Thursday, March 8, 2012

Somebody had to point this out

Johny Depp featuring a dead bird and, oh, that one guy.

Kirby Sattler's "I am Crow"

Wait, isn't Tonto supposed to be Comanche? 
So, shouldn't he look a little more like this?
Quanah (aka Fragrance, aka Quanah Parker) - Comanche/Scots-Irish - circa 1869

WTF is up with the bird, anyway?
I had a brainstorm with Rob Schmidt, Newspaper Rock blogger, this afternoon (when I should have been doing homework) trying to figure this out.

While Johnny Depp's costume seems a pretty exact copy of Sattler's painting, what was Sattler's inspiration?
Taken from Sattler's website on where he gets his inspiration:

He is not mainly concerned with being historically accurate. His art interpretations give a feeling of authenticity without being specific to a particular tribe. The paintings begin with reference materials, finding a visual to inspire an image. The composites of facial features from different sources; books, fotos, models, imagination, combined, result into a simple rough sketch on the canvas, establishing the scale and composition of the painting.”


Hmm...Okay, Sattler seems concerned with looking authentic while being totally generic. (Which could be why his paintings are so popular with the pretendian crowd)

Rob offered the explanation that either the painting or Tonto's get-up could be inspired by a Chipewyan story about a man named Crow-head who, coincidentally, did wear a crow skin. The crow skin cape gave him power but, also got him made fun of by girls.

So, we have a Crow in a painting title, a Chipewyan story, a guy claiming to be part Cherokee or Creek wearing it all and nothing about Comanches, but, hey, they all begin with “C”, right?









5 comments:

  1. Tonto is a fictional chcharacter.
    Whats the problem here?
    Clearly, The Lone Ranger is NOT intended to be a realistic movie.... it's a Disney-fied Western!

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    1. BUH! It's like somebody put a Juggalo, a dirty hippy and a taxidermist in a blender!

      Seriously though, is it too much to ask that Hollywood at least TRY to get it right? Yeah, I know the answer to that, too. Just a little research and they could have made Tonto into a believable character. Instead, they took the lazy route.

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    2. The problem is that while To to may have been fictional, the Comanche are not. And a big ol' DUH to you if you can't figure out why that's a problem.

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    3. It appears this is Depp's baby:

      Depp, however, had a clear vision of the revamped Tonto: “I’d actually seen a painting by an artist named Kirby Sattler, and looked at the face of this warrior and thought: That’s it,” Depp told EW.

      And so, the 21st century Tonto was born, even down to the headdress, which to Depp was of paramount importance.

      “I thought: Tonto’s got a bird on his head," he said. "It’s his spirit guide in a way. It’s dead to others, but it’s not dead to him. It’s very much alive.”

      Deep, Depp. And Huffpost reported that Depp was just offered to join the Comanche Nation. I wonder if Al Jolson got an invite from the NAACP for "The Jazz Singer."

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  2. Depp is a dumbass. In the lefto-lib world being part "Indian" is the flavor of the month. Look at that squaw Lizzy Warren in Mass. If he was REALLY part Indian, he would have done some research and come up with something better. Shows just how smart he really is...NOT~

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