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?