Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 15:17:00 -0400
From: [g--l--n] at [falcon.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex)
Subject: FTP 506

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FIT TO PRINT
by cathrine yronwode
for the week of October 10, 1994


THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 506: Today, September 14th, 1994, in honour of
Clayton Moore's 80th birthday, i read the first issue of The Lone Ranger and
Tonto by Joe R. Lansdale and Timothy Truman. The art is gorgeous and the
story is fast-paced and exciting, but in the end it troubled me, and i want
to unburden myself about that here.

In taking on this project, Joe had two missions to fulfill: scripting a
full-tilt adven-ture suitable for Tim's exotic-funky art style and working up
a new twist on an old tale. The first mission he accomplished with
con-siderable panache, creating a scurvy band of wind-surfing pirates who
steal a load of cursed Aztec artifacts from a touring exhibit -just the kind
of thing Tim draws to per-fection. But, in my opinion, his second mission
went awry because against this allowably anachronistic backdrop (such Aztec
artifacts were not discovered until decades after the Lone Ranger was dust),
Joe based a subplot on the conceit that dime novel authors of their day are
characterizing Tonto as the Lone Ranger's servant, whereas in fact they are
equals, and Tonto deeply resents being thought of as a "faithful Indian
companion."

The premise of this subplot dates back to a famous quip sold to Mad Magazine
by the late E. Nelson Bridwell (best known as DC's master-historian) when he
was a mere youth. That joke is summed up in its punch-line: "What do you mean
'we,' white man?" It was a great joke, and whether or not Joe knows that
Nelson was the first person to express the idea in print, it makes a dandy
story springboard. So far, so good.

In a text feature in the first issue, Joe writes, "I've made no effort to
make Tonto 'politically correct.'" Yet in demonstrating Tonto's equality, he
performs the supremely politically correct feat of giving the Indian command
of perfect King's English-and, even more "correctly," he attributes the
broken English heretofore associated with the character to conscious or
unconscious racism on the part of fictional dime novel authors.

Now, we all know that these characters originated in the mind of Fran
Stryker, long after the dime novel era ended. Thus, by impugning "dime
novelists," Lansdale seems to be charging Stryker and his successors with
misrepresenting Tonto. I think that in doing so, he is being grossly unfair
to deceased authors who cannot defend them-selves against the accusation of
racism.

Furthermore, granting Tonto better-than-average English skills violates the
character's origin. As told and retold in the radio series, when Tonto found
the wounded John Reid and nursed him back to health, he was not what was then
called "a civilized Indian," that is, he had not been captured as a child and
raised in a white-run boarding school. A war between his tribe and the whites
made it impossible for him to receive language coach-ing, so he did not speak
English fluently. It was his friendship with a man who would under ordinary
circumstances have been his enemy that made the character of Tonto so
interesting. Reid became a renegade who never rejoined the Texas Rangers, and
Tonto, whose tribe had been massacred, became a renegade from Native American
life.

It made perfect sense, given this origin story, that Tonto spoke English as a
second language, with a pronounced accent and with some flaws in grammar.
Whether or not his grammatical errors were presented in accordance with any
actual Native American rules of grammar is an area of contention for
linguists, but the accent and intonation used by the actors who played
Tonto-notably Jay Silverheels, himself a Native American-certainly resemble
the accents i have heard among bi-lingual Cherokee, Navaho, and Sioux
speakers. There was authenticity of a sort, and certainly no racism was
implied.

I'm not accusing Joe of violating the orig-inal series by introducing
emotional tension between the two men-that adds welcome depth-but the tension
could have arisen just as naturally had Tonto been allowed to keep his
politically incorrect but narratively appro-priate dialect. In that case, the
friendship between Tonto and The Lone Ranger, a bond that bridged two
cultures, would have seemed as extraordinary to today's readers as it did to
yesterday's listeners. Now it just reads like Tonto made a big mistake.