Save the Last Dance for Two-Socks

Until this past weekend I’d never seen Dances With Wolves, and I was extremely fine with that. You say “Kevin Costner produced, starred in, and DIRECTED a 1990 movie about a white guy who integrates into a Lakota community as their mascot/savior” and I say “I’ll pass, thanks.” But as fate, or Scott’s streaming services, would have it, all three hours of the theatrical cut have now made their way into my consciousness. That’s how far I’m willing to go for my art.

I’ll grant this much: Could’ve been worse. It was a white dude’s show from start to finish, but Indigenous folks on both sides of the camera did great work too. And it was about as much of a bummer as I expected, but I’ll try to make it less of a bummer to read about. Heads up that there’ll be some suicide attempts and some sad fates for animals, which you have my blessing to skip or skim. (I personally yelled “I HATE THIS MOVIE” several times due to animal-related developments, so I get it.)

It’s 1863; we’re Civil Warring. Kevin’s a rugged Union soldier, John Dunbar, who’s about to have his wounded foot chopped off. He opts for suicide-by-Confederate instead. After hobbling to the closest horse—Cisco, the best character—he rides back and forth in front of the Confederate lines for, I go to say, forty-five minutes. Confederates keep shooting at him and missing, and once they’re out of ammunition the other Union soldiers attack. Nice. The general’s so impressed by… whatever he thinks just happened… that he’s like Hey, I’ve got special foot-saving medicine in my private stash.

Next thing we know, Dunbar’s got two working feet, ownership of the amazing Cisco, and a posting in Dakota Territory. Not because he’s keen on fighting the Indigenous people who live there but because he… wants to see the land? And the movie makes it very clear that there’s a lot of land out here. Biiiig chunks of it. Kevin’s cinematographer pulls no punches with the landscape footage.

ME: I expected him to have been kidnapped by now.

SCOTT: He never gets kidnapped.

ME: Really?! So… they just hang out?

SCOTT: Pretty much.

ME: Ohhhh… I still have questions about this pacing.

At Big Fort Wherever, an officer who’s clearly going through some stuff assigns Dunbar to a remote mini fort, then promptly shuffles off his mortal coil, so there’s nobody to file the paperwork. Dunbar’s escort to the mini fort is the worst guy he’s ever met; apparently Dunbar’s fellow Union soldiers all had first-rate hygiene and tasteful senses of humor. We know Dunbar hates this guy’s guts because Dunbar’s keeping a diary, which Kevin narrates via voiceover.

These voiceovers persist through most of the movie (EVEN AFTER DUNBAR STOPS MAKING DIARY ENTRIES: Excuse me, can I speak to the manager, we’ve got a PLOT HOLE here). And Kevin consistently takes the concept of monotone to a new level.

ME: Google Assistant has more inflection than this!

SCOTT: Well, he won the Oscar for directing, not acting.

They reach the fort, which has gone full ghost-town. No other soldiers in sight. Dunbar, a classic rule follower, says, Welp, it’s still my post; guess I live here now. He unloads enough supplies to win Oregon Trail and parts ways with his detested guide, who’s too preoccupied with eating hardboiled eggs out of a mason jar to get invested in Dunbar’s situation. As viewers, we were invested in the hardboiled eggs.

ME, as the guide stuffs a whole egg in his mouth: Wow, he really went for it! Single bite!

SCOTT as the guide’s wagon pulls away: The egg jar’s getting jostled! Careful!

ME: Protect the egg jar!!

We’re now about five hours into the movie and finally see some Indigenous people. They’re Pawnee, the film’s Bad Guys. They shoot way more arrows than necessary into the guide (not to whitesplain combat to these folks but maybe go for a vital organ?), then casually eat his hardboiled eggs, which is frankly an incredible payoff for the eggs.

Meanwhile Dunbar has no way to contact the rest of the Army, and nobody alive knows where he is. But he keeps busy by renovating the fort, while Cisco frolics about and occasionally side-eyes him for making rookie mistakes in frontiersmanship.

ME: If anything happens to Cisco I will riot.

SCOTT: [stares in “has seen this movie before”]

An adorably goofy-looking wolf starts hanging around. Dunbar names him Two-Socks. Two-Socks is built like he was drawn by a child; his proportions are simply not right and I love him with all my heart. You shouldn’t feed wild animals but I get why Dunbar keeps trying to give him bacon.

Sidenote: Two-Socks was played by two wolves named Teddy and Buck. They worked together on several movies and retired to the same wildlife sanctuary. This comforts me.

Eventually Dunbar meets the film’s Good Guys, the Lakota. By “meets” I mean he hears them stealing Cisco one night, runs right into a doorframe and concusses himself, then revives to find that Cisco has escaped and returned to him. The moment where Cisco casually canters across the screen, past a stunned Lakota straggler, en route back to the fort is my favorite part of the movie.

Sidenote: Cisco was played by a horse named Justin who lived to be thirty-two. This also comforts me.

So the humans all have one thing in common: not being able to boss around the world’s coolest horse. This becomes the foundation for a beautiful friendship.

The Lakota aren’t sure about Dunbar at first—especially the designated firebrand, Wind In His Hair (Omaha actor Rodney A. Grant)—but Dunbar wins them over by giving them coffee with Starbucks portions of sugar, learning one (1) Lakota word, and being a harmless derp who playfully chases Two-Socks around. HENCE the name the Lakota give him: Dances With Wolves.*

Dunbar, or DWW (“Dee Double-Dubs,” per Scott), does his first white saviorism when he runs into Mary McDonnell mid-suicide-attempt. McDonnell’s character, Stands With A Fist, was adopted by the Lakota after her white family got unalived by the Pawnee. (We get a whole flashback of this massacre, which is how you know Kevin had a solid budget: just casually hiring a slew of actors for a single scene that could’ve been summed up in two lines of dialogue! His daughter played Young Mary so I hope the acting credit was worth it.) She’s totally recovered from that backstory, but she’s grieving for her recently deceased husband and that’s why she needs an IV when DWW meets her.

He brings her home to the Lakota, and as soon as she’s bandaged up, her adoptive father, Kicking Bird (Oneida actor Graham Greene), encourages her to explore a career as a translator. Despite her rusty English, she’s able to help DWW communicate with the Lakota. It’s definitely a Choice to make DWW’s love interest the only white lady who gets past the “within 600 miles” filter on his dating app, but we were at least relieved that McDonnell wasn’t cast to play an Indigenous character. “Could’ve been worse” strikes again. (We also love Mary McDonnell, despite whatever’s going on with her hair in this movie.)

A few other observations on cultural sensitivity:

• Many characters speak Lakota throughout the movie (thumbs up), but most of the actors weren’t fluent in the language, so it’s not rendered as accurately as it could’ve been (thumbs down)

• There are multiple scenes from Lakota characters’ point of view instead of DWW’s (thumbs up) but they’re always discussing white people in some capacity (thumbs down)

• Kicking Bird and his wife, Black Shawl (Cree and Métis actor Tantoo Cardinal), have a particularly great dynamic and come across as layered characters (thumbs up) despite limited screen time (thumbs down)

DWW starts learning Lakota, swapping clothes with his new buds, and discovering the magic of having less facial hair (“Thank God” was my verdict when he shaved his mustache). His next white saviorism is tipping off the Lakota after a herd of bison thunders past his fort.

ME, as Kevin runs into the path of the approaching herd: Be careful, man! That’s how Mufasa died!**

SCOTT: Maybe The Lion King got that idea from this movie!

The Lakota are pumped. There’ve been slim pickings bison-wise because white people have been sniping so many lately. The Lakota keep optimistically accumulating horses for hunting and at this point have, objectively, way too many horses, like that player who loses Settlers of Cataan by focusing on one resource. A nearby herd is exactly the break they need.

DWW joins them on their hunt, which goes well except for the fact that—sad animal fate ahead—white people have slaughtered a bunch of bison for their hides and left their meat to rot. My reaction was “Oh no!!!” followed by “Sigh, that tracks.” The ONE respectful and accurate thing we learned about Indigenous peoples in school was that they used every part of the animal, unlike the punk colonizers I’m descended from.

Sidenote: For the herd, Kevin used a combo of real bison and animatronics. To get one bison named Cody to charge at the camera, the production team offered him an Oreo. Let this comfort you.

I’ll be honest, I stopped taking notes after the scene with the hardboiled eggs, so I’m winging it with this summary. Here’s the gist of what DWW gets up to over the next few months:

• helps the Lakota fend off a Pawnee attack (thumbs up; the Pawnee take out a beloved elder AND inflict some sad animal fates—we can’t have that)

• builds his own fire at the fort and dances around it in imitation of the Lakota (thumbs down; that’s appropriation, babe)

• becomes BFFs with Wind In His Hair, previously his biggest skeptic (thumbs up)

• gets hitched to Stands With A Fist (thumbs sideways? Black Shawl figures it makes sense: “They’re both white!”)

• advises the Lakota to head for their winter camp, where they’ll be farther from encroaching white people (thumbs up)

Right before they hit the road, DWW realizes he left his diary at the fort. He’s worried that the intel in it could lead the Army straight to the Lakota, even though A) the fort’s still abandoned as far as he knows, and B) the Lakota are ABOUT TO RELOCATE ANYWAY. Don’t go in there! It’s a trap! Thumbs down!!!

Ignoring my warnings, he and Cisco book it back to the fort, and OF COURSE, the United States f***ing Army has chosen that day to show up. They take one look at DWW’s (admittedly questionable) hair feathers and open fire.

Sad animal fate ahead: Cisco, the most perfect horse to ever grace the Dakota Territory, gets shot by these MFers. Look, I fully recognize what the movie’s doing. In case the human Lakota characters don’t matter enough to white filmgoers, an animal death oughta rile us up.

Well, it worked, Kevin. You got me. I was ready to go full John Wick.

First we had to sit through DWW getting captured and interrogated by the soldiers, all reeking of cop energy. DWW refuses to tell them anything; he even speaks in Lakota to show how serious he is.

SCOTT: So he became fluent in this language in less than a year?

ME: Guess he’s just That Good.

He takes so many blows to the head during this sequence that I got concerned about long-term traumatic brain injury. (And that’s without even accounting for that time he knocked himself out by running into a doorframe.)

Btw, some illiterate goons have been using DWW’s diary as toilet paper, so AS I TOLD HIM, he didn’t even need to go back! Cisco sacrificed himself for nothing! Dude just hadddd to play the hero again. White saviorism has officially gone TOO FAR.

And alas, there’s another sad animal fate ahead: While transporting DWW back to Big Fort Wherever for court martialing, the soldiers shoot Two-Socks for sport. I completely lost my mind at this point.

ME: You can’t do that, Kevin! You can’t kill BOTH the perfect animals in your movie! There are rules!!! WTF! I hate this movie!!!

SCOTT: [questions all the decisions that have led him to this moment]

That’s when the Lakota turn up to jailbreak DWW and give the Army ghouls satisfying deaths. I would’ve happily watched three more hours of them ripping my ancestors to shreds. Instead they head to the winter camp, where DWW reunites joyously—like, REALLY joyously—with Stands With A Fist.

ME: Wow, okay, Mary, calm down.

SCOTT: Yeah, you don’t need to be THAT excited that the one other white person is back.

DWW decides to do one more white saviorism: Since the Army’s going to hunt him down, he must strike out alone (with Stands With A Fist; he’s not a monk) to avoid endangering the community. I… doubt that’ll work, but whatever.

As he and Stands With A Fist depart, Wind In His Hair literally yells from a clifftop that DWW is his friend. DWW is like oof, cringe, and I got very mad that he didn’t even wave. Your buddy’s being vulnerable! Don’t leave him hanging! Clearly DWW still has some deprogramming to do. Today we tackled racism and colonialism; tomorrow we’ll work on toxic masculinity.

But for now, we’ve reached the closing text, which informs us that the Lakota lost everything to white people within the next few years.*** On the bright side, at least one wolf is still alive; it howls meaningfully in the distance. While less funny-looking than Two-Socks, this wolf is fine too, I guess, and I wish it all the best.

Plot, Pacing, and Structure: 3. Did this movie need to be three hours long? No. Did it need to be four hours long, the length of the extended cut? NO. Was I bored? Rarely!

Characters: 2. DWW himself simply isn’t that compelling. The Lakota characters, and even Stands With A Fist, have more depth than I expected—likely because my bar was so low. Btw this is the newsletter’s first featured content with ALL fictional characters, though Stands With A Fist is loosely based on Cynthia Ann Parker.

Historical Accuracy: 2. There’s no way around the fact that this movie was scripted, produced, and directed by white guys. It’s not showing an especially nuanced view of Lakota culture—or Pawnee culture; every Pawnee character is an antagonist, even though IRL the Pawnee were underdogs in conflicts with the Lakota. The 1988 novel from which the movie’s adapted featured the Comanche instead of the Lakota, which is a WILD switch (and explains why Floyd Red Crow Westerman’s character has a seventeenth-century conquistador’s helmet in his Vanquished Enemies Archives; that thing belongs in New Mexico). Still, the film’s Indigenous consultants should get credit for some cultural accuracies showing up onscreen, especially in the costuming and in the flawed but groundbreaking use of the Lakota language. Also… the US government did carry out a genocidal campaign against Indigenous peoples, so there’s that.

Themes: 3. I deduct a point for “If you like a culture enough you can BECOME it”… Nah. Don’t do that. We lose another point for the double whammy of “white guy saves grateful marginalized people” and “white guy’s perspective is most interesting and important.” But other themes hold up better. For instance: Don’t abet genocide. Be curious; listen; be willing to change based on what you learn. Respect your fellow travelers of all species. BUT if you meet a N*zi—meaning someone with no respect for human rights, someone who revels in causing suffering, someone who looks at beauty and sees target practice—punch that MFer. And never underestimate the merits of a hardboiled egg.

*I always interpreted the movie’s title as “Noun, Preposition, Noun,” a la The Remains of the Day, but it’s actually “One Proper Noun,” a la Emma. Look at my assumptions being shattered!

**For the record, Mufasa got trampled by wildebeests, not bison. Just so we’re all on the same page.

***Obviously the Lakota still exist; they didn’t vanish from the earth, a common inaccuracy of white people’s narratives. And on that note: let’s all try to watch and read more work by Indigenous creators!