Top Five Gags: The Paleface

*Spoilers.*

January 15^th, 1922—the day The Paleface was released. The ignorant/racist elements of this short shouldn’t be dismissed, and as such, a number of gags that would otherwise be funny fall short. Maybe that’s why a lot of my favorites here are such short sequences—less time for them to veer further into offensive territory.

 

Butterfly Chasing

Buster wanders onto tribal land in pursuit of a butterfly. The main joke here is that he’s so intent on his chase that he fails to clock the entire tribe suspiciously following him, but there are some good bits of business sprinkled throughout. I especially love a moment when, frustrated at the butterfly eluding his net, he tries to punch it.

 

Hiding

After he’s (of course) gotten on the tribe’s bad side, Buster tries to escape them in multiple ways, including disguises and good old-fashioned hoofing it. But there’s a great moment where, at the edge of a cliff with nowhere to run, he ludicrously thinks he can hide by holding a blanket up in front of himself—in the wide open frontier. Needless to say, one of his pursuers sees through that “clever ruse” in about two seconds.

 

Fireproof Suit

The tribe has captured Buster and intends to burn him at the stake (which, from what I can tell, is something Native American tribes never practiced.) However, during his brief getaway from them, Buster was hiding out in a cabin and happened upon a roll of asbestos. He made himself a set of fireproof asbestos slippers, pants, and a jacket that he now wears under his regular clothes, and so, while the flames get him plenty hot under the collar, they don’t actually burn him. Unfortunately, this fun, clever move is marred by the immediate reaction, whereby the tribe thinks Buster is a god and falls at his feet to worship him. Boo!

 

Captive

After being accepted by the tribe, Buster helps them face off against the oil tycoons trying to steal their land. In the resulting fight, Buster is held at gunpoint by one of the tycoons, who forces Buster to swap clothes with him in the hopes that the pursuing tribe will confuse him for Buster and let him go. What makes this scene is the moment where Buster uproots a ridiculously-skimpy sapling and sticks it back in the ground between them for “modesty” as they change clothes. An absurd, delightfully-Buster bit of comedy there.

 

Getting the Girl

Once all the action is over and the tribal land has been saved, it’s of course time for Buster to get the girl (unfortunately played by a white performer in redface, like all or most of the indigenous characters in the short.) They fall into a dramatic embrace and he dips her as they kiss. A “two years later” intertitle pops up, but rather than, say, the sight of Buster emerging from a tepee with a gaggle of young children, they’re still kissing in the exact same pose. They surface for air, take a breath, and kiss again as we fade to black. Cute!