Native Americans from Buffalo Bill's Wild West

For years I've been fascinated with the great American West, and the history of America itself. It's a unbearably sad history, full of genocide and awful acts of betrayal, but spotted around it are moments of beauty, honour, and pride. If you'd like to read a devastating book on the Indian history of the American West, you can't go wrong with Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, but be warned; it'll make you want to crawl into a hole. 

It's also still a beautiful place to visit. If you know me, you won't be surprised to hear that I'm a particular fan of Arizona. You should go, drive into the desert, and soak up the silence, the beauty, and the great, great expanse of it all. 

"In 1898, photographer Gertrude Käsebier looked out of her studio window on Fifth Avenue in New York City and saw the cast of Buffalo Bill's Wild West parading past. Buffalo Bill, a.k.a. William Cody, was by that time a legendary figure of the American Old West, a legend he partially self-generated.

Cody's nickname arrived when he supplied buffalo meat to workers on the Kansas Pacific railroad. In 1872, Cody performed in the Wild West theatre production Scouts of the Prairie, and in 1883, aged 37, he founded his own circus-like show, called Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The show toured annually across the U.S. and Europe, performing in front of Queen Victoria and the future kings Edward VII and George V of Britain, and the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. In Rome, the cast met the pope. The show included sharpshooting acts, horse riding demonstrations and reenactments of American history. The performers included several Native Americans, many of them Sioux. 

What Gertrude Käsebier saw from her window connected with her memories of the Native Americans she had known in the 1850s and 1860s, growing up in Colorado and on the Great Plains. Käsebier wrote to Cody asking if she might photograph the Native American performers in her studio. They arranged a session. A number of the Sioux photographed had fought against the U.S. military. Chief Flying Hawk was a veteran of Great Sioux War of 1876, the Battle of the Little Big Horn of the same year and was present at the massacre of Wounded Knee — just eight years before Käsebier took his portrait." Via. 

Birth

I love these photos by Christian Berthelot of babies seconds after delivery (all by cesarean). My view on birth has changed radically having been witness to my son's birth. I never thought it disgusting, but I did think it was a little messy, and it is messy - there's no way around that - but what a beautiful mess it is. 

Internet. Chapter 4

This week I rant about Jurassic World (which was almost about human-dinosaurs hybrids soldiers). That's at the end so you don't have to sit through it, but you should read it anyway and agree with me, because I'm sure you'll agree. 

Let's start with something really depressing. Here's some dude from One Direction 'meeting' his fans. I've only ever asked one famous person for their autograph (Tracey Ullman. She told me I'd made her day). 

Do you agree with these 80 moments that shaped the world? I think I do. 

Women can't play football.

Centipedes and millipedes. Never liked either of them, and now I really don't like millipedes.  

The Snowman is sacred to me. I watch it each and every year without fail, and usually cry too, because I'm a big baby. This should make me furious, but it doesn't. 

Well, I mean, why not. 

Lovely, lovely, lovely art deco ads for Rolls Royce. 

They say this is by a man called Simon Beck, but I'm sure it's aliens. Just like crop circles. Apparently Simon walks 20 - 30 km a day to create these patterns. They're very nice. 

That now very famous note from LEGO (which is real).

OK, here's my rant. 

The trailer for Jurassic World came out this week. Now, you might recall me saying that I went to see Jurassic Park eight times in the cinema. This is true, but not entirely my fault. It came out during the summer holidays, and I just so happened to be going through a popular phase when lots of people came to visit me at my parents house in the countryside. All my friends lived in London, so I'd basically grab any chance for a visit. My social life was....limited. Anyway, every time some came to visit they'd ask if we could see Jurassic Park, and I, because I was so nice, said 'but of course'.

It was never boring. Not once did I get tired of seeing it, and I am perfectly happy to watch it today. In fact, I am willing to watch it and might watch it again soon, come to think of it... It is an excellent film. The effects are spectacular, the shocks and scares real enough to make adults clench their buttocks (but not too scary for children), and the lack of gore - something hard to do in films that want to shock today - isn't noticeable until you notice it and then it's quite surprising for a film which features a fair few people getting eaten. The dialogue might not win any Oscars, but it works. The actors work, the roles work, the chemistry works, and it's a great split between content for adults and content for kids. There are many stand out moments - the water on the dashboard, the whole kids trapped in the car scene (constricting iris to glass roof - Christ the whole thing is brilliant, not to mention seriously bum clenching), the 'clever girl' moment, the entire raptors in kitchen scene, basically any scene with Jeff Goldblum, but especially the chaos theory one, the first time we/they see a dinosaur, and of course, the moment the T-rex kills the raptors, and a banner reading 'When dinosaurs ruled the earth' floats down. I actually wanted to clap when I saw that, and I'm not a cinema clapper. 

I'm pretty sure there are more great scenes, but let's face it - you might as well just watch the film. I absolutely loved the fact that the park's shop featured Jurassic Park merchandise that of course you could later buy in real shops in the real world. Life imitating art...or...something even more profound. In short, I love this film. I've actually never really thought about it so much, but there you go. 

So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw the Jurassic World trailer. There seems to be far too many rip offs from the original, and as much as I love Chris Pratt, he just doesn't quite come across....right in this trailer. Obviously, what annoyed me the most is the fact that the big bad is a genetically modified dinosaur. What in God's name do we need that for? One of the biggest - if not the biggest - reasons the first film worked so well was because dinosaurs are basically really bloody scary. They have lived. We know they're big, scaly, toothy and essentially just made for killing and eating and other bad stuff you don't want to be at the wrong end of. The idea of them unleashed on us is really bloody scary. As soon as you bring in something man-made, the fear factor drops about 90%. It's not real. It's never lived. It's all make believe. It's just another monster movie - not necessarily a bad thing at all, but why the need to make something believable, unbelievable? Why bring in something fake when there are so many good things to work with? Presumably it's because if they didn't, it would basically be a complete and utter rehash of Jurassic Park, instead of a 90% rehash of Jurassic Park.

I, as you might guess, am unimpressed. I'll see it, I'll definitely watch it, but I'm telling you now - I won't see it eight times. 

See you next week.