Steven Spielberg is in trouble because the Native American extras on Into the West are complaining – despite much of the mini-series being devoted to exploring Western expansion from a Native American point of view – that Spielberg’s company isn’t being sensitive enough:
A Mescalero Apache family in southern New Mexico has sued the producers of Steven Spielberg’s television miniseries, “Into the West,” claiming a set stylist cut an 8-year-old girl’s hair without regard for tribal customs. “It’s part of our culture not to cut a girl’s hair until her Coming of Age ceremony,” the girl’s father, Danny Ponce, said Friday in a telephone interview. “The only ones allowed to do that are the parents. Nobody asked for permission.”..
Gov. Bill Richardson in recent years has increased state efforts to attract the film industry to New Mexico. While Ponce welcomes those initiatives, he suggested filmmakers from outside the state should try to be more culturally sensitive. “Just because you’re wealthy, you don’t do something without checking first,” Ponce said.
Why is it that only highly abstract, exotic, and romanticized beliefs count as things that Hollywood filmmakers have to be “culturally sensitive” to? What about our belief that “terrorists who murder Olympic athletes shouldn’t get other people’s sympathy?” Is that not “cultural” enough to be worthy of “sensitivity”?
