MONTANA ON VIDEO: LOST TREASURE

Having somehow gotten out of sync with Netflix, I resorted to the local library and -- for some reason -- checked out a short stack of Montana videos. The three I watched that night were an interesting sequence.

First was “The Marias: The River of History and Beauty,” which was a compilation of scenery along the whole length of the Marias River from the origins in the Rockies to the confluence -- after many small confluences with tributaries -- with the mighty Missouri. The photographers were a group calling themselves the “Shutterbugs” and the script -- narrated by Bob Norris, a local radio voice -- was in the gee-whiz mode once traditional in such films. The orchestral sound-track was also familiar to us oldsters. The images were Kodachromey, bright intense color but a little blurred. There was considerable aerial camera cruising. The part most interesting to me was footage of the first contemporary commemoration of the Baker Massacre, which happened a little earlier than Wounded Knee I, both disgraceful episodes that have resonated ever since. The producer was Joel Feager, who lived in Chester at the time.

The second video was “Montana on my Mind,” professionally produced by Vision Media Productions, which appears to be in Pasadena now. The video was meant to showcase the photography of Michael S. Sample and accompany the book by the same name, which was successful enough to inspire a series on scenery (“Glacier on my Mind” and so on) and sometimes hook-and-bullet books/videos. The production values were high and the hour-long vid had a nice flow with music composed specifically for the video. In short, it’s slick. Is there something wrong with that? Originally produced for Falcon Press, this video evidently migrated when Pequot Press bought Falcon and left Montana.

So next comes a 22 minute video called “Montana, Defined by Images: An Artist’s Impression” with Dana Boussard, produced by River City Media and copyrighted by the Center for the Rocky Mountain West in 1999. This one was the pay-off and it slapped me upside the head with new awareness in two ways. First was Dana’s words: “Are we TRAFFICKING Montana images?” she asked, putting herself right in the middle of the issue of “environmental pornography.” The argument is that reduction of the Western states to a series of gorgeous images, is entirely misleading when it comes to the reality of this place that -- more than some -- has to be earned. Even in “Montana On My Mind” people noted that they had given up high incomes and major cultural amenities to live in Montana. This implies, of course, that they are more insightful and therefore more privileged than others.

But Dana was perilously close to saying we pimp Montana, we prostitute the land. It’s obvious to most people that coal mining, oil drilling and even wind farms draw out value without putting anything back except transient jobs and that the persons doing this are ultimately not the land-dwellers but profiteers who live elsewhere and are quick to abandon old raddled ground. But what about tourist beauty parades?

Then the video slid back over to an accounting of art images, showing the land, then the work drawn from it, and traced the course of realistic art through abstraction and then back again to origins. Bob Scriver is not listed or mentioned, but his “Herd Bull” bronze appears in a wide shot of a C.M. Russell Museum interior.

“Herd Bull” originated as the maquette for the buffalo that used to be mounted in the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife. The actual bull was killed in the course of mating battles at Moiese, Montana, on the National Bison Range, which is located very close to Dana Boussard’s studio in Arlee. Bob rode in the annual roundup, so rather than just put the old bull carcass on a carrion heap, they called to ask whether he wanted it. He did. Arriving at night with a bucket of knives and a couple of helpers, the crew skinned all night with the only light from the pickup headlamps. which was a good thing, since one side was full of maggots. That side always had to stand against the wall in the museum. The reality of the story faded and then, at Bob’s death, the actual bull (only its hide really, glued onto a papier mache replica of its body) was put into the care of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Contemporary liberals speak of mounted animals with contempt and mockery. But they admire even representational bronzes.

Boussard, the Internet tells me, was born in Salem, Oregon, five years after I was born in Portland, Oregon. It says she grew up in Choteau, an hour’s drive from Valier, and attended the University of Chicago, but not which years so I don’t know whether we overlapped. I’ve seen and admired her work everywhere, but have never met her. She seemed at least partly Native American but Boussard sounds Metis. When I made email contact yesterday, she told me her family background is German and Lebanese. So there goes my romantic knee-jerk assumption. How much should this affect understanding and appreciation of her art?

This sequence of three vids, chosen at random, nevertheless marks three points in the development of consciousness, technology, and artfulness. Amateur “Shutterbugs” impressed by pretty scenery and dramatic history, lucky enough to have a friend with a little airplane; then a polished presentation to sell books; and finally a philosophical and heartfelt consciousness-raising work. None is going to become obsolete if an audience for them exists.

But as the librarian pointed out, no one checks these videos out because people have gotten rid of their VCR’s in order to go to DVD’s. So I thought, “Gosh, someone ought to be writing grants to convert all these old tapes to new discs.” And then I thought, “No, that’s backwards! DVD’s will soon go out of style. They should be streamed. All these videos should be streamed digitally from some central repository cloud.” A statewide YouTube.

So I called the Montana Historical Society where the newly hired Loreto Pinochet (from Toronto) in charge of such matters understood at once and agreed. She is inventorying what videos, films and so on the society owns or is charged with distributing, but translating from video tape to DVD is done on a case-by-case basis as funding can be found.

There is certainly no state-wide list nor any provision for updating systems in local libraries. Even if the Valier library got a grant for translating the videos into DVD’s, what would be the legal ramifications? A video that is on tape in a library is like a book. It stays there until it decays or is discarded. If it were digitized and transferred to a DVD or transmitted over the Internet as streaming, it would soon be out of the bottle, pirated and everywhere. Copyright is worthless under such circumstances. On the other hand, most of these videos were not intended for profit and no one has seen some of them for years. If they were digitized and streamed, students in classrooms could watch them on electronic tablets, wearing headphones, just the same way that they’ve always read books in their seats.

Great emotional surges over print books becoming ebooks and DVD’s becoming streaming, all the head-banging over the business and legal systems for such changes, have entirely overlooked the libraries of the nation where old tapes take up enough space that the natural impulse is to just discard them. Seems like the least thing that could be done is a repository of such discards. I sent an email to Dana Boussard and another to Loreto Pinochet. Just a little nudge.