“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers”: Violence and Social Justice in Recent Films of Kansas and the Great Plains Edited and Introduced by Thomas Prasch

n the newly reissued The Bender Hills Mystery: The Story behind the Infamous Murders from 1870s Kansas (originally published in the Parsons Sun in 1934 and reprinted by the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection of Washburn University’s Mabee Library in 2018), Leroy Dick, by then the oldest surviving Civil War veteran in Parsons, recounted to reporter Jean McEwan his memories of the “Bloody Benders.” As township trustee, Dick had been responsible for securing the property at the Bender place after the family fled after they became the focus of Iincreased suspicions, and his nose had given their crimes away: “For then and there my finical nostrils got a hint of the gruesome tragedy. . . . And I was telling myself, ‘Leroy Dick, you’ve lain beside dead comrades on the battlefield while the Confederate guns kept up their bombardment. You’ve breathed the stench of rotting human blood too many times to be fooled by its smell” (p. 45). Dick helped organize the crew that dug up the bodies in the Benders’ backyard, volunteered to behead the corpse of Dr. York (which for some reason was helpful in securing the identification of the body), participated in the search for the family, constructed his own account of their flight, and was involved in the arrest in Michigan of two women who he was convinced were Elvira and Kate a decade and a half later (a judge in Parsons ordered their release in 1890, unconvinced that they were in fact the Bender women; Dick ascribed that outcome to corruption). The Bender killings were, Dick asserted, “one of the most atrocious crimes in all the annals of our blood drenched frontiers,” although he was also glad to be “doing my bit . . . on the side of law and order” (p. 58). From the beginning, Dick also recalled, the killings drew crowds. The news “spread like prairie fire across the entire region. From a neighborhood gathering of forty men at dawn, the crowd had steadily increased during the morning. It was estimated by good authority that by mid-afternoon close to a thousand spectators had congregated to await whatever disclosures were forthcoming” (pp. 52–53). From the start, then, the Bender case was not only about crime but also about popular culture, a tale spread first by gossip (and tale-tellers such as Leroy Dick), then by newspaper stories, and later reincarnated in books and films. Tourists still search for the Bender mound or pause before the historical marker (which now appears in revised form, toned down from the time when its official account concluded, “The end of the Benders is not known. The earth seemed to swallow them, as it had their victims”).

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 42 (Autumn 2019): 190–223

190 Kansas History Photograph of crowd overlooking graves of Bender family murder victims in Labette County, Kansas, dated May 9, 1873.

The Benders’ legacy of killing first found a place inKansas dark alternative twisting of a Superman-esque origin History—or, technically, in its predecessor, Kansas story. We thus begin and end our chronology with serial Historical Collections—in 1928, when Edith Connelly killings. Indeed, a thread of blood runs through much Ross penned her melodramatic account, and it has of our selection, from the Bender family to the steadily continued to attract historians and horror writers, from accumulating corpses of the Coen brothers’ Ballad of Fern Morrow Wood (The Benders: Keepers of the Devil’s Inn, Buster Scruggs; from the deaths that haunt the homestead 1992) to graphic novelists Michael Frizell and D. A. Frizell in The Wind to the multisided brutality of the late phase of (Bender: The Complete Saga, 2018). The tale has fascinated the Indian Wars, the setting for Hostiles and Woman Walks filmmakers as well, perhaps most recently (until now) Ahead; from the Clutter killings that informed Truman in “The Benders” episode on the first season of the Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) to the murders that propel television show Supernatural (2006), although relocated to the plots of Goodland or The Scent of Rain & Lightning; and Minnesota for the show’s purposes. The family appears finally to Brightburn’s killing spree. on the screen again in John Alexander’s Bender, reviewed If there is a countertext to this cinematic thread of blood, in this selection. it would seem to be films concerned with social justice. Our chronological survey of films this year opens with a From those (admittedly minority) voices who defended review of Bender and closes with the most recently released Indian rights in the 1890s to Madonna Thunder Hawk, film we review this year, the horror film Brightburn, a taking up the same cause some eighty years later; from

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 191 contribute to the evolutionary debate as fossil hunters. In addition, he edited the new edition of The Bender Hills Mystery. We commence our chronological survey, as noted, with the latest film incarnation of the “Bloody Benders,” John Alexander’s Bender. Reviewing Alexander’s film is Jedd Beaudoin, who teaches in the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries at Wichita State University and hosts the nationally syndicated music show Strange Currency on 89.1 KMUW in Wichita. Dedicated to the preservation of Kansas music and culture, he is a frequent contributor to PopMatters, and his work has appeared in Vox, No Depression, and Rock & Roll Globe. We have regularly featured new incarnations of the Western in our reviews of films, and the rich range of Westerns that have appeared in the last two years suggests something of a revival of the genre, albeit with revisionist The original marker---since replaced by the one above---commentates twists. In this year’s survey, Vanessa Steinroetter takes the nearby home site of the Bloody Benders including the somewhat on two of the more interesting recent contributions to whimsical wording of their uncertain demise. the genre, the Coen brothers’ Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Emma Tammi’s The Wind. Steinroetter, associate William Allen White fighting against the Ku Klux Klan professor and chair of Washburn University’s Department (KKK) in the early twentieth century to Ron Stallworth of English, teaches classes in American literature. Her infiltrating it in the 1970s; from Langston Hughes fighting scholarly interests include nineteenth-century American against discrimination as a Lawrence schoolkid to the literature, periodical literature, literature of the Civil War, overturning of legal racial segregation in public education and literary portrayals of life in the Great Plains. She will with the Brown v. Board of Education decision; and in the be familiar to readers of Kansas History for her essay “Walt embrace of new immigrants seeking refuge from violent Whitman in the Early Kansas Press” (Autumn 2016) as homelands in modern-day Garden City, the films under well as for previous contributions to these film reviews review repeatedly turn on issues of social justice. Perhaps (Dawn of Day: Stories from the Underground Railroad in this is a logical balance: the sources of bloodshed impel 2017 and The Homesman in 2015). Her essay “Unsettling the quest for justice. Madness: On Prairie Madness and EcoGothic Themes in We begin, as always, with our chosen classic, and U.S. Plains Literature” (you can see why she is interested this year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of John in The Wind) appears in the summer 2019 issue of Great Frankenheimer’s Gypsy Moths by revisiting the film. It Plains Quarterly. was the fourth and last Frankenheimer film featuring Burt The fundamental truth of Westerns still holds: where Lancaster, and Paul Tatara, in his commentary on the film there are cowboys, there will be Indians. At the same for Turner Classic Movies, noted, “Even within the realm time, it is perhaps in film representations of Native of Lancaster’s other movies, this is a portrait of existential Americans that the revisionist currents run strongest. despair with a shockingly fatalistic twist.” For our review, Both Scott Cooper’s Hostiles and Susanna White’s Woman we turned to Thomas Fox Averill, who taught the film Walks Ahead center on the early 1890s, when the Indian regularly in his Washburn University class on Kansas in wars were coming to a close (along with, Frederick the movies. Readers of Kansas History will know Averill’s Turner argued at the time, the frontier itself), forcing a work, most recently in the articles “Kansas Literature fundamental renegotiation of the positions of Native and Race” (Autumn 2013) and “Flyover Country: Images peoples and settlers on the plains. The films are reviewed of Kansas” (Spring 2011); he has also regularly charted for us by Eric Anderson, a professor of history in the echoes of Oz in our film reviews. His most recent novel, Indigenous and American Studies program at Haskell Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr (2018), Indian Nations University and an enrolled member of imaginatively inhabits that nineteenth-century moment the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. His special research when amateur scientists, including women, could emphasis concerns the nonreservation boarding schools

192 Kansas History for American Indian youth created in the late nineteenth century, and he is currently working on a collaborative textbook project that examines Native American history in the United States and Canada. Race was also being renegotiated in other ways in the final decades of the nineteenth century, and continuing into the twentieth, with the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow and the modern KKK. These historical trends may have first appeared in the South, but they made an impact in Kansas as well as black Exodusters settled the prairie and the Klan’s presence began to be felt in Kansas politics. William Allen White, the “sage of Emporia,” made fighting the incursion of the KKK into Kansas a central thrust of his editorial work in the early twentieth century, and that agenda is the main First table reading of BlacKKKlansman, with (left to right) Ron focus of Kevin Willmott’s centennial celebration of White, Stallworth, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee. Stallworth is the actual the documentary William Allen White: What’s the Matter police officer who infiltrated the Klan. Photo courtesy of Patsy Terraza- with Kansas? (Willmott, who has had new work for us to Stallworth. review every time we have assembled a new selection of film reviews, has had an especially busy couple of years; African American Topeka (2013), is genealogy librarian at in addition to the White documentary, he also helped pen the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library; she is a the screenplay for Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman, discussed past president of the national Afro-American Historical below, and crafted another documentary—not reviewed and Genealogical Society and current president of that here—Gordon Parks Elementary [2016], which tracks the society’s Kansas chapter. experiences of students, their families, and their teachers The film The Chaperone, like the same-titled Laura at the revitalized urban charter school over the course Moriarty novel (2012) from which it was adapted, of a full school year.) William Allen White is reviewed for considers, albeit somewhat tangentially, the early years us by Kelly Erby, who teaches U.S. history at Washburn of the career of Kansas-born film actress Louise Brooks, University. Erby is the author of Restaurant Republic: whose sultry performances and signature hairdo made The Rise of Public Dining in Boston (2016), a study that their mark in Weimar cinema. For a review, we turned to underlines the class-based, gendered, racial, and ethnic John Tibbetts, who has just retired from the Department dynamics of dining out in the nineteenth century, and of Film and Media Studies at the University of Kansas. she will be familiar to readers of Kansas History for her Tibbett’s film expertise extends from the silent era to essay “The Hull Baby Case and Women in 1870s Kansas” contemporary film, and he has helped organize festivals (Autumn 2017). to celebrate such Kansas-born film stars as Buster Keaton, Racial positions in Kansas also inflected the early ZaSu Pitts, and Martin and Osa Johnson. Kansas History development of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston readers may recall Tibbetts’s essay “Riding with the Devil: Hughes, who grew up in Topeka and Lawrence (he was not The Movie Adventures of William Clarke Quantrill” alone in bringing Kansas roots to the Harlem Renaissance (Autumn 1999), and he has been a regular contributor to project; artist Aaron Douglas hailed from Topeka). our film reviews. His most recent books are Performing The short documentary Langston’s Lawrence offers, in Music History: Musicians Speak First-Hand about Music a sense, a preliminary posting from a larger project; History and Performance (2018) and The Gothic Worlds of the Dream Documentary Collective behind the film is Peter Straub (2016), and his The Furies of Marjorie Bowen is at work developing funding for a fuller documentary forthcoming. consideration of Hughes, “‘I, Too, Sing America’: Langston During the Great Depression, Kansas was among the Hughes Unfurled, which, their website argues, will counter states that benefited from New Deal relief programs that the “overly simplistic representation of Hughes’s career subsidized artists, including support by the Department of in the mainstream media.” In the meantime, we have the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture for murals this short film about the Lawrence that Hughes knew, and reliefs for new post offices. The documentary A New reviewed for us by Sherri Camp. Camp, the author of Deal for Public Art in the Free State examines the history of

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 193 us. Mactavish teaches U.S. history at Washburn University, and his current research project is an analysis of the role of former senator David Atchison in the 1856 raid on Lawrence, Kansas. The murder of the Clutter family outside Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 famously inspired Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood (1966), and it continues to fascinate scholars, inspire new explorations in literature and film, and draw tourists to the scene. The latest evidence of this continuing fascination, the four-episode documentary Cold-Blooded: The Clutter Courtesy of Through A Glass Productions. Family Murders, is reviewed for us by Ralph Voss (whom readers may these post-office art projects, from their inception through remember for his review of the film adaptation of William the controversies that some of the projects provoked to Inge’s Picnic in our 2005 selection of film reviews). Voss, their later history. Reviewing the film for us is Bill Tsutsui, a professor emeritus in the Department of English at the president and professor of history at Hendrix College. University of Alabama, is perfectly suited to the task as the Readers of Kansas History may recall Tsutsui’s essay author of Truman Capote and the Legacy of “In Cold Blood” (with Marjorie Swann) “‘Open Your Eyes to the Beauty (2011); his earlier works include A Life of William Inge: The around You’: The Art Collection of the Kansas Federation Strains of Triumph (1989) and the edited collection Magical of Women’s Clubs” (Winter 2003/2004) and their review Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams (2002). essay “Kansans and the Visual Arts” (Winter 2002/2003); We stretch our Great Plains terrain a shade west to he is also the author of a number of books on Japanese include in this year’s survey BlacKKKlansman, Spike Lee’s history and popular culture, my personal favorite being film adaptation of the story of how Ron Stallworth, the Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters first black police officer in Colorado Springs, infiltrated (2004). the KKK; University of Kansas (KU) professor and This year marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the filmmaker Kevin Willmott had a hand in shaping the Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating public screenplay, and he has the Oscar to show for it. To review schools, with Topeka’s own challenge to “separate but the film, we turned to playwright Darren Canady, who equal” principles providing one of the five cases the court reviewed Willmott’s Destination: Planet Negro! for us bundled together in reviewing challenges to the precedent in 2013. Canady is a core writer with the Playwright’s of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and we are reviewing two Center in Minneapolis and a professor of English at KU. documentaries that commemorate the anniversary. His play Reparations, a coproduction of Sound Theatre KTWU’s I Just Want to Testify . . . gathers Topekans who and the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, lived through the transition the Brown decision brought will premiere this season in Seattle. Also this season, the about in Kansas schoolrooms to listen to their stories, Pittsburgh choral ensemble Voces Solis will premiere an while Brown v. Board of Education Mural Project: Legacy & opera, Dillinger: An American Oratorio, for which Canady Vision: Time-Lapse Video Project recounts the creation of a provided the libretto. His Ontario Was Here will be featured commemorative mural across the street from the Brown as part of the Latin American Theatre Review’s Annual v. Board of Education National Historic Site, organized Conference at the Lied Center in Lawrence, including a by Michael Toombs for Topeka ARTSConnect (for more Spanish translation. on the mural project, see www.artsconnecttopeka.org/ It is difficult to know precisely where in a chronological bvb). Bruce Mactavish, who has been involved with the survey to place the documentary Warrior Women. The Brown Foundation since before the opening of the Brown film centers on the activism of Madonna Thunder v. Board of Education National Historic Site on the fiftieth Hawk, but that activist career has now run for over fifty anniversary of the decision, reviews the two films for years, beginning with the American Indian Movement’s

194 Kansas History occupation of Alcatraz (1969) and Wounded Knee (1973) and continuing through protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline (beginning in 2016). It is an activist tradition carried forward by her daughter and women of her generation and now by her grandchildren; the film closes with Thunder Hawk’s call for “the younger generation to pick up the reins.” So we place our review here, at the end of the range of historical films that we review this issue. Tai Edwards, our reviewer, is associate professor of history and director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College. She is the author of Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power (2018); readers of Kansas History will remember her article “Disruption and Disease: The Osage Struggle to Survive in the Nineteenth- Century Trans-Missouri West” (Winter 2013/2014), and she and James Leiker coedited the special issue devoted to Quindaro (Summer 2019). Recent films have also richly represented contemporary (or near-contemporary) Kansas and the Great Plains. Josh Doke’s West Kansas–set crime drama Goodland might not be quite contemporary, judging from the telephone technology (flip phones and a still-working pay phone on the street), but it is nearly so. Given the film’s noirish sensibilities, I turned for a reviewer to David Weed, who has taught courses on both film noir and the literature of the West at Washburn University. His other territory is English literature of the eighteenth century; his essay “Sentimental Misogyny and Medicine in Humphrey Clinker” (1997) has been reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition of Tobias Smollett’s classic. Courtesy of Kino Lorber. Uncovering the buried facts of murders also propels the plot of Blake Robbins’s The Scent of Rain & Lightning, reviewers to do so. Claire Thomson is a PhD candidate adapted from Nancy Pickard’s novel (2011); that plot plays in the Department of History at the University of Alberta, out against a carefully limned Great Plains terrain, from writing her dissertation on Lakota historical connections ranching landscapes to small-town bars. Kevin Flanagan, between her home community of Wood Mountain, who reviewed Robbins’s first feature, The Sublime & the Saskatchewan, and Lakota reservation communities in Beautiful, for us in 2015, returns for a take on the new the United States from 1881 to 1940. Corey Yellow Boy is film. Flanagan, an assistant professor of English at George on the faculty of the Lakota Studies Department at Oglala Mason University, edited the collection Ken Russell: Re- Lakota College in his home community on the Pine Ridge viewing England’s Last Mannerist (2009), and his book War Reservation. Representation in British Cinema and Television: From Suez to Strangers in Town is the third documentary that the Thatcher and Beyond is forthcoming. filmmaking team of Steve Lerner and Reuben Aaronson When I saw Chloé Zhao’s The Rider a year or so ago, have made about Kansas subjects, after Florence, Kansas I was astounded at the level of access and intimacy that (2011) and When the Well Runs Dry (2015). The new film this young Chinese director had managed to achieve examines Garden City’s policy of deliberately welcoming with the Lakota community of Pine Ridge, an almost immigrants from around the world and the impact this anthropological eye but with more empathy. I quickly multiculturalism has had on the community. Reviewing came to realize as well that we had entirely missed her it for us is Isaias McCaffery, professor of history at first feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, two years ago. Independence Community College. Readers of Kansas So we review both films in this issue and employ two History may recall his articles “Fear, Politics, Myth, and

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 195 were a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang in 1964. But not much has changed in Bridgeville, Kansas, the fictional setting of John Frankenheimer’s Gypsy Moths, a “nice little town” with a “college and a missile base,” typically “midwestern,” as one character describes it. And not much has changed in the familiar trope of the Western and midwestern film: a stranger rides into town. Think of William Inge’s Picnic, one of the first films to use Kansas as a film set in 1955. Or maybe much has changed. Gypsy Moths begins with an aerial sequence, the stunning cinematography showcasing the Kansas land- and skyscape. Three skydiving barnstormers, The photograph above are of Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert at Standing Mike Rettig (Burt Lancaster), Joe Rock in 2017. Photo courtesy of Khyber Jones. Browdy (Gene Hackman), and Malcolm Webson (Scott Wilson), fall together in a Memory: Governor Thomas A. Osborn and the Osage choreography beautiful and dangerous. Rettig is the last Border War of 1874–1875” (Spring 2019) and “We-He- to pull his rip cord as the others, floating above, grimly Sa-Ki (“Hard Rope”): Osage Band Chief and Diplomat, watch him challenge the earth. Browdy and Webson 1821–1883” (Spring 2018) as well as his previous film see his risk-taking as a problem, and they bombard the reviews. brooding Rettig throughout the film with warnings, Finally, completing our arc from serial killer to serial cautions, and questions. killer, the new horror film Brightburn reimagines the Bridgeville, Kansas, is played by Cottonwood Falls, Kansas childhood central to the Superman origin story. its ornate French Renaissance courthouse anchoring the Reviewing the film for us is Bethany Mowry Ramos, a end of Main Street. Cameo appearances are made by PhD candidate in history at the University of Oklahoma Benton (airport), Wichita, Abilene, and El Dorado. After who plans to complete her dissertation this fall. She is delivering flyers for their stunt-jumping from the air, the the author of Path to Excellence: Building the University three skydivers ride into town, only to be pulled over by of Oklahoma, 1890–2015 (2015) and of several entries in the local police and fined for littering. And so the contrasts the encyclopedia The Americas, forthcoming from ABC- begin: between beauty and danger, between small-town CLIO. She also confesses to being “a loyal customer of eagerness for and fear of anything different. my friendly neighborhood comic shop” and is my own Malcolm has an aunt and uncle in Bridgeville, go-to source for all films adapted from comics. Elizabeth Brandon (Deborah Kerr) and V. John Brandon (William Windom), and they agree to house the trio. “A Thomas Prasch home-cooked meal,” they are promised, but this is less a Washburn University home than a house of tension and distance, where over lemonade and sour looks they talk about skydiving. “The Gypsy Moths. Directed by John Frankenheimer; closer we come to the ground, the more interesting it screenplay by William Hanley, from the novel by James is for our customers, and for us,” Rettig explains. He is Drought; produced by Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts. the practitioner of the cape jump, their most dangerous 1969; color; 107 minutes. MGM; distributed by Warner stunt. Elizabeth takes him to her club meeting, where Home Video. he impresses her “ladies” with the daring, even terror, In 1969 we saw the Apollo 11 moon landing, 350,000 of what he does, opening his chute so that it springs out rock fans at Woodstock, five murders committed by the like the surprise snake from a nut tin. After the meeting, Charles Manson cult, the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick sensing Rettig’s distance, aloofness, and condescending debacle, and the introduction of PBS. The times they bravado, Elizabeth accuses him of having contempt for

196 Kansas History her and “nearly everyone here.” He does not deny it. Malcolm’s parents were killed in Bridgeville in a drunken car wreck. He was not taken in by Elizabeth and V. John because Elizabeth had been in love with his father. She chose safety over love, and she is obviously unsettled by Malcolm, who looks exactly like his father. Bridgeville offers a kind of homecoming, but without the home. Over that home-cooked meal, Rettig says that jumping is a way to live but also a way to die. Such counterpoints permeate the film. Each character negotiates between attraction and danger, life and death: the moth to the flame, as the film’s title suggests. The Blake Robbins (left) directed Will Patton in Scent of Rain & Lightning. Photo courtesy of awkward responses, stilted dialogue, Logan Rine. palpable tension, and slow pace of the film can be excruciating, but it all serves take it from anyone who says it’s not yours to take.” as backdrop to the thrill of the seconds spent free and Elizabeth knows that trope, too, calling him “the merciful floating in the air and the brief time spent seeking love stranger come to save me from the terrible boredom and and affection. After either, the characters must drop back lovelessness of my life. Is that who you think you are?” into the humdrum of daily life. He is exactly that, but she will not and cannot change. As the familiar trope predicts, each man finds a love The storm ceases, and the trio goes to perform, the interest: Rettig and Elizabeth, naturally; Malcolm with stands filling, the lowering clouds lifting. Elizabeth does the Brandons’ student boarder, Annie (Bobbie Bedelia); not attend, though V. John and Annie do. Again, the film and Browdy with a local stripper at the Paradise, a place offers an amazing choreography of jumping, falling, recommended by Brandon as appropriate to their type. and flying above green prairie and farmland, a show of But Rettig does not stay at the bar, instead returning to multiple jumps. Yet tension builds toward the final cape find Elizabeth. They make love on the living-room couch jump, Rettig hurtling toward the earth with the thinnest before she returns upstairs to her loveless bed and cold cape for wings. This last stunt of the day is the last of husband. Browdy goes home with the Paradise stripper, Rettig’s life as well. The clouds burst again. and Malcolm returns for conversation with Annie. To pay for the burial, Malcolm agrees to perform the Given the night’s rain and morning storms, the cape stunt on the Fourth of July. Browdy jumped it once barnstormers fight about the danger of jumping. “Be but says it is too tempting to fall to earth; he came too careful,” Rettig has always told Malcolm. Now Malcolm close. “You don’t know if you’re the kind who might asks him, “Why are you taking so many chances now? do that unless you put the cape on,” he tells first-timer What are you trying to prove?” In fact, everyone in the Malcolm. On the clear Independence Day morning, the film is taking chances, flirting with change, wanting their Bridgeville High marching band takes to the street for the lives to be different, longing for what they cannot have. parade. The director, played humorously by stage actor When the rain stops, Rettig goes to the garage to ready his Thom Conroy, has been rehearsing the cacophonous gear for the show. amateurs throughout the film, a small subplot reminding Elizabeth finds him there. He asks her if what us that all is imperfection. After all the practice, they play happened between them happens often. “It doesn’t to a completely empty street. Everyone is at the airfield, happen often, but it happens,” she answers. “Are you waiting for that last-minute pull of the rip cord. Malcolm, surprised?” He invites her to leave with him after the pale and traumatized, survives. He leaves town, unsure airshow. She recoils, asking, “How can you come to what he is going to do. Browdy says, “I think I’ll head have this wonderful freedom of choice?” He says, “You west,” a typical American ending.

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 197 exhaustive examination of the Bender family, nor does it attempt to uncover their motives. Instead, it focuses on the family’s downfall. Who were the Benders? The family of four—John, wife Elvira, daughter Kate, and son John Jr.—arrived in Kansas as homesteaders around 1870, setting up a small grocery store and inn on a parcel of land in what had been Osage territory. They may not have been blood relatives and were perhaps drawn together by their peculiarities. Kate Bender showed an interest in the occult and advertised herself as a psychic. John Jr. demonstrated cognitive limitations and/or signs of mental illness. John Sr. and Elvira, meanwhile, spoke little English and were reportedly foul-tempered. Starting in 1871, a number of travelers went missing, and several bodies appeared near the Benders’ homestead. There were reportedly suspicions about various members of the community who might have committed the crimes. In 1872, George Newton Longcor and his daughter Mary Anne left Independence, Kansas, for Iowa but vanished on the trail, leading their onetime neighbor, physician William York, to search for them. When he, too, disappeared, his brother Alexander Courtesy of Warner Home Video. took up the search. Bender picks up the story when William York (Jon Home again, Elizabeth is confronted by Brandon Monastero) sets out to look for the Longcors. Narrated about being invited to leave. “The thought terrified me,” by York’s brother Alexander, the story plods along for she says. “And me,” he affirms. Freedom, it seems, is not some time, with hints of evil deeds and the like spoken of “just another word for nothin’ left to lose”—that mantra in shadowy outline. The script’s tendency to stilt York’s of “Me and Bobby McGee,” a song released the same year language with a lack of contractions and semigrandilo- as this movie—but another word for losing everything. quent prose sets a murky and sometimes deadening tone Thus, the familiar trope is updated. Yes, the exotic and that frequently threatens to derail the story. Monastero erotic come to town, unsettling lives, but they lead to is generally a fine actor, but here he struggles to connect desperation, loss, and death when Rettig—moody and with the character. When York arrives at the Benders’ inn contemplative, desperation lining his face throughout the and grocery, he quickly meets Kate (Nicole Jellen), who film—finds gravity a stronger pull than life. appears to fancy him romantically. When he rejects her notions of psychic powers, pronouncing himself a man Thomas Fox Averill, Emeritus of science, she is wounded. The screenplay suggests that Washburn University this rejection becomes the motive for York’s murder. The film’s tone and the script’s tendency to tell rather than Bender. Directed by John Alexander; screenplay by show the viewer what is going on prove frustrating dur- John Alexander and J. C. Guest; produced by J. C. Guest. ing the brief time York spends with his assailants. 2016; color; 80 min. Distributed by Candy Factory Films. The normally reliable James Karen (The Return of the Bender, directed by John Alexander, tells the tale of the Living Dead) plays John Bender, but his performance as Bloody Benders, the family of serial killers who murdered the murderous plainsman proves difficult to watch, as it is some dozen travelers in Labette County in the early 1870s. dissonant in the context of the picture’s sometimes torpid Though Kansas has seen its share of crime and criminals pace and tone of quiet understatement. Meanwhile, Leslie since then, the Bender family remains an enigma, and tales Woodies turns up as Elvira (called “Ma” here, as Karen of their deeds are prone to embellishment. This cinematic is “Pa”), seemingly adrift in a script that never fully representation, shot in Wichita, Geary County, El Dorado, develops her role. There are not-so-subtle indications that and Hall County, Nebraska, does not seek to provide an John Jr. (“Boy” in the film, played by Chance Caeden)

198 Kansas History is the product of incest. Though it plays into certain horror-film tropes, Bender is decidedly not a horror film, although it does provides moments of shock, as in Pa’s later revelation that he prefers Kate to his wife. Beyond distorting the historical record (accounts report that John Jr. was older than Kate; some versions suggest that he was Kate’s spouse instead of her sibling but certainly not her son), the subplot does little to illuminate the characters or story, a problem that frequently arises in the film. Bender is a dramatic fictionalization rather than a doc- umentary about the family, so such embellishments and twists are easily forgiven even if they stretch our ability to fully invest in the story. Stretching our investment to its breaking point, however, is the arrival of York’s brother Alexander (also played by Monastero). The decision to use the same actor for both roles is jarring: Is this a re- incarnation of the dead man (albeit with a limp)? York mutters something about fraternal versus identical twins during a scene with Kate, but the film never allows the viewer to settle into the twin idea, and from a symbolic or Courtesy of Candy Factory Films. metaphorical standpoint it seems pointless. Although Alexander is more receptive than his brother The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Directed by Ethan Coen to Kate’s affections, he also nearly falls prey to the Benders’ and Joel Coen; screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, murderous tendencies before escaping. He brings a search one segment adapted from a story by Jack London and party back to the scene of the crimes only to find that the one from a story by Stewart Edward White; produced family has fled (sans Pa, who has been poisoned by his by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Megan Ellison, Robert Graf, wife). The murky aftermath of the Benders’ killing spree is and Sue Nagle. 2018; color; 133 minutes. Distributed by told in summary. There were rewards offered and rumors Netflix. of the Benders appearing in a wide range of locations for The Wind. Directed by Emma Tammi; screenplay by more than a decade after they fled Kansas. One can find Teresa Sutherland; produced by Christopher Alender multiple accounts of subsequent years, some of them and David Grove Churchill Viste. 2019; color; 86 minutes. apparently wildly inaccurate. The film explores none of Distributed by IFC Midnight. these versions, and although it need not have done so, The remarkable success over the last decade of neo- one cannot help but wonder what a more thorough and Westerns such as Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and The Homesman thoughtful script might have achieved in telling the story (2014) speaks to our continued fascination with stories set of this notorious family. in the Old West but presented in original and innovative Doubtless this is not the last we will hear about the ways. This approach also distinguishes two excellent Benders. One hopes that a more thorough and even recent additions to the genre, Joel Coen and Ethan accounting and/or attempt to unravel the real facts of Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Emma Tammi’s these crimes may come to the screen at some point. Bender directorial debut The Wind. Set in remote regions of the (even the title is curious, with its switch from plural to trans-Mississippi West, the stories told in these two singular; were we supposed to keep our eye on one films reflect many of the hopes and fears to which settler family member?) serves as passable entertainment, and colonialism and westward expansion gave rise in the perhaps an important diversion for state-history buffs, nineteenth-century United States: dreams of land, gold, but one wishes it had found its footing and dug in more easy profits, and a fresh start balanced by threats of assertively. death, deceit, loss, and failure. By focusing exclusively on the fate of nonindigenous individuals of European Jedd Beaudoin or American descent, the films inevitably retread old Wichita State University ground and continue the long tradition of imagining the

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 199 that they had written the six tales over a period of more than twenty years and consulted primary sources such as nineteenth-century accounts of life on the Oregon Trail in preparation for filming. While Ballad invokes many settings and tropes of traditional Westerns, it simultaneously subverts viewers’ expectations. With their trademark eye for the absurd and irreverent humor, the Coen brothers populate their tales with ludicrous elements and eccentric characters that undermine the seriousness of each story. In the titular vignette, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” the protagonist is a singing cowboy who is more concerned with his music and appearance than with the violence he inflicts. Another episode, “Near Algodones,” features as one of its main characters a man absurdly decked out in pots and pans, intent on defending a bank from a would-be robber. And “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” a story focusing on a wagon train crossing western Nebraska on its way to Oregon, includes as a character a Jack Russell terrier named President Pierce whose constant yapping enrages fellow travelers. The juxtaposition of death, violence, and tragedy with absurd humor creates a bizarre atmosphere that leaves the viewer laughing one moment and deeply unsettled the next. The episode titled “Meal Ticket,” for instance, is particularly disturbing and grotesque. It follows an impresario traveling from one remote mountain camp to the next seeking to make a living off a quadruple Courtesy of Netflix. amputee who recites poems by Percy Shelley and William Shakespeare, passages of scripture, and the Gettysburg American West as essentially a stage for Anglo-American Address in front of mostly indifferent audiences. adventures. Aside from this shortcoming, however, both The human tragedies that play out in these tales are movies succeed in telling truly engaging stories that not the result of grand or heroic deeds, as in many classic foreground the many small and large tragedies that can films and stories about the Old West. Instead, the Coen befall human beings on the remote frontier. brothers’ West is one where a character’s demise more The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an anthology film often results from an accident, a mistake, or a trick played comprising six vignettes set in different parts of the Old by another. It is a world where gruff old prospectors West and featuring recognizable character types from can be as dangerous and unpredictable as cold-blooded classic Westerns: gunslingers, poker players, bank robbers outlaws and where an uneventful ride in a stagecoach is and other outlaws, con artists, prospectors, settlers crossing transformed into a nightmare not by an external attack the prairie in covered wagons, and strangers traveling but by a fellow passenger’s strange remarks. In Ballad together in a stage coach. Each of the short films presents of Buster Scruggs, the Coens expertly mobilize ideas a self-contained story, although they share thematic links. and themes of classic Westerns only to surprise viewers Most notably, each story includes at least one unexpected with unexpected and tragicomic twists. The result is an death as well as a darkly ironic twist. Several of them also anthology film that pays homage to myths of the Old feature characters who become suspicious of the motives West but does so in innovative ways and with a highly of others, a common theme in Westerns, where survival in original voice. remote, hostile places renders characters both dependent Taking a different though no less interesting approach on one another and wary of strangers. In interviews with in The Wind, director Tammi also revisits familiar terrain— National Public Radio (November 19, 2018) and the Los prairie madness and the harsh life of early settlers on the Angeles Times (November 18, 2018), the Coens related Great Plains—to tell a chilling story of death, loss, and

200 Kansas History personal tragedy. In this horror film set in a remote but unspecified part of the prairie in the nineteenth century, Tammi is careful to build suspense slowly through the use of flashbacks and by including enough ambiguity to keep viewers guessing as to the origin of the ostensibly supernatural elements in her story. While some of the special effects in the film’s second half veer toward the silly, the movie’s enigmatic ending and other strengths make up for this. Opening with bloody images of a dead mother and baby, The Wind introduces many of its key themes from the start: death, domestic unhappiness, and the toll that loss, grief, and loneliness take on those left behind. It features a minimalist cast consisting primarily of four main characters: Lizzy and Isaac Macklin, a young married couple homesteading on a remote part of the prairie, and their new neighbors, Emma and Gideon Harper, who have recently settled on an adjacent claim. Lizzy and Isaac have managed to prosper and seem well adapted to frontier life. The Harpers, by contrast, are ill prepared for homesteading on the prairie. During her pregnancy, Emma becomes increasingly mentally unstable. Convinced that an evil presence or force is whispering to her and is out Courtesy of IFC Midnight. to get her baby, she desperately wants to head back east. Gradually, fear and suspicion start to haunt Lizzy as well, and she begins to experience hallucinations of her own, The film’s rich symbolism further shows that Tammi with tragic consequences. is clearly aware of the Gothic traditions that she invokes The film is particularly relevant for viewers and in her film. For instance, at one point Lizzy is seen scholars interested in the theme of prairie madness, a reading from a copy of Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic classic The phrase commonly associated with the perceived mental Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) but stops when she comes to and emotional decline of some early European and a point where a female character questions whether she American settlers on the Great Plains. Historically, writers is imagining things. The author of Demons of the Prairie and filmmakers have attributed this decline to domestic and the female characters in the film truly believe that unhappiness, depression, poor health conditions, “there is something out there,” as Lizzy exclaims, but the isolation, and a sense of being profoundly out of place brilliance of The Wind lies in leaving room for uncertainty. in an alien environment. Tammi includes aspects of all of The film hints at the possibility that the settlers’ fears and these potential factors in her film and also gestures toward struggles come from being truly out of place. the settler-colonial experience as the likely source of many Vanessa Steinroetter of these anxieties and disturbances. For instance, several Washburn University times in the film, Lizzy comes across a printed religious pamphlet titled Demons of the Prairie that lists the various Hostiles. Directed by Scott Cooper; screenplay by demons believed to tempt and assail Christian settlers. Scott Cooper, from a manuscript by Donald E. Stewart; The list, which includes names such as “Abbedon—The produced by Scott Cooper, Ken Kao, and John Lesher. Destroyer. Brings forth an army of locusts,” “Abazu—The 2017; color; 134 minutes. Released by Entertainment Seizer. Takes things in the night,” and “Balben—Invader Studios; DVD distribution by Lionsgate. of the weak mind. Bringer of delusions,” reads like a Woman Walks Ahead. Directed by Susanna White; catalog of the common fears and misfortunes of early screenplay by Steven Knight; produced by Andrea settlers. As such, potential supernatural forces witnessed Calderwood, Marshal Herskovitz, Erika Olde, Richard by characters in the movie serve as apt metaphors or Solomon, and Edward Zwick. 2017; color; 101 minutes. externalizations of settler-colonial anxieties. Released by A24; DVD distribution by Universum Film.

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 201 and experiences of the period. Central is Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), the shell-shocked white survivor of an Indian raid, a bellwether character who firmly holds the film’s moral center, creating a bridge between Blocker’s shattered psyche and an evolving insight into Native complexity and perseverance. Yellow Hawk’s son, Black Hawk (Adam Beach, giving an understated but admirable performance), has his own family in tow, arousing empathy that runs both ways. The small platoon of soldiers accompanying this group runs the gamut: a grizzled Sergeant Metz (stalwart character actor Rory Cochrane), lamenting his past transgressions in the name of duty; a freshly minted West Point officer, Lieutenant Kidder (an excellent Jesse Plemons), whose by-the-book approach is tested in this trial by fire; and Private De Jardin (Timothée Chalamet, in a small but memorable role), the naif, a French-Canadian immigrant struggling to understand how he got here. In one poignant scene, African American Corporal Woodson (Jonathon Majors) is ordered by Blocker to clap Yellow Hawk in irons. While it was unlikely that a “buffalo soldier” would be serving among the ranks of whites at this time, the irony of a black man putting another oppressed minority into bondage should not be overlooked. Courtesy of Lionsgate. Overall, nuance is the name of the game, and the po- tential to transform even the hardest of hearts offers an Hostiles opens with a sequence of horrifying violence, antidote to the bleakness. Blocker is intensely compli- setting a grim tone that pervades the film. The fictional cated: he speaks Cheyenne, reads Shakespeare, is un- story tells of U.S. Army Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian flinching in the face of death, and simultaneously spews Bale), who, as a seasoned veteran of the U.S. Indian wars, vitriol and weeps for fallen comrades, all while holding escorts ailing Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) on by a thread. Many tender ties also abound: between home to die, their journey evoking hard truths of the Quaid and the Native women (Q’orianka Kilcher and nineteenth-century American West. This odyssey, finely Tanaya Beatty, both embodying great strength and depth and brutally brought to life by director and screenwriter despite few lines), a bond forged in shared perils; and no Scott Cooper (based on a script by Donald E. Stewart), less between Blocker and Quaid as they reach for shelter cuts to the heart of darkness in America’s relationship from the storm of sorrows. Mournful prayers and condo- with its first peoples. A corrosive enmity puts in stark lences are offered across cultures, reaching an apotheo- relief cultural biases and misunderstandings, creating sis with Yellow Hawk and Blocker, who, if they do not hostility on both sides, but the film also uncovers common accomplish a total reconciliation, at least reach a mutual humanity. recognition of their parallel lives and fatigue with this In 1892, Blocker arrives at Fort Berringer, New Mexico, world. Moreover, a short but powerful exchange be- and is given a last detail, one he finds utterly distasteful: tween Yellow Hawk and his young grandson Little Bear to bring his nemesis, Yellow Hawk, now a released (Xavier Horsechief), intimating hope for a better future, prisoner, to Montana. These details are indulgences in reveals a palimpsest of optimism beneath layers of awful- creative fancy, as the characters, the outpost, why Plains ness. Some characters are more one-dimensional but no Indian POWs are there, and the destination (“the Valley less convincing. Cyrus Lounde (Scott Wilson), the white of the Bears”) are flights of historical imagination. But landowner of Yellow Hawk’s final resting place, wrings accuracy emerges elsewhere, particularly in the portrayal every bit of anti-Indian hatred and Western crustiness out of the ragtag band of wounded souls traveling on this of his last on-screen appearance in a cruel standoff late fateful mission, who inhabit key perspectives, emotions, in the film. Other actors likewise shine even when given

202 Kansas History little screen time. Stephen Lang, as Blocker’s superior officer Colonel Abraham Biggs, as- signs him this culminating peregrination with unwavering aplomb while simultane- ously entertaining a haranguing and hard- drinking Harper’s Weekly correspondent (the wonderful Bill Camp), who deeply sympathizes with the Indians’ grievances over their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government. Also noteworthy is the handiwork of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, who deftly captures the stark landscape in lockstep with the dangers of the trail and the descent into the dark night of the soul. The superb and ominous musical score by Max Courtesy of A24 and Universum Film. Richter accentuates the film’s foreboding and fitful ambiance. Director Cooper employs a mostly paintings, which are admired by Catherine Weldon masterful hand stitching everything together, laying bare (Jessica Chastain), a New York widow of means seeking the cruelties and vagaries of shifting Indian policies, the adventure and renewal she believes the West offers. the damage wrought by humans exposed to so much A painter herself, she is drawn to Sitting Bull, the Lakota inhumanity, and the Gordian knot of trying to survive, visionary, seeking him out in 1890 in the hope of painting forgive, and honor loss. his portrait. Traveling to the Standing Rock Reservation, There are missteps, too. For one, the Comanches are she soon learns of the turbulence and bellicosity there: cast as irredeemable Indians. They murder wantonly and the Sioux are desperate, seized by political factionalism, remorselessly, the stereotypical rapacious savages. Thus, and tensions with the government are at the boiling point. a continuum exists between this and other Westerns as Refusing to be dissuaded, despite (or perhaps because of) diverse as John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Kevin the misogyny and racism evident among local whites, Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990) in portraying certain she springs into action as defender and savior of the Indians as not fully human without addressing the downtrodden Indians, aiming to bring her Washington motives for their anger and bloodletting. In addition, connections to bear. An unlikely friendship ensues the subplot concerning Sgt. Philip Wills (Ben Foster, between her and Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes). a gifted actor) is largely unnecessary to drive the plot “The Bull” at first demands money from Weldon, forward, as the racism and criminality that he represents eventually bargaining her up to $1000. He then explains are abundantly represented elsewhere. Including these that the purpose is not to honor him but to feed his scenes only increases the movie’s running time and tests starving people, revealing a key difference in Western and the audience’s threshold for enduring a surfeit of such Native notions of status. This much of the story is true; the morbid moments. Still, the film’s final scene softens main protagonists were actual people who did interact, these blows considerably and shifts its overall demeanor, and Weldon’s painting of Sitting Bull exists. Much of the arriving at something resembling rescue. rest of this film, however, takes wide poetic license with Woman Walks Ahead is infinitely simpler both to digest their relationship and other facts. Although the story is and assess, although it shares some common ground “based on true events,” numerous grains of salt would in contemplating the “otherness” dividing whites and be a wise accompaniment here. While it does offer some Natives in the context of what federal policymakers decent insights and a few standout performances, director perceived as “the Indian problem” throughout the Susanna White and screenwriter Steven Wright rely on an nineteenth century. However, it hews to romantic notions oversimplified historical approach that often misleads. of American Indians and brushes with broad strokes, Chastain is competent but not praiseworthy; she affording little pity for their Euro-American counterparts. demonstrates that Weldon, initially framed as a frail The opening credits roll across images of George Catlin’s flower, is no shrinking violet. An indecorous decision to

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 203 familiar tropes deeply rooted in Hollywood’s trade in Native American features: the arche- type of Indian mysticism, a representation that supports deeply entrenched stereotypes, and the far-too-familiar white-savior plot. To the film’s credit, the use of Indian humor and ora- tory, vital to cultural survival, receive nice nods here. In the end, however, these are not enough to salvage what might have been a much better and more accurate biopic. Eric P. Anderson Haskell Indian Nations University

William Allen White: What’s the Matter with Kansas? Directed by Kevin Willmott; written by Kevin Willmott and Mark von Schlemmer; Courtesy of KTWU/PBS. produced by Scott Richardson. 2018; color and black and white; 60 minutes. Ninth Street bypass Sitting Bull on the trail is one among many cultural Studios; distributed by KTWU/PBS. faux pas Weldon commits, earning her the moniker that is Fear and anxiety over immigration; racial tensions; de- the title of the film. Weldon was an Indian-rights activist, bates about women’s rights; sharpening socioeconomic but portraying her as a trusted counselor to the Lakota, disparities; concerns over “fake news” and the value of as depicted here, defies credibility. The drought-breaking free speech; widening ideological divides between ru- rainfall that comes with her arrival borders on the ral and urban; and charismatic, demagogic politicians. ridiculous, as does the suggestion of a romance with her Sound familiar? As renowned independent filmmaker subject. Stronger performances are delivered by Greyeyes, Kevin Willmott’s recent documentary about the leg- conveying the dignity and wisdom of his character’s endary Kansas journalist William Allen White demon- namesake, and especially Sam Rockwell as Silas Groves, strates, the dilemmas and concerns that plagued turn- a military attaché from Washington more wily and politic of-the-twentieth-century America resonate in profound than his exterior suggests. Chaske Spencer is another ways with the country’s struggles today. According to standout worth watching; he plays Sitting Bull’s nephew, the film, White played an influential role in leading his who serves on the Indian police force and provides key home state of Kansas and the nation to choose moderate, information to Sitting Bull. Perhaps the most interesting principled responses to these problems. A Kansas native character is James McLaughlin (Ciarán Hinds), the himself, Willmott also suggests the progressive role that reservation agent with a Native wife (Rulan Tangen) Kansas and the Midwest played at this time. Bill Kurtis, who muses on the whims of policy decisions. Notably, the film’s narrator, intones: “White’s appearance on the Bill Camp, who also acted in Hostiles, appears in another world stage” occurred when America “needed a voice boisterous turn here, this time as General Crook, although from the heartland, a moderate voice, grounded in com- his and other roles have limited character development. munity, justice, and community ideals.” While the region The social context of land-allotment policy and dis- was home to its share of xenophobia and racial terror, the ruption of traditional ways is marred by the designation film also shows that the state—through White and with of this policy as a “treaty” to which the Indians were a White—could lead the way in demanding that the nation party; in fact, Natives occupied wardship status after the live up to its more egalitarian ideals. Dawes Act was thrust upon them in 1887. Other inaccura- Willmott, professor of film and media studies at the cies, including youthful makeovers given to the two leads University of Kansas, has gained acclaim for writing and and the appellation of Sitting Bull as a chief, are minor, directing movies that grapple with the problem of race in but the botched historical handling of his murder and its American life. In 2019 he, Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, connection to the Wounded Knee Massacre are indicative and Charlie Wachtel won an Academy Award for best of the larger mythos at play in contemporary treatments adapted screenplay for BlacKKKlansman (also reviewed in of the American West. More troubling are two extremely this issue). Willmott has said in several interviews that he

204 Kansas History was initially attracted to telling White’s story because of his role in expelling the racial terrorist organization the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) from Kansas; Willmott also uses the documentary to highlight race relations in several additional aspects of White’s life and writings. The documentary charts White’s ideological evolution from early in his career, when he took the role of editor of the Emporia Gazette. White’s politically conservative, satirical editorial “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” provided him with his first national exposure when the Republican Party sent hundreds of copies of the editorial to news outlets all over the country. In that essay, White blamed populism and the Democrats for driving money, people, and industry from the state: “Whoop it up for the ragged trousers; put the lazy greasy fizzle, who can’t pay his debts, on the altar, and bow down and worship him. Let the state ideal be high. What we need is not the respect of our fellow men but the chance to get Here pictured is the subject of William Allen White: What’s the Matter something for nothing.” Over time, however, White with Kansas? at work at his desk. Courtesy of KTWU/PBS. came to embrace many of the progressive ideals long championed by the People’s Party in Kansas and to believe that “human dignity was more important than brutality and systemic racism. According to McCormick, property.” Notably, White counted people of color and “They’re kneeling. It’s not as though they are committing immigrants as worthy of dignity, standing up throughout acts of terror or violence. As far as protests go it’s really his long career not only to the KKK but also to Jim Crow pretty passive. And yet people are so outraged.” The segregation. film suggests that White would have found this kind of In the 1920s White emerged as an advocate for freedom silencing unacceptable. Likewise, following its discussion of speech. He was critical of the Red Scare, writing in of Kansans’ attraction to the KKK and racist agitator and one editorial: “The Attorney General seems to be seeing quack Dr. John R. Brinkley, the film pivots to a discussion red. He is rounding up every manner of radical in the of the 2016 presidential election. “We’re all Kansans now,” country. Every man who hopes for a better world is in says author Thomas Frank, who borrowed the title of danger of deportation by the Attorney General. The White’s most famous essay for his own political reflections whole business is un-American.” Later, in 1927, White in What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won wrote that the Red Scare had resulted in terrible injustices the Heart of America (2004). Several of the journalists and “by the suspicion and credulity of people who believed historians interviewed in the film also look nostalgically to nothing and suspected everything.” White also stood up what they describe as White’s careful separation of fiction to Republican Kansas governor Henry Allen in 1922 with from fact through his editorial career. A brief discussion his editorial “To an Anxious Friend.” Allen had declared of White’s defense of student protests in 1932 draws a a railroad strike illegal and said that anyone who voiced comparison to the recent March for Our Lives movement support of the strikers was subject to arrest. White took in support of legislation to prevent gun violence. strong exception to this violation of the First Amendment, A central tension throughout William Allen White is writing that “peace without justice is tyranny.” whether White became the “Sage of Emporia” and a Throughout the film’s telling of Allen’s life and career, champion of progressivism in spite of his Kansas roots or Willmott makes pointed comparisons between White’s because of them. All too often, including in recent analyses time and the present day. “Think about how relevant of the conservative outcome of the 2016 presidential William Allen White would be today,” says historian election, the Midwest and the people who live in it are and journalist Mark McCormick. McCormick goes on cast as closed-minded and backward-looking. The film to discuss the injustice of prohibiting NFL players from acknowledges that possibility, but it also considers the kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police more egalitarian impulses of the region, rightly crediting

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 205 Productions, http://www.throughaglass.com. “Langston was not in the deep South. He was in the Midwest, which is a kind of peculiar animal,” University of Kansas English professor Maryemma Graham explains in Langston’s Lawrence. Lawrence, Kansas, is not the South, but it still had segregation. This short documentary depicts what African Americans faced in the early twentieth century in Kansas through the eyes of the young Langston Hughes. Langston’s Lawrence illuminates racial roles and rules in Lawrence during the years when Hughes was growing up there. Founded as an antislavery settlement, Lawrence became a destination for African Americans during the Civil War. By the end of the 1880s, Lawrence’s pop- Maryemma Graham, Distinguished Professor of English at the University ulation was one-fourth African American. After this of Kansas, served as a consultant in Langston’s Lawrence. Courtesy of Through a Glass Productions. influx, racism and segregation soared. Nonetheless, many African Americans prospered, and the commu- nity supported itself despite and because of the ad- it, for example, as the birthplace of the People’s Party (the versity that its members faced. same one that White initially critiqued). In one interview, Lawrence is representative of other cities in Kansas author and filmmaker Mark Zwonitzer illuminates the after the Civil War, during the Exoduster era, and into potential for progressive thinking in small-town America. the early 1900s. Kansas represented freedom and a better In attempting to explain White’s evolving progressivism life for the many African Americans who moved here in throughout his life, Zwonitzer notes, “White stayed search of their piece of the American dream. While they in a small town, which is a very democratic place. . . . still experienced segregation and Jim Crow, as they did You know your neighbors, you know the lowliest guy in the South, black Kansans were able to create their own on the block, and you know the richest person. And you social order within the larger society of Kansas. They had understand that they’re not that different. And you may their own doctors, lawyers, grocers, and other businesses, not understand that living in the big city the way you do everything they needed to thrive amid the segregation of living in a small town.” the time. William Allen White includes interviews with many— The film examines the details beneath the dichotomy almost too many—nationally known and local journalists, established between Kansas and the South. Lawrence was politicians, historians, and biographers. There is a segregated, but also integrated. Some places, such as the wealth of archival photographs of White and his family swimming pools and the movie theater, were segregated, as well as little-known audio and film footage of White but the public library was not. In his poem “Merry-Go- speaking. A few brief “reenactment” scenes woven into Round,” Hughes sees segregation and Jim Crow as alive the documentary are less effective than these interviews and well in Lawrence. Even if Kansas was not as deeply and archival documents. Above all, the film demands that ruled by Jim Crow as the South, Hughes saw the difference viewers see injustice and the need to confront it as not just in the way African Americans and whites were treated in as an issue for the past but also a necessity today. This is a Lawrence. He became aware of such injustices early in his powerful approach to historical storytelling. life, practicing civil disobedience as a fourteen-year-old in junior high school when he experienced one of his teachers Kelly Erby practicing segregation in his integrated classroom. Washburn University “If you want to understand my poetry, you have to understand my childhood,” explains Hughes. His Langston’s Lawrence. Directed by Madison Davis Lacy; experiences as a boy in Topeka and Lawrence are depicted written by the Dream Documentary Collective; produced in the images of Langston’s Lawrence as well as in his poetry by Tess Banion and Steve Nowak. 2017; color and black and prose. Much like Gordon Parks of Fort Scott, whose and white; 7:50 minutes. Distributed by Through A Glass early Kansas experiences remained a part of him all his

206 Kansas History life, Hughes’s work tells the secret that unlocks his world. In his memoir The Big Sea, Hughes wrote of school, “All the teachers were nice to me, except one who sometimes used to make remarks about my being colored. And after such remarks, occasionally the kids would grab stones and tin cans out of the alley and chase me home” (quoted in Jennifer Schussler, “Langston Hughes Just Got a Year Older,” New York Times, August 9, 2018). Langston’s Lawrence gives us a glimpse into the early life of the young Langston Hughes, who, like many African Americans of his era, experienced racial injustice, segregation, and bullying by whites. These experiences Courtesy of Fibonacci Films/Masterpiece Films. so impacted his life that, as he became an important writer of the Harlem Renaissance, he found his voice speaking against racial injustice. His off in Germany under the mentorship of the formidable example speaks to the experiences of African Americans G. W. Pabst (Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, both who were not accepted in mainstream Lawrence society. 1929). After that, her career stumbled, and after making a But now, Lawrence is happy to claim him, with a school few B-Westerns back in Hollywood, she returned in 1938 named after him, a statue in the Watkins Museum, and a to the family home in Wichita, where she taught dance plaque on the City Hall quoting one of his poems. while hiding away from Hollywood. Her last years were spent in Rochester, New York, where her autobiography Sherri Camp spurred a newfound fame and cult status. Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library All of this, ironically, is almost irrelevant to Laura Moriarty’s novel The Chaperone (2012) and Julian Fellowes’s The Chaperone. Directed by Michael Engler; screenplay film adaptation. Based on a thin layer of historical fact, by Julian Fellowes, based on the novel by Laura Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) is the middle-aged Wichita Moriarty; produced by Kelly Carmichael, Greg Clark, housewife who chaperones the lively fifteen-year old Rose Ganguzza, Victoria Hill, Andrew Mason, Elizabeth Louise (Haley Lu Richardson) on her trip to New York McGovern, Andrew Mann, and Luca Scalisi. 2019; color; to audition for the famed dance company of Ruth St. 103 minutes. Fibonacci Films/Masterpiece Films. Denis and Ted Shawn. Once ensconced in their New York It says a lot about actress Louise Brooks that her walk-up, Norma and Louise are a study in contrasts as sharply acerbic Lulu in Hollywood, published in 1982, three they pursue diverging paths. Norma, a quiet and slightly years before her death, contains a chapter entitled, “Why straitlaced matron, seeks the truth of her past from the I Will Never Write My Memoirs.” Apparently, even she orphanage where she was raised. Louise, a budding had difficulty facing up to the scandal-ridden career that ingenue, sports her signature bobbed hairdo as she had blazed so brightly in the late 1920s and early 1930s, marches briskly into the future with the Denishawn Dance yet faded just as quickly, leaving her in relative obscurity Company. Norma finds an unexpected new friend in the for the last forty years of her life. handyman of the orphanage. Louise enjoys the attentions In the introduction to his interview with Brooks in of a new boyfriend and, by no means incidentally, curries The Parade’s Gone By (1968), historian Kevin Brownlow favor in the eyes of dance master Shawn. wrote that he found in the reclusive Brooks “a woman of The story concludes in 1922, three years before Brooks’s immense creative energy, “ a “brilliant writer,” someone first movie. Norma returns to Wichita, her new lover in “completely honest about herself” and “not afflicted with tow, to confront her startled husband. Louise goes on morbid nostalgia.” Born in Cherryvale, Kansas, in 1906, the road with the Denishawn company with new worlds she moved with her family to Wichita and then pursued of her own to conquer. A brief epilogue that serves up a a career in dancing in New York before making her first few glimpses of the later years of both women is a big films in the mid-1920s in Hollywood. Her career took mistake. This token nod to later history—complete with

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 207 unconvincing wigs and makeup—should have been Heitz; produced by Kara Heitz. 2019; color; 22 minutes. omitted. The story of the relationship between the two Distributed by Clio’s Scroll Productions LLC, https:// women, so different in age and temperament, works best cliosscroll.org. when allowed to remain on its own. A few token images In 2019, for the third year in a row, the Trump from Pandora’s Box play out against the closing credits, administration proposed a federal budget for the fiscal but it would have been better to have left them out, too. year 2020 that would wind down the National Endowment Without context and limited to a few scant seconds, they for the Arts, seeking an “orderly termination of all fail to convey anything of Brooks’s sensuous allure. operations,” as the “Major Savings and Reforms” section Given the lively character of Brooks and the pagan of the so-called Budget for a Better America put it (https:// hedonism she brought to the screen, The Chaperone is a www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ surprisingly mild affair. Except for a few scenes of a wild msar-fy2020.pdf, p. 98). The White House proposal, part party with Louise’s new boyfriend and her revelations of efforts to “eliminate wasteful or unnecessary spending” to a startled Norma about her not-so-proper lifestyle, (ibid., p. 1), was consistent with the long-standing little hints at the spectacular rise and fall to come. Haley contention of many on the political right that, as the Lu Richardson is fetching and conveys at least some of Republican Study Committee put it in Securing America’s Brooks’s charisma. Her dance scenes, in particular— Future Economy, its own budget proposal for 2018, “the including a wonderful re-creation of one of Denishawn’s federal government should not be in the business of signature dance programs—are highlights. But the palm funding the arts” (https://rsc-johnson.house.gov/sites/ in the film goes to the superb Elizabeth McGovern, who republicanstudycommittee.house.gov/files/Initiatives/ has previously worked with screenwriter Julian Fellowes SecuringAmericasFutureEconomyRSCFY2018Budget. and director Engler on the Downtown Abbey series (2010– pdf, p. 142). Kansas, it should be noted, has the dubious 2015). Her every scene shows textbook restraint and subtle distinction of leading the nation in disavowing public eloquence. A real standout sequence is her brief reunion support for the visual and performing arts. When, in 2011, with her birth mother (played by Blythe Danner). We sit then Governor Sam Brownback vetoed appropriations back, savoring these two professionals in action, as they for the Kansas Arts Commission, Kansas became the only test each other’s mettle, their mutual discovery ending state ever to defund its public arts agency. in quiet recriminations and heartbreak. That scene alone The powers that be in Washington, however, have not is worth the price of admission. The fine supporting cast always considered investment in the arts “wasteful” and includes Campbell Scott as Louise’s father, Miranda Otto the support of practicing artists “unnecessary.” During as Ruth St. Denis, and Geza Rohrig as the handyman at the Great Depression, when an estimated ten thousand the orphanage, who brings a nicely muted quality to his painters, printmakers, and sculptors were out of work, turn as Norma’s new love. New Deal relief programs provided employment and Louise Brooks was not the only screen entertainer to creative outlets for America’s struggling artists. Most come from the southeast corner of Kansas. Cherryvale, famously, between 1934 and 1943, the Section of Fine Arts Parsons, Iola, and Independence also produced, respec- of the U.S. Treasury Department commissioned almost tively, Vivian Vance, ZaSu Pitts, Buster Keaton, and 1,500 original murals (including 29 in Kansas) in post Martin and Osa Johnson. They were all born within the offices and other public buildings. Most of these works years 1894–1906, and none remained long in their home- remain in place today, forming not just a remarkable, town, but they have all been honored in recent years with widely distributed collection of Depression-era painting annual celebrations back home. I can attest to the fact that and sculpture across the state and the nation but also screenings of Brooks’s Beggars of Life (1928) and Pandora’s a testament to the vision of a federal government that Box still astonished those who attended the Parsons committed deeply (and wisely) to artists and communities events. Happily, these once-lost films are now available in a time of national crisis. in new, restored versions for home viewing. A New Deal for Public Art in the Free State is a short but substantive introduction to the history of the post-office John Tibbetts murals in Kansas. Tightly organized, visually appealing, University of Kansas and occasionally provocative, the film manages (in just over twenty minutes) to establish the historical context A New Deal for Public Art in the Free State. Directed by of the Depression and Dust Bowl; survey New Deal art Graham Carroll; written by Graham Carroll and Kara programs; provide several in-depth case studies on the

208 Kansas History conception (and reception) of murals in Kansas; and encourage viewers to reflect on the complexities of public art, democracy, and the creative process. The approach is thoroughly historical rather than art historical: the focus is on the subject matter of the murals and the stories behind their creation, not on stylistic elements or aesthetic concerns. Historical footage is interspersed with vibrant present-day images of the murals, and the filmmakers make excellent use of interviews with historians and curators from colleges, universities, and museums across the state. Highlighted in A New Deal for Public Art in the Free State, Joe Jone’s WPA- A New Deal for Public Art emphasizes that the sponsored mural, Men and Wheat, adorns the Seneca, KS post office. Courtesy of Depression-era federal patronage of murals Clio’s Scroll Productions LLC. went beyond being a relief and recovery program to become an ambitious “attempt to democratize Rural Free Delivery in Goodland). What postal patron, art” one post office at a time. “But,” as the film’s voice-over exhausted from the struggles of the Depression, would observes, “democracy comes with conflict.” Section of not want to see a mural that offered a reassuring vision Fine Arts officials were eager to commission work of high of “making Kansas great again,” right there above the quality, yet they also strove to include local communities postmaster’s door? in the planning of murals and ensure that the completed A New Deal for Public Art ranges remarkably widely, paintings did not affront local tastes or sensitivities. In considering the imagery of Native Americans in post- Fort Scott, for instance, citizens had the opportunity to office murals and exploring the career of Martyl Schweig, vote on thirty-nine proposed mural designs. In Horton, one of only four women to complete commissions for the Kenneth Evett’s apparently innocuous depiction of a rural Section of Fine Arts in Kansas. The film also documents, picnic so enraged the townsfolk that he was brought back perhaps unintentionally, the poor upkeep of many small- to paint a second mural that celebrated the history of the town public buildings around the state: while the murals Pony Express. And in Salina, as wonderfully documented themselves appear to be generally well maintained, the here and by art historian Karal Ann Marling (in Wall-to- post offices in which they reside look all of their eighty Wall America: Post Office Murals in the Great Depression years of age, with cracked plaster, peeling paint, and rusty [1982], pp. 233–237, 242–249), the eight murals created weather vanes. by New York artists Isabel Bate and Harold Black were A New Deal for Public Art in the Free State deserves a almost literally run out of town on a rail by a parochial large audience and is particularly appropriate for use in mob of civic boosters and self-styled art critics infuriated school and university classrooms. Implicitly challenging by less-than-flattering portrayals of Great Plains life. those who see government funding of the arts as an One Treasury Department apparatchik, quoted in A extravagance or a waste of taxpayer dollars, this engaging New Deal for Public Art, wrote to Kenneth Evett at the film reminds us of the tremendous promise of public art, height of the Horton brouhaha that “we are anxious, of the powerful legacy it can have in communities, and whenever possible, to give the public what they want” of the vigorous, democratic contention that its creation on their post-office walls. One must wonder if this regularly seems to stir. Kansans are fortunate indeed that conception of a democratic art actually pandered to not all the walls of our post offices are covered in bland, a discontented, backward-looking, populist strain in uniform coats of cream-colored paint. the collective temperament at a time when Kansas was buffeted by dust and battered by economic misfortune. William M. Tsutsui Struggling communities, it seems, responded to images Hendrix College that presented a romanticized past (a dashing Pony Express rider in Horton, a cattle drive on the Chisholm I Just Want to Testify . . . Directed by Jim Kelly; written Trail in Caldwell) or a heroic present (reaping the bounty by Eugene Williams; produced by Marietta Patterson, of the land with a modern combine in Seneca, celebrating Alona Harrison, Jim Kelly, and Eugene Williams. 2019;

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 209 color; 58 minutes. Distributed by KTWU, https://ktwu. volunteers are interviewed, frequently in front of the org/product/i-just-want-to-testify. emerging mural. The mural itself is an elaborate mix of Brown v. Board of Education Mural Project: Legacy & portraits, inspirational phrases, schools, insects, children, Vision: Time-Lapse Video Project. Directed by Hector and blue sky. Inspired by their participation in this project, Bernal; artistic director Michael V. Toombs; produced many express deep satisfaction at the ways in which the by Daryoush Hossein. 2018; color; 61 minutes. Mural creative process has brought the community together and video sponsored by ARTSConnect Topeka; in a spirit of inclusion and unity. Interviewees often streaming on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/ emphasize themes of love and hope. One artist asserts, watch/?v=444814512690184. “This mural is evidence that the future is bright.” Another Immediately after Chief Justice Earl Warren’s May 17, declares that the mural is a “progressive statement about 1954, press conference announcing the Brown v. Board of our community taking it up a notch. Coming together. Education of Topeka, Kansas decision that “the doctrine of Art is the focus of unity. This just ties it all together.” The ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational video convincingly documents the value of the project for facilities are inherently unequal,” reporter Mona Millikan the hundreds of participants. of the Topeka State Journal sought a response from Topeka On other levels the documentary falls flat. Poor sound National Association for the Advancement of Colored quality makes it difficult to understand several speakers. People (NAACP) President McKinley Burnett. Burnett Blurry images suggest a lack of polish in editing. While responded: “Their decision will enable me to pay my taxes the documentary emphasizes process through a series of with a little more grace. It increases my somewhat weak wide-angle “time-lapse” sequences, the segments quickly belief that democracy, American variety, in its finality become repetitive. The work seems to rapidly pass to a is real. It makes me feel that I’m an American citizen in point of celebration without engaging the vital conflicts the true sense of the word. It will enable me to sing ‘My and tensions played out in the space occupied by the country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty’ without making mural. Despite the subtitle “Legacy and Vision,” viewers myself a hypocrite.” Most importantly for Burnett, the will likely be disappointed by the absence of historical or Supreme Court had “broken the back of segregation.” For contemporary context. Neither the documentary nor the this black Kansan, the decision was personal, renewing mural finally tells us much about the decision it celebrates. his faith in American democracy. A major contribution for students of American history, In the sixty-five years since the Brown decision, I Just Want to Testify . . . consists of five acts or sets of Kansans have continued to debate its meaning. Two re- interlocking questions, developed through discussion cent documentaries offer divergent perspectives. Brown among twenty informants artfully led by KTWU’s Eugene v. Board of Education Mural Project: Legacy and Vision: Williams. The narrative is enhanced by impressive Time-Lapse Video Project traces the work of local students multicamera filming, staged against a backdrop of large and artists in creating a 130-by-30-foot outdoor mural to black-and-white images of African American life in commemorate the decision. The overall image is one of Topeka. Viewers will feel as if they are in the middle of color, vibrancy, and celebration. I Just Want to Testify . . . , an important and timely conversation. Black Topekans a groundbreaking production by Topeka PBS station share memories of growing up in neighborhoods such KTWU, builds on the memories of black Topekans who as Mud Town, Sand Town, Tennessee Town, and Jerdon experienced the often jarring shift from segregation to in- Town, sources of pride with close ties and connections in tegration. The voices in this project describe the love of which children felt they were a part of a “village.” The family and community that carried them through the in- documentary captures abundant smiles and infectious consistent experience of school integration, concluding laughter as informants remember the “freedom” of with an invitation for America to take action to save its childhood. own soul. Act 2 uncovers the often hidden corners of African Brown v. Board of Education Mural Project follows the American life in largely segregated Topeka. One woman fascinating process of transforming an exterior cement explains that she “thought the whole world was in North wall of a central Topeka warehouse near the Brown v. Board Topeka.” She “didn’t know there were white people . . . of Education National Historic Site (once the segregated and I wasn’t missing anything.” With visible pride across Monroe Elementary School) into large-scale community decades. we hear about a father who built a home “from art. The documentary weaves dozens of images together scratch” on Lincoln Street. Among the thriving black- to create a loose timeline of the project. Artists and owned enterprises around Fourth Street, we hear of

210 Kansas History hotels, service stations, taxis, grocery stores, bakeries, and drugstores. Keeping the focus on local patterns, Act 3 pulls the viewer into the lives of a remarkable group of Kansans who experienced the transition from segregation to integration. One informant proclaims, “Washington School [an all-black elementary school] did not convey to me my inferiority; instead, what it conveyed to me was my inner strength.” Others recall how churches and the Topeka branch of the NAACP contributed to their feeling Scene from I Just Want to Testify…shows KTWU’s Eugene Williams leading a conversation about African American life in Topeka. Courtesy of KTWU. of self-worth, which later “enabled us to protect ourselves.” In segregated elementary schools, an informant recalls, “we are valued Rattle, and Roll,” ending the program as the credits roll every day, told that we could succeed,” and, importantly, with a plea for us to listen to the testimony and to take “we never felt inferiority to white children.” One woman action: “Well, you won’t do right to save your doggone proclaims, “I am the proud product of segregation.” With soul.” the integration of elementary schools—Act 4’s concern— this black self-worth was confronted with ugliness and Bruce Mactavish racial hatred from some white students and teachers. Washburn University One Topekan describes how she did not know that she was black until she entered school with whites who Cold-Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders. Directed by taunted her and called her “nigger.” Her response was to Joe Berlinger (series director; 4 episodes), Alison Berg physically fight all who insulted her. Memories of the first (2 episodes), and Kahane Cooperman (2 episodes); years of integration vary. One woman recalls that a white produced by Alison Berg (series producer), Jawad Metni teacher made her “feel good” with class field trips to his (2 episodes), Seth Skundrick (2 episodes), and Keven North Topeka farm. Another remembers that “integration McAlester. 2017; color and black and white; four 42-minute was not hard for me because I knew half the kids in the episodes. Distributed by SundanceTV; streaming on classroom because they grew up in my neighborhood.” multiple platforms. For others, fear dominated: “There were a lot of mornings The subject of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) when I did not want to go back to school because I was is a well-plowed field that might seem overtilled by scared of the [white] teacher.” now, with multiple articles, books, commercial films, The final act evaluates the Brown v. Board of Education and television documentaries in the wake of the actual decision after sixty-five years, intent on “reminding new Clutter murders and the “nonfiction novel” true-crime generations of the freedoms they enjoy and how they account that Capote, with assistance from his then-friend came to be.” The success of the case involved Topekans Harper Lee, painstakingly researched, witnessed, and who “we know, we respect, [and] we love.” The case wrote. Yet documentary director Joe Berlinger has found changed public institutions forever, but in ambiguous considerable new material to present in Cold-Blooded: The ways: it ”opened doors of access, but it was a Pandora’s Clutter Family Murders, a four-episode offering (Berlinger box.” One interviewee insists, “Racial progress following calls it a “docuseries”) first broadcast on AMC. the case is all smoke and mirrors.” Berlinger seeks to refocus attention on the Clutter Williams’s voice closes this praiseworthy program: victims themselves: Herb, the father; Bonnie, the mother; “The simple goal of this documentary project is to keep Nancy, their teenaged daughter; and Kenyon, their our society healthy by remembering the promise of Brown teenaged son. He profiles Holcomb, Kansas, as a folksy v. Board and to inspire a new generation to continue to community that resists being known only for the Clutter preserve the basic tenants of human rights.” Careful murders; Cold-Blooded features interviews with Clutter viewers will hear a verse of Joe Turner’s 1954 hit “Shake, relatives, friends, and associates in the communities of

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 211 tiny Holcomb, where the Clutters were shotgunned in Brenda Currin (who played Nancy Clutter) and Quincy their home, and Garden City, the nearby Finney County Jones (whose original music for the film won an Academy seat. These interviews—especially with Diana Edwards, Award). Berlinger also interviews officials of the KBI who a Clutter niece; Gwenyth Fracke, Bonnie Clutter’s sister; still consider solving the Clutter case one of their proudest and Bob Rupp, onetime boyfriend of Nancy Clutter— moments. reveal that Capote, who famously claimed that every The final episode also features interviews with Clutter word of In Cold Blood is true, was often far off the mark, family descendants, whose names are withheld, as in particularly in his portrayal, of Bonnie Clutter. They Kansas there is still considerable sensitivity about this contend that Capote misrepresented the Clutters while subject. An unnamed Clutter granddaughter wonders exploiting their tragedy and that Capote’s book is far why this story “just doesn’t go away.” Additional too sympathetic in its portrayals of the killers, Richard interviews include Smith’s army friend Don Cullivan, Hickock and Perry Smith. The irony that lowers over who came to Kansas to be a character witness at the their protestations is that, over half a century since the trial; Dr. Mitchell Jones, the psychiatrist who evaluated crime, there is still only one factor—Capote’s book—that Smith and Hickock (and whose testimony was never prompts the ongoing interest in the Clutter case and all given at the trial owing to a technicality); and Gene Kirby, the ancillary works that have followed its publication. caretaker of the Mt. Muncie Cemetery in Lansing, Kansas, The first three episodes—“Farm Family Slain,” “Killers where Smith and Hickock are buried. Kirby does not on the Run,” and “The Intruders on Trial”—cover the understand why he gets so many requests for the location crime itself, the hunt for the killers, and the trial after of Smith’s and Hickock’s graves and wonders if as many their capture, including accounting for Capote’s interest visitors wish to see the Clutters’ graves in the cemetery in and pursuit of his story. The details are well known, in Garden City. The most striking interview is with Jewel but Berlinger provides some rare, heretofore unseen James, who claims to be Perry Smith’s son as a result of a photographs of the victims’ and killers’ families and liaison with James’s mother, the wife of Don James, one includes interviews with Capote’s and Lee’s biographers, of Smith’s army friends. The interview with James is just Gerald Clarke (Capote: A Biography [2010]; also editor of one of many that make Berlinger’s work extraordinary, Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote [2004]) and exceeding the assembly of interviews conducted by his Charles Shields (I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee numerous predecessors. There are additional interviews [2008]; Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee from Scout to with Kansas City journalist and professor Corbin Cradle, Go Set a Watchman [2018]). Berlinger also interviews Paul current Finney County Sheriff Kevin Bascue, Kenyon Dewey, the son of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation Clutter’s boyhood friend Bob Jones, and more. Berlinger (KBI) detective who violated bureau protocols in helping gives us the most thorough documentary on this subject Capote get his story. In addition, there is archival footage to date, and that is the salient strength of this work. of long-ago interviews with Alvin and Marie Dewey, Episode Four concludes with Bob Rupp visiting the who, unsurprisingly, reflect the elder Deweys’ affection Clutter Family Memorial recently erected in a small for Capote and their belief that the writer told the story park in Holcomb, which Rupp himself was instrumental accurately. Berlinger makes excellent use of rare footage in creating. The memorial mentions only the Clutters’ from home movies, maps, and locales that were significant achievements in the community, noting that they were to the story. Particularly skillful is Berlinger’s method of murdered by intruders. Fittingly, there is no mention of splicing in appropriate material to coordinate with his Smith, Hickock, or Capote. Cold-Blooded will likely not narrative, a kind of creative nonfiction with images. be the last examination of the In Cold Blood story and the Episode Four, titled “The Gallows and the Novel,” Clutter case, but it is hard to imagine that anyone could covers Capote’s promotional campaign for his book achieve anything better or more thorough. and an account of his gaudy celebrity and his legendary black-and-white ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The Ralph F. Voss, Emeritus episode also covers the executions of Smith and Hickock University of Alabama and the toll those executions took on Capote, who, in the course of his research for the book, had become close to BlacKKKlansman. Directed by Spike Lee; screenplay the killers, especially Smith. It highlights the 1967 on-site by Spike Lee, Kevin Willmott, Charles Wachtel, and filming of the story by director Richard Brooks, featuring David Rabinowitz, based on the book by Ron Stallworth; interviews with Scott Wilson (who played Hickock), produced by Jason Blum, Spike Lee, Raymond Mansfield,

212 Kansas History Sam McKittrick, Pordan Peele, and Shaun Redick. 2018; color; 135 minutes. Released by Focus Features; DVD distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Spike Lee needed a black Kansan to make BlacKKKlansman. Specifically, Lee needed Kevin Willmott. The activist/ auteur/educator with roots in Junction City, Kansas, may not seem like the most obvious choice to take over shaping a script about a black detective going undercover to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, but Willmott’s worldview and unique artistry suffuse much of what makes the film effective. Before adding Oscar and British Academy of Film and Television Arts award winner after his name, Willmott was making local Kansas headlines because of his professional sartorial choices. A professor in the Film and Media Studies Department at the University of Kansas, Willmott returned to a changed campus in the fall of 2017. That July, a Kansas law had gone into effect allowing the carrying of concealed weapons on college campuses. Willmott showed up to his first class that semester wearing a bulletproof vest over his clothes. “Try to forget that I’m wearing a vest, and I’ll try to forget that you could be packing a .44 Magnum,” Willmott told his screenwriting students. More than mere anecdote, that moment before his class reveals the wry, near-absurdist, laughin’-to-keep-from-cryin’ honesty that Courtesy of SundanceTV. permeates much of Willmott’s work. The articles about Willmott and his vest in both the Kansas City Star and Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), picked up the option as the University Daily Kansan are accompanied by a picture producer. He tapped Spike Lee as the director and gave of Willmott standing against a blank wall in a dark gray the directing legend wide artistic freedom. Lee knew T-shirt with the bulky black vest draped over him. It is immediately that he wanted to take another pass at the the expression on his face that most intrigues, however: script and also precisely who he needed to make that pass neither loudly defiant nor obviously jokey. There is just a success: Kevin Willmott. Lee had been so impressed the slightest suggestion of what used to be called “an with Willmott’s C.S.A. (204) when he saw it at the impish grin” tugging at the corners of the mouth but Sundance Film Festival that he signed on as “presenter” accompanied by a straight-on look in his eyes that seems to help give the film wider circulation. In addition, Lee’s to say, “Welp, this is what it is, and this is where we are.” Chi-Raq (2015) began with a Willmott script adapting You immediately grasp the complicated brew of stark Aristophanes’ antiwar sex comedy Lysistrata to the present truth, ridiculousness, and life-and-death stakes. day. Lee mixes dark humor and sociopolitical honesty in Which brings us back to BlacKKKlansman. many of his most daring works (such as Do the Right Thing An adaptation of a memoir by Ron Stallworth (Black [1989], Bamboozled [2000], or She Hate Me [2004]), and that Klansman, 2014) and set in the 1970s, the film tells the approach is part of Willmott’s signature as well. It is used story of the first black detective in the Colorado Springs, to complex, meaningful effect in BlacKKKlansman. Colorado, police force, hatching a plan to go undercover Stallworth is someone with a complex racial in the KKK. Stallworth finds his professional trajectory positionality. His rise through the ranks of the police force caught up in a complicated mix of institutionalized is met with skepticism and barriers from the beginning racism, black nationalism, and the very real terrorism that in a department that believes his aptitude is to be little motivates groups such as the Klan. more than a records jockey, digging dead files from Earlier drafts of the script had been bouncing around stacked boxes in the department’s back room. At the for a few years when Jordan Peele, creator of the thrillers same time, once he does become a detective, he accepts

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 213 Stallworth decides to attempt to join a local division of the KKK, he must call the national headquarters to complete the membership process. His exchange with up-and- comer David Duke is one of the most raucous scenes in the film. We watch Stallworth, embodied by John David Washington—dark-skinned and with an enviably full and shapely natural—unfurl shameful, absurdly racist rhetoric that becomes catnip for Duke. It should not be as delicious as it is, but you cannot help but howl along with Stallworth’s colleagues. The laughs come with a bite, however. Is he on a fool’s errand? Can black people ever feel truly secure when the white people around them are also laughing at the joke? And, as the film’s climax makes clear, what seems funny at the moment can quickly become a potentially deadly enterprise. That is where Willmott’s artistic hand is the most sure and clear. Vivifying the complex, fraught, politeness- covering-the-nastiness realities of racial conflict in the American heartland has been part of Willmott’s filmmaking since his first movie, Ninth Street (1999). Stallworth suffers through a department whose racism is institutionalized yet that nevertheless sees itself as better than the more overt racialized terror practiced by the Klan characters. That conflict creates a tightrope negotiated by many racially marginalized people in the Midwest. That tightrope can seem ludicrous yet all too real at the same time. It is a balancing act that Lee knew had to be palpable to make BlacKKKlansman work. Enter Kevin Willmott. Courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. an undercover assignment to surveil and undermine Darren Canady a speech being given by black nationalist Kwame Ture University of Kansas (née Stokely Carmichael). While there, he meets and eventually falls for Patrice Dumas, the president of the Warrior Women (2018). Directed by Elizabeth A. Castle Black Student Union at a local college. He is thus forced and Christina D. King; based on research by Elizabeth to be dishonest with Patrice even as his feelings for her A. Castle; produced by Anna Marie Pitman, Elizabeth become more serious. So, even before the Klan plot takes A. Castle, and Christina D. King. 2018; color; 64 minutes. over the film, we see Stallworth as a black professional Distributed by Good Docs at https://www.gooddocs.net. whose career goals demand a performance that traps him I first saw this documentary last fall, when itwas between the racism of his white peers and an embrace of screened at Kansas State University’s annual Indigenous blackness that may thwart his career plans. Peoples Day Conference, held on “Columbus Day.” It In some quarters, that very bind opened the film up is a must-watch for anyone interested in Indigenous to criticism, perhaps most notably from director Boots people’s history and social justice organizing. The film Riley (Sorry to Bother You, 2018), who sharply criticized examines the life and leadership of Madonna Thunder BlacKKKlansman on social media for centering the Hawk (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe) to demonstrate story on someone who worked to undermine activists the central role of women in Indigenous activism. She such as Ture; Lee and Willmott have both sidestepped has spent the past fifty years engaged in high- and low- responding directly to Riley. But Stallworth’s desire to be profile organizing to “retain our right as a people to be a transformational law-enforcement officer nevertheless Indian.” The filmmakers effectively use archival and raises some of the film’s most intriguing questions. Once contemporary recordings of Thunder Hawk’s decades-

214 Kansas History long efforts to protect land, natural resources, legal rights, and Indigenous sovereignty. There are also interviews with numerous female family members who share in her activism, including her daughter Marcella “Marcy” Gilbert, her sister Mabel Ann Phillips, and her niece Lakota Harden. Thunder Hawk’s life shows the impact of U.S. federal Indian policy and how it was and is resisted. She, her sister, and her mother were all forced to attend boarding schools, and the film shows the intergenerational trauma that this policy produced by isolating children from loving adults and preventing them from learning how to parent. When the federal government began relocating Indigenous peoples to urban areas in a further effort to destroy tribal communities, Thunder Hawk ended up in the San Francisco Bay area, where she participated in the occupation of Alcatraz. Meanwhile, her hometown and over one million acres that had provided a subsistence level of gatherable foods on the reservation were destroyed by the series of dams that the federal government built along the Missouri River to control flooding, produce electricity, and provide irrigation to local farmers. Thunder Hawk’s daughter Marcy Gilbert reflects, “She comes from the old Agency on Cheyenne River that’s flooded, so she can never really go home. So, I think that’s why she’s dedicated her life, because she can’t really go home. . . . When the [American Indian] Movement came, she was just like, ‘OK, this is my home.’ She had somewhere where she belonged.” Thunder Hawk calls herself “an old AIM-ster gangster,” referencing her years of work with Courtesy of Good Docs. AIM during the 1960s and 1970s, including at Wounded Knee II. This activism successfully reoriented federal trying to help her people . . . it swallowed [her] up. She policy from Indigenous elimination and assimilation to wasn’t there for us emotionally. So I didn’t know how to self-determination. But much work remained. Thunder be there for me emotionally.” As a result, Gilbert talks Hawk continued, along with others, to oppose uranium about intentionally playing a more active role in her mining, protest the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and children’s lives than her mother was able to do for her. In confront violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act in her own activism, Gilbert promotes cultivating traditional South Dakota’s foster-care system. foods in community gardens to reconnect people with the Much of the film also focuses on children. Thunder landscape and improve health. While also protesting the Hawk taught a “Survival School” where children, DAPL, Gilbert is shown teaching young children about including her own, learned about U.S. imperialism and the Missouri River and wild foods, reminiscent of her how to argue and organize against it while reconnecting mother’s “Survival School” decades earlier. with Lakota culture and affirming their Indigenous This documentary is also an example of Indigenous identity. But for her children, having an activist mother women making a film about Indigenous women. The proved challenging. She was frequently absent, and the results are revealing. When describing her AIM organizing, way to be with her was to participate in her activism, Thunder Hawk says, “The press, they just automatically learning to speak to the issues and facing the associated gravitated to the men. And who really knew what was backlash and violence. Gilbert sums it up: “I was a going on [and who] was really running the show were teenager trying to figure out: Who am I? It felt like a lot, the women.” In history specifically and the broader a lot of pressure. She was so busy taking on the work of culture generally, most Americans know very little about

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 215 modern Indigenous people and next to nothing about Raines: the rhyming surnames suggest the counterpoint. Indigenous women and children. This film does excellent The plot ultimately focuses on a small group of work expanding the social representations of Indigenous outsiders to Goodland, a criminal conspiracy, a dossier, people in U.S. society to include twenty-first-century and shadowy representatives of the U.S. government. women activists. It also illustrates the long, difficult These elements from beyond Goodland seem less effective battle that Indigenous people and nations face to this than the film’s local concerns. The film’s broader scope day in dismantling entrenched, systemic colonialism and suffers from stock storytelling and some heavy-handed protecting their sovereignty. Gilbert concludes, “When symbolism; both elements ring less true than the veracity you’re a revolutionary, you have to make . . . sacrifices. of its portrait of Goodland. In particular, Sheriff Gaines, What she was doing rebuilt the nation. It’s easier for me played as suitably low key and stolid by Cinnamon to think about her as Madonna the activist rather than my Schultz, loses her place at the film’s core near the end, mom because all that other stuff gets in the way. And then when she appears, rather unaccountably, to assume that I can see her for who she is. And probably the way other she has solved the mystery. Her disappearance becomes people see her.” And what do we see? Thunder Hawk and emblematic of the film’s drifting too far from its Kansas her female relatives as “warrior women.” roots. The figure of Sheriff Gaines, a female head oflaw Tai S. Edwards enforcement in small-town middle America, immediately Johnson County Community College recalls Frances McDormand’s portrayal of police chief Marge Gunderson in Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s Fargo Goodland. Directed and written by Josh Doke; produced (1996), but Gaines is more straightforwardly steely and by J. S. Hampton; 2017; color; 84 minutes. Distributed businesslike, without the ironic detachment that defines by Rockhaven Films; streaming on multiple platforms; Marge’s attitude toward her work in a traditionally male website https://www.goodlandmovie.com. profession. The film dramatizes her attempts to fathom The most interesting feature of Goodland may be its the mystery of the dead drifter in part through her depiction of small-town western Kansas. First-time conversations with her mentor, former Sheriff Hal Bloom, feature-film director Josh Doke, a 2012 University of one of the last roles for Kip Niven, the former Hollywood Kansas film school graduate who raised $12,500 through film and television actor who had been a fixture of theater a Kickstarter campaign to help finance the film, captures in the Kansas City area since the 1990s (Niven died of a his hometown with a capable and honest eye. Set in heart attack in May 2019). When Gaines visits Bloom at a the recent past, an era of flip phones and Ford Crown nursing facility, she gives him a copy of Herman Melville’s Vic police cruisers, Doke’s film presents the town as Moby Dick, perhaps a reference to her own single-minded insular and isolated. At worst it is in decline; at best it pursuit of the mystery of the dead drifter, though hers is wandering aimlessly. The opening shots beneath the is less epic and takes place not in the sea but in the vast credits, depicting empty landscapes and a deserted Main space of the Kansas plains. Street, emphasize that nothing much happens here or Goodland is at home in that space, deploying even necessarily moves much. atmospheric elements of the Western and film noir. Doke Indeed, it is proverbially too quiet, which is precisely includes variations on conventions such as the stranger the point, because even stark, static places such as in town and the duel on Main Street to suggest that the Goodland sometimes have their troubles. The film’s main American West is in some ways not much different from action revolves around the death of a drifter just outside its nineteenth-century past. Raines in particular embodies town, combined with the arrival of a photographer. these traditions. In the role, Matt Weiss adeptly conveys The photographer takes up lodging, curiously, at the Raines’s reticent, secretive attitude. He is a loner in a ramshackle Empire Motel in town rather than the new place that seems to foster loners. When he checks in to motel “out by the interstate,” which, as the townsfolk the Empire Motel, the clerk, Ida Flowers (played by Sara reiterate in a phrase that becomes a running joke in Kennedy), tells him, “We have a single. Actually, all we Goodland, “has a pool.” Part of the film involves the have are singles.” A young woman clearly bored with investigation by Sheriff Georgette Gaines into whether the Goodland, Flowers pursues Raines, knocking on his door drifter’s death is murder as well as whether the stranger one evening with a six-pack and a mouthful of attempts at at the motel is somehow connected to the drifter’s death. witty conversation. His aloof demeanor indicates that he The other part of the film follows the stranger, Ergo intends to avoid any Goodland complications. His name,

216 Kansas History Ergo, which he has to tell locals is Latin for “therefore,” also sets him apart from the community and increases their curiosity. It also strikes an ominous chord: it seems to translate to something like “therefore, it rains.” His presence signals bad weather. The image that may best capture the film’s heritage involves the disguises worn by the bank robbers. In black hoodies and masks that resemble cattle skulls, they are at once urban crime figures and Western relics. In the sense that they also resemble aliens, they bring new threats to the West, such as organized crime and high-powered weapons. Doke integrates these references to cinematic tradition smoothly, though not everything works equally well. Some elements call attention to themselves in ways that disrupt the narrative illusion. For instance, some of the actors are clearly acting, though for the most part the principals do solid work. A few shots, especially in the scenes about the discovery of the drifter’s body, are artificial and contrived: the actors and camera have obviously been placed for effect, although the effect is largely incongruity. But these instances are thankfully rare. Indeed, the look of the film is one of its strongest assets. Iain Trimble’s cinematography is impressive, giving Goodland just the right mood and texture. These variables perhaps suggest the way that the film serves as a learning experience for Doke, whose finest talent reveals itself in his screenplay. He has the good sense to treat his Courtesy of Rockhaven Films. viewers intelligently, using dialogue and images to tell the story without overwriting or belaboring the obvious. on a story of a man released from prison forced to reckon Beyond that, Goodland shows that he has a sharp eye for with a changed Midwest community). His kinship with both the strengths and the foibles of the people of western the area should be solidified by The Scent of Rain & Kansas. Lightning, a film adaptation of Kansas City writer Nancy Pickard’s novel that was filmed entirely in Oklahoma. David M. Weed The narrative is punctuated by contemplative shots of Washburn University the landscape, with a focus on scrub and storms. The film plays like a more modestly scaled entry into a range of The Scent of Rain & Lightning. Directed by Blake recent films and television shows in which extended rural Robbins; screenplay by Jeff Robison and Casey Twenter, families deal with their troubles in the context of the social from the novel by Nancy Pickard; produced by Michael dynamics of the small communities in which they live. Davis, Maggie Grace, Jeff Johnson, Blake Robbins, Jeff Examples such as Hatfields & McCoys(2012) or the second Robison, Casey Twenter, Kevin Waller, and Dan Koetting. season of the television series Fargo (2015) offer American 2017; color; 100 minutes. Distributed by SP Releasing. twists on Shakespearean machinations, with buried Blake Robbins is an accomplished actor turned director family secrets and old rivalries that flare up into tragedy. whose work has a nice affinity with the Great Plains. His The Scent of Rain & Lightning works in this vein, showing previous feature, Sublime & Beautiful (2014), was filmed in how the jealousies and mistakes of one generation of a Lawrence and premiered at the Free State Film Festival. family spill over into another and must be uncovered He has acted in films for Kevin Willmott, most notably from obscurity. in The Battle for Bunker Hill (2008), a movie with thematic The narrative takes place in two time periods. In the linkages to The Scent of Rain & Lightning (both are premised present, Jody Linder (Maika Monroe) is disturbed to hear

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 217 really happened), it has arty touches. It takes a while for some of the relationships to be established, and when they are made clear, dynamics are signaled in low-key ways. Of particular importance is a family gathering, hosted by Senior and Annabelle, in which we see just how big the Linder family is and get a sense of some of the tensions in play. Senior is something of a grizzled patriarch, and his gruffness probably does not help the young generation honestly express their feelings. These patterns of aggression and repression are displayed atmospherically, with overlapping conversations, snippets of dialogue, and subtle physical cues. There are some exciting brawls and a few moments of violent action, but this is a film focused mostly on verbal altercations. One could make the case that The Scent of Rain & Lightning is better sold as a modern-day Western. The Linders own a cattle ranch, and the iconography of the cowboy way of life looms large in key moments: a hat is a key component in the mystery, and the Linders all dress for the range. The central conceit of the present-day narrative—a man released from jail, back in the community he once tormented—has featured in plenty of Westerns, and even the investigative element of reconstructing the Courtesy of SP Releasing. past for the present figures in such memorable films as John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). The that the man sent to prison for killing her parents has had Scent of Rain & Lightning thankfully never lapses into his sentence commuted and is imminently returning to staid heartland sentimentality but instead keeps an edge, town. Much of the film takes place in the past, however, hesitant to romanticize the past. It weaves tried-and-true in a slow reveal of the events surrounding the murders, elements together into a whole original enough to have with layer upon layer of complications revealed until kept me guessing. the film’s climactic moments. In the present timeline, The film seems like something of a homecoming Jody works with Collin Croyle (Logan Miller), son of for Robbins, who besides directing also appears in the presumed murderer Billy (Brad Carter), to reconstruct film as Sheriff Don Phelps. Robbins has spent muchof what happened. Billy harbors resentment and toys with his career portraying lawmen, state troopers, guards, the Linder family, while Jody’s grandparents, Annabelle and agents, most memorably in Oz (2001–2003). Maybe (Bonnie Bedelia) and “Senior” (Will Patton), keep mum. because Robbins is himself a character actor, one of the In the past scenes, young Collin and Jody exist on the most pleasurable elements of the film was seeing so periphery of her parents’ world, with jealousies, a many familiar faces, many of whom are given slightly terminated employment, and marital infidelities ensuring more space and depth here then they are typically. For that everybody shoulders some of the blame for the instance, Mark Webber gets some key comedic moments tragedy of the killing. Jody’s parents, Hugh Ray (Justin in Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2009), but Chatwin) and Laurie (Maggie Grace), fight and bicker; here he plays a more central role in the narrative. Actor Laurie grows close to Hugh Ray’s brother, Chase (Mark and producer Maggie Grace might be most familiar to Webber); and during a heavy-drinking story night spent audiences as the daughter of Liam Neeson’s character with Meryl (Aaron Poole) and Belle Linder (Sarah Noble in the long-running series of Taken films (2008–2015), but Peck), everyone bears witness to the drunken tirade by here she flexes more range (as she also does in Simon Billy at a bar that seems to set fate into motion. Fellows’s intriguing Malice in Wonderland [2009]). The While A Scent of Rain & Lightning is something of a slow- Scent of Rain & Lightning had a limited theatrical release burn mystery thriller (we are kept in suspense over what but is now widely available on VOD platforms.

218 Kansas History Kevin M. Flanagan Pine Ridge Reservation. Their father, Carl Winters, has George Mason University died in a house fire, and his funeral brings together his twenty-five children (with nine different mothers). John The Rider. Written and directed by Chloé Zhao; produced bootlegs alcohol on the reservation, which brings him by Chloé Zhao, Mollye Asher, Sacha Ben Harroche, and both money and trouble. He plans on leaving for Los Bert Hamelinck. 2017, color, 104 minutes. Distributed by Angeles with his girlfriend Aurelia after their high-school Sony Picture Classics. graduation. He regularly visits his incarcerated brother, Songs My Brothers Taught Me. Written and directed by Cody, and Cody urges John to leave the reservation, but Chloé Zhao. Produced by Chloé Zhao, Mollye Asher, John worries about what his mother and sister will do and Angela C. Lee, Nina Yang Bongiovi, and Forest Whitaker. think if he leaves. 2015, color, 98 minutes. Distributed by Kino Lorber. Jashaun, meanwhile, often wanders the reservation The Rider centers on Brady Blackburn, a young and befriends Travis, a local artist recently released from Lakota cowboy from a South Dakota reservation who jail who decorates clothing, paints on walls, and inks skin has suffered a severe head injury from bronc riding. His as a tattoo artist. Jashaun makes a deal with Travis: she injuries leave him with seizures that impact his dreams will help him sell his art if he will make her a dress for the of being a professional rodeo rider. Doctors warn him not powwow. Travis is imprisoned after a fight, but Jashaun to ride again because further injury could cause severe finds her completed dress among his things. Jashaun is brain damage or death. As a constant reminder of this hurt when she overhears John and Aurelia discussing possibility, Brady regularly visits his friend Lane, who their plans to leave, so she reaches out to her other half- suffered severe brain trauma while bull riding and now brothers, wanting to know more about her father. She goes lives permanently in a rehabilitation home. This injury to the rodeo and finds her half-brother Kevin Winters. He begins Brady’s search to understand who he is without tells her that even though he grew up in their dad’s house, riding. they were not close; their father was often gone, especially Throughout the film, Brady struggles with whether for rodeo. to quit riding, unable to make peace with letting go of John finally tells his mother and Jashaun that he is his dreams and identity. Brady tries to transition from leaving with Aurelia. John walks to Aurelia’s home, his former life by giving his friends his rodeo gear and where they plan to meet before leaving for California, working at a grocery store to help make ends meet at but watching her and her close-knit, happy family from home, where he lives with his sister and father. However, afar leads him to change his mind. John returns home, to he continues breaking horses for others even though he the delight of Jashaun. In the end, John takes up his half- realizes the risk. Brady has a very close relationship with brother’s earlier offer of work in an auto-body shop on his sister, Lilly, who has autism and of whom he feels very the reservation. protective. Brady’s father, Wayne, tries to discourage him Both films are well done and portray contemporary from riding again, and their relationship is sometimes reservation life without falling into tropes of romanticism, strained. But Wayne buys Brady a horse that he wants spiritualism, or poverty porn. They reflect the different even though others have given it up as untrainable. personalities, cultures, and lifestyles that exist on many This horse is aptly named Apollo, like the Greek god reservations, where cowboys, bootleggers, mechanics, associated with healing and medicine. Apollo becomes and families all live. Both films were shot on the Pine the symbol of Brady’s hope of riding again, but when Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the majority the horse is seriously hurt, Brady cannot bring himself to of the actors were local people. The films focus on self- shoot him. Instead, he asks his dad to put the horse down journey, but not as some kind of quest for Native identity for him. Brady is hit with the realization that everything or spiritual awakening. Rather, these journeys are more has a purpose, and his is to ride, which pushes him to the day-to-day life struggles that everyone goes through. enter an upcoming rodeo. While waiting to get on his We must offer one historical correction. Travis, in bronc, however, he sees his dad and sister watching, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, states, “Crazy Horse said, and he makes a last-minute decision not to ride. It seems ‘Everything will all seem to have ended at Wounded that in the end, Brady makes peace with letting go of his Knee, but it’ll all begin again with the seventh generation,’ ambition of being a professional bronc rider. you know. That’s you.” However, Crazy Horse died Songs My Brothers Taught Me follows John and Jashaun in 1877, years before the Wounded Knee Massacre of Winters, siblings who live with their mother, Lisa, on the 1890. Furthermore, the “seventh generation” prophecy

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 219 This concise documentary updates the story of how immigration transformed Garden City, Kansas, after the arrival of the first meat-packing facilities in the 1980s. The primary voices heard in the film are those of foreign-born workers and their American- born children growing up in western Kansas. Waves of Mexicans, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Somalis, Sudanese, Burmese, Ugandans, and other nationalities have created what one observer termed the “Ellis Island of the Plains.” A decade ago, CNN headlined the ongoing demographic transformation of Finney County under the dramatic title “Whites Become Minority Scene from The Rider. Courtesy of Sony Picture Classics. in Kansas County” (CNN, May 22, 2009). Garden City received national attention as a harbinger of the rising ethnic/racial heterogeneity that is growing tiresome on the reservation, as every new was transforming the face of rural America. generation is identified as the seventh one. Maybe, for all Over the past decade, the anxiety of many white we know, that ambiguity is the purpose of the prophecy. Americans over the consequences of immigration has A central theme that runs through both films is led to an ugly rise in xenophobic violence. Unfortunately, Lakota kinship. Culture always evolves and changes, but Garden City enjoys no special immunity from this trend. acknowledgment of relatives (whether blood, extended, In 2016, three Anglo men plotted the bombing of a local or adopted) remains a strong cultural aspect of Lakota apartment complex that housed Somali Muslim migrants, identity and community. Historically, the relationship a plan thwarted by the FBI (https://www.justice. between a brother and sister, called hakákta, is one of gov/opa/pr/three-southwest-kansas-men-sentenced- the most important. The siblings—John and Jashaun in prison-plotting-bomb-somali-immigrants-garden-city). Songs My Brother Taught Me, Brady and Lil in The Rider— While avoiding explicit references to politics, Strangers clearly stand out as examples of this kind of important in Town reveals a community that has rejected division relationship, which adds a layer of meaning that we and discovered strength in its multicultural identity. appreciated. Regarding the terrorist plot as “an attack on Garden Overall, we enjoyed these films and appreciated City,” the population mobilized with candlelight vigils, seeing local people get the opportunity to be part of the prayer services, and demonstrations. The city police chief moviemaking business in a way that was not exploitative. and other civic leaders proclaimed that the town has “no We applaud the actors and Chloé Zhao for showcasing room” for hate. new kinds of stories in a place that has over the decades The filmmakers weave together interviews to offer received quite a bit of limelight but only across a narrow glimpses into various segments of Garden City’s social spectrum, oscillating between romanticized idealizations mosaic. Among the “swarms of strangers” came many and poverty-focused tragedies. refugees fleeing war and violence, seeking better lives in a place that offered stable jobs and basic security. Recent Corey Yellow Boy arrivals from the Darfur region of Sudan work at the local Oglala Lakota College Tyson plant, play chess during their off hours, and dream Claire Thomson of someday obtaining a higher education. A social worker University of Alberta explains the twin problems of culture shock and isolation, issues eased by an open and welcoming environment. Strangers in Town. Directed by Steve Lerner and Reuben The process of adjustment is illustrated by the stories Aaronson; produced by Steve Lerner. 2018; color; 33 of earlier Mexican migrants. Following their arrival in minutes. Distributed by Derussey/NGO Films; streaming Kansas, members of the Guevara family left behind at http://strangersintownthefilm.com/. meat-packing jobs to open small businesses, the parents

220 Kansas History focusing on clothing and a Hispanic grocery while their children opened an upscale coffee shop. Restaurants, barber shops, bakeries, auto-repair garages, and a myriad of other establishments attest to the inventiveness and work ethic of the transplanted residents. This dynamism is integral to maintaining an economically vibrant downtown. Jose Mendoza came from Chihuahua to work for Tyson, first living in a trailer but eventually buying and renovating a home within sight of the plant where he has toiled for over twenty-five years. His children interview him in fluent English, to which he responds in Spanish. His son Joe remarks, “I don’t know how you were able to work so hard for so many years.” One of the daughters, asking her father if he had ever dreamed of having all the material things that he has now, is told, “Mi hija, no tengo nada. Simplemente los tengo ustedes” (My daughter, I don’t have anything. I just have you guys). Another interesting focal point of the film is the large Mesa family, an amalgam of Anglo, Latino, and African American ancestry that reflects the growing local phenomenon of intermarriage. The most striking element in the film is the interviews with students raised in Garden City, attending schools where over twenty languages are spoken. These articulate young people effectively refute many of the unfounded falsehoods that fuel public fear about immigrants. Like the children of the “new immigration” who came of age a century ago, during the 1920s and 1930s, these youths Courtesy of Derussey/NGO Films. appear thoroughly at ease with the dominant culture of the United States. The enormity of the migrant generation’s spheres when they return home at the end of the school achievement is a source of inspiration, and the danger day? Does “John” revert seamlessly to “Juan” as if is not that foreign identities will overwhelm American making a change of clothing, or is living with a foot in norms but that the remarkable legacy of the migrant two worlds a bit more complicated? If English is their generation could fade over time. John Alexander Silva dominant language, how much traditional culture do observes that his grandfather “risked a lot coming here. If these young people see themselves transmitting to the he went through that struggle, then I can do everything.” next generation, especially if many marry outside their Perhaps the greatest impact on the maturing millennials own ethnic groups? Within families, how much can the of growing up amid intense cultural diversity is a general foreign-born and Kansas-born really understand each solidarity across racial and ethnic lines. As the next wave other, or is adapting to an alien society an experience of foreign workers arrives at school, the children of past that is comprehensible only firsthand? Are these children migrations react with empathy and strive to make the subjected to tensions between the values of their foreign- newcomers feel welcome, for example, by inviting single born parents and the behavioral standards of small-town strangers to sit at their lunchroom tables. The students Kansas? Is Garden City a kind of sanctuary, or is “red” seem completely at ease in a place where “we have people Kansas more broadly adjusting to twenty-first-century who come from all over the world.” One Anglo teenager social change? What reception do these children receive acknowledges the remarkable value of such multicultural when they leave their hometown? How do they react to literacy. the swirling controversy over immigration in the United It is unsurprising that this brief documentary leaves States today? Strangers in Town will show viewers the many questions unanswered. Do the young speakers beauty of transcultural understanding and then leave of perfect midwestern English live in separate cultural them wishing for a bit more time to talk.

“Our Blood-Drenched Frontiers” 221 Isaias J. McCaffery to “Take the World,” starting with anyone who might Independence Community College obstruct him from fulfilling his predatory desires. Such a storyline can happen only in a place where Brightburn. Directed by David Yarovesky; written by secrets can thrive, and that is where the filmmakers make Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn; produced by James Gunn their most fundamental misstep in metaphor and setting. and Kenneth Huang. 2019; color; 90 minutes. Distributed Brandon establishes his keen intellect by telling his by Screen Gems. classmates about the differences between bees and wasps. In 1938 National Allied Publications (later DC Comics) Bees make the homes in which they can proliferate, while published the first issue of Action Comics, launching the wasps are predators by nature and must infiltrate beehives superhero genre with Superman, a crash-landed alien to reproduce (if you somehow missed the metaphor, you baby taken in by small-town Kansas parents and raised will have a fun moment of revelation at the first sight of as Clark Kent. Superman’s adherence to “truth, justice, Brandon’s homemade mask with its makeshift proboscis). and the American way” inspired patriotism even as his This concept of Earth as hive resonates with the forested story led future comic-book writers and pop-culture surroundings of Brightburn and all the secrets that a small pontificators to ask the intriguing, if obvious, follow-up town can hold. Yet the metaphor screeches to a halt once question: What if Superman was the bad guy? The recent the film explicitly declares its Kansan locale. In Clark sweep of blockbuster films from Marvel Comics’ studio Kent’s world of rotary phones and Route 66, it was easy branch (and the high-budget, if less successful, echoing to believe that a white male humanoid alien with a good spate of DC flicks) has given this question fresh urgency, heart and a keen pair of specs could hide in plain(s) sight. with Brightburn taking the first—if copyright-conscious— But we are not in Smallville anymore, and so Brightburn’s steps to extrapolate its contours on the big screen. insistence upon its own separation from the rest of the Set in the fictional town of Brightburn, Kansas, the film outside world continually falls flat. replaces Jonathan and Martha Kent with Kyle and Tori Supposedly Brightburn is so geographically isolated Breyer (David Denman and Elizabeth Banks), shown pre– that Brandon’s aunt Merilee (Meredith Hagner) is the flagrante delicto at the end of a roving shot that pans past only certified guidance counselor for miles around, yet their vast collection of fertility books. One loud spaceship nobody has any problem using their shiny iPhones or crash and mysterious red light outside the window later, Wi-Fi-enabled laptops unless Brandon’s powers interfere. the screen swaps to a montage of home videos featuring Rust-eaten old trucks traverse well-paved roads, while a dark-eyed, chubby-cheeked toddler: their son, Brandon paint-peeling clapboard houses have well-maintained (Jackson A. Dunn), now a sweet-faced preteen with and spacious interiors (or, in one glaring case, a wall of shaggy hair and a quiet mien. windows that reveals a pristine outdoor pool). Everyone The ninety-minute film wastes no time setting up the congregates in the faded linoleum of the cash-only town building blocks of Brandon’s descent into villainy: here diner unless they bring home a bag of Chinese takeout. is his genius-level IQ, there are his bullies, and here Brandon and Kyle go on a father-son hunting trip with is his pretty classmate Caitlyn (Emmie Hunter), ripe deadly results, but why are they traipsing through a forest for a prepubescent fixation. But this is, after all, a film rather than sitting in a blind, and is it even deer-hunting about alien dangers, and so the real horror begins when season yet? The film’s final moments spur one last Brandon is drawn from his bed by the flaring red lights question for anyone who’s ever actually been to “flyover and hypnotic whispers of the spaceship, locked up tight country”: Has anyone ever written or uttered the phrase in a dilapidated barn. A few attempts to break free from “Kansas forest fires” without oxymoronic intention? its siren song later, Brandon’s sociopathy ramps up in To be fair, the film seems at least somewhat aware of pacing and gore, from the torment and murder of his its environmental shortcomings, so we get the sense that family’s chickens to making creepy romantic overtures Brightburn’s barrenness is more a matter of its people while floating outside Caitlyn’s open window. After a than its place. Doubts about familial conflicts of interest public rejection and Brandon’s first retaliatory use of aside, it is easy to believe that Brandon’s violence against superhuman strength, the audience knows what most his fellow student can be swept under the rug with a of the townsfolk just keep missing: Brandon has already few days of suspension, so long as Aunt Merilee gives segregated himself from humanity and embraced his the town sheriff (Gregory Alan Williams) an update on potential as an alien scourge, determined to follow orders Brandon’s progress. It is easier still to believe that in this

222 Kansas History small town, the only person capable of wrapping his or her brain around the idea of a twelve-year-old sociopath is said sheriff, who arrives at this conclusion owing to the stylized sigil that Brandon uses to sign his crime scenes. On top of it all, this is a town that, for all its hints of insularity, suffers a fundamental lack of communication. Nobody on the screen gets the big picture because only the audience is given all the puzzle pieces necessary to reveal the mounting steps of Brandon’s dark path. Brandon’s murders all hinge on the same turning point: he warns his potential victims that speaking about his deviance will “end very badly” for those involved, and their resulting defiance seals their fate. Small wonder, then, that so many of them die choking on their own blood. The cast acts out these moments as well as the script and tight pacing of the film allow. Banks is a standout in this dramatic role, her persistent devotion to the “blessing” of having a child holding strong even when maintaining that belief requires massive maternal myopia. Denman provides a steady bulk and verbal fumbling that sell the notion of a father who wants to help his strange boy but lacks the emotional tools to do so. Dunn plays the role of blank-eyed creepy moppet to the hilt, even when he has to deliver a casually Übermenschian speech to his aunt about his superhuman “superiority” that undercuts the will-he- won’t-he tension of the film’s climactic face-off between Courtesy of Screen Gems. mother and son. The special effects are also quite good for a film with a $7 million budget, spent judiciously on the film closes on its montage of panic-filled news clips Brandon’s laser vision, superhuman strength and speed, showing Brandon’s growing spree of destruction and and flying as well as an escalating series of splatterfests, chaos, a midcredits scene of a C-list conspiracy newscaster ranging from a highly improbable but full-body-cringe- (played by Michael T. Rooker with a delightfully wild- inducing eye injury to an unfortunate instance of jaw haired mania) sets the stage for an expanded roster of meets steering wheel and the high-velocity murders of comic book analogues. Between these two depictions of the the friendly local police force. The occasional CGI gaffe wider world comes the film’s most existential threat: what can be largely forgiven against these hallmark moments, if Brightburn’s inability to grapple with its superhuman although many may find it difficult not to laugh in the transplant is humanity’s rule rather than its exception? middle of a discordant nightmare sequence that reminds With any luck, Brightburn’s relative box-office success will us too much of Chucky and not enough of Rosemary’s allow its creators to move beyond the impositions of its baby. source material to show what comes next. In the end, Brightburn shines most as a dark origin story with good intentions and better world building. As Bethany R. Mowry University of Oklahoma

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