by Drew Martin, with Michael Barson
Typically an interview is conducted in order to learn more about a person and for insight on a particular topic but this interview was originally designed to help decide what to do with a unique collection of advertising artwork.
Michael Barson is the Senior Executive for Publicity at G. P. Putnam's Sons and author of a number of well-received books on American popular culture, including Red Scared!, True West, Teenage Confidential, The Illustrated Who's Who of Hollywood Directors and Agonizing Love.
We regularly cross paths on the PATH, the subway system between New Jersey and New York, and we work in the same building in SoHo. A typical PATH train encounter has Michael pretending to trip over me, or nonchalantly dropping his satchel on my lap while demanding I give up my seat for him. The passengers are shocked and appalled at his rude behavior, which pleases Michael to no end. (He is very easy to please.) I turn red, squirm and try to diffuse the situation by making it known that I am familiar with these juvenile antics before he is escorted off the train by security. But Michael maintains this is high-level meta-comedy.
When he dropped his satchel on my lap the other day, I reached in and pulled out a portfolio filled with product labels and movie placards from the early 1900s to mid-century. The common theme of each piece is the Native American, more specifically - stereotypes of Indians. They are fascinating from every angle. The artwork includes commercial illustrations, hand-tinted photographs, movie posters and fruit-crate labels. Aside from a few black and white pieces, everything else is from a four-color press and the artwork has a lot of vivid fields of color along with painterly people and objects.
One of the most bizarre examples is an advertisement for a rubber heel company. It is DaDa and Surreal. In the black and white illustration a huge rubber heel hangs in the sky above a river. In the foreground, an august caucasian man steps forward in a fine pair of shoes and an all but naked Indian kneels before him, clearly demonstrating his awe at the man's wondrous shoes. Or rather, the wondrous heels on his shoes. Michael would define this as a high-level form of meta-comedy as well.
Drew:
I know you collect red scare posters, love comics and Spaghetti Western media but these "Indian" works are quite different, more indigenous. Is it an extension to the Westerns or are they simply another piece of your childhood?
Michael:
My fascination with the differing ways the American Indian has been portrayed in popular culture is probably an offshoot of my interest in the larger area of the Western, but I would say it is also the most intriguing part. And that is because of the ways our viewpoint regarding Indian cultures (and there were many distinct ones) has ebbed and flowed over the past 150 years.
These items of advertising art that you confiscated from me are in the mode of the Noble Savage - their iconography is essentially our white world worshipping the attributes of the unspoiled Redman. Or he would have been unspoiled if we hadn't already eradicated him, or at least much of his original world.
Drew:
Speaking of your childhood. Has it ended? I mean...are your interests in these topics a matter of nostalgia or is it simply a childhood continuum?
Michael:
I can honestly say it isn't due to nostalgia alone, since 80% of the materials I work with in my books and other projects are things I never saw as a child growing up in the Fifties. But yes, I do try to mine my memories of the culture in which I was immersed as a kid in order to include those first-hand examples in my writing. I like being able to say from my own experience that I liked Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates on the show Wagon Train more than I liked James Arness as Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke, and why. But you can't experience everything first-hand, so I also continue to learn about the rest of the pop culture of the day in the course of my research. Which will probably continue until the day I die.
Drew:
All of these images are, or at least the use of them is, politically incorrect on so many levels I would not know where to begin. I believe your interest in them is more a matter of campy cultural eras but do you also look them more critically and academically?
Michael:
I disagree with that assessment, at least in terms of this advertising art. There is nothing politically incorrect about having a portrait of the nobel Red Cloud on a cigar box label... It may be ridiculous to link the properties of a five-cent cigar with one of the greatest Indian leaders who ever lived, but it is not showing disrespect to the memory of Red Cloud. Rather, it is trying to add class to the product by dint of Red Cloud's legendary reputation for nobility and leadership. To me, that does not really qualify as "camp."
Of course, in other kinds of pop media - movies, comic books, paperback novels - there was plenty of disrespect going on at the same time. That is part of the schizophrenic attitude we have always shown toward the American Indian, which is why the topic continues to fascinate me.
Drew:
Is the "Indian" vanishing from magazine pages and movies because of political correctness or is there simply a drop in relevancy and romanticism?
Michael:
The recent success of the science fiction movie Avatar demonstrated that our fascination with the mythology and iconography of the Indian is still hard-wired into our cultural consciousness, even if James Cameron's story had to be tweaked and re-packaged into a somewhat different form. Although the eight-foot-tall blue-skinned native people in Avatar were technically aliens, beneath the surface they functioned exactly as the Indian cultures did in such other hit films as Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves (which won six major Oscars back in 1990) and the Disney version of Pocahontas, all of which "donated" major plot elements and characters to Avatar (as many critics pointed out at the time of its release). And most important of all was that the story in Avatar allowed a new generation of moviegoers to see a revamped, re-imagined dramatization of what the United States military (and by extension, our government) wrought upon the original Indian nations during the 19th Century.
The attacks by the heavily armed forces of the pitiless soldiers in Avatar were horrifying to witness, just as their ultimate defeat by the combined forces of the native tribes and Mother Nature was totally exhilarating. By that point, the audience fully identified with the "aliens," rejecting the brutish instincts and violent natures of the white military forces. Hence, the final shot in the movie was one of the most emotionally satisfying I can recall. That said, we aren't likely to see the Western return to its former prominence in pop culture again, in my opinion. But every now and then it can still make its presence felt, thank goodness. Those lessons are ones we should not forget.
Drew:
You mentioned pitching them for a book idea or at least an article but what is your true ambition for them?
Michael:
Sharing them as widely as possible with others who might be interested is my main ambition, I suppose. And you could say that about all of my books about different aspects of American popular culture. They all contain lessons to be learned about our past, using materials that conventional histories largely bypass.
Typically an interview is conducted in order to learn more about a person and for insight on a particular topic but this interview was originally designed to help decide what to do with a unique collection of advertising artwork.
Michael Barson is the Senior Executive for Publicity at G. P. Putnam's Sons and author of a number of well-received books on American popular culture, including Red Scared!, True West, Teenage Confidential, The Illustrated Who's Who of Hollywood Directors and Agonizing Love.
We regularly cross paths on the PATH, the subway system between New Jersey and New York, and we work in the same building in SoHo. A typical PATH train encounter has Michael pretending to trip over me, or nonchalantly dropping his satchel on my lap while demanding I give up my seat for him. The passengers are shocked and appalled at his rude behavior, which pleases Michael to no end. (He is very easy to please.) I turn red, squirm and try to diffuse the situation by making it known that I am familiar with these juvenile antics before he is escorted off the train by security. But Michael maintains this is high-level meta-comedy.When he dropped his satchel on my lap the other day, I reached in and pulled out a portfolio filled with product labels and movie placards from the early 1900s to mid-century. The common theme of each piece is the Native American, more specifically - stereotypes of Indians. They are fascinating from every angle. The artwork includes commercial illustrations, hand-tinted photographs, movie posters and fruit-crate labels. Aside from a few black and white pieces, everything else is from a four-color press and the artwork has a lot of vivid fields of color along with painterly people and objects.
One of the most bizarre examples is an advertisement for a rubber heel company. It is DaDa and Surreal. In the black and white illustration a huge rubber heel hangs in the sky above a river. In the foreground, an august caucasian man steps forward in a fine pair of shoes and an all but naked Indian kneels before him, clearly demonstrating his awe at the man's wondrous shoes. Or rather, the wondrous heels on his shoes. Michael would define this as a high-level form of meta-comedy as well.
Drew:
I know you collect red scare posters, love comics and Spaghetti Western media but these "Indian" works are quite different, more indigenous. Is it an extension to the Westerns or are they simply another piece of your childhood?Michael:
My fascination with the differing ways the American Indian has been portrayed in popular culture is probably an offshoot of my interest in the larger area of the Western, but I would say it is also the most intriguing part. And that is because of the ways our viewpoint regarding Indian cultures (and there were many distinct ones) has ebbed and flowed over the past 150 years.
These items of advertising art that you confiscated from me are in the mode of the Noble Savage - their iconography is essentially our white world worshipping the attributes of the unspoiled Redman. Or he would have been unspoiled if we hadn't already eradicated him, or at least much of his original world.
Drew:
Speaking of your childhood. Has it ended? I mean...are your interests in these topics a matter of nostalgia or is it simply a childhood continuum?
Michael:I can honestly say it isn't due to nostalgia alone, since 80% of the materials I work with in my books and other projects are things I never saw as a child growing up in the Fifties. But yes, I do try to mine my memories of the culture in which I was immersed as a kid in order to include those first-hand examples in my writing. I like being able to say from my own experience that I liked Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates on the show Wagon Train more than I liked James Arness as Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke, and why. But you can't experience everything first-hand, so I also continue to learn about the rest of the pop culture of the day in the course of my research. Which will probably continue until the day I die.
Drew:
All of these images are, or at least the use of them is, politically incorrect on so many levels I would not know where to begin. I believe your interest in them is more a matter of campy cultural eras but do you also look them more critically and academically?
Michael:
I disagree with that assessment, at least in terms of this advertising art. There is nothing politically incorrect about having a portrait of the nobel Red Cloud on a cigar box label... It may be ridiculous to link the properties of a five-cent cigar with one of the greatest Indian leaders who ever lived, but it is not showing disrespect to the memory of Red Cloud. Rather, it is trying to add class to the product by dint of Red Cloud's legendary reputation for nobility and leadership. To me, that does not really qualify as "camp."
Of course, in other kinds of pop media - movies, comic books, paperback novels - there was plenty of disrespect going on at the same time. That is part of the schizophrenic attitude we have always shown toward the American Indian, which is why the topic continues to fascinate me.Drew:
Is the "Indian" vanishing from magazine pages and movies because of political correctness or is there simply a drop in relevancy and romanticism?
Michael:
The recent success of the science fiction movie Avatar demonstrated that our fascination with the mythology and iconography of the Indian is still hard-wired into our cultural consciousness, even if James Cameron's story had to be tweaked and re-packaged into a somewhat different form. Although the eight-foot-tall blue-skinned native people in Avatar were technically aliens, beneath the surface they functioned exactly as the Indian cultures did in such other hit films as Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves (which won six major Oscars back in 1990) and the Disney version of Pocahontas, all of which "donated" major plot elements and characters to Avatar (as many critics pointed out at the time of its release). And most important of all was that the story in Avatar allowed a new generation of moviegoers to see a revamped, re-imagined dramatization of what the United States military (and by extension, our government) wrought upon the original Indian nations during the 19th Century.
The attacks by the heavily armed forces of the pitiless soldiers in Avatar were horrifying to witness, just as their ultimate defeat by the combined forces of the native tribes and Mother Nature was totally exhilarating. By that point, the audience fully identified with the "aliens," rejecting the brutish instincts and violent natures of the white military forces. Hence, the final shot in the movie was one of the most emotionally satisfying I can recall. That said, we aren't likely to see the Western return to its former prominence in pop culture again, in my opinion. But every now and then it can still make its presence felt, thank goodness. Those lessons are ones we should not forget.Drew:
You mentioned pitching them for a book idea or at least an article but what is your true ambition for them?
Michael:
Sharing them as widely as possible with others who might be interested is my main ambition, I suppose. And you could say that about all of my books about different aspects of American popular culture. They all contain lessons to be learned about our past, using materials that conventional histories largely bypass.