undersized american

Where's the spirit essay jojo

oh you mean the essay about how spirit untamed is legitimately the most evil thing i have ever seen and knowledge of its existence caused me to question whether humanity can truly be redeemed? you mean that essay? i need you to understand that i think dishing on children's media is stupid. children, and young girls especially, are constantly derided for what they like. i'm not here to do that. likewise, i'm not here to dish on sequels and reboots. i love sequels and reboots. i even liked the hobbit movies. i have no taste and won't attempt to force my taste on others. no. i'm here to say that spirit untamed is an unmitigated crime against both god and man in every way a piece of media can be because it attempts to build on the unparalleled masterpiece that came before it.

and i know i'm right. i've never been more right. what the fuck is spirit untamed, you ask? here's a trailer. you'll note they turned off comments. every official iteration of this has comments turned off. what i'm about to say in this essay is very much fellow-feeling for people of a certain age and they've made their thoughts explicitly clear basically everywhere this sequel film has been talked about. if you don't want to watch the above trailer or can't, it's a cgi animated horse girl movie with all the horse girl accoutrements. she moves to a small town, she's a little weird, she loves animals, she makes friends. presumably something bad is happening and she will fix it with horses and friendship. once again, i'm not here to dish on that. i love cgi and i'm a horse girl. i learned how to ride on a mustang. this is a movie about me. that's fine. if this were the only spirit that had ever existed, it would be fine.

unfortunately, this is a sequel to a much better movie, 2002's traditionally animated spirit: stallion of the cimmaron. when i say it's a "better movie" i mean that i'm not totally sure two movies so different can exist in the same universe. because the 2002 movie was told from the perspective of the HORSE as voiced by MATT DAMON and it was literally about him SABOTAGING WESTWARD EXPANSION and FUCKING THE EVIL UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT and DESTROYING INDUSTRY.

there are exactly two relevant humans in the film: the colonel (he's a colonel) and little creek (he's a lakota boy who gets captured by the united states government along with spirit, the titular horse). i'll let you guess who the bad guy is! no i won't. it's the united states government which is accurately depicted as an accessory of capitalist expansion west as represented by the railroad specifically, to the detriment of all things good. the first time we see anyone in uniform, they're killing natives in an unprovoked massacre on a native village. shortly after, the colonel captures spirit, and then little creek after that. when the colonel sees little creek, he comments on his race in a way that is malicious and real, and then has him put not in the stockade but tied up where they tie unbroken horses, where they have tied spirit. the movie never attempts to sidestep what it's depicting or saying. it says it plainly, in a way any child or adult can understand. it's uncompromising.

honestly, i'm kind of shocked this movie hasn't entered into the modern sphere of discourse a little more. maybe it's because it's unimpeachable. no one can disagree that it's visually one of the most beautiful animated movies out there. no one can disagree with the message, because it's so simple and true: yes, the government destroyed native populations. yes, it existed largely as an arm of capitalism to aid westward expansion at the expense of native populations and the land itself. the dichotomy of good and evil is so clear in this one and the evil is american.

this is the climactic scene:

spirit--who has just destroyed the railroad with little creek's help--tries to escape the actual literal united states government who are trying to actually kill this horse and this lakota boy with actual guns. i think little creek actually gets shot, but not fatally. they escape together by jumping across a canyon, solidifying the eagle symbolism that the movie used repeatedly as a metaphor for freedom and the spirit of the west, but the west-west. like the actual land in the west. not whatever texas thinks it is. it ends with little creek letting spirit go (this scene apparently still makes me cry 20 years later so JOT that down) along with his own horse so they can go live in horseful peace in the (titular) cimarron, which in this movie is an effective stand-in for the unmolested west--though the area depicted is largely a fantasy mishmash of various areas.

full stop i'm a emotionally compromised about any discussion of the american west and history. it's been most of my life and the depth and nuance is endless. we could examine the rights and the wrongs of the national park system, of preservation over conservation, over the drastic and continued and literal physical marginalization of native people and cultures. we can also get deep into wild horses in this area specifically today, how they're rounded up, why, and where they ultimately end up. all the efficacy of that. i've been to more bureau of land management auctions than i can count, and even trained a few wild horses. i'm not going to get into any of that here. i just want you to know that this animated horse movie, with music by bryan adams and hans zimmer, is the closest thing we have had to a mainstream kid's movie addressing any of it. any of the reality and any of the history.

it depicts the government sanctioned destruction of native populations, it shows how the "untouched" west was actually very much touched by native populations prior to industrial expansion west but not in a way that destroyed those areas, it critiques the very concept of taming the west, and it shows that manifest destiny and westward expansion as represented in the movie by the railroad had a very real toll on nature in and of itself and required vast fucking resources to accomplish. it even shows that they were really shitty to horses in the old west. and again, not to harp on it, but it absolutely 100% is the only mainstream animated film that shows an unprovoked massacre of a native village by the government. and it did all this no exposition, almost no dialogue at all. it just puts it on screen in stunning animation. i dare any studio to even attempt a movie like this today. no one would even try.

NATURALLY, THIS GIVEN, I WOULD FEEL SOME RESERVATIONS ABOUT A CUTESY SEQUEL WHERE SPIRIT IS LITERALLY TAMED BY THE DAUGHTER OF THE RAILROAD OWNER.