Colonization, Conquest and Culture Clash: - title need italics

The “Custer Complex” in Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Author:

Philip R. Fagan

2005

Blending Marxist literary theory and historical analysis, Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment (1994) lays bare the myths that lie behind American ideology at the dawn of the industrial age. At the root of both myth and ideology is a utopian vision of the frontier, as much a metaphor for the character of a white civilized Christian people as for the beauty of the land. But as Slotkin’s history demonstrates, this frontier myth hides a dark underside. The supposed virtues of its people are but a manifestation of a strongly held belief in racial and cultural superiority, and the land becomes a bloody playing field for unchecked violence, greed and corruption. Slotkin’s book is a grim wake up call for the average American reader, exposing the ideology Americans have been spoon-fed for generations as, essentially, a doctrine of genocide and white supremacy.

Slotkin’s revisionist history shares an affinity with the films of Werner Herzog. Three of his collaborations with the volatile actor Klaus Kinski explore the folly that attends the colonizing/ conquering instinct and inevitably dismantles its best intentions: Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972); Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987). The trilogy demonstrates a strong tie between the German director’s vision of the conquest and colonization of South America and Slotkin’s analysis of the Northern frontier experience. In particular, the first entry seems a virtual companion piece to the issues and themes set forth in The Fatal Environment.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God recounts a doomed expedition along the Peruvian Amazon by Spanish Conquistadors in search of the fabled El Dorado, City of Gold. Aguirre (Kinski) is an ambitious and insane officer who leads the troops first to mutiny, then to death. He embodies the most deplorable traits of Slotkin’s frontier “hero”, and his misadventure parallels Custer’s “Last Stand” at Little Big Horn. Indeed, the figure of Aguirre has much in common with the “Boy General” of The Fatal Environment. While Custer dies seeking a “New El Dorado” in the Black Hills, Aguirre meets a similar fate searching for the source of the original myth. Both are officers on the rise who have proven themselves as natural leaders and fierce warriors, they share the same obsessive ambition and greed, even the same “long yellow locks” of hair (Slotkin, p.386), and they each lead their final missions to doom. Most importantly, they have in common the same violent and uncivil temperament that marks their nature as inseparable from the “savages” they seek to conquer, a frontier type described by Slotkin variously as the Half-Breed, Dangerous Frontiersman, Indian Fighter and White Savage (pp.79-80). As Aguirre puts it, “It is not my habit to retreat!”

Custer and Aguirre simultaneously demand respect but resent the same political authority they aspire to. Aguirre is the more extreme renegade in this regard, leading a mutiny and essentially establishing his own short-lived Peruvian dictatorship on the Amazon. In overthrowing the expedition’s leader, he invokes the legend of Cortez who was ordered back to Spain, but refused and went on to conquer Mexico: “That’s how he became rich and famous! He disobeyed!” Revolt and rebellion against authority are inextricably linked with success and manhood. Later in the film, the mission’s priest echoes this belief: “The Church has always been on the side of the strong.” By endorsing Aguirre, he contributes the same religious advocacy of bloodshed and genocide that Slotkin locates in frontier types like William Walker and Cotton Mather. In another scene, an Indian who the priest considers “trusting’ in nature recounts his people’s prophecy of the arrival of the White Man, then is killed for “blasphemy” when he accidentally mishandles a Bible. The priest remarks, “It is a tough business. These savages are hard to convert.” Here, as in Slotkin’s book, the policy of converting the savage coexists with a doctrine of extermination. Sadly, religious doctrine has consistently been used throughout history to rationalize oppression and domination, assisting in the ascent to power of madmen like Aguirre and Custer. In spite of his callousness, the priest feels compelled to remind the men not to forget the most important goal of the mission: “The conversion of savages.”

Ironically, the violent and fanatical obsessions of the white alpha male are tempered by an incessant need for female affection and nurturing. As Custer must have the love and approval of wife and sister, Aguirre brings his daughter on the expedition, doting on her in a loving manner that is in stark contrast with the insanity he exhibits throughout the film. Like Custer and the frontier heroes, he appears to legitimize his violent nature as an instinct to “protect or avenge the imperiled ‘female’” (Slotkin, p.377).

Despite the striking similarities between megalomaniacs like Custer and Aguirre, the propagators of the frontier myth portrayed the Spanish Conquistadors who proceeded them in the New World as an inferior, corrupted and effete race whose racial “taint” assured their eventual defeat: “…The same historical principles that decreed the sixteenth century triumph of feudalism over barbarism decree in the nineteenth century the triumph of Young America over the remnants of Aztec and conquistador…(The United States) is not only militarily superior to that of Cortes, it is morally superior, and therefore sure of conquering” (Slotkin, p.175). Thus, Aguirre’s history is doomed to repeat itself in the form of a supposedly superior Custer and countless other frontier heroes.

In a sense, Herzog views the Spaniards in a manner similar to that of Slotkin’s new frontiersman. As mentioned previously, Aguirre is comforted (incestuously, it is implied) by his daughter on the mission; and the officer he overthrows also has a female companion, his mistress. It is as though these warriors cannot rend themselves from the nurture of bosom even if it entails mortal danger to the women in question. Guzman, the nobleman, is a fat and effeminate voluptuary who gorges himself on the scant food supply and attempts to maintain his lavish lifestyle as the expedition spirals into oblivion. As the their adventure deteriorates into a struggle for survival, the troops undergo a “degeneration through nature” similar to that of James Fenimore Cooper’s fictional Bush Clan (Slotkin, p.99), most evident in scenes such as the one where they desperately lap up precious salt like dogs. In following Aguirre into rebellion and rejection of civil authority, they become savages of nature themselves. Of course, the director is not indulging in careless stereotypes of the Spanish, but critiquing the notion of racial and cultural superiority embodied by both the South American conquistador of the 1500s and the 19th Century North American Frontiersman Slotkin describes. In the wild, civilization maintains only the most precarious hold on such as adventurers, and the risk of succumbing to the savage instinct is always at hand. It is the very duality of the civilized soldier and white savage that is required of fierce, hardy leaders like Custer and Aguirre.

Issues of race, class and gender are addressed in a number of ways in Aguirre. In the New World of Spanish colonization, it is the Indians who are slaves. The priest pronounces his judgment of them in no uncertain terms: “Our Indian slaves are useless. The changing climate kills them off like flies…Most of them die of colds. We don’t even have time to give them a Christian burial.” They are not only physically weak, but are comparable to flies and not worth the time or energy to bury when they are worked to death. Okello, a black man among the Spanish troops, is an ex-slave who now performs domestic services for the nobleman Guzman. Guzman looks forward to the discovery of El Dorado when they will be able to slay the enemy with golden bullets and attempts to entice Okello by suggesting the ex-slave will then be able to serve the nobles on “golden platters”. Okello dreams of the utopia of the new colonies: “And all of us will gain something…Governships… Women… Perhaps I’ll even be free…” As history will tell, Okello and his race will hardly be emancipated in the New World order. He is also stripped and forced to run in front of the troops to frighten hostile Indians. If the Indians are scared of their horses, the conquistadors reason, a black man will terrify them even more. The comparison suggests that Blacks, like the Indians are subhuman.

Women fare no better in the New World. When the mistress of the overthrown commander asserts that servants should be paid in the jungle as they are in Spain “even if they are just Indians”, the priest replies condescendingly, “We understand your confusion, Dear. You are excused.”

In one poignant scene, a Peruvian slave laments his encounter with the White Man in a monologue that could easily transfer to the Red Man of Slotkin’s frontier 300 years later. He was a “prince in this land”, a man of great dignity and respect. The Whites reduced him to slavery, put him in chains and replaced his name with a Christian one, literally annihilating his identity. Still, he feels sorry for Aguirre’s crew because he knows “there is no escape from this jungle.”

There are many elements in the film that follow this “force of nature” theme. Even before the mutiny, the expedition seems doomed. The rainforest terrain is impossible for the troops to navigate with their horses, heavy munitions, and the sedan chairs for the ladies and noblemen. The cannons sticks in the mud and horseback riders become entangled in the trees. The rapids of the Amazon are at first so fierce that they take on a supernatural vitality, then so stagnant that the rafts drift in circles, reflecting the fatigue and fever of the imperiled soldiers. The horrors of untouched nature act together as a unified force to defeat the would-be conquerors and the volatile spirit of the land becomes a character in itself.

In his retracing of the fated Aguirre expedition’s travels, writer Stephen Minta (1993) evokes the hostile nature of this environment and the futility of attempting to tame it: “Vital though the rain forest is to our survival, this doesn’t necessarily make us want to love it. It’s only to easy to believe that life started out this way, at the bottom of the primeval mire. That’s why the reckless fantasy of taming the forest feels so much like progress: Stripping the past away for a nice well-ordered ranch, with cattle grazing in the sun. After another day, the path had almost vanished and from then on we moved very slowly. Brambles sharp as knives would scrape against our arms and legs or wrap themselves tightly around our packs, holding us motionless” (Minta, p.104).

It was precisely this mythical and mystical essence, as beautiful as it is malevolent, that Slotkin locates as the irresistible draw to conquerors and colonizers of every race and generation, the association of a vast untrammeled nature with legendary “sacred and magical lands…Transformation would be part of the experience” (p.40). The Edenic beauty and abundance of resources apparently made even the most dangerous expeditions into the New World worth the risk.

The Natives of such lands are seen as an embodiment of this malevolent force of nature as well. In Aguirre, arrows appear out of nowhere sporadically, slowly but steadily wiping out Aguirre’s band of mutineers. The fact that the hostile Indians are barely glimpsed in the film adds to the impression that it is Nature herself striking back at the arrogant conquistadors. The popular association of the Indians of Slotkin’s frontier with nature itself is compounded throughout The Fatal Environment. He locates the root of this myth in the historical romances of Cooper. While “Nature herself” speaks through the nobility of the “good Indians”, the “evil and hostile force of nature…(resists) the advance of civilization, its cruelty and cunning coupled with an affinity for the environment” (Slotkin, pp.100-101). The Indian becomes representative of all that is treacherous and hostile in the natural world and by controlling or exterminating him, the white conqueror will bring nature itself under rule. “Pitted against the relentless majesty of the primeval landscape,” John Sandford writes, “is the equally relentless will of Aguirre himself” (1980, p.52).

It is in such a savage and fatal environment that Aguirre overthrows his troop’s commander and makes his last stand. Still, his descent into madness and treason must have the veneer of respectable civilization. “Because of our mutiny, we must make our position legal”, he proclaims before drawing up a writ of independence that reflects Slotkin’s theme of manifest destiny in the frontier ideology.

“Fate, God’s help, and the work of our hands have carried us down a river…in search of a new land of gold…We are forging history and no fruits of this earth shall henceforth be shared. We rebel until death…Fortune smiles on the brave and spits on the coward.” Aguirre crowns the slovenly nobleman Guzman “Emperor of El Dorado” and then demands the execution of the former commander. Guzman responds that while he is emperor, “law will prevail”. A mockery of the judicial process follows, but Aguirre soon has his way and the man is executed.

Those who plot a counter-rebellion against Aguirre (“I would rather join the Indians than stay with this madman.”) are quickly dispatched. Now the embodiment of Slotkin’s dangerous frontiersman/ renegade archetype, Aguirre declares himself the “ultimate traitor. There can be none greater!” Like the frontiersman gone native Slotkin describes, Aguirre the soldier devolves into Aguirre the white degenerate, infected by the wild and its savage denizens:

“…Those who act as the agents of dispossession- the Indian fighters in the wilderness…acquire the taint of society’s moral malaise…’half-breeds’ sharing a racial taint which ties them to the Indians (they are) combating” (p.80).

As they drift downriver to their protracted doom, Guzman “solemnly and formally” takes possession of all land in sight and is pleased that his new kingdom is all ready six times the size of Spain and growing each day on the Amazon. Aguirre’s ambitions are wilder. In his mad arrogance, he sees himself as a deity, a literal force of nature. He can make the birds “fall dead from the trees” and proclaims himself “The Wrath of god. The earth I walk upon sees me and quakes.” He promises his dying followers the riches of El Dorado as surely Custer promised glory at Little Big Horn. “Mexico was no illusion. If we turn back now, others will come and succeed…Even if this land only consists of trees and water, we will conquer it. And it will be milked dry by those who follow us.” Herzog seems to be hinting that as far back as the 16th century, even conquerors as mad as Aguirre acknowledged the finite nature of frontier expansion. The land eventually runs out, only to be reclaimed by a new race or generation of conquerors.

Aguirre goes on to say that the mission is not about the gold of El Dorado, but about power and fame. He resents his reluctant followers’ pursuit of simple wealth; like Custer, it is history and his God-given manifest destiny that beckons him. His beloved daughter dead and nature literally overtaking him in the form of hundreds of small capuchin monkeys that swarm over his decrepit raft, Aguirre continues to dream of the glorious days to come in the conquered lands of his delirious mind. Marrying his daughter and breeding a perfect race, he will take Mexico from Cortez and overthrow the Spanish crown in Trinidad. The conquering instinct appears stronger than death. “We will stage history as others stage plays. Who else is with me?”

Many others, like General George Armstrong Custer, will continue to answer his call to conquest, white savagery and race war.

In closing, it should be noted that Slotkin is not primarily concerned with rewriting the history of the frontier at the start of the industrial age. In his introduction, he claims that the ideology and issues he will illuminate are thoroughly ingrained in our culture and will probably continue to dominate our sense of ourselves as a race and nation. He claims Vietnam as “our last great ‘Indian War’ invoking the Frontier Myth’s dark side of racism, false pride, and the profligate wastage of lives, cultures, and resources” (p.XV). Herzog doubtless saw the same parallels when he made Aguirre at the height of this last great Indian war. The European counterculture sensibility Herzog brings to his vision of an attempted colonization of Peru shares the same concerns and responsibilities as Slotkin’s revisionist frontier history books. Herzog and Kinski would revisit the themes of conquest, colonization, and culture clash in two later films that, together with Aguirre, form a trilogy which mocks the inevitable folly of such enterprises.

Perhaps no other actor could inhabit the roles of Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde in as complete a manner as the volatile Kinski. Just as Slotkin suggests that the myth of the frontier is a condition that is firmly rooted in our notions of ourselves and our nation, Kinski the man apparently saw himself in terms similar to frontier ideology and propagated his own legend as an uncivilized and primal acting force. Tales of his insanity and violent outbursts on and off set abound, and after his death, Herzog felt compelled to make a documentary chronicling the actor’s extreme antics throughout their long career together (My Best Fiend, 1999).

Kinski famously once claimed “I am like a wild animal born into captivity.” Taking great pride in his unpredictable and antisocial behavior, he saw himself as a primitive born out of time, a wild man raging in defiance against the conventional norms of civil propriety. He drew on these self-described attributes to fully inhabit his subhuman white savage characters and create a personal myth of the crazed Aryan “child of nature” actor, Klaus Kinski. Herzog dismisses this as so much posturing, claiming Kinski was actually very intimidated by the wilderness he often acted in, but played up this legend at opportune times for the camera, in interviews, etc. The fabricated self-image and public persona of the rabid white savage, then, simply reflects his personal ideology regarding masculinity and the rebel, which has its roots in myths like those of the frontier.

But what to make of Werner Herzog? Here is a film director whose commitment to authenticity forces him to relive the experience of colony and conquest in painful toilsome detail. With Kinski, cast and crew, he jeopardizes the lives of all through meticulous recreations of history in the most hostile environments imaginable. He perilously charts new paths through untouched jungles and mountains, navigates the world’s most dangerous bodies of water, and lives and works among primitive peoples who have never seen a white man. In essence, Herzog bends nature to his will and conquers and colonizes the New World yet again, at threat of life and limb to all that accompany him. Perhaps, he is the true white savage that Kinski only pretends to be. Perhaps he is, like Custer and Aguirre, an ambitious fanatic leading his men (with camera instead of saber) to certain doom for the sake of his claim to film history. If the motives differ, is the arrogance and foolhardiness not the same?

What is certain is that, as these two artists demonstrate, the white supremacist conquering and colonizing ideology that Slotkin views as the defining trait of the Anglo-European race is in fact a deep-rooted instinct that time may not erode. Those who know history, as Herzog certainly does, are apparently still doomed to repeat it. Sadly, the “Custer complex”, the drive to conquer both man and nature at any cost, seems with us to stay.

References:

Herzog, W. (Writer/Producer/Director).(1972). Aguirre: The wrath of God [Motion Picture]. Germany: Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Herzog, W. (Writer/Producer/Director).(1982). Fitzcarraldo [MotionPicture]. Germany: Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Herzog, W. (Writer/Producer/Director).(1999). Kinski: My best fiend [MotionPicture]. Germany: Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Herzog, W. (Writer/Director) & Stipetic, L. (Producer).(1987). Cobra Verde [Motion Picture]. Germany: Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Minta, S. (1993). Aguirre: The recreation of a sixteenth-century journey across South America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Sandford, J. (1980). The new German cinema. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc.
Slotkin, R. (1985). The fatal environment: The myth of the frontier in the age of industrialization 1800-1890. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

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