#floyd red crow

[dare-g]

Clearcut (1991)

[loveboatinsanity]

[filmjunky-99]

d a n c e s w i t h w o l v e s, 1990 🎬 dir. kevin costner 'Buffalo Hunt'

[tuttle-did-it]

Murder She Wrote ‘Night of the Coyote’

Graham Greene (The Green Mile, Wind River, Dances with Wolves, Maverick)

Mariette Hartley (California Man, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, WIOU, Columbo, Gunsmoke, Bob Newhart Show, Bonanza, Peyton Place)

Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman (Walker, Texas Ranger, Dances with Wolves, Hidalgo, The X-Files)

S9E6 Episode aired Nov 22, 1992

[northernexposuregifs]

I think I can help you.

[20y2]

NORTHERN EXPOSURE 2.02 The Big Kiss

[northernexposureonly]

NORTHERN EXPOSURE 2.02 The Big Kiss

[sloshed-cinema]

Clearcut (1991)

“Someone has to pay.”  But who, and in what form?  If we’re talking about reality in this sort of affair, those who foot the bill are often First Nations peoples, their land footing the bill as mining and logging companies pillage with abandon.  But in his anger, lawyer Peter Maguire wishes for something bloodier.  Perhaps it’s turn of phrase or frustration, but newcomer Arthur is all too willing to partake in the lawyer’s wish to exact his pound of flesh from the owner of the mill.  Potentially Wisakedjak, a chaotic trickster entity, he is wholly freed from what Peter would consider to be his moral compass.  He brings the two White men through a forested hell, pressing their endurance and choices to the limits.

In many ways, Clearcut shares parallels with Robin Hardy’s Wicker Man.  Arriving at the beginning in the same fashion by seaplane, Maguire is an ineffectual neoliberal lawyer rather than a devout Catholic policeman.  He goes through a discovery process of local customs, enduring a fiery baptism of his ordeals and expressing moral outrage at what he sees.  Clearcut approaches its central issue with more shades of grey than Wicker Man, forcing the viewer to consider moral ambiguity in fighting for large-scale issues such as environmentalism.  Maguire begins as an awkward ally figure, stumbling along the way, but holding what he believes is a campaign for a noble cause.  Yet he is still part of the legal establishment.  As the film goes on, his character becomes darker, from condescending savior to willfully silent bystander.  His lack of action does nothing but further a cycle of suffering.  This film can be contextualized by something like the Oka Crisis, but in more contemporary reading bears in mind the scope of atrocities committed at residence schools finally being brought to light and acknowledged after so many years, which makes it all the more chilling.

Sweat lodge sequences form the majority of the most performative horror in the film, linking the experience to native customs.  Maguire’s first ritual follows the orthodox practices, but leads to a nightmare as he prays with rage and anger.  Arthur/Wisakedjak enacts a dark parallel of this at the characters’ lowest point, substituting heated stones and steam for toxic smoke and libations with the pipe for severing his fingers and cutting his flesh.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says ‘appeal’.

The road is mentioned.

Someone tumbles down a hill.

The beeper goes off.

BIG DRINK

The suitcase appears onscreen.

A hallucination sequence begins.

Someone gets tied up with duct tape.

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Dances with Wolves 1990

[custer-died-for-your-sins]

Floyd Red Crow Westerman - Custer Died For Your Sins

[ancestorsalive]

[crookedfandomquill]

This is very situational, and sadly may not be realistic for everyone, but I need y’all to understand that a very important part of political activism is fucking talking to your conservative or moderate friends and family.

My dad voted for Trump in 2016. He’s a middle class white evangelical from Arkansas. He raised me with conservative Christian values, just like his parents raised him. When he voted Trump, he was holding his nose, but he didn’t feel too bad about it, and went on to vote red down the ticket in the 2018 midterms, as well.

But I started college in 2017. Higher education and independence changed everything for me, and I went home over holidays and summers with fire in my belly and a thousand arguments ready at the drop of a hat, to my father’s dismay.

I remember crying in my room after emotional, intense arguments with him. I told him over and over that I felt betrayed by his choice to vote for a man who admitted to sexually assaulting women, who built his platform on dehumanizing immigrants and the disabled, who spread overtly-racist rhetoric, who flouted the values of kindness and self-discipline that I’d been raised on. And my dad always had some justification about the “greater good”: fighting against abortion, bolstering the economy, getting other Christian politicians into office.

But over time, as we grew further apart and I lost my will to discuss anything with him at all, he softened. He started asking me why I thought the way I did about the things we disagreed about. He would listen to my answers without interruption, and mull them over afterward instead of expressing his own opinion. And all the while, he watched the Trump presidency become cruel and absurd and devastating.

The first time he openly expressed regret to me, I had come home for a weekend after Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS. My dad realized he had helped elect a man who preyed on women… and that man had opened the door to more predators. I can’t tell you what it felt like for him to admit that he’d made a mistake, not just in voting for Trump but in defending him for so long. We kept arguing, but it was more debating than fighting. I knew he was capable of seeing my side of things, even if it took a while, and he knew I wasn’t just a sensitive college student with shallow new ideas about the world.

And then 2020 hit. Specifically, George Floyd was murdered, and the events that followed played out on the national stage. My dad was incredibly shaken by it. He asked me if I had any books from college about racial issues. I loaned him The New Jim Crow, one of the required readings for my Race and the Law class. Then I gave him Just Mercy. Then he watched the documentary 13th. Then he joined a racial harmony group he learned about through one of the few Black families at our church and insisted our whole family come. He held up signs at a protest against Confederate monuments in our conservative southern town. In three years, he went from defending Trump’s comments about “Black-on-Black crime” to publicly advocating for racial justice and opposing the death penalty.

We went together to vote in the 2020 primaries. I couldn’t help asking who he’d voted for; I didn’t even know if he’d asked for the Republican or Democratic ticket. He admitted he’d voted for Bernie. fucking. Sanders, then made me promise not to tell my grandma he’d voted liberal. When the election rolled around in November, he voted Biden. I’m sure he held his nose to do it, just like he held his nose voting in 2016. But I know he doesn’t regret it.

I am, of course, unbelievably lucky to have a parent who loved me enough, and was empathetic enough, to choose his relationship with me over his strongly-held opinions. He kept searching for truth because, as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a very smart and curious person. No degree of intelligence or curiosity makes you immune to propaganda, especially if you were raised not to question the party line. It’s easy to dismiss our conservative, conspiracy-pilled loved ones as stupid, hypocritical, and cruel. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they will bend to keep their relationships from breaking. Sometimes, if they can be made to understand that their beliefs and actions are harming someone they love, they will make concessions. And sometimes they just need one person in their life to put a foot down, to be vulnerable and assertive and argumentative, to bring the impact of their politics close to home.

As the most important election of our lifetimes approaches, do not put peace over progress. If you have someone like my dad, someone who is good-willed and smart and loves you more than their own opinions, tell them how you feel. Tell them what their choices will mean for you, for your friends, for your community. Tell them what they could lose: your trust, your affection, your respect. Don’t avoid conflict if it could be productive. Because my conflict with my dad didn’t just win him over–it won over my moderate mom and one of my conservative brothers. And it put us in community with other like-minded people and led my parents to a healthier and kinder faith.

All of this to say, there is hope in conflict. There is hope in our relationships with people who think differently from us. There is hope in exposing your fear and anger and pain to people you love. And hope is a form of activism.

[filmjunky-99]

d a n c e s w i t h w o l v e s, 1990 🎬 dir. kevin costner

'There's talk that you want to get married.' - wind in his hair

'To who?' - dances with wolves

'To Stands With A Fist.' - smiles a lot

[summerwages]

Drums...

And there are drums beyond the mountain

Indian drums that you can't hear

There are drums beyond the mountain and

they're getting mighty near...

Floyd Red Crow Westerman 🎵 (chorus)

[northernexposuregifs]

Chief?

[20y2]

ONE-WHO-WAITS: You want to learn about your parents, don't you?

NORTHERN EXPOSURE 2.02 The Big Kiss