Dances with Wolves: Cinema's new frontier? Behind

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satisfy him—if Iraq fails to surrender unconditionally.

On Dec. 16, David Frost interviewed President Bush, which was shown on television on Jan. 2. Listen to what sounds like the ravings of a madman! The president harshly denounced Saddam as "the agressor, the dictator, the rapist of Kuwait." Bush argued that the chance for a more peaceful world will be lost "if we give one single inch to placate [Iraq]."

He went on to say: "It is not acceptable to have any conditions for Saddam's withdrawal, halfway withdrawals or "well, I'll do it tomorrow' excuses-that is not good enough." Bush also said that if the United States goes to war on Jan. 15, "it would be over in a few days, but what happens, realistically, is hard to tell."

Nuclear weapons

From the very beginning of the United Nations-sanctioned blockade of Iraq, the Bush administration has hinted at the use of nuclear weafought on the Western frontier. The war of the plains was fought under the same flag of the Union, but with a different aim—to wipe out the indigenous people of the region.

"Dances with Wolves" begins on a battlefield back East. Soldiers in blue and in gray taunt each other across a fenced-off field. The movie's hero, Lt. John Dunbar (played by Kevin Costner), attempts a solo charge against the Closing date:

SUAN enemy lines—with no other purpose than suicide.

When, beyond all the bounds of luck, Dunbar comes through unscathed, his commanders praise him as a hero and grant him an assignment in the West. But later, when the lieutenant tries to make peace with the Sioux, he is beaten and carried in chains to be executed. Such is the logic of the Army.

Indeed, Lt. Dunbar went so far in his "treasonable acts" as to try to understand the point of view of the enemy Sioux and even to adopt their way of living. Thus the film presents us with a question: Can a person, specifically a soldier of the U.S. Army, successfully "cross over" into the camp of our government's enemies? The facts of the case are given. The answer is left to us.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Costner said that his film is about "how the West was lost." This is obviously far from a conventional Western. Despite the deep-focused shots of thunderheads and prairies, it's the characters' personal confidences and self-doubts that give the film strength.

Costner points out "We've had a lot of films portray ing Indians as the enemy, a few showing how they were cheated. This film explores how they felt being cheated. It's a very intimate approach to a very big subject."

Unfortunately, Costner allows some of the more conventional elements of Western melodrama to intrude. The soldiers who capture Lt. Dunbar at the end of the film are a stick-figure group of villains. It could have been inspiring to find a soldier among them who, while he served flag and country, had the potential to change his behavior-— as the character played by Costner did before him. But Costner the filmmaker lets the opportunity ge away.

Likewise, when Lt. Dunbar takes sides with the Sioux "goodies" against the Pawnee "baddies," the audience's sympathies are expected to follow right along. The Pawnees that we meet in the film resemble 19th-century Skinheads. They presumably have no wives and children, as the Sioux men do.

It would have been consistent After Wounded Knee One hundred years ago, freedom for the Plains Indians came to an end. On New Year's Day, 1891, an Army detachment was sent out to Wounded Knee, S.D., to bury those who had died there.

The day before, a cold blizzard had swept through the Dakotas. And the soldiers found several hundred Oglala Sioux—women, children, and a few men-lying twisted in the snow.

Some of the people seemed to have frozen in the very horror of facing Army bayonets. Many women had shielded their faces with their shawls—as if to block out the sight of soldiers who were spraying their babies with Hotchkiss machine guns.

On this morning of the New Year, the soldiers posed by their frozen trophies and grinned for the photographers. Then the onceliving were stripped naked for souvenirs and shoveled into a pit.

Two weeks later, on Jan. 18, the last of the Sioux warriors surrendered. The Army then offered them coffee, sugar, beef, and "protection." But during the next years, the Sioux were forced to give up three-fifths of the land that they had held shortly before Wounded Knee.-M.S.

with the movie's theme to point out that the Pawnees, too, were victims of the whites. During the previous 30 years, germ warfare (cholera and smallpox) had reduced their numbers by half. Their traditional way of life was shattered, and the remaining Pawnees were forced to become thieves and mercenaries for the U.S. Army against other Indian nations.

On the whole, however, the realism of "Dances with Wolves" goes far beyond the standard film-tinsel view of American history. From now on, the movie industry might find it less easy to speak with a forked tongue.

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CTION end women's rights

By Michael Schreiber