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KRISZTINA Kopó
preconceptions of whites seeking the “authentic Indian." In other words, the
vanishing imaginary Indian that Summer — a white (blond) twenty-five-year-old
university student doing Native Studies — is trying with too much enthusiasm
to capture as proof of her understanding of Native culture and her “one sixty¬
fourth Native” heritage. As she declares with somewhat childish excitement:
“I found evidence that my great-great-grandmother, Donna Seymour... was one
quarter Native. [...] I am proud to say one-sixty-fourth. And proud of every
aboriginal cell in my body. Can you see it in my features?”**
Summer’s continual search for authentic native spirituality highlights
typical non-native blunders in which she believes any story told by a Native
to represent deep spiritual meanings. Similarly, she is unable to differentiate
between the various tribal languages, therefore she comes prepared with a few
sentences of Ojibway, Mohawk and even Cree. However, in her failure to be
understood she experiences a moment of apologetic realization: “Oh my...I’m
so sorry. That was just my white concept of pan-Indianism coming through.”
However, Amos and Noble continue to tease and make fun of Summer with
popular quotations from French and Latin. This results in total confusion
on the part of Summer, and she exclaims: “Wait a minute. This isn’t how
it’s supposed to be!” Noble’s responds: “oops, kind of ruins the image, don’t
it?”2° The play, then, is a mockery of the romanticized stereotypical image of
the Indian, encouraging the audience to laugh at Summer’s overenthusiastic
and silly behavior. In fact, this is the so called “comic shock recognition””’
whereby the native and non-native audience laughs at themselves, because
these situations reflect their views of themselves.
The comic illustration of transcultural shifts and mix-ups in The Bootlegger
Blues and The Baby Blues is the underlying force of the plays in which humor
is directed at two distinct cultures. The incidents in the plays show how
certain cultural markers have been appropriated and embedded into the
everyday usage of the language and individual identities. To illustrate this,
it is worth quoting the stage directions from the beginning of Scene Two:
“Amos is getting his food stand together. It is a trailer-like structure with
signs on it saying things like ‘Nish Chalet,’ ‘Fortune Scones,’ ‘Nee-Cheese
Burgers,’ ‘Corn soup from the (ab)original recipe.’””®
The signs with the food names are clear transcultural identifications with
multicultural labels. “Nish Chalet” refers to the well-known Canadian menu
of grilled fish chalet, where chalet, an obvious French word, recalls the wooden
cabins or houses used by holidaymakers in the Swiss Alps. “Fortune scones” isa
13 Hirch, Subversive Humour, 112.
4 Taylor, The Baby Blues, 14.
45 Ibid., 37.
416 Ibid., 38.
# Hirch, Subversive Humour, 114.
18 Taylor, The Baby Blues, 26-27.
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