April 13, 2008

Indians in Astro Boy

The 26th English-language episode of the Japanese cartoon Astro Boy features a Native theme. If you overlook the racist characteristics of the primary antagonist, it's not bad.

Here's the standard synopsis:Don Tay's Infernal Machine (Astro Boy; Mushi Productions, 1964): Wicked scientist Don Tay has built a super robot named Ferno, capable of generating tremendous heat to destroy other robots, break into vaults and eventually revive an inactive volcano.The cartoon opens with a shot of a saguaro cactus, then pans over a desert landscape of mesas and cacti. A newsreel-style narrator sets the scene:In a faraway desert land, proud and noble descendants of a formerly great civilization were conquered by invaders. History tells how the invading armies took all the gold and silver and forced the natives to work in the mines and in the fields. Old and young alike were pressed into service, and made to spend long hours under the blazing sun.Peasant Indian women are shown carrying loads of ore on their backs, then hoeing a field. An overseer in an Mexican sombrero and sash whips one old lady, who collapses to the ground.

A pained voice takes over the narration. The camera pulls back to reveal that a man in a suit has been watching the previous scene in a film:"She's an old lady. She's just like my grandmother. All the cruelty she suffered."He shuts off the film and turns to a robot he's built:"I've run this film for over 20 years, and every time I cry. To think how my parents were made to suffer. That's why I created you, Ferno, a mighty robot with tremendous strength and power."We eventually learn that the man is named Don Tay, and his robot Ferno is the infernal machine of the title. Judging by the visual and verbal references, the cartoon is set in Mexico, although no specific location is mentioned.

It's a decent setup for a cartoon--not unlike the one in the Superman cartoon featuring a mad Indian scientist. Especially when you consider that it was an early 1960s cartoon. This may be the first description of the atrocities committed against Indians to ever appear in a cartoon.

Don Tay the dog

As one critic put it, Don Tay "is a fully clothed, well-dressed, thoroughly civilized, and educated man." Unfortunately, he looks like a racist caricature. He must be a mix of Indian and European blood, with perhaps some African blood thrown in. He has dark skin and a weird shock of white hair--but other than that, he resembles a dog. He's distinctly less human than the Euro-Americans he encounters. And his disguise, such as it is, is a black mask with a sombrero rim around his neck.

After Ferno steals some plans from the Institute of Science, we learn what Don Tay's scheme entails. Ferno is to dig a tunnel under Mount Smokum, an inactive volcano, to trigger an eruption. The lava will destroy a Mexican village. Presumably this will kill the Mexicans who enslaved his people as well as a bunch of innocents.

But Don Tay repents when he's surrounded by lava himself and Astro Boy saves him. He helps Astro Boy divert the lava and save the village. A lesson is learned: something about evil swallowing itself if left unchecked, literally as well as figuratively. And all's well that ends well.


dmarks said...

Sounds better reading it, with very few pictures. I never gave "Astro Boy" a look, due to a character that lookes like a "jet age" version of a Big Boy statue.

Rob said...

Most of the cartoons were pretty lame. About the only saving grace was that Astro Boy was a nice little guy who avoided violence whenever possible.