“We Were Indians First, Before We Became Croats”: “Playing Indian” on the European Frontier

ThisDrenjančević, Ivana paper proposes aFrontier comparative analysis of theRuntić, Sanja “imaginary IndianImaginary Indian” trope by examining its configuration and dissemination in the American and European popular culture. Commenting on the West GermanGermany WinnetouWinnetou film series (1962–1968), East German Indianerfilme (1966–1985), and the 2016 Winnetou adaptation Der Mythos lebt (The myth lives on), all of which were filmed in today’s CroatiaCroatia, it argues that in both the American and the European context, the phenomenon of “going NativeGoing Native” has served as a site of ideological investment that has resonated with processes of geopolitical/economic expansion and the consolidation of hegemonic power relations. We contend that, like in the U.S., in Germany, too, the cultural and national identityIdentity politics has been negotiated through the WesternWestern frontier myth. The last part of the paper maintains that the transplantation of the “imaginary Indian” to the Croatian soil has led to an unexpected mutation, and possible exhaustion, of the paradigm. Discussing its reduction to a trivial touristTourism spectacleSpectacle and its carnivalization in the 2005 Croatian comedy Što je muškarac bez brkova (What is a man without a moustache), we argue that the defetishization and inflated commodification of the trope in the Croatian context has divested it of its romanticRomanticizing veneer and subverted its function by creating a rupture between the expectationExpectations and representationRepresentation.