Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 148

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Popular Culture Review

This episode of DQMW is a paean to multiculturalism, tolerance and negotiated
compromise. Thus, even the government — as represented here by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and in other episodes by various other institutions — is shown to be
not so hopeless after all. Rules can be modified, so they need not be defied. Thus,
DQMW both acknowledges the desire o f diverse audience segm ents for
legitimization, and at the same time depicts established institutions as amenable to
compromise and change, thus supporting the ideological system which sustains
mass media. Clearly this meassage is as much wishful thinking today as it surely
must have been in late 19th century Colorado, and while historians might well
bemoan its accuracy, it has powerful appeal to growing audience segments with
memories o f disenfranchisement of