Tonto Doesn’t Call for a Remake
Disney, well-known for its stereotyped characters and films over the years, has decided to make a Lone Ranger film. The company sure doesn’t have a great track record in portraying people of color in a positive light, and though Johnny Depp, who is portraying Tonto—which means “idiot” in Spanish, by the way, and was supposedly derived from the nickname some Native Americans gave to a drunk man—claims that he wants to give the character a depth that television previously did not, I simply don’t see how.
The character of Tonto was not designed for dignity. He was designed as a stereotype that American viewers at the time could ridicule and laugh at, and perhaps occasionally cheer on as he did something (stereotypically) brave and admirable. What his character lacked in depth was made up for in his inability to speak English, thereby creating a caricature that audiences could conveniently file away as a person who was “other,” perhaps not even a person at all.
So including Tonto in a 2012 film at all is not about to break any new grounds. Keeping the character in action instead of including a new character—with a new name and more in-depth personality—would have been revolutionary. Not making the movie at all and instead making something brand new, featuring actual native actors and actresses, would have been revolutionary. This looks like it’s just another big payday for Hollywood.
While these first photos of the film released do portray a different look for Tonto—I suppose—they are still a version of redface, as far as I am concerned. Depp himself says that his intention is to change the way natives are portrayed in film. Um, really? Do you really think that’s your job, Johnny? Your job is to make pirates look sexy rather than syphilis-y and drive the non-macabre lovers of pretty faces to Tim Burton films. Your job is NOT to make a new image of Native Americans in movies. That, good sir, is the job of a Native American actor or actress—and though I would argue that it should be the job of every person in the film industry on some level (particularly writers and producers and directors), only an actual native person should be allowed to do it in the first place.
I’m against any character named Tonto, particularly in our increasingly Spanish-speaking culture—but I’m also simply against these one-note tropes that Hollywood seems so stuck on.