Page 51 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

a tremendous turnaround, he shoots fifteen savages in just a few seconds. The

floor of the arena is covered in dead bodies. Encouraged by their hero, the
cavalry rallies and suddenly the combat reverses the previous outcome. The
military restore battle formation. They charge and the Indians withdraw, but
there’s only a handful of them left and they die one by one in a well-practised
choreography. Things are now as far away from the original event as they
could be, and the massacre has been transformed into a succession of thrilling
exploits that lead to an edifying conclusion.

When the “battle” of Wounded Knee has finally ended, most of the Indians
are dead. It’s a crushing victory. Buffalo Bill bends over a wounded man, and
then another. The scene is almost touching. Finally, he pays homage to the
Indian combatants and raises them from the dead with an imperious gesture,
before announcing the next act.

THE SPECTACLE IS OVER; people wander round the Indian craft stalls and the
hot-dog stands. They glance at the goods and try on a necklace. They’d love to
have a tomahawk or even a feather headdress! This is what we now call
merchandising. The Indians are selling products that derive from their
genocide. They haggle with the gawpers, and then stash the modest sums in

their leather purses.
Reality shows are not, as has been claimed, the ultimate, cruel and all-
consuming incarnation of mass entertainment. They are its origin; they propel
every last one of the participants of their dramas into perpetual amnesia. The
survivors of Wounded Knee will have to endure for all eternity the blanks

fired by General Miles’s rangers, by night as well as by day, because, thanks
to its giant projectors, the Wild West Show was the first artificially lit
spectacle in the world, the first night-time spectacle.
From then on, whether in Strasbourg or in Illinois, in show after show, the
survivors of Wounded Knee would perform the “soft” version of Wounded
Knee. A version where the Indians and the 7th cavalry regiment would
heroically confront each other, and where the US Army would emerge

victorious. And for more than a year, right across Europe, they would perform
the Buffalo Bill interpretation of the facts. In this edited version you don’t see
the stockbreeders’ treachery, nor the ambush laid by Riley Miller who killed
as many Indians as he could before flogging off their tunics and their scalps to