I happen to like the book, and not the movie. Cooper is, of course, white-centric, but he is quite sympathetic to the Indians, for someone of his time. And in any event, the bookis set during the French and Indian War, the goal of which was not for evil whites to get Indians to wipe each other out, but for the French and English to settle their differences on yet another theater of operations (French and Indian War is the name for the North American subset for the Seven Years War which was conducted in Europe, some historians argue this was the first true world war).
At this point, all the powers were concerned about was the other European powers in NA, and Indians interested them only insofar as they could help them kick the British or French (depending on who you were) out. It was very much before the huge expansion that followed Lewis and Clark etc and portions of NA inhabited by whites were very small.
OK, this said, the main reason I do not care for the movie is because it completely changes the plot of the book. Don't like the story, write your own, don't keep nothing from te book and call it LotM.
In the book, Hawkeye is an old man (the age of Uncas' father). The main 'lovebirds' of the book are Duncan (the British officer) and Alice (the younger, blonde daughter). Cora also likes Duncan but he always loved Alice, so no go, there. Uncas ends up falling for Cora. Hawkeye, clearly, doesn't have any sexy scenes, as that would be more senior citizen sex and not hunky DDL disrobing. Cooper did write a book about young Hawkeye, in fact LotM is somewhat in the middle of the Leatherstocking Tales, and in that book Hawkeye had an OTP, but I think the book was called Pathfinder (I read it a long time ago) and has nothing in common with this.
This book was actually unusual for a time, because it had bad Indians (Magua is a very Victorian villain) but also noble and good ones (Uncas, Chingachgook) and its ideas that 'miscegenation' can produce noble people was also rather novel. Cora's father is very explicit about his love and pride in her, and Cora is clearly the stronger of the sisters. And Duncan makes very clear that it's not because of the race thing that he is not in love with Cora, but because he just prefers Alice. The trope of two sisters, the older one very strong and intelligent and the younger fragile, and the hero falling for the latter, is a very common Victorian trope (see Woman in White by Wilkie Collins) and says a lot about what people of the time found desirable in women, but I don't find it a huge flaw, just a thing of its time.
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Date: 2007-10-19 12:59 pm (UTC)At this point, all the powers were concerned about was the other European powers in NA, and Indians interested them only insofar as they could help them kick the British or French (depending on who you were) out. It was very much before the huge expansion that followed Lewis and Clark etc and portions of NA inhabited by whites were very small.
OK, this said, the main reason I do not care for the movie is because it completely changes the plot of the book. Don't like the story, write your own, don't keep nothing from te book and call it LotM.
In the book, Hawkeye is an old man (the age of Uncas' father). The main 'lovebirds' of the book are Duncan (the British officer) and Alice (the younger, blonde daughter). Cora also likes Duncan but he always loved Alice, so no go, there. Uncas ends up falling for Cora. Hawkeye, clearly, doesn't have any sexy scenes, as that would be more senior citizen sex and not hunky DDL disrobing. Cooper did write a book about young Hawkeye, in fact LotM is somewhat in the middle of the Leatherstocking Tales, and in that book Hawkeye had an OTP, but I think the book was called Pathfinder (I read it a long time ago) and has nothing in common with this.
This book was actually unusual for a time, because it had bad Indians (Magua is a very Victorian villain) but also noble and good ones (Uncas, Chingachgook) and its ideas that 'miscegenation' can produce noble people was also rather novel. Cora's father is very explicit about his love and pride in her, and Cora is clearly the stronger of the sisters. And Duncan makes very clear that it's not because of the race thing that he is not in love with Cora, but because he just prefers Alice. The trope of two sisters, the older one very strong and intelligent and the younger fragile, and the hero falling for the latter, is a very common Victorian trope (see Woman in White by Wilkie Collins) and says a lot about what people of the time found desirable in women, but I don't find it a huge flaw, just a thing of its time.
Anyway, this is getting novel length itself.