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In reply to the discussion: "Can someone tell me whether we're supposed to be offended by Johnny Depp's portrayal of Tonto?" [View all]pipi_k
(21,020 posts)know the answer to that, but I saw something funny a few months ago when I was watching a documentary on Netflix called "Indians in Hollywood" or something like that.
Loads of movie clips and interviews with actual Native Americans.
One group told a story about a movie they were in some years ago. They were told to speak in their native language for the movie...which they did.
The subtitles showed the usual dialogue you see in such a movie, but the reality was that, since they were speaking in their own tongue, they could say just about anything and few people would know.
So they came up with some outrageous dialogue, like "The white men eat buffalo shit", and things like that.
I don't know how they managed to keep straight faces while they made the movie...