When I was young, I grew up watching John Ford’s western films with actor John Wayne. As a little girl, who just wanted to watch the Disney Channel, I never understood my brother’s obsession with John Wayne. However, being the little sister, after all, I had to make some compromises to watch my brother’s hero. After watching several of these films, I started becoming more familiar with John Wayne’s swagger, the tone of westerns, and the general war-related subject matter between the White Americans and Native Americans. Even as a young kid, there was one thing I could never get used to, the unfair depiction of Native Americans. In the limited Amazon TV series, The English, the narrative is very different from the narrow-minded perspective of old westerns from previous filmmaking eras.
This time around, our heroes are an aristocratic English woman called Lady Cornelia Locke (played by Emily Blunt) and Pawnee Scout, Sergeant Eli Whipp (played by Chaske Spencer). Very unlike, our typical stories with White American men, this story is told from the perspective of a woman and a Native American. Our lens into this story focuses on, the challenges they face at the hands of US Army patrol, as well as the Native people who corroborated with them.
In the opening scene of the series, we hear Lady Cornelia Locke speak of someone she’s lost, and she is dressed all in black with a veil. Locke narrates and acts as if, she is talking to a friend, and says a Pawnee word: ‘tataciksta,' which means “I cherish you.” There’s a sense, we will come back to this moment, and understand the significance later in the tale of this relationship.
In the first episode, we see how Eli Whipp is a Native American, who corroborated with the US Patrol. His circumstances are starkly different from the stereotypical “Indian” we have become familiar with in past westerns. He helps track down a wanted commander Cheyenne chief, Running Hawk. After, he retires and wants to seek the land, as he is owed for his service. When faced with limited options, the Native people were forced to swear loyalties to those who took away their land in the first place to have better lives. Despite Whipp’s dedication to the US Patrol, the internal conflict is still there between his loyalty to his people versus his commitment to the US military, which makes for a compelling character arc throughout the show.
Lady Cornelia Locke is also a new character we haven’t seen before in westerns: a woman, who fights for herself versus the typical damsel in distress. Not only that, but a woman who has the desire to avenge her son by killing the man responsible for his death. Even as the character evolves, we see that Locke knows her own worth, but isn’t familiar yet with, how things are won in the wild west. Right from the get-go, Locke is challenged by her surroundings, but adapts very quickly. Never has this been the case in previous westerns. Locke’s evolution throughout the narrative makes for a more compelling story.
