The Images That Haunt Columbus
By Christopher Robe', with comments by Lauren Eisner, Timothy Guida, Jonathan Zubkoff, and Jaclyn Ulman
[1] 1492: Conquest of Paradise is predominantly a movie directed for a mainstream American audience. As a result, the portrayal of Columbus is the familiar sanitized, heroic version that is found in most children's school books (comment by Lauren Eisner). Film critic Richard Alleva points out that the film offers such a benign view of Columbus since it relies "on the well-known fact that Americans don't read history" (21). But to say that Ridley Scott's film only offers an unproblematic portrayal of Columbus is to disregard the moments in the film that destabilize Columbus's heroic status.
[2] One way in which Columbus-as-hero is destabilized in 1492 is through the complex relation that occurs between visual and aural tracks. As philosopher Gilles Deleuze states, "You get an endless struggle between what we see and what we say, brief clutchings, tussles, captures, because we never say what we see and never see what we say. The visible emerges between two propositions, and an utterance emerges between two things. Intentionality gives way to a whole theater, an endless interplay between the visible and the utterable" (Negotiations 107-8). Because most mainstream American audiences do not realize that there is a complicated interplay between the visual and aural, 1492 seems to champion Columbus. But if one is looking for such interplay, Columbus's role becomes more problematic. One scene that offers mixed significations of Columbus occurs when he and the Spaniards make first contact with the natives [0:56:13]. I will first present the mainstream reading of the film and then show how it is problematized by the interactions that occur between its images and sounds.
The Mainstream Reading
[3] The scene begins with Columbus leading the Spaniards into a lush green forest. A hazy light shines down from the trees and silhouettes the Spaniards, making the forest into an Edenic image. The haze and light blur the men and forest together like an impressionist painting and create a dream-like atmosphere. The Edenic allusions become more prominent as the scene cuts to a snake in a tree. Although the forest might seem idyllic, danger/evil is lurking nearby. The scene cuts back to the Spaniards. None of them notice the snake that lurks around them. The cut between snake and Spaniards makes the Spaniards seem caught in a state of childlike wonder, so entranced by the forest that their guard is down. This wonder is exemplified again when the Spaniards halt as a flock of birds suddenly burst from one of the trees. The Spaniards stand in awe of the birds. The scene overall connotes that the Spaniards' presence in the New World was less of a conquest and more of an innocent exploration.
[4] At the moment of first contact, as can be imagined, Columbus is portrayed as the patient, paternal figure while the natives are shown to be aggressive and conquest-like (comment by Timothy Guida). When the Spaniards first spot the natives, a man yells for muskets, but Columbus tells his men not to raise their weapons. Columbus is juxtaposed against his men's aggression to place Columbus in a paternal role. (It is significant that the first scene in the film is Columbus sitting with his son Fernando explaining to him that the world is round [0:03:05]. The movie attempts to link Columbus's actions with the natives to his relationship with his son-- which is racist in and of itself, since it equates the natives with a childlike and ignorant role). Columbus humors the natives as he would an ignorant child. When both groups meet, the natives are the ones to approach the Spaniards. The Spaniards merely stand still. The scene effaces the fact that the Spaniards traveled 750 leagues to reach their destination by making them so motionless in the present--as if they suddenly materialized in the New World.
[5] The first literal contact between natives and Spaniards occurs when a native approaches a Spaniard named Juanito and touches his cleft lip. When Juanito does not react, the other natives approach the other Spaniards and grope their equipment, hair, and bodies. The scene suggests a strange reversal from history: the Spanish are the objects of the natives by allowing themselves to be groped and poked. The irony is, of course, that the natives will serve as the ultimate objects--soon after this first encounter--of Columbus's slave system that utilizes their free labor as a key ingredient to create a viable economic system that supports the conquest. But by showing the natives as the first to manhandle the Spaniards makes the Spaniards' eventual manhandling of the natives in slavery only seem a difference in degree rather than kind. Both groups, as Scott's film show, are guilty of manhandling each other (comment by Lauren Eisner). The film raises the loaded question: slavery might have been bad, but would the role be reversed if the natives were the ones who possessed the advanced military technology?
[6] Even more significant, while the manhandling by the natives occurs, the native leader is speaking/yelling at Columbus in a foreign tongue. Columbus stands mute as the native's words code over Columbus's body and the images of the natives poking and grabbing the Spaniards. Columbus and his men stand mute and motionless at the mercy of the native's words. The "mainstream" scene is perverse in that it overlooks how Columbus's own journals and letters reveal how the power of the word was one of the main ways in which Columbus took possession of the New World. Historian Stephen Greenblatt writes, "For Columbus taking possession is principally the performance of a set of linguistic acts: declaring, witnessing, recording" (57). It was Columbus who renamed lands, rivers, peoples, and kidnapped natives so that they might learn Spanish and convert to Christianity. The power of the word was nothing short of a christening of the New World under Spanish rule. Greenblatt notes, "Such a christening entails the cancellation of the native name--the erasure of the alien, perhaps demonic, identity--and hence a kind of making new; it is at once an exorcism, an appropriation, and a gift" (83). All of this is not overlooked in the aforementioned scene but, even worse, reversed. It is as if the native is christening Columbus and his men under the despotic rule of the natives' language. By hearing the native's voice verbally accost the Spaniards while watching the natives also physically manhandle the Spaniards, makes the viewer infer that the Spaniards are the victims of the natives.
[7] The purpose of the overall scene is to equate the Spaniards' later and more severe actions with the natives' own initial actions to the Spaniards. By placing both of their attitudes on the same plane, the scene makes the Spaniards not seem so guilty nor the natives so innocent in the atrocities that occur later in the film The film supports a Machiavellian justification of genocide: kill and enslave them before they kill or enslave you. (see comment by Jonathan Zubkoff)
The "Cracked" Reading
[8] One of the ways in which the Spaniards' benign and passive role is destabilized occurs during the image of the snake. A snake is seen crawling through a tree. The scene cuts back to the Spaniards walking through the forest. Another cut is made to the snake. By bracketing the Spaniards in between the images of the snake, the Spaniards are being associated with the snake. The snake is not some danger lurking outside the Spaniards, but the Spaniards themselves are the snake/the danger that is penetrating into the Edenic forest. The threat of the Spaniards is emphasized since after the second image of the snake, the scene cuts to Juanito beating his drum. Although the drum does not sound menacing, it is still the foreign sound of colonization that is gradually penetrating the forest. The scene then cuts to a low-angle shot of the Spaniards' boots trampling through the forest. The low-angle suggests that the Spaniards are in a position of authority, roaming where they please and stepping on whatever comes in their way. Linking the drum and the boots shows how the Spaniards are invading the forest both aurally and visually. Finally, the scene cuts to Columbus walking to and stopping underneath a low lying branch. The warped and knotted branch arches over Columbus's body and looks much like a snake wrapping over Columbus. By framing Columbus under this snake-branch, the viewer can associate Columbus as being no other than the snake itself. Here he stands framed and waiting. He and his men slither single file through the deep foliage as the drum slithers through the forest's sounds. The images and sounds foreshadow the conquest to follow: the snake will attack whomever comes in its way, regardless of what tribe one might be from. (comment by Jaclyn Ulman)
[9] The difficulty about maintaining a counter-reading of the movie is that the narrative order of the film is always trying to appropriate the subversive elements; the whole attempts to subjugate the parts. Stephen Greenblatt explains that narrative is a good form to subdue deviant readings since "the pressure of linked events and the assumed coherence of the tale help pull the reader past the awkwardness of incommensurable positions and silenced voices" (61). One way to avoid such totalitarian adherence to a cohesive order in the film is to understand how the visual and aural tracks influence each other. In a traditional reading, the snake in the forest represents some abstract danger. But reading the various cuts of the snake with the Spaniards with the sounds of a drum with the boots with Columbus creates a composite linkage that challenges the portrayal of the natives as the initial aggressors. As filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha notes, "The relationship between images and words [sounds] should render visible and audible 'cracks' (which have always been there; nothing new . . .) of a filmic language that usually works at gluing things together as smoothly as possible . . . supporting an ideology that keeps the working of our language as invisible as possible, and thereby mystifying filmmaking, stifling criticism, and generating complacency among both makers and viewers" (151-52). 1492: Conquest of Paradise might appear as homage to Columbus, but it has enough cracks, if one looks for them, to sink all of his ships.
Comments
The natives were the first to stroke the Spaniards, but this can in no way equate to the description of the natives as manhandlers themselves. To "manhandle" by definition is to have rough touching. However, the touching by the natives was simply out of curiosity and interest in these new strangers. Blaming the natives for crossing "boundaries" and in doing so creating their future fate is a misguided assertion. Scott's film does not present the "touching" by the natives to equal the "manhandling" and later abuse by the Spaniards. This analysis takes a wrong turn in its view of Scott's film, as Scott was not creating equality of force between the two cultures, but rather symbolically strong differentiations. Robe does differentiate between the degrees of manhandling, yet coining the word manhandle to describe the natives is far from accurate. The natives were gentle and welcoming to the Spaniards from the beginning of the film. Although originally hesitant, the natives took proactive advances toward the Spaniards. These same Spaniards later destroy the natives' culture and way of life. The simple fact that the Spaniards did drive the natives into slavery creates two completely different spectrums of thought and culture. Robe takes these two completely different groups and pulls them together under the umbrella of manhandling. Inaccuracy is therefore created, in that it was only the Spaniards who did exemplify the rough touching and jostling of the natives. It is inconceivable that the natives' touching of the Spaniards was in any way connected to the brute force of the Spaniards.
I am reminded here at this early point in the Robe essay of what James Axtell says in his "Moral Reflections on the Columbian Legacy" about America's portrayal of celebrated events: "The form in which our celebrated events are typically presented -- drastically simplified, neatly packaged, and attractively wrapped, usually in the flag of national chauvinism or corporate altruism -- prevents us from recognizing the events as they actually occurred, in all their manifold complexity and meaningful contextuality." Although Columbus is destabilized as an American hero through certain schematic aspects, as Robe goes on to point out in this essay, there is no denying the tone of American patriotism for Columbus that is impressed upon this film. In the discussion of all viewpoints on Columbus, we must take into account the native viewpoints in order to keep with the ideals of accuracy and fairness. As a modern society, the past is continually scrutinized and, in searching out truth, further details about the discovery are found. History, its writers, and reproducers now decide the fate of the past and the destiny of what future generations will apply as truth in the "discovery of America." Perhaps this fate has already been decided, but the analysis continues to burden each expression of this moment. In the end -- we must all remember -- it is the individual, the student, the adult, who must decipher what really happened, who must finalize his or her perception of the truth.
Timothy Guida 10/01/02
[1] Robe's essay is based upon Columbus's Letter describing the first voyage. A more detailed description of the first contact, though, is given in Columbus's Diario (ed. Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr., U of Oklahoma P, 1989). In this Diario (57-69) the first contact with the natives is a stark contrast to the picture we receive in the film.
[2] First, on physical appearance, the native people in the Diario are described as colored only slightly darker than European, and they are fully naked. Columbus gives no mention of hairstyle or physical decorations. The Scott movie, however, has a native people who are highly different from this. They are dark, wearing minimal clothing (but clothing nevertheless), have a distinct hair styling, and are adorned with jewelry and decorations. The native people are thus more "savage" and less innocent in the film than they are in the Diario.
[3] Second, the native people in Columbus's writing are described as having no weapons. Columbus says, "They do not carry arms nor are they acquainted with them, because I showed them swords and they took them by the edge and through ignorance cut themselves" (67). Scott presents us with a far different scene. Instead of a people innocent of the use of weapons, he presents a culture of confident, aggressive warriors. They move without taking their guard down and approach the newcomers with weapons drawn. This again reduces the innocence associated with the native culture. It also gives the Spanish an excuse to be so heavily armed.
[4] A third difference is that the scene of first contact takes place directly on the beach in Columbus's account. The text reads, "Soon they saw naked people; and the Admiral went ashore in the armed launch" (63). This first contact takes place in the deep woods in Scott's interpretation. The scene is dark and tense, whereas the beach front meeting in Columbus's account is bright and friendly. The delayed meeting of the natives also removes from Columbus the guilt of claiming a land he could see was already inhabited.
[5] Columbus also observes in the Diario that he believes these people have no religion (69). The dialogue in Scott's film has no mention of this observation. Scott does not, however, give us any reason to believe that they do or do not have a religion, though a people with a so obviously advanced culture would surely have one. This issue is ignored largely because we know now that these people did have a religion, and the morality behind seeking to convert them is questionable.
[6] Finally, Columbus says in his Diario, "They should be good and intelligent servants . . . I will take six of them from here to your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak" (67-69), showing from the immediate point of first contact Columbus's plan to mold these people into servitude. The film has no hint of this now rather uncomfortable intention, and, instead, has Columbus, as Robe says, presented as a paternal protector of the native peoples.
[7] Scott's artistic interpretation gives a far different impression of the first contact than is presented in the Diario. The filmmakers had access to the Diario, and therefore we can deduce that they made a conscious decision to warp these events. The general trend is to warp them in order to preserve the image of Columbus as an American hero. All of the discrepancies discussed above seek to play down those aspects of Columbus that were destructive to the native cultures and to decrease the innocence of the native people who were victims of this destruction.
I found this excerpt from Christopher's essay to be incredibly thought provoking, yet flawed. Although he makes a valid point, explaining the intentional cuts from snake to Spaniards to emphasize the danger Columbus and his crew present to the New World, Chris failed to make an important connection. How can one write about an Edenic forest and a snake, and not see the reference to Adam and Eve? In the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, it is the snake that tempts Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, although God has forbidden her to do so. In this case, it is difficult to decipher the snake's role. It's possible that the snake was acting for God, instead of against him as with Adam and Eve, and attempting to drive the Spaniards from this Eden. It is also possible that the snake was a sign of the danger to come for Columbus, as the navigator and his crew take advantage of the New World, like the forbidden fruit. Regardless of Scott's meaning for the snake, it would be naive to ignore the obvious biblical reference.
I don't agree that the purpose of this overall scene is to prep us for the Spaniards' atrocities later on in the film. When I first viewed this scene without reading any analysis, I thought the natives were simply playing a joke on the Spaniards, which we see when one of the "elders" comes into the screen and starts laughing. The Spaniards respond by laughing as well, and then we get a scene of Columbus describing how nice the native people are and how they will not use physical force against them. While I think Chris did a great job breaking down the scene, I think he is mistaken in depicting the natives as harmful in any way simply because they pointed spears at Columbus and crew for less than a minute. That being said, I think Scott clearly wanted us to have an image of the Natives as a lesser group of people than the Spaniards. The way they made contact with the Spaniards made me personally think of a caveman-like civilization immediately. It became instantly clear that Scott did not want us to view these two groups as people as equals, which becomes clear immediately in the rest of the film.
