February 25, 2006
The New World
Philosophy of Two American Johns
I have been thinking a lot about two pediophiliac men who are archtypes of America. And they're both named John. John Smith and Johnny Appleseed. Two hundred years seperate them in real history, but in America's imagination they're close as cousins.
A week ago I wouldn't have thought so. But a week ago, I hadn't read the opening chapter of Micahel Pollan's Botany of Desire nor had I seen Terrence Malick's New World. Neither of these I really wanted to experience, but I was obligated to anyhow (by a class in the first instance, by a filmmaker's reputation and a friend in the second).
Pollan's book is a New York Times bestseller and reads like a feature article in the New Yorker. It is the kind of book similar to the one unfaithfully adapted in the film Adaptation, and the archtype of the book I have been urging a friend of mine to write about the world of World of Warcraft. The book's purpose is to give a "plants-eye-view" of the world, but by mainly reading a whole lot of philosophy and culture into the meanings of particular plants, it reads more like a Pollan-eye view of the world. No matter; Pollan's first chapter is all about apples. But the chapter is ultimately more illuminating about America than apples, because he places at its center one John Chapmen, known to grown elementary school attendees far and wide as Johnny Appleseed. Before reading Pollan, I had the idea that Johnny merely wandered the country side dropping seeds here and there. But this is America of course, and Johnny Chapmen merely hugged the American frontier as an incredibly lucrative commercial venture, colonizing with the best of them. Chapmen set up an orchard anywhere the forecast read "white settlement," and took to where ever a large crop of apples might take. As white settlers strolled in, Chapmen strolled out, pausing only to make a killing selling his apples to the folks coming in on his way to the next Golden Orchard. Given the apple was the main staple of American alcohol until the Prohibition Era, Chapmen made a killing. He also managed to aid in the killing off of all that stood in America's way. Turns out the apple played a key role in colonizing North America. If it was an entirely too anachronistic an action, I swear I'd fucking boycott the apple.
Speaking of anachronism: enter Terrence Malick's New World, which tells a story that should have died with the little white lier who told it: John Smith. Like Appleseed, the story of Smith is familiar to just about everyone, thanks to Disney's Pocahontas. Given Malick is a philosophy professor and part-time filmmaker, who has only made three films since the 70s (all of them great, including one of my very favorites, Thin Red Line), one'd think he'd do better than a production company that has pumped out something like 30 or 40 animated features over the same time period. One would think wrongfully. Alas, no dice. The film portrays Smith's story of his child lover, Pocahontas, literally verbatim, with several lines of Smith's account provided via Malick's trademark voice-overs. Meanwhile, Pocahontas speaks nary a word, accepting a choice line or two pining after Smith, both in his presence and in his absence (frankly, there's large elements of this in Thin Red Line too: voiceless indigenous peoples, angry, moody men at war. For me, though other, stronger moments, such as the relationship between Witt and Welsh, manage to make that film).
Both Pollan and Malick think they are telling stories rich with philosophical musing, about the in and outs of overtaking innocence, the domestication of wildness by men caught between the strict civilization as they knew it, and a new world as they dreamed it. Pollan devotes lengthy passages casting Johnny Appleseed as America's Dionsysus; Malick gives us a few voice-overs of Smith pining after a free commenwealth. Yet for both Pollen and Malick, the American frontier and its inhabitants are a perfect medium for the Johns desire, and neither shows any interest in exploring the destruction that desire wrought. Both Johns are cast as friends to the Indians, yet Indian's own voices are conspiciously lacking in both accounts. If it wasn't for that lack, America likely would not remember these Johns so fondly. As Malick ignores, and Pollan, to his credit, alerts us to, is the pedophilia that both these Johns tended towards, as both had a penchant for women much younger than they. Pocahontas could not have been older than 12 or 13 when Smith was said to be involved with her; and Chapmen was once engaged to a child bride, all of 10 years, until, it is said, she broke his heart.
Maybe it would break America's heart to know the truth about these two Johns; maybe that's why Pollan's bestseller's subject is plants, not plunder, and why Malick's film insists it is a tale of love. But in refusing to break America's heart, neither author gives us anything all that new (as Indian Country Today said of Malick's film, Not much new in 'The New World': "The production crew says ''The New World'' is not a history, but a fictional love story between Captain John Smith and Matoaka, aka Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Powhatan Confederacy of Tidewater Algonquian tribes. But it's not really a love story, either. With Smith playing the colonizer and Pocahontas the ''good Indian,'' it's actually a metaphor reinforcing the tragic inevitability of the conquering of America - a story we've heard too often already."). In its relationship with Pocahantas and with itself, I think America could stand to have its heart broken. Maybe then, for once, some truth could shine through.
