{"id":844,"date":"2015-01-18T23:16:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T23:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womansconed.com\/?p=844"},"modified":"2015-01-19T02:31:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T02:31:21","slug":"popcorn-and-a-movie-lauding-little-big-corn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.womansconed.com\/?p=844","title":{"rendered":"Popcorn and a movie: Lauding little big corn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pop01\"<\/a>[I] have complete respect for the days set aside to honor, including Jan. 19, which is also National Popcorn Day. That being said, it occurs to me there is no day set aside to honor the First Americans. <\/p>\n

Some of us choose not to forget. In so doing, I honor not only a day of popcorn, but the first movie I remember seeing. It is still just about my favorite. <\/p>\n

Since it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Little Big Man,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d how could it not be?\"lilbig_01\"<\/a> 1970, I was but a wee lass, not yet in school, but absorbing all I saw. A night out at the movies — the drive-in — was not only the biggest adventure of my life at that time, but the launching of my lifelong love of movies. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure what I got out of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Little Big Man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at that young age, but it was unforgettable and profound enough that I continue to watch it every year — at least once.<\/p>\n

At the dawn of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s, the world of movies was changing. With Little Big Man<\/a>\"\" came a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153revisionist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d western that turned the previous notion of Indians as villains and the white man as hero on its ear. Arthur Penn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s masterpiece (based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger<\/a>\"\") looks over the life of 121-year-old Jack Crabb (played by Dustin Hoffman)who claims to be the lone white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. This tale weaves one man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life (ala \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Forrest Gump\u00e2\u20ac\u009d before Forrest was even a thought) into a changing American history, as Crabb lives among both American Indians and the whites who are betraying and destroying them. As with Gump, Crabb embodies many lifetimes in one as he becomes an American Indian warrior, U.S. Army scout, gunslinger, snake oil salesman, mercantile owner and drunk. Throughout his adventures, he finds himself at significant historical junctures, running into such icons of the 19th century as Wild Bill Hickock and General George Armstrong Custer<\/p>\n

\"pop02\"<\/a>As a boy, Crabb is raised by the Cheyenne (who call themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153human beings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), specifically under the tutelage of Old Lodge Skins (played by Chief Dan George), who gives the undersized Crabb the name Little Big Man because his bravery is so big. Key moments in the film see Crabb and Lodge Skins together in a teepee, talking, and it is Lodge Skins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 words that resonant most significantly and powerfully throughout this film. In one scene, Crabb asks Lodge Skins if he hates the white man. Lodge Skins holds up a scalp and says: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the human beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. And also the things from them… like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he’s bald on the other side, because I now own his scalp! That is the way things are. But the white man, they believe EVERYTHING is dead. Stone, earth, animals. And people! Even their own people! If things keep trying to live, white man will rub them out. That is the difference.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d