"Michael's Tribe," Part II

[Part I of the BBB response to the My Wife and Kids 2002 episode "Michael's Tribe" can be found below.]

A side storyline in “Michael’s Tribe” involves Michael’s teenage daughter Claire and her plan to sneak out of the house with Tony, one of her friends. Learning of the plan from his son Junior, Michael asks, “How?” To which Junior replies, “Are you asking me a question or are you speaking ‘Indian’?” After Junior explains how Claire’s friend will arrive at midnight and use a ladder to climb up to Claire’s room, Michael turns to storytelling to recruit the Indian Princesses to help him catch Claire and her friend.

MICHAEL. Many, many moons ago, there was Princess Claire-awatha. She was the daughter of the greatest chief ever. One day a brave from another village came to steal away Princess Claire-awatha and this made the chief very, very angry.
RACHEL. Wait a minute. Claire-awatha? Is this just a thinly veiled reference to your actual life?

Michael tells the Princesses of Claire’s plan and asks them to help make sure Claire stays “here in the village” (i.e., at home). Next, the Princesses prepare for what Bald Eagle labels as “war” while dancing senselessly and chanting “hi-ya uh-ya-ha hi-ya uh-ya-ha” with their chief. Chief Bald Eagle also leads the Princesses in a rendition of “the sacred song of our Indian People.” In unison, they sing “three little, two little, one little Indian” from the well-known Septimus Winner nineteenth-century minstrel song (and later nursery rhyme) “Ten Little Indians.” “Indian” players in My Wife and Kids unabashedly sing a tune about the counting of “Indian” deaths. As Kanatiyosh (Onondaga/Mohawk) states, “Asking children to sing ‘Ten Little Indians’ is pure racism. The song is an Indian annihilation song that the Pioneers sang to their children to sooth [sic] their fears. If you remember the song, they count up and then they count backwards until there is only one Indian boy left.”

The time arrives, Bald Eagle tells his warriors, “to prepare our faces for war with paint.” The girls, who now wear a headband with a single feather, shout in excitement as they line up to physicalize redface. Donning a red, white, and blue headdress, Michael tells them, “Step forward, close your eyes, and look to the moon” before he slaps their faces with a paintbrush. Next, he teaches them the war dance and soon begins to do the robot dance. When one of the Princesses recognizes the familiar dance, Bald Eagle declares, “Oh, you are wise. That’s because we must be brave like robots.” Not surprisingly in this episode of dehumanization, “Indians” are objectified into robots as everyone performs the robot dance.

Having prepared for war, the Chief and his Princesses attack. When Tony arrives to the house, he begins to climb a ladder to Claire’s upstairs room. The Princesses hide in the bushes and, upon Bald Eagle’s command, hit the young man with toy arrows. Bald Eagle instructs them to take Tony away. Viewers then see Claire’s friend tied to a chair in the living room while the Princesses yell and run circles around him. Rachel, the supposedly educated one, asks Bald Eagle, “Do we get to set him on fire now?” She sounds well-versed in Hollywood footage that depicts “Indians” dancing around captive White men who are tied to wooden stakes. In The Flintstones “Droop-Along Flintstone” (1961), for example, White characters Fred and Barney are tied to stakes by “Indians.” Whereas their wives Wilma and Betty rescue them, Bald Eagle in My Wife and Kids declares, “We should let [Tony] go back to his village so that he may tell others what happens when they try to mess with our women.”

To recognize and applaud his efforts for the Indian Princesses gathering, Kady says, “Daddy, I had a good time tonight. You’re the best chief ever.” In a self-aggrandizement of confirming his ability to be a pseudo-“Indian,” Bald Eagle replies, “You got that right.” If the use of “best” can mean the best in playing “Indian” in one of the most anti-Indigenous, disrespectful, and misinforming American sitcom episodes in television history, then Kady may be onto something.

My Wife and Kids "Michael's Tribe," Part I

Yesterday, the episode "Michael's Tribe" of the former ABC sitcom My Wife and Kids, starring African American actor Damon Wayans, aired on a local Fox affiliate. "Michael's Tribe," as the following Brady Brave Bureau response may reveal, entails disturbing illustrations of redface.

Michael Kyle (Damon Wayans) serves as the adult “Indian” figure while his youngest daughter Kady is like Opie Taylor with his interest in “Indians” in several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. At first, Michael hesitates to play “Indian” not because of its potential disrespect to Indigenes but because he is more interested in a sports game on television. When he hears that his daughter’s “Indian” Princesses group will be camping at the house of a family he does not know, Michael demands that the camping be at his house. As he tells his wife Jay/Janet (portrayed by Tisha Campbell), “I’ll be the chief. I’ll watch the game and then I’ll go out there and play ‘Indian.’” Jay explains that he will not have time to see the game because he will be with the girls “the whole day and night” and thus, too busy “[teaching] them the culture and the history of Native Americans, the arts, crafts, dancing, all of that.” Obviously, one “day and night” would not suffice in teaching effectively about the millions of heterogeneous Indigenous Peoples and hundreds of Indigenous nations, yet effectiveness in education is not a characteristic of learning about the sitcom’s “Indian.” Not wanting to back down after volunteering, Michael replies, “Fine, I can do that.” As the rest of the episode unfolds, he shows that he is clueless about as well as racist towards Indigenous Peoples. The only clue he has is being well-versed in Hollywood “Injun” stereotypes, which suffices for the sitcom’s “Indian.”

Calling himself “Chief Bald Eagle,” Michael sits lazily near his radio in the backyard and listens to the game. At one point, one of the Princesses brings him a beer. In return, Bald Eagle gives her the “Indian” name Little Fetch-Me-Beer. When Jay reminds Michael that he must teach the girls about Indigenous Peoples, he interrupts her by speaking in a Hollywood “Injun,” broken English monotone.

MICHAEL. Silence! Maiden no tell Chief how to act, what to do.

JAY. Michael, if you ever want to get into this maiden’s wigwam again, you’ll do as I say.

MICHAEL. Whoa. Poked-out hiney.

JAY. Hey!

MICHAEL. I see where you have hidden sacred drum. Can’t wait to bang drum slowly.

Jay’s threat of withholding sexual relations leads to Michael expressing his desire to “bang drum slowly,” an obvious reference to sexual intercourse. Michael’s comparison between a Native drum and his wife’s backside is one of the most vulgar jokes in “Indian” play throughout the history of redface in Amerian sitcoms. It represents a large shift in what has become acceptable to say in sitcoms. Unfortunately, to use a revered Native object like the drum for a sitcom’s sexual metaphors and innuendos is reflective of contemporary sitcom material.
Michael’s main resistance to seeing the game is a White, red-headed “Indian” Princess named Rachel. Known to Michael as “Little Pain-in-Butt,” Rachel repeatedly has reservations about Michael and his un-educational tactics.

RACHEL. This is ridiculous. All we’re doing is waiting on you hand and foot.

MICHAEL. Yes, yes, because you are a maiden, and a maiden must tend to the needs of the chief.

RACHEL. You gotta be kidding. You’re overly simplifying things. The Native Americans had a very advanced culture.

Speaking of oversimplification, Rachel generalizes by speaking of a singular, monolithic “culture” from the past. The hundreds of cultures from historical and contemporary times are ignored. “Despite the cultural differences among tribes,” academic and activist Devon Mihesuah (Choctaw) explains, “many non-Indians believe that all Indians are alike” (20).Rachel then explains that Indigenes “were the first to openly accept gay people.” Is she referring to all Indigenous Peoples of all Indigenous nations? What time period does she have in mind? To apply almost any concept or belief as representative of all Native Peoples is, to say the least, a major fallacy. Michael has no understanding either. His response to Rachel’s comment on accepting homosexuality is a made-up reference to “the tale of Little Drop the Tomahawk,” which is an “Indian”-specific version of jokes about men dropping bars of soap in locker room showers.

part 2 of the bbb's analysis of "michael's tribe" will appear in our next post.

Disney's Revolutionary "Indians"

Set in Boston at a hotel, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody targets young Disney viewers as it follows the adventures of twin teenage White brothers Zack, the carefree troublemaker, and Cody, the studious dreamer. In the 2006 episode “Boston Tea Party,” Boston city hall plans to transform Liberty Park, one of the boys’ hangouts, into a paved lot. Cody writes a lengthy letter of protest in which some of the key words, he announces, are “boldfaced” for emphasis. Zack, growing tired and, as he calls it, “boredfaced,” inattentively listens to his brother and falls fast asleep. The episode then goes into a dream sequence of flashing back to what I label a redfaced reenactment of the Boston Tea Party.

Set in 1773, the year of the Tea Party and three years before the official founding of the United States of America, the dream depicts the non-Native cast engaging in talk of revolting against England’s high taxes on imported tea and of forming their own country. That same year, a group of American colonists in Boston dressed as Mohawk “Indians” to disguise themselves while throwing English tea overboard. Like the real colonists in Boston, the characters’ plan is to dress as “Indians” and dump the latest shipment of English tea into the Boston Harbor. In the next scene, several characters are seated on Liberty Park’s lawn and constructing their “Indian” headdresses. “During our raid on the tea ship,” one character explains, “these Indian headdresses will disguise us so the British won’t know who we are.”

For colonists to have played “Indian” at the real Boston Tea Party and in The Suite Life’s reenactment functions as far more than mere disguise. To be pseudo-“Indians” enabled colonists to take on characteristics they linked with “Indianness.” For one, the colonists associated “Indians” with courage. To be dressed as “Indians,” Cody adds, “will show [the British] we can fight!” The Suite Life plays on the Euro-American rationale of believing that all “Indians” are warriors who will go to any length to protect themselves and their homelands.

To associate “Indians” with violence occurs again in the next scene. Dressed in their exotic “Indian” regalia of feathers and beaded necklaces and belts with multicolored paint on their faces, the non-Native characters enter the hotel and celebrate their off-screen dumping of the tea. Another character, who did not play “Indian,” sees them and yells, “Indians!” After the pseudo-“Indians” duck in fear, she screams, “Indian attack!” One of the “Indian” players proudly responds, “We’re not Indians; we’re revolutionaries!” As a signifier of revolutionary and uninhibited freedom, “Indian” denotes who is not British. Attracted to what they perceive as Indigenous characteristics of exoticness, freedom, courage, and violence, the “Indian” players in The Suite Life, like the historical American colonists, looked to become different from the British. The Boston Tea Party, Philip Deloria states, “offers a defining story of […] American character.” It functions, he adds, as “a catalytic moment, the first drumbeat in the long cadence of rebellion through which Americans redefined themselves as something other than British colonists” (see Deloria's book Playing Indian, pg 2). The Tea Party portrays a pictorial semblance for colonists to assume an authentic American identity.

To play, not be, “Indian” enabled the White revolutionaries to move away from being British and towards original Americanness in the form of “Indians,” America’s original inhabitants. Thus, White revolutionaries in Boston engaged in playing “Indian” to serve their purposes without claiming permanent “Indian” identities. In the process, they perpetuated the notion of “noble savagery,” which Deloria denotes as “a term that both juxtaposes and conflates an urge to idealize and desire Indians and a need to despise and dispossess them” (Playing Indian 4). The Suite Life characters ethnomasquerade as “Indians” one moment, fear an “Indian” attack the next, and then proudly proclaim to be non-“Indian” revolutionaries.

Awaking from his dream, Zack is inspired to save the park, a symbol of his joy in America. This time, he does not resort to “Indian” disguise. Instead, he checks the park’s historical significance of a huge tree in the park and learns of its ties to the Revolutionary War. While waiting for a permit from a local historical preservation society, Zack and other characters stage a protest on the same lawn where the “Indian” headdresses were constructed. The encouragement and revelation from Zack’s dream of “Indian” players reaches fruition as a permit is issued and the park is saved from the awaiting demolition crew.

“Boston Tea Party” never mentions that most of its cast, like Boston colonists in 1773, dressed as “Mohawks.” Instead, it refers to generic, tribeless “Indians.” In the epilogue, the female character who yelled “Indians!” in Zack’s dream enters the hotel lobby with her hair styled into what she calls a “Fauxhawk,” or a fake Mohawk hairdo. Now, she, too, joins the “Indian” play, but in a more subtle manner. Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the scriptwriters were aware of the ambiguity here as they temporarily transformed numerous characters into faux Mohawk “Indians.” But I do not credit The Suite Life of Zack and Cody with knowing of the offensiveness and disrespect associated with redface.