#f-troop

Vincent Price as Count Sforza -

Vincent Price in the F-Troop episode “V Is For Vampire”

Watercolors On Paper, 8.5″ x 11″, 2022

I mean... on the one hand, yes, there are definitely problems with its portrayal of native peoples. The show is full of stock racial caricatures, and none of the Native Americans are played by Native American actors, which is a problem ubiquitous to midcentury television. Never in a million years would I hold forth the Hekawi as any kind of valid representation (and not being of native descent, it wouldn’t be my place to do so, anyway).

However, what I think the writer of the article missed is that F Troop is an absurdist genre parody, and much of what is problematic about it is rooted more in the broad “Cowboys and Indians” concept it’s making fun of than anything specific to F Troop’s execution. The backbone of the show’s comedy formula wasn’t mocking native culture, but rather mocking everyone equally. The soldiers of Fort Courage are utterly inept, and the majority of the show’s humor derives from their failures: The captain literally can’t dress himself without suffering personal injury. The bugler can’t play the bugle. The guard tower gets knocked down in every other episode. Likewise, the “warlike Indians” that Fort Courage is meant to be suppressing are so completely un-warlike that they’ve formed a business partnership with the fort’s sergeant, marketing kitschy souvenirs to gullible tourists. There is not one single character in the entire F Troop universe who isn’t some kind of comedic inversion. In contrast to many of the “classic” Westerns of the 1940s-50s, in which the Heroic White Man perpetually triumphed over the Savage Red Man to reinforce a narrative of racial superiority, F Troop presented all parties as equally ridiculous.

Does the fact that they’re not meant to be taken seriously excuse the racial caricatures, or the use of white actors to portray native characters? No, certainly not! I can understand why some modern viewers are uncomfortable with the series. (I grew up watching it, and there are moments I still cringe.) But I do think it’s possible to appreciate the elements of parody that the show did well -- inverting Western hero tropes and crafting legitimately hilarious comedy situations out of pure genre stock -- without endorsing the systemic racism of the 1960s television industry or the unfortunate production decisions it led to.