Margot Mifflin » olive oatman

Americanitus: Diagnosis for the People

margot.mifflin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:37:15 +0000

Proust suffered from it. Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman took “rest cures” for it. And though it’s been retired from The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we all surely have a touch of it: Americanitus (or “neurasthenia”), a nervous condition triggered by the stresses of modern life (which, said Freud, also caused flatulence).

San Francisco artist Alison Pebworth has launched a cross-country research project called “Beautiful Possibility” in which she explores contemporary manifestations of Americanitus by interviewing people about what ails them and why. Her historical research focuses on the intersection between European and Native American history and how it shapes American identity today. Pebworth’s wry, postmodern, and stunning circus-style tour banners combine folk, historical and political icons (including Olive Oatman, who, she says, elicits more questions than anyone in the series). One of my favorites, “Claim Your Demons,” shows Dick Cheney hunkered down in a basket next to the Sauk Indian chief Black Hawk (to her credit, Pebworth forces you to figure out why Black Hawk was once considered a demon of Cheneyesque proportions).

Pebworth’s multimedia road show is interactive on many levels: she’s out there taking the pulse of the nation now; you can browse around to see where the northern leg of her tour is taking her here, learn what happened at previous stops here, or take her Americanitus survey here. Better yet, track her down and tell her how you’re feeling. Next stop: Aberdeen, SD.

Arizona Death Trip: Phantom of the Black Hills

margot.mifflin — Sun, 23 May 2010 17:06:05 +0000

Since she was ransomed back from Mohave Indians in 1856 wearing a tribal chin tattoo, Olive Oatman has inspired a sculpture by Erastus Dow Palmer, two biographies, two novels, a play starring John Wilkes Booth’s brother, a 1965 episode of “Death Valley Days” (featuring Ronald Reagan), four children’s books, a 1982 short story by Elmore Leonard, and an Oscar-nominated short film (2008), but never a song.

Until now. Last month the country grindcore band Phantom of the Black Hills released a fittingly Deadwoodesque tribute to America’s first tattooed white woman on “Ghosts,” tweaking some interesting themes, like whether or not Oatman, a Mormon, lost her religion as a white Mohave. If the facts in “Olive Oatman” are iffy (twisted as they’ve been for over a century), the mood is right: Here’s the Oatman clan heading west:

Her and her family prayin’ to the moon
Piled in a wagon, rolling to their doom
Bones of the past rattlin in the back
That’s when the mountain roared

Indeed, the Yavapai Indians who killed Oatman’s family in southern Arizona (then Mexico) were mountain dwellers. (Note to Governor Brewer: back then, the state was filled with nativists–none of whom were white). Phantom nails it in saying Oatman, who was taken captive, then traded to the Mohave, “had to bend but she never bowed.”

The song’s gritty vocals and driving rhythm–slow in the intro, then double time–evoke Oatman’s ride on a prairie schooner driven by a reckless and monomaniacal father of seven, bound for California (the place, wrote Didion, “where we run out of continent”). A banjo traces jittery lines of fingerpicked beauty across this well-worn gothic narrative. Though Phantom of the Black Hills’ website is damnably uninformative (perhaps a masked dude aiming his banjo at you like a loaded weapon is all you need to know), I’m glad an L.A. band with a pistols-at-dawn attitude was the first to claim this California dreamer.

Olive, Britney, Hillary, and Michelle

margot.mifflin — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:39:27 +0000

When a journalist asked me if the Oatman story sheds any light on expectations of women today, my first impulse was to talk about how far we’ve come since the 1850s when she became a public figure whose story was written by a man, who was concerned about remaining in her proper sphere on the lecture circuit, and who had to conceal her body even as she discussed her tattoos. But there is a striking continuity: people were fascinated by Oatman largely because of her body: they lined up to see her and pondered her physical violation both sexually and through the tattoo. Her story gave them permission to stare at a woman and allowed her to present and even refer to her body in public.

As in Oatman’s day, when women were forced into body-modifying clothes involving corsets and bustles, we’re still obsessed with women’s bodies in terms of shape (whether they’re too fat or thin or old or mannish or cosmetically reconstructed or in need of reconstruction) and in terms of behavior (whether Britney’s wearing underwear in public or not, whether President Hillary Clinton would have aged in office to Rush Limbaugh’s satisfaction, whether Michelle Obama’s arms have semiotic significance, and so on). Oatman had to be very careful about discussing her tattooed body in public, reinforcing the notion that whatever her physical experiences had been with the Mohave, she was their victim. Today, women are much physically freer, but our culture is equally obsessed with the body and what women do with it.

The difference is that now, showing is not only permitted, it’s expected. I sometimes wonder if centuries from now people will look back at public rituals like the Grammys and the Academy Awards and marvel that exposure is virtually a requirement for women in formal wear, while men’s bodies are fully concealed. The same applies to Esquire’s Women we Love entries (of eight photos posted in this page right now, two women are naked, two are topless, three are wearing lingerie, and one wears a tank top). And Elle’s best loved men? A hairy forearm is as racy as it gets.