is an expert hunter/warrior for their tribe, happily married to his beautiful wife who is expecting their second child, when their "Apocalypto" takes place, changing their lives forever. Just as an iceberg the size of London and Manhattan has broken off from the ice shelf to melt into water that will be the next "Great Flood" of our time, our heroic family fights to survive under the most vile, extreme circumstances humanity has to offer, finding each other before the next wave of corruption and death rolls in. After our hero finally escapes for good (surviving many life-or-death battles his young family does without him), they do what any sane, rational people facing the end of the world do: head for higher ground. 

My G-d Bless You And Keep You Safe, My Most Faithful Children Of The Word. Amen.

Ongka's Big Moka

The gods must have been crazy to show a bunch of hard-partying, state school kids a movie about a tribe in Papua, New Guinea that selects a new "head honcho" to enrich so that everyone can have a chance to participate in the fun, but that's exactly what happened when a class in Cultural Anthropology tore its way through my crowd. After that, the stoners went wild with late night discussions about society's failings. Why couldn't Americans be, like, more hip? Yeah, right. Why? 

Most of the time, our talks took place in the off-campus living rooms of rich suburban hippies whose parents bought them cars and homes to go back to after school. We'd be eating their mama's carefully shipped food like starving charity cases, when I'd been cooking all my life. Pot makes the crazy kids even nuttier, so I sat on my growing unease with my hands tucked between my knees most of the time, in the freezing old houses we rented for cheap. It never seemed warm enough, no matter how many layers we put on.

But, the idea was interesting. If a group of people agreed to it, could you actually give away all of your stuff to someone else without being a total asshole about it? It seemed doubtful, the way hippie kids tried to outdo each other over things like mixed tapes of live Dead shows, while they argued about who had the best collection. The hippies at school were some of the worst kinds of kids, too: petty, deceitful, spiteful, arrogant, defensive, condescending, overly competitive, and cheap. They wouldn't give anyone a loose joint for free, let alone the whole dime bag. These kids were gonna grow up to save the world? It's 2017, and guess what? I'm still waiting on that.