Contemporary Cowboys: Reimagining an American Archetype in Popular Culture 1666920177, 9781666920178

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Contemporary Cowboys

Contemporary Cowboys Reimagining an American Archetype in Popular Culture Edited by Clint Wesley Jones

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jones, Clint Wesley, 1979- editor. Title: Contemporary cowboys : reimagining an American archetype in popular culture / edited by Clint Wesley Jones. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023017470 (print) | LCCN 2023017471 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666920178 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666920185 (epub) | ISBN 9781666920192 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Cowboys in popular culture—United States. | Cowboys—Mythology. | West (U.S.)—In popular culture. | National characteristics, American. Classification: LCC F596 .C737 2023  (print) | LCC F596  (ebook) | DDC 305.9/636213—dc23/eng/20230425 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023017470 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023017471 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my dad— He lived his whole life as a cowboy and instilled in me the spirit of the West To my mom— Well, for everything. I love you.

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii Chapter One: The Gaucho in a Globalized World Adam Barkman and Enzo Guerra



Chapter Two: The Philosophy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Judge Holden and Heraclitus Jerold J. Abrams

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Chapter Three: Horse Sense: Discerning a Dialectic of Human/e Relations from Buck and The Rider 31 Jennifer L. McMahon Chapter Four: “Should’ve Been a Cowboy”: Changing Yet Stable Representations of the Cowboy in Modern American Country Music 67 Gillian Kelly Chapter Five: Can You Hear Me?: “Outlaw Pete” as American “Hero” 85 Lilian Haney and John Thompson Chapter Six: “I Can’t Go Back”: The Reimagination of Space in Feminist Westerns Karen Adkins

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Chapter Seven: “They Forgot to Put in the Quit”: Representations of Whiteness and Foundation Myths in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 127 Misty L. Jameson vii

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Chapter Eight: Slow Cowboys and New Men: Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and First Cow 143 Wendy Chapman Peek Chapter Nine: Rewriting the Western Myth: Marcia Muller’s Private Eye on California Cynthia S. Hamilton‌‌‌

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Chapter Ten: The Lone Wolf and the Wild West: How Private Eyes Became the New Cowboys Dahlia Schweitzer

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Chapter Eleven: Deadwood’s Return to Authenticity Mark Walling



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Chapter Twelve: Semiotic Landscapes and Fallen Heroes: Repurposing the Myth of the West in Westworld 213 Caroline Collins Chapter Thirteen: Graphic Evolutions: Imagining the Cowboy-as-Archetype in Contemporary Comics Clint Wesley Jones‌‌‌ Index



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About the Editor and Contributors



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Preface

The wild days of the American West lasted roughly twenty years and provided popular culture icons in the form of white-hatted do-gooder lawmen and their nefarious, black-hatted counterparts as well as enduring stories about trail drives, Native peoples, gold rushes, adventurous exploration, and, of course, the cowboy. While the actual life of a cowboy was far from glamourous or exciting the pop culture figure of the cowboy as an exciting and enticing persona has become central to the mythology of the United States. The cowboy is the inheritor of the legacy of the frontiersman and the early settlers that colonized the Midwest and blazed the western trails subsequent generations would follow during the period of US expansion. Yet, as Eric Hobsbawm argues, it is simultaneously true that the American cowboy played no significant political role in the taming of the West or in America’s sociopolitical landscape generally.1 The cowboy, once established in American popular culture, has never left and was, for decades after the taming of the Wild West, a stable if not static fixture in the makeup of American identity. Citing Frederick Jackson Turner’s designation of the significance of the West to American society, Heike Paul argues, the Western frontier is “the most decisive factor in shaping American political and social institutions and in creating a specifically American national character.”2 Given Hobsbawm’s position contrasted to Turner’s it is clear that the influence of the cowboy and the West has had a significant and outsized impact on American culture in the abstract without having been a real significant influence. This seems to have begun to change, and that change is the focus of this volume. To understand what is at stake in the characterization of the cowboy as a mythological figure it is important to set out what mythology means in this context. I take a social mythology to be the stories cultivated within a society to ground the values, morals, and identity of the people in that society. Mythology in this sense, then, functions as the basis for the cultivation of shared practices, formulates the (or a) origin story of the society, and conveys ix

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the expectations and desires appropriate to the persons who identify with the mythos as given. The cowboy, understood as a mythological figure, began to wane in popularity and influence in the mid-twentieth century amidst the rise of superheroes in comics, war heroes on television, space exploration in science fiction, and political upheavals in the sociocultural identity of Americans. It is important to note here that while it was certainly the case that popular interest in the cowboy and the West in a traditional, fin-de-siècle representation was waning in popular culture, the spirit of the cowboy and the West remained strong even within countercultural politics, art, and scholarship.3 Finding itself hemmed in by the rapid development of new technologies, a changing sociopolitical cultural landscape, and stories too far removed from fin-de-siècle imaginations as automobiles replaced horses, tommy guns supplanted six guns, and civilization entered the nuclear age, the cowboy seemed ready to ride into the sunset. Faced with fading into history or adapting to keep up with the times, the mythology of the cowboy, still integral to American’s idea of what it meant to be an American, began to morph into new interpretations of the cowboy-qua-cowboy; that is, the cowboy began to develop a set of criteria for cowboy-ness that would fit into the newly popular genres dominating the popular cultural narratives of America. The gap separating the real-life cowboy from his pop culture shadow has now widened into a chasm spanning generations, imbued with class conflicts, burdened with social significance, and often barely recognizable in the twenty-first century. The life of the cowboy as a mythological figure parallels, in important ways, the reality of another myth central to American identity—that of the frontier. As the frontier has begun to falter as a sustaining mythos the cowboy has been cleaved from it and preserved for posterity in new characterizations and emergent reinterpretations.4 This rendering of the new cowboy in the latter half of the twentieth century is well documented and has been rehashed in various forms for years but interest in the relevance of the cowboy as a central figure in American popular culture began to wane once again in the late 1980s and early 1990s as urban culture and suburban lifestyles began to dominate Americanism. This seeming lack of interest in the mythological life of the cowboy did not equate to a disappearance of the cowboy from the pop culture scene; rather, the cowboy continued to evolve and find new ways of recommitting people to the importance of the cowboy to American identity. This volume explores the relationship Americans have developed with the cowboy in the twenty-first century both as a fixture of the pop culture scene as well as a staple in the consumption of American-ness. The cowboy-as-archetype represents a twofold conflict central to American identity: the conflict of nature and civilization, on the one hand, and the antagonisms between freedom and self-constraint, on the other.5 Using these

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two arenas of tension to drive the story of the cowboy in popular culture writers, cartoonists, musicians, filmmakers, politicians, and others have crafted a figure capable of capturing at once the contradictions of American identity and a rallying point for bringing us together as a country—no other mounted subculture has been capable of doing the same thing to the same extent which makes the American cowboy quite unique as a character even if the American cowboy is only one token of a global type. By analyzing how the cowboy has morphed into new identities and how the cowboy ethos is conveyed to modern audiences this volume seeks to tease out the underlying causes and overarching ramifications of mythological shift in the figure of the cowboy in popular culture. Many of the best attempts to wrestle with the legacy of the cowboy are outdated now by decades and the prevailing assumptions about the figure from the end of the twentieth century are stale and unhelpful for situating the cowboy in a dynamic twenty-first-century context. Arguing for the continued relevance of the cowboy to American identity this volume raises questions about race, class, gender, sex and sexuality, as well as issues pertaining to cultural influences, like music, their relationship to their horses, adaptations to technology, and violence, among others, through the lens of the emergent reinterpretations of the West, the western, and the cowboy. In the introduction to their fascinating study of the weird West, the editors of Weird Westerns argue that the greatest innovations in the genre of the western are taking place not in the classic form but in the hybrid narratives of the weird western.6 This, I would argue, is only partly true, maybe even mostly true, but not entirely true. While it is the case that weird westerns provide ample opportunity for delving into the various issues bound up with the western as a genre and the characters that populate it, the modifications made to the West and the cowboy as mythological fixtures of American identity are better mirrored in the modifications to the classic formulations. It is in the creative space of these formulations that this volume seeks to highlight how the cowboy has changed, but also how the ongoing relevance of the cowboy is situated in a contemporary context for popular culture consumption. While weird westerns have certainly updated the genre for more contemporary audiences, traditional representations still resonate albeit with their own contemporary modifications. Shows like Deadwood, Justified, Longmire, and Yellowstone have captured the attention of large and varied audiences. Of course, Longmire, as a novel series, has maintained bestseller status and developed a loyal and large fanbase well beyond the boundaries of the West while Yellowstone’s success, similarly popular well beyond the boundaries of the western, has produced numerous spin-offs increasingly engaged in traditional representations of the West and the cowboy.

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Other programs have been even more successful than these and are often read as neo-westerns despite lacking any obvious connection to the traditions associated with westerns and cowboy culture, like, for example, Breaking Bad. Paula Brown has argued that Breaking Bad, “recreates and rejuvenates the genre of the Western,” pitting the protagonist not against a frontier to be tamed to facilitate civilization, but rather, by bringing civilization down.7 Similarly, Neil Campbell’s sustained study of the post-western genre gives film the same treatment many theorists, like Brown, have given to television.8 Applying Campbell’s work, Jesús Ángel González argues that post-westerns have shifted traditional western tropes allowing for a broader coding of the West in contemporary films such as the move from “frontier” to “border” and, citing Xan Brooks, indicates, “the western . . . has not died out. It has simply changed shape, colour, and compass point.”9 Paralleling these successes are western themed video games, like Rockstar Game’s wildly popular Red Dead Redemption, the heavily western-troped comic series The Walking Dead, and the rise of successful musical acts like Chris Stapleton, or the self-styled outlaw crooner Jelly Roll, who work within the context of classic western singer-songwriters. Far from being pushed out to pasture, the cowboy has morphed into a contemporary figure helping adjust the American imagination to emerging shifts in societal values, moral orientation, and political consciousness. Tracking these shifts along the fault lines of alterations to the West, the cowboy, and the various aspects of cowboy lifestyles, characterizations, and the centering of marginalized viewpoints, it is possible to witness the subtle and not so subtle changes happening in American culture. Far from being a canary in the coal mine sounding the alarm about the end of America as we know it, the cowboy is the vanguard of depicting and articulating shifts in American identity. Shifts in American identity along these lines in the twentieth century have been thoroughly analyzed for years, but it has been hard to see similar shifts occurring in the new millennium for two reasons. First, many theorists have treated those shifts has extensions of the big shifts that occurred in the 1960s or again in the 1980s without allowing for how more recent shifts also represent a break with the twentieth-century conception of the cowboy in significant ways. Second, barely two decades into the twenty-first century many of those significant shifts have not had enough time to develop substantial trajectories to make it possible to tease out how and in what ways those shifts matter to a consumer of contemporary American popular culture. This volume seeks to attempt to examine those trajectories not as extensions of twentieth-century shifts, but rather on their own merits and in relation to contemporary culture in the twenty-first century. With that in mind, each essay in this volume, while it may offer a brief history to contextualize the material,

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foregoes attempts to locate contemporary shifts in the cowboy or the West as mere extensions of shifts that happened, or began, in the twentieth century. For instance, rather than read the history of the cowboy and West through a feminist lens to demonstrate how that history is fraught with problematic characterizations, especially renderings of masculinity, many of the essays in this volume reveal how contemporary uses of the cowboy or the West are infused with feminist discourse correcting for those problematic historical elements. The same could be said of sexuality, violence, or nationalism, all of which have been historically maligned in traditional mainstream productions of the cowboy and the West as integral to American mythology. Of course, most troubling in this regard is the relegation of Native Americans to stereotypical figures in traditional westerns not as historical persons and cultures, but as either a part of the landscape which needed to be tamed or willing allies in the inevitable Manifest Destiny of European Americans. This treatment of Native Americans has resulted in the prolonged exposure of American consumers to a fictional creation of Native Americans as geographically and culturally homogenous. According to Kay McGowan, this limitation on experience with real Native persons or cultures results in “stereotypes, misconceptions, and false assumptions resulting in microaggressive behaviors” that propagate such beliefs outside popular culture.10 As a result, contemporary television shows, like Reservation Dogs, are attempting to bring modern and compelling representations of Native American life into the pop culture mainstream. As Ellen Jones writes in her review of the show, “Reservation Dogs is able to lay waste stylishly to centuries of myth and misrepresentation due to one simple, crucial, innovation: almost everyone involved in the production is a Native American, offering a perspective which never panders to the often-fetishising gaze of outsiders.”11 This expansive reading of Native Americans in popular culture must be balanced against a stubborn insistence to reduce Native American women to persistent stereotypes and one-dimensionality even when those characters are being written by or directed by Native American creators, especially men.12 Each of the chapters in this volume interpret and reinterpret the cowboy, the West, and the western as integral components of American mythology demonstrating how those identity markers have shifted: taken up space in nontraditional settings, moved transgressively across established philosophies, or enhanced our understanding of these mythological figurations by embodying atypical representations in traditional, or expected settings. As contributors to this volume, it is our hope that these essays demonstrate how the cowboy and the West have taken up residence in the twenty-first century and continue to function as a mirror to reflect contemporary society’s culture expressions of what it means to be an American and the desires, beliefs, morality, and identity that are bound up with that conception.

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NOTES 1. Eric Hobsbawm, Fractured Times (London: Abacus, 2014): 275. 2. Heike Paul, The Myths That Made America (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2014): 311. 3. A substantial and compelling examination of this can be found in Michael Allen’s excellent article “‘I Just Want to Be a Cosmic Cowboy’: Hippies, Cowboy Code, and the Culture of a Counterculture,” Western Historical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Autumn, 2005): 275–99. 4. For an excellent analysis of the frontier as myth and its current standing in relation to the socio-political landscape of American identity, especially it uses in the populism of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, see Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019). 5. Hobsbawm, 278. 6. Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, and Sara Spurgeon (eds.), Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020): 14. 7. Paula Brown, “The American Western Mythology of Breaking Bad,” Studies in Popular Culture 40, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 78. 8. Neil Campbell, Post-Westerns: Cinema, Region, West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013). 9. Jesús Ángel González, “New Frontiers for Post-Western Cinema: Frozen River, Sin Nombre, Winter’s Bone,” Western American Literature 50, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 51. The Xan Brooks quotation is used as an epigram for González’s essay and acts as its organizing principle. 10. Ken Saldanha and Kay McGowan, “On Discussions of Westerns, Cowboys, and Indians: But Ought There to Be Included a Native American Perspective Too?” International Review of Qualitative Research 8, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 364. 11. Ellen E. Jones, “Reservation Dogs Review—A Stereo-type Smashing, Tarantino-esque Triumph,” The Guardian (13 October 2021). www​.theguardian​.com​ /tv​-and​-radio​/2021​/oct​/13​/reservation​-dogs​-review​-a​-stereotype​-smashing​-tarantino​ -esque​-triumph accessed January 2023. 12. For a sustained look at this phenomenon, as well as women working to counter such depictions, see Laura L. Beadling, “Reel Indigenous Women’s Lives: Female Protagonists in Films by Indigenous Women,” Rocky Mountain Review 70, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 133–49.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Michael. “‘I Just Want to Be a Cosmic Cowboy’: Hippies, Cowboy Code, and the Culture of a Counterculture.” Western Historical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Autumn, 2005): 275–99. Beadling, Laura L. “Reel Indigenous Women’s Lives: Female Protagonists in Films by Indigenous Women.” Rocky Mountain Review 70, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 133–49.

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Brown, Paula. “The American Western Mythology of Breaking Bad.” Studies in Popular Culture 40, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 78–101. Campbell, Neil. Post-Westerns: Cinema, Region, West. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Fine, Kerry, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, and Sara Spurgeon, eds. Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. González, Jesús Ángel. “New Frontiers for Post-Western Cinema: Frozen River, Sin Nombre, Winter’s Bone.” Western American Literature 50, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 51–76. Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019. Hobsbawm, Eric. Fractured Times. London: Abacus, 2014. Jones, Ellen E. “Reservation Dogs Review—A Stereo-type Smashing, Tarantinoesque Triumph.” The Guardian (13 October 2021). https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​ /tv​-and-radio/2021/oct/13/reservation-dogs-review-a-stereotype-smashing-tarantino-esque-triumph, accessed January 2023. Paul, Heike. The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2014. Saldanha, Ken, and Kay McGowan. “On Discussions of Westerns, Cowboys, and Indians: But Ought There to Be Included a Native American Perspective Too?” International Review of Qualitative Research 8, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 363–78.

Acknowledgments

Every book written is essentially a group project. Though my name appears on the cover I could not have brought this manuscript into being without the help and support of many people. That is true of every book, but it is especially true of this one. This book has been a lesson in patience, perseverance, frustration, and commitment unlike any project I have ever worked on. In that regard, every contributor to this text deserves a hearty thank you and the highest possible praise because not everyone who began this journey with me stuck around to see it to completion—their loss and ours. Each person who contributed a chapter to this volume has been exceedingly patient, incredibly supportive, professional at every twist and turn, and, I hope, satisfied with the product of their hard work—because work hard at this they have. This book began as an idea for a contribution to another book project which, at the time of this writing, has gone from indefinitely on hold to defunct as a project. My planned contribution to that book found its way into a journal and the editor of that journal was incredibly kind in their comments and praise of the essay, but also suggested to me (what I was already thinking) that there was more to be said about the subject of the shifting nature of the cowboy and West in the American culture imagination. So, I decided to pursue my own book on the subject. A special thank you, then, is reserved for that editor whose kind words and encouragement led to this project. After circulating the original call for papers, the book was picked up by a press that wanted to use it as their first title in a new series they were planning to publish on western culture in the twenty-first century. Their enthusiasm gave me the confidence I needed to pursue the project as one that had recognizable value as a contribution to the study of the West and American culture. The editor that selected this text for publication ultimately parted ways with the publisher and the planned series was scrapped along with the contract for publication I had been extended. This sent me in search of a new publisher, which I found, just as COVID was surging. The project languished in review for nearly eighteen months as the press and their pool of reviewers, xvii

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like everyone else, frantically tried to adjust to a pandemic lifestyle and navigate the many interruptions that COVID brought with it. I do want to thank the people at this press, especially the editor who helped me move the project through the process of review. During this lengthy delay several contributors began to pull out and my hope for the project began to wane. A crushing blow was dealt to the project when the press decided against pursuing publication after the reviewers were split in their decisions regarding publication. Fortunately, their primary concerns were with essays that had already been pulled from the project, but it was too little, too late for the editor and the press. Once again, I found myself without a publisher and, this time, with too few contributions. Instead of abandoning the project the remaining contributors doubled down in their support and we were able to connect with Lexington Books. Judith Lakamper and Mark Lopez are two people who deserve to be singled out for their support of the project, their assistance in bringing it to press, and being genuinely excellent people. I want to thank their team at Lexington Books, many of whom are nameless, but whose efforts are nonetheless present in the final product. Being able to work with great people makes the arduousness of the tasks of writing and publishing so much easier and I am fortunate to have been able to work with great contributors and great editors who believed in the project. Along this journey I have also been supported by many friends and colleagues whose encouragement and suggestions have no doubt greatly improved the volume. Though their names may not appear in the text, their fingerprints exist on its pages. My family has been a source of great support and solace during this project, and I am sure they are as happy as anyone to see it brought to completion. Working on a project like this is never easy and it is harder still if you attempt to do it in isolation. I am thankful for each person who has made this a less difficult task. I would like to extend this recognition beyond my own family to the families of the people who contributed to the manuscript as well because I know that writing, editing, proofreading, and indexing are time-consuming tasks that require substantial time away from loved ones and those sacrifices ought to be praised just as much as the content provided for publication. On behalf of myself and the contributors to this volume I would like to thank you, too, reader, and we hope that you enjoy the book!

Chapter One

The Gaucho in a Globalized World Adam Barkman and Enzo Guerra

Francis Schaeffer suggested that what individuals “are in their thought world determines how they act.”1 This seems true. For instance, behind the composed, sophisticated, and sometimes cheery demeanor of Albert Camus was likely a philosophical perspective of life that informed the way he lived. Interestingly, Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that Camus was “the admirable coming together of a person, an action, and a work.”2 Throughout Camus’s life, beyond merely being an esteemed author and philosopher, perhaps he embodied a lived response to the absurd. Moreover, Karl Jaspers suggested that behind Socrates’s decision to obey the (arguably groundless) claims by the council that condemned him to death, was an allegiance to “his native state.”3 Socrates possessed a loyal commitment to state decisions and its laws, and was therefore compelled to act accordingly—even if the final verdict was unjust.4 Jaspers might say that it would be “unthinkable”5 for Socrates to choose the path of a rebellious foreigner, rather than that of a faithful citizen. While this thinking may appear too draconian to the modern reader, it is likely what motivated Socrates’s actions. Even for Diogenes, to perform the socially taboo behavior that he did, there must have been a radical thought process behind them. While many stories attributed to Diogenes are believed to be apocryphal,6 Louisa Shea notes that Diogenes “could be seen . . . defecating on the stage at Olympus.”7 Such actions reveal his countercultural outlook on life. For Seneca the Younger, his writing and actions were characterized by a philosophy of acceptance, especially of life circumstances that normally cause despair. In the face of Nero’s command for Seneca to take his own life, Seneca shockingly remained calm. Donald Dudley suggests that Seneca “met death with fortitude and composure.”8 1

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These few examples point to a link between our actions and the broader philosophical commitments behind them. There is not always, however, a direct correlation between our outlook on life and our actions. Sometimes we act contrary to what our values would suggest. Sometimes we are motivated by emotional considerations, or by what we feel is right. In other circumstances, perhaps we act without much deliberation at all, either by impulse or by the unconscious outworking of our biological and environmental context. Human beings are indeed complex, which makes it difficult to consistently identify a correlation between our mind and our actions. Yet aiming to identify and analyze our “thought world,”9 as well as how it shapes the people we are, is important. It is valuable for considering the kind of individuals we often are, and in some sense, the individuals we strive to be. It reveals some of the core and essential characteristics of ourselves. Every individual, culturally bound or otherwise, real or imagined, likely has an outlook on life that influences their behavior.10 While we see the noticeable outward signs—the actions, the appearance, the words, the expressions, the reactions, and so on—they collectively point to the world within, though often in subtle ways. In light of these suggestions, we wish to explore the outward and inward dimensions of the gaucho, a character that is sometimes understood as “Argentina’s cowboy.”11 We will do so in the following two sections. First, we will primarily explore the Argentine gaucho by inferring, in part, some aspects of his philosophy of life from how he is commonly portrayed— whether in fiction, media, or within Argentine culture.12 Second, we will explore a few themes at the intersection between the gaucho and globalization. As our world becomes increasingly globalized, and cultural exchanges become more common, we consider how we might culturally appreciate the gaucho and how we can understand the similarities and differences between the gaucho and other cowboy-esque characters around the world.13 I. THE GAUCHO Richard W. Slatta suggests that similar to the American cowboy serving as an icon for America, so the Argentine gaucho serves as an icon for Argentina.14 While these comparisons are helpful, they should likely be taken as a general heuristic. Argentina’s history and culture are different from America’s, and, hence, the meaning and value of each of these characters have unique positions within their respective contexts. While Slatta’s comments are indeed truthful, suggesting that the gaucho is merely the South American counterpart to the American cowboy can obscure the rich nuances that separate them.

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To begin illustrating what the gaucho is like, let us begin with his appearance. A quick Google search reveals a unique attire that is common for the gaucho. This consists, in part, of tall boots, loose-fitting pants, a dress shirt, a hat to block the beating sun, a handkerchief, an elaborate belt, and sometimes a poncho.15 The gaucho is often accompanied by a horse, standing tall in front of the “Pampas” or plains of Argentina.”16 While the gaucho can sometimes be spotted with a smile, his gaze is typically serious and firm. Perceptively, the gaucho’s appearance shows toughness and vigor. The toughness of the gaucho is reflected, especially, in the work that is performed. The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica suggest that “contrary to fiction, a gaucho’s work is far from glamorous. His days are long, dusty, and exhausting—far from the picture imagined by the majority of city dwellers.”17 In a way, the gaucho’s work represents a large component of who he is. We can identify the gaucho’s work as physically demanding. Yet the work and overall lifestyle of the gaucho may not be perceived only as an obvious necessity of life but might also be something self-fulfilling. In Tom Martienssen and Josh Bullock’s Gaucho documentary, one of the featured gauchos say, “My thing is completely gaucho: horses, cows, mountains. Like a wild animal. Freedom, snowfields, bad weather, intense heat, drought, being with your animals, with your dogs. That fills your soul . . . it has no explanation.”18 Although this documentary was filmed in the Chilean region of Patagonia, it hints at the idea that the gaucho’s toil—though difficult— goes beyond being just work. Perhaps a strong reason why the gaucho’s toil is satisfying is due to the freedom that is associated with his lifestyle. Behind the gaucho is a romantic image of man-in-and-of-nature. Again, quoting from Tom Martienssen and Josh Bullock’s Gaucho, “One cannot think. One should live without thinking. To just say: ‘Today I’ll go somewhere’ And then go. ‘Tomorrow that’s what I’ll do.’ And nothing more. That’s what I and all country folk think.”19 While the philosophical underpinnings may be difficult to decipher here, there seems to be something deeply connected between the gaucho’s toil or work life (along with its entailments) and a sense of fulfillment. Choice and simplicity seem to be key components of the gaucho’s way of life, where simplicity here is associated as freedom from deterministic forces brought on by societal or urban forces. Another important consideration of the gaucho is his relation to music, singing, and artistic expression more generally. In José Hernández’s famous epic El Gaucho Martin Fierro, the main character proclaims: Cantando me he de morir, cantando me han de enterrar y cantando he de llegar

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al pie del eterno Padre; dende el vientre de mi madre vine a este mundo a cantar.20

While fictional, this section of the epic likely illustrates the importance of what music and singing mean for the gaucho. Our translation reads: I will die singing, they will bury me singing singing I will come to the feet of the eternal father; from my mother’s womb I came to this world to sing.21

While the gaucho can be firm, and perhaps stoic at times, there are no reservations when it comes to artistic expression.22 Like nature herself, the gaucho can be at times tough and, at other times, light and musical. A man suited to nature; a man reflective of nature. Indeed, while the American cowboy and other cultural cowboys share this duality of stoical and musical, the gaucho is particularly expressive and poetic. Roberto Lara’s Argentina: The Guitar of the Pampas album is representative of some of the musical sounds that are common for gauchos.23 These instrumental guitar songs contain smooth finger-picking patterns, varied speed transitions, and elegant melodies. Each song has a somewhat unpredictable flow which keeps the listener engaged.24 There is a fine balance between a somberness and a euphoria in the songs, perhaps reflective of the general temperament of the gaucho. In addition to song, gauchos are also expressive through dance. The Malambo is a “solo dance with improvised footwork” that is common among gauchos.25 The Malambo consists, in large part, of intricate foot tapping and stomping patterns. The entire dance contains rhythmic elegance. I (Guerra) have memories of witnessing my uncle perform this dance at one of his birthday parties. It was intriguing to watch the graceful movements of the Malambo. The artistic expression of the gaucho reveals perhaps another aspect of his philosophy, namely, the idea that life should afford simple enjoyments. To find the gaucho singing and dancing reveals—at least tentatively—an unapologetic commitment to be himself and an ability demarcate a space in the world to live life. The gaucho is not known for a comfortable lifestyle filled with grand luxuries, yet overall, remains committed to enjoying it, as expressed through song and dance.

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II. A GLOBALIZED WORLD Globalization, particularly cultural globalization, it seems, has become more prominent in recent years. Manfred Steger describes cultural globalization as “the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe.”26 While Steger notes that cultural exchanges have certainly taken place in the past, they take on a new form in our current digital age.27 This seems true. The ability to learn about other cultures has never been easier through the use of the internet. Anyone with a curiosity to learn about Argentina, its history or culture, can do so accessibly. In the process, they are likely to encounter the gaucho. Rosanna Deerchild defines cultural appreciation, from an Indigenous perspective, as that which, “Truly honours our nations’ art and cultures . . . [taking] the time to learn and interact, to gain understanding of a culture, or cultures, different from your own.”28 In other words, it is a move away from a superficial appreciation of a culture, and more specifically of a cultural icon. A proposal for culturally appreciating the gaucho, in light of the considerations in this chapter, is not only attempting to appreciate the outward characteristics of the gaucho, but also the thought-world within. This involves, in part, humbly trying to gain a deep understanding of why the gaucho is the way he is. While enjoying the outfit, the work, and artistic expression of the gaucho is fine, a rich cultural appreciation goes even deeper (i.e., beyond sense perception), as Deerchild may be hinting at. Although there is still a lot to learn about the gaucho, and therefore a lot more to appreciate, we hope this chapter can be a step in that direction. While we see a kind of hardworking cowboy that is interesting and engaging, there is an underlying perspective on life that is perhaps even more interesting and engaging, perhaps because it is more fundamental. This is, of course, a difficult task. The gaucho can be studied for a lifetime, and there could still be a lot more to learn. Yet the value is also found in the process of discovery, and not only in the richer understanding that follows. This is true of the gaucho, as well as other gaucho-like characters that are present within other cultures. And this raises an important question, namely, is it possible to at once to appreciate the uniqueness of the gaucho, and categorize him, as this book does, as a type of cowboy? Can we celebrate differences and yet also note similarities? While we fully appreciate that the process of categorization can lead to oversimplifications and can potentially do violence to cultural appreciation, we do not think this is a necessary result. I (Barkman) may fully appreciate the uniqueness of each of my seven children and at the same time be fully aware that they are “my children,” “human beings,” “rational animals,” and so on. Likewise, behind the gaucho and his unique thought-world,

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there are surely many similarities with other cowboy types, particularly the American cowboy. When analyzing the American cowboy, there seems to be four essential characteristics connected to it—all of which, in a broad sense—are shared with the gaucho: (1) a certain duty and responsibility to those around him, (2) the relationship he has between himself and his animals, (3) toughness, and (4) simplicity. Firstly, there is the idea of responsibility and duty. The cowboy, as conventionally conceived, is always defined in some way by the work that he does.29 Cowboys often have ranches or work under ranch owners. They use these ranches to domesticate animals, and in turn, make a living.30 It seems as though the dream of every cowboy is to one day own a ranch and take on the responsibilities that come about with that task. If a cowboy doesn’t own a ranch or works on one, then there would seem to be something lacking in its identity. Thus, this duty is often essential to the cowboy. Along with this duty, is also the responsibility the cowboy has toward those around him. It seems the underlying motive behind the work that the cowboy does is not just to provide for himself, but also those around him, including his family. It, however, is true that this alone does not make cowboys, cowboys. Everyone, regardless if one is a cowboy or not, has work duties that they must fulfill. However, for the cowboy, there would seem to be something missing if their duties were to change. A cowboy would not really be a cowboy if he was a physician or a professional athlete. This is not to say that cowboys are not capable of doing these tasks; they certainly can. Rather, it seems that if they lose their duties of animal domestication, then they would not really be cowboys. Similarly, the cowboy possesses an essential responsibility. Although the cowboy is often presented as a solo hero, he very rarely lives a solo life. His responsibilities extend more than just to himself. Within an American context, autonomy is often a prized value.31 Because this is so, the obligation to care extends usually to oneself, and only oneself, unless one is a parent of child; but even that responsibility can be transferred legally. Essentially, because American culture had become increasingly autonomous, the sphere of responsibility has lessened more and more. In contrast, however, for the cowboy, these responsibilities not only extend to himself, but also to his family, friends, and community at large. There is a sense that the cowboy must provide for this family. There is a sense of brotherhood among other cowboys to help when in need. And there is also a sense of patriotic protection on the part of cowboy that extends to his larger community, which if required, would compel him to act in the forces of opposition.32 The cowboy is not autonomous and individualistic in regard to the responsibilities he possesses. Thus, essential to a cowboy is the work that he does, namely, a herder or domesticator of animals of some sort, and the sphere of responsibilities that

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extend beyond himself. The gaucho, too, while certainly one who spends a great deal of time alone and relishes the freedom of the wild, rarely does this simply so he can be alone. Secondly, there always seems to be a close connection between man and animal that cowboys possess. While certainly the cowboy is responsible for a wide variety of animal domestication, it seems essential that the cowboy— and the gaucho—have a particular bond with his horse. Thirdly, cowboys always appear to be hardworking individuals who labor every day, rain or shine. American cowboys are rarely depicted as lazy and in bad physical shape. Instead, they are usually imagined to aligning with a hard-work ethic. Cows have to be milked, chickens have to be fed, and pregnant heifers must be watched closely in the winter.33 It seems as though cowboys have a characteristic of being hard, determinant workers as an essential character trait. A way to illustrate the work ethic of the cowboy is to compare him to a rancher. Ranchers, who are not cowboys, are possessors of large lands that often include ranches.34 A rancher usually is interested in the monopoly of property. The primary concern, for the rancher, is making large profits with the hard work often being delegated. This, however, is not like the cowboy. The cowboy, when he does not own his own ranch, is forced to work for a rancher. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty and will put in the long hours to get a specific task done. There is a consistent drive motivating his ability to push through long days of work. Thus, it seems that this too, is an essential characteristic of the American cowboy, and, we would add, the gaucho. Lastly, there is often an association of simplicity when it comes to cowboys. By simplicity, we do not mean that cowboys are simple-minded hicks, but rather that, like the Roman Stoics, were not tied to luxury and futile endeavors. An example is that American cowboys often live a life free from the unnecessary complexities that are often found in urbanized locations, such as social media relations, concerned about fashion, or other things that are not necessarily bad things but would disrupt the simplicity of cowboy living.35 This simplicity allows for simple pleasures such as music (with simple instruments) and dancing. This simplicity is why cowboys are often presented as on the move, and a country lifestyle—harmonics, dancing and all—often comes with the life of a cowboy . . . and a gaucho. This chapter has sought to do two things which are difficult to do at the same time, namely, advocate for the uniqueness and particularity of the gaucho and his thought-world, and at the same time note the striking universality and similarity he shares with cowboys in general and the American cowboy in particular. Readers will have to judge how successful this has been, but for us, this has been a fun ride.

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NOTES 1. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976). 2. Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 1. 3. Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), 19. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. T. Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Diogenes,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 21, 2021, www​.britannica​.com​/biography​/Diogenes​-Greek​-philosopher. 7. Louisa Shea, Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 9–10. 8. Donald R. Dudley, “Seneca,” Encyclopedia Britannica, January 1, 2022, www​.britannica​.com​/biography​/Lucius​-Annaeus​-Seneca​-Roman​-philosopher​-and​ -statesman. 9. See footnote 1. 10. For instance, in the world of myth and fiction, characters are often brought to life by authors to the extent that they too, though fictive, possess their own sophisticated thought world. 11. Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 1. 12. While the gaucho is not entirely unique to Argentina (see “gaucho” by the Editors of The Encyclopedia Britannica), the Argentine gaucho will be our main focus. 13. It may be helpful for the reader to know that many of the suggestions in this paper are indeed explorative and, in some ways, also tentative. They can be understood as a springboard into a larger discussion. 14. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 1. 15. Carolina González, “Traditional Dress of Argentina: The Warrior Gaucho Costume,” Gaucho Experience in the Pampas and Estancias, September 11, 2016, gauchoexperience.com/traditional-dress-argentina/. 16. T. Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “The Pampas,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 20, 2015, www​.britannica​.com​/place​/the​-Pampas. 17. T. Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Gaucho,” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 9, 2013, www​.britannica​.com​/topic​/gaucho. 18. Gaucho, directed by Josh Bullock and Tom Martienssen (Great Big Films, 2018), 12:10–12:40. 19. Ibid., 34:54–35:12. 20. José Hernández, El Gaucho Martín Fierro (Boston: Squid Ink Classics, 2018), 16. 21. A more literal translation would read “foot” rather than “feet.” 22. In addition to singing and music, there are forms of dancing that are attributed by the gaucho such as the Malambo.

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23. “Argentina: The Guitar of the Pampas—Roberto Lara,” World Music Store (Lyrichord), accessed June 23, 2022, www​.lyrichord​.com​/collections​/south​-america​/ products​/roberto​-lara​-the​-guitar​-of​-the​-pampas​-cd. 24. Although there may be some repeated patterns, it consists of new and continuous progression of melody. 25. Susan V. Cashion, “Latin American dance,” Encyclopedia Britannica, September 2, 2020, www​.britannica​.com​/art​/Latin​-American​-dance. 26. Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 83. 27. Ibid., 84. 28. Rosanna Deerchild, Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Appreciation, Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2016. 29. John Erickson, The Modern Cowboy (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2004), 4. 30. Ibid., 5. 31. Due to the increasing shift toward libertarianism within contemporary American society, liberty or autonomy is held to be its core value. 32. Will Wright, The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory (London: Sage, 2001), 158. 33. John Erickson, The Modern Cowboy, 8. 34. Ibid., 5. 35. Due to the countryside lifestyle these cowboys often have, these things are not things focused on.

BIBLIOGRAPHY “Argentina: The Guitar of the Pampas—Roberto Lara.” World Music Store. Lyrichord. Accessed June 23, 2022. www​.lyrichord​.com​/collections​/south​-america​ /products​/roberto​-lara​-the​-guitar​-of​-the​-pampas​-cd. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Diogenes.” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 21, 2021. www​.britannica​.com​/biography​/Diogenes​-Greek​-philosopher. ———. “Gaucho.” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 9, 2013. www​.britannica​.com​ /topic​/gaucho. ———. “The Pampas.” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 20, 2015. https:​//​www​ .britannica​.com​/place​/the​-Pampas. Bullock, Josh, and Tom Martienssen, directors. Gaucho. Great Big Films, 2018. 36m. Cashion, S. V. “Latin American dance.” Encyclopedia Britannica, September 2, 2020. www​.britannica​.com​/art​/Latin​-American​-dance. Deerchild, Rosanna. Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Appreciation. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2016. Dudley, Donald R. “Seneca.” Encyclopedia Britannica, January 1, 2022. www​.britannica​.com​/biography​/Lucius​-Annaeus​-Seneca​-Roman​-philosopher​-and​-statesman. Erickson, John R. The Modern Cowboy. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2004.

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González, Carolina. “Traditional Dress of Argentina: The Warrior Gaucho Costume.” Gaucho Experience in the Pampas and Estancias, September 11, 2016. https:​//​ gauchoexperience​.com​/traditional​-dress​-argentina​/. Hernández, José. El Gaucho Martín Fierro. Boston: Squid Ink Classics, 2018. Originally published in 1872. Jaspers, Karl. The Great Philosophers. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962. Lottman, Herbert R. Albert Camus: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979. “Malambo Argentino.” Travelsur.net. Accessed July 6, 2022. www​ .travelsur​ .net​ / argentinamusic​/malambo​.html. Schaeffer, Francis A. How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976. Shea, Louisa. Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Slatta, Richard W. Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Steger, Manfred B. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Wright, Will. The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory. London: Sage, 2001.

Chapter Two

The Philosophy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian Judge Holden and Heraclitus Jerold J. Abrams

Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (1985)1 tells the story of the John J. Glanton gang of horsemen riding the deserts of Mexico, killing and scalping Indians for gold. Stunning for its inversion of classic American western tales of Indians scalping cowboys, and almost unbelievably graphically violent, Blood Meridian is also, as Harold Bloom has written, gorgeously wrought. “Blood Meridian,” writes Bloom, “seems to me plainly the greatest esthetic achievement of any living author,” and “the ultimate Western, not to be surpassed.”2 At the center of the novel is Judge Holden, who Bloom calls “the most frightening figure in all of American literature.”3 A seven-foot-tall hairless albino with elephantine size and superhuman strength, the judge is a horrifying killer, and not the less horrifying for his supreme mastery of all arts and sciences. The judge speaks all languages, and he lectures nightly by the fire on philosophical questions of existence, perception, understanding, time and eternity, appearance and reality, the order of the universe, truth and falsity, good and evil, and games and war. At times, the judge’s cryptic lectures seem to glow and disappear like brilliant embers crackling skyward and without unity, for he rarely mentions the tradition of philosophy.4 Toward the end of the novel, however, the judge cites Thales and Anaximander,5 two of the earliest western philosophers; and clearly elements of Anaximander’s philosophy, for example, “fire-holes” in the firmament, can be seen in the novel. But ultimately the judge’s philosophy, and the philosophy of the novel as a whole, is a version of Heraclitus’s philosophy.6 In Heraclitus’s philosophy all things are one, and that one is 11

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self-opposed, and all things move between opposites, but all things are also unified in their becoming, by the logos (or word), rendering all things strife and war, and war the father of all things.7 THE KID AND THE JUDGE At the beginning of the novel, “the kid” sits by the fire with his father. The mother has died giving birth to the child, and now the father “lies in drink.” “All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”8 The father, once a schoolteacher, has taught the kid nothing. “He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.”9 The kid runs away and eventually joins the Glanton gang, the judge among them.10 A natural philosopher, like the presocratics, the judge examines the composition and variation of rocks in different regions of the land. In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of earth’s origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat.11

The judge takes the rocks as if they were an eternal text, much as the horsemen take scripture. But the judge will have none of this. “Books lie,” he tells the men, just as Heraclitus once rejected Homer and all the other poets, and any who believed them. “In taking the poets as testimony for things unknown, they are citing authorities that cannot be trusted.”12 But one among the horsemen claims the author of nature does not lie; and the judge agrees, yet without reversing his claim. “No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.” The judge holds up a rock. “He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.”13 The logos speaks in nature and the wise man trusts sensation and reason, not the lies of books. Nature (not poetry) is logos, and the wise man knows the difference. “It is wise,” writes Heraclitus, “listening not to be me but to the report: to agree that all things are one.”14 Here “report” in Greek is “logos,” and may be better left as logos or “word.” This story about the judge recalls the best-known story about Heraclitus, as recorded by Aristotle: “Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, is reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present.”15 As Heraclitus says the gods are present in the fire, the judge says rocks are divine words, the judge who is seen throughout the story to warm himself at the fire like Heraclitus.



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At the fire, the ex-priest Tobin tells the kid how they found the judge. Without gunpowder and fleeing “the savages,” they suddenly beheld an enormous, colorless, hairless man “set on a rock in the middle of the greatest desert you’d ever want to see,” smiling happily. “It was like . . . You couldnt tell where he’d come from.”16 He set on that sole rock in the desert, and neither belonged, man nor rock. “I said that it was a merestone,” Tobin says, “for to mark him out of nothing at all.”17 The judge had no canteen or supplies but with him was a rifle inscribed in Latin, Et In Arcadia Ego—“A reference to the lethal in it”18—for death is in all places, even in Arcadia. Like those Latin words, speaking with existential self-determination and omnipresence, the judge himself appears to have been everywhere. “Every man in the company claims to have encountered that sootysouled rascal in some other place,” Tobin tells the kid, describing the judge’s soul as if it were soot from a rifle, or some other Heraclitean fire.19 The judge, Tobin says, the judge is like no other man. “I’ve never seen him turn to a task but what he didnt prove clever at,” and between the judge and any man, “It’s no fair accountin,” no weighing of the scales. Bloom says much the same, speaking of the judge as nothing short of “a Promethean demigod.” Tobin tells the kid, He’s the greatest fiddler I ever heard and that’s an end to it. The greatest. He can cut a trail, shoot a rifle, ride a horse, track a deer. He’s been all over the world. Him and the governor they sat up till breakfast and it was Paris this and London that in five languages, you’d have give something to of heard them. The governor’s a learned man himself he is, but the judge.20

Heraclitus writes, “Men who love wisdom must be good inquirers into many things indeed.”21 The judge always makes time for his inquiries into nature. Even fleeing the savages, he periodically dismounts for scholarly study of rocks or plants. “The judge would stop to botanize and then ride to catch up,” says Tobin. “Pressin leaves into his book.”22 Collecting samples and taking notes, sketching forms, always in an elegant and styled hand. Analyzing everything in his path. His mind seems always to be working. In fact, while the horsemen sleep by the fire at night, the judge remains awake. “He never sleeps.”23 His mind is evermoving, like fire, like being. All things flow, writes Heraclitus. All things are in flux: Panta rhei. And what the judge is thinking of is the savaging tracking them, his men out of gunpowder, and the bats circling the skies above. “Watchin the bats,” Tobin tells the kid of the judge, making “notes in a little book.”24 Leading the men to a mountain and a cave, the judge will collect the bat droppings to extract “the nitre” (potassium nitrate) and then mix it with urine, forming a foul but volatile batter, and this to be spread on stone in sun to dry, and become gunpowder.25

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At the last possible moment, as the Indians have the men trapped, encircling them, and ready to take the mountain, the judge tells the men to fill their pistols and rifles. “Gentlemen,” says the judge, pulling both pistols at once from his back, from his belt, for “he drew them one in each hand and he is as either-handed as a spider,” says Tobin, “he can write with both hands at a time and I’ve seen him to do it, and he commenced to kill indians.”26 “One man is ten thousand, if he is the best,” writes Heraclitus.27 The judge is a man beyond men. THE JUDGE ON GAMES AND WAR After riding through the desert, killing and scalping, and covered in dirt and the blood of Apaches, at last the horsemen bathe in a large pool in Chihuahua. One after another they descend, gradually turning the pool to a “thin gruel of blood and filth.”28 Previous bathers exit the pool and behold a scene like something out of Heraclitus’s fragments: “They are purified in vain with blood, those polluted with blood, as if someone who stepped in mud should try to wash himself with mud. Anyone who noticed him doing this would think he was mad.”29 Only a madman believes he can purify himself in war and blood, as only a madman believes he can bathe in mud, but the judge believes exactly these things: “If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay.”30 The judge waits for the pool to fill with blood and mud and prepares to cleanse himself in liquid war. He strolls the pool perimeter naked and enormous, brilliant white—like something from space, for he “shone like the moon so pale,” and “not a hair to be seen anywhere upon that vast corpus”— while “testing the waters with one toe, surprisingly petite.”31 Finally, “that great bulk lowered itself into the bath,” and the “waters rose perceptibly” as the judge “submerged himself to the eyes,” those “eyes slightly crinkled, as if he were smiling under the water like some pale and bloated manatee surfaced in a bog.”32 The judge is enormous, but he is also strangely shaped like a child. His body is hairless and globular, “outsized and childlike”33 with “surprisingly petite” feet and small hands: “His hands were small.”34 The judge is an “enormous infant,”35 much as the kid is both a man and a “kid,” and said also to be a “pale” child. “See the child,” is the first line of the novel. “He is pale and thin.” The child at the fire watches the fire and watches his father. “He watches, pale and unwashed.”36 These two pale children, the kid and the judge, are opposites, but they are also one being. One is tall and massive with small hands and feet. The other is small and thin with big hands: “He is not big but he has big wrists, big hands.” The kid and the judge also both have childlike faces, despite their experience. Here is the kid: “The child’s face is



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curiously untouched behind the scars, the eyes oddly innocent.”37 And here is the judge: “His face was serene and strangely childlike,”38 a childlike face with “oddly childish lips.”39 The kid and the judge also have opposite minds. The kid “can neither read nor write,” and rarely speaks. The judge, however, is supremely intelligent, eloquent, and loquacious. At the beginning of the novel, in the kid “broods already a taste for mindless violence.” By contrast, the judge’s taste for violence is never mindless, but always charged with philosophy.40 The kid and the judge are the one child Heraclitus sets at the center of his philosophy. “Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.”41 Charles Kahn in “A New Look at Heraclitus” examines this fragment from Heraclitus: “Life-time (aiôn) is the royal player, moving pieces back and forth in a game whose rules are those of the cosmos. It is War, the struggle of opposing tendencies up and down, which assigns everyone his place: god or man, slave or free.”42 The judge is Heraclitus’s immortal child-king, ruling the land and guiding the horsemen, conquering opponents, and playing the eternal game of war. The kid is a philosophical reflection of the judge, identical in many ways, opposite in many ways. Here is the judge’s statement on the nature of the universe as games and war: It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

As Heraclitus claims war to be cosmological and eternal, the judge claims war to be eternal, preexisting man. The judge also identifies war with fire, as does Heraclitus: “The ordering, the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in measures going out.”43 The same philosophy lies at the heart of Blood Meridian, whether given by the judge or the narrator: “For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be.”44 A man named Davy Brown listens and then asks the judge, “Is that why war endures?” “No,” the judge says. “It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.” Davy says, “That’s your notion.” The judge responds. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill

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and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principles and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player all.45

In any game of chance or skill the players play for stakes, typically money or honor, and these stakes determine the meaning and value of the game: the greater the stakes the greater the game. Therefore, the judge seems to reason, the ultimate stakes determine the ultimate game. But the ultimate stakes are the players themselves, and the players become these stakes precisely in the game that is war. For in war existence itself is in play, and that is why war is the ultimate game. And furthermore, if all games aspire to their ultimate condition, and war is the ultimate game, all games aspire to this highest game of war. As the judge claims, “all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.” The universe, for Heraclitus, as for the judge, is a game of existence, one in which being is opposed to itself, and which is played out by fire of becoming, one thing destroying another, and then becoming something else. In war, in history, man—or humanity—plays a version of this game by setting himself against himself, by setting existence against existence. The judge says, This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.46

The same view appears in the fragments of Heraclitus: “War is father of all and king of all; and some he has shown as gods, others men; some he has made slaves, others free.”47 W. K. C. Guthrie in “Flux and Logos in Heraclitus” comments: “By calling War ‘father and king of all,’ Heraclitus deliberately recalls Homer’s titles for Zeus, and so suggests that War, not Zeus, is the supreme god.”48 As Heraclitus rejects Homer’s gods, and replaces Zeus with war, the judge rejects scripture and claims, “War is god.” And as Heraclitus claims war shows some men gods and kings, and others men—that “kingship belongs to the child”—so too will the judge claim that war makes some men gods or kings and others merely men, the judge himself being just such a king. The judge even declares himself a king, upon being asked by Toadvine about the dressing of birds. For the judge:



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would dress expertly the colorful birds he’d shot, rubbing the skins with gunpowder and stuffing them with balls of dried grass and packing them away in his wallets. He pressed the leaves of trees and plants into his book and he stalked tiptoe the mountain butterflies with his shirt outheld in both hands, speaking to them in a low whisper, no curious study himself. Toadvine sat watching him as he made his notations in the ledger, holding the book toward the fire for the light, and he asked him what was his purpose in all this.49

The judge responds. “Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”50 In the judge’s epistemology, to know a thing is to command a thing, and anything in creation that exists beyond his knowledge exists beyond his command, and therefore threatens his reign. “These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men’s reckoning.” The judge as law (nomos) is here opposing himself to nature (physis) and declaring his will to conquer and enslave nature: “Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.” “What’s a suzerain?” asks Toadvine. “A keeper or overlord,” says the judge.51 A suzerain is a king, and the judge extends his suzerainty by understanding and inscription of that understanding in his ledger (his law). He understands by listening to the language of nature, by giving it a hearing, and entering his language into its language, thereby mastering it. Nothing of the earth shall escape his rule or ledger, nothing shall not speak to him, even the butterflies, unthreatening though they may seem. For the judge lays claim to all. “This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.”52 Toadvine listens. “I dont see what that has to do with catchin birds.” The judge responds: “The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos.” “That would be a hell of a zoo,” says Toadvine. The judge smiles: “Yes, he said. Even so.”53 THE KID AND THE JUDGE Later, following a violent battle, the kid finds the judge in the desert at a well, unclothed and scorched by a blazing sun, “the judge a pale pink beneath his talc of dust like something newly born.” Once again, the judge appears as a gigantic child; and once again, this child is a king, only now “like some scurrilous king stripped of his vestiture.” The child king sits at the well with “a bucketful of gold coins of every value,” and offers the kid gold for a hat and

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gold for a gun, plus powder and ball. “Everything’s for sale, said the judge.”54 As each thing becomes another in nature, so too with gold exchanged for goods, says Heraclitus: “All things are requited for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.”55 And this, and this alone, according to Heraclitus, as for the judge, is justice, is law, as overseen by the judge himself. “One must realize that war is shared and Conflict is Justice,” writes Heraclitus, “and that all things come to pass . . . in accordance with conflict.”56 Near the end of the novel the kid reaches San Diego and sees the ocean. He drinks in a bar and four soldiers arrest him, later to awake and see the judge, his keeper, the kid now like a bird in the judge’s zoo. “One morning he woke to find the judge standing at his cage, hat in hand, smiling down at him. He was dressed in a suit of gray linen and he wore new polished boots.”57 The judge had told the authorities that it was the kid who was the madman responsible for all the violence in the desert. “Told them the truth,” says the judge. “That you were the person responsible.” Very strange, but if the kid is the judge, and the judge the kid, then perhaps what the judge has said is not false, though the kid need not know it. “You’re the one that’s crazy, said the kid.” The judge reject’s the kid’s claim. “No, he said. It was never me. But why lurk there in the shadows? Come here where we can talk, you and me.”58 “Nature loves to hide,” says Heraclitus.59 The kid is “nature,” hiding from the judge, but the kid can hardly hide any longer from the judge. “How will one hide from that which never sets?” writes Heraclitus.60 “Hear me, man,” says the judge to the kid. “I spoke in the desert for you and you only and you turned a deaf ear to me.” The kid partook in war but “turned a deaf ear” to the judge, silent of words like nature itself, at least toward the judge. And yet the kid, like another presocratic philosopher, had studied the judge, much as the judge had been studying the rocks, the plants, the birds and butterflies and bats. Each studied his opposite, the judge speaking and not hiding, the kid hiding and not speaking. The judge says, “Only each was called upon to empty out his heart into the common and one did not.” The kid barely responds. “It was you, whispered the kid. You were the one.” The kid charges the judge with deception, the judge who concealed himself behind words, his words often riddle or self-contradiction—like the logos in Heraclitus—only seeming to share openly his thought with the men at the fire; and the kid knew as much. “Look at me,” says the judge. “Our animosities were formed and waiting before ever we two met.” Their opposition is ontological and primordial as war itself, the judge always speaking, the kid saying so little, hardly anything. “You, said the kid. It was you.” Never before had the judge to demand, “Look at me,” “Listen to me,” “Hear me,” “Come out of the darkness.” But the kid refuses all. “Lies, said the kid.”61 Somewhere out there in the desert the kid



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attained autonomy, not a bird’s autonomy, but a man’s, and chose to die with his choices, a man at last free, and thereby fearless of death, fearless even of the judge himself, and therefore more insult to the judge than anything else in nature. As they speak, the kid is still in much pain, for he carries in his leg an arrow from the Yuma battle. “The kid carried an arrow in his leg and it was butted against the bone.”62 After his release, a surgeon prepares the kid with ether and he sleeps and dreams of the judge. “In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other?” Yet, in those dreams, the judge appears not as an orator or philosopher so much as a monster, as quiet as the kid, and apparently nature itself in some alternate form. “A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was their system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go.”63 Silent and serene like a child, the judge can no more be divided into his origins than war or fire or logos, for the judge is his own antecedent, as becoming is its own antecedent, as the eternal child of war is father to itself. EVENING AT THE BAR Years later the kid is a man. He drinks in a bar. A bear dances onstage. A drunken man levels a “longbarreled cavalry pistol” and shoots the bear, after which the bear “began to totter and to cry like a child and he took a few last steps, dancing, and crashed to the boards.”64 The judge watches the kid who is now a man, the kid become a man; the judge having not aged. The judge joins the man and speaks of “the dance.” The man refuses interest. “I aint studyin no dance,” he says, as if distinguishing himself from the judge’s “apprentice scholars”65 in the desert. The judge tells the man to drink and threatens his life. “This night thy soul may be required of thee.” The man drinks but he is not afraid. The judge speaks of the man’s silence in the desert as if it were the opposite of the logos, the logos which becomes through opposition: “Was it always your idea, he said, that if you did not speak you would not be recognized.” The man says, “You seen me.” The judge spoke to all, but the kid set himself outside the common fire (commanded by the judge in speech) as if refusing language itself, and refusing language refusing the game, refusing war. As opposite the judge, the kid withdraws even from speech, almost like Heraclitus’s disciple Cratylus who walked in silence, only moving his finger as a sign signifying paradoxically the impossibility of signification, for nothing true could be said of a universe all in flux (as Aristotle tells the story).66

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The judge says, “I recognized you when I first saw you and yet you were a disappointment to me. Then and now. Even so at the last I find you here with me.” The judge’s purpose has always been to force the unity of existence between himself and the kid, in dialogue and death. The man corrects the judge: “I aint with you.” The judge feigns inquiry: “Not? he said. He looked about him in a puzzled and artful way and he was a passable thespian.”67 The man denies intention of war despite spatial proximity: “I never come here huntin you.” “What then?” says the judge. “He looked at the judge. I been everywhere, he said. This is just one more place.”68 Tobin once told the kid the judge had been everywhere. Now the man tells the judge the man has been everywhere. The unity of the man and the judge deepens, and their opposition deepens. The man tells the judge the man is a man like any man, and the bar a bar like any bar. But the judge knows better and knows too their meeting not to be contingent but necessary, for tonight they must be reconciled. Tonight, says the judge, is a great ritual celebration of reconciliation of opposites, the beginning of the man, and the end of the man, and all the opposites he contains, “for each man’s destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well.”69 The judge tells the man to drink and prepare for the ritual. “Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together?”70 “The path of the carding wheels is straight and crooked,”71 writes Heraclitus; the same view the judge is now advancing. The paths of the kid and the judge are different paths, but in their opposition they circle back into one another: “The beginning and the end are shared in the circumference of a circle.”72 Earlier in the desert, at the ruins, the judge spoke similarly of the wheel of becoming: “This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.”73 The man again dismisses the judge: “You aint nothing.” The judge says, “You speak truer than you know.” The judge is being and nothingness, at once, in becoming, and this becoming is war, and this war is the dance of fire, and the dance of the bear to come. But the man takes no more interest in the bear than the dance or the judge himself: “Even a dumb animal can dance,” says the man, refusing to hear what the judge is saying to him. So again the judge demands his words enter the mind of the man: “Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance. Bears that dont.”74 Later the judge kills the man in the outhouse. The judge “gathered him in his arms” and returned the man “to antic clay,” the man who found war not holy, each now completing the same celestial circuit. “Fire coming on will



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discern and catch up with all things,”75 writes Heraclitus, and the judge has at last caught up with the man. According to Kahn, Heraclitus’s fragment, here, also means that fire will eventually “judge” and “seize” or “grasp” all things; and much the same applies to the action of the judge, who has judged, seized, and gathered up the man. And yet the judge’s action cannot be final, for the judge well knows the truth of the presocratic philosophy, that “never can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again gathers.” THE DANCE AND THE FIDDLE Following the death of the man, the judge returns to the bar for the ritual dance of victory over his opposite, over himself. The scene of the dance is a literary composite of several images from several fragments from Heraclitus: the bear, the fiddle, the dance, the warder, madness, intoxication, the Dionysian ritual, the reconciliation of opposites, the game, immortality, the child, the logos, and the limits of evening and dawn. The narrator tells of the judge: He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.76

The judge dances among the mad intoxicated dancers as if he were Dionysus from Heraclitus’s fragment on Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, madness, ritual dance, and theater.77 The dance is not linearly directional but activity turning upon and into itself and whose end is none other than itself, like fire. Earlier a bear danced onstage and died, after which the judge told the man that all must die—“Bears that dance” and “Bears that dont”—all except one: for “there is room on the stage for one beast and one alone.” Now the judge dances on stage like a dancing bear, at the end of the odyssey, on its last evening, just before dawn; and here too the story is deeply Heraclitean. For Heraclitus also sets “the Bear” between evening and dawn: “The limits of Dawn and Evening is the Bear; and, opposite the Bear, the Warder of luminous Zeus.”78 Kahn comments: “‘The Bear’ (arktos) must designate Ursa Major, our Big Dipper, or Great Bear, a general mark for the celestial pole and hence for the north.”79 The Big Dipper is the Great Bear (Ursa Major), which is opposed to the Little Dipper, or the Little Bear (Ursa Minor). The same Great Bear appears on the first page of Blood Meridian. The father tells

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the kid: “Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.”80 The Leonids are a meteor shower, but the father, an educated man, calls space a “stove” releasing fire. The Great Bear and the Little Bear fell from the “Dipper stove” to become the judge and the kid.81 Anaximander claims the ultimate principle of the universe to be the apeiron, that is, the boundless, which is divided and unified by opposites, and perforated by “fire-holes opening and closing.”82 The father as “warder” beholding the Bears fall looked for “blackness” left by the “holes in the heavens,” after the holes released their fire and closed. Once the Great Bear fell to earth, the warder and the Great Bear as opposites exchanged themselves. The judge as the Great Bear becomes warder to the kid and the horsemen in the desert, the judge declaring himself “suzerain” and “keeper” (or warder) of nature. All along, the judge appeared to be opposed to nature, for he sought to become suzerain over all nature; but now, with the man killed, the judge who was nomos, opposed to physis, has become a new variation of himself, becoming nature again, as a gigantic bear—or bearlike being—playing a fiddle. The image of the fiddle (or the lyre) is also essential to Heraclitus’s philosophy: “Homer was wrong when he said, ‘Would that Conflict might vanish from among gods and men!’ (Iliad, XVIII.107). For there would be no attunement without high and low notes, nor any animals, male and female, both of which are opposites.”83 They who wish for an ultimate end of conflict and war fail to understand the nature of becoming by opposition in the universe: “They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with itself; it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre.”84 Plato in the Symposium notes this image in Heraclitus’s philosophy: “The one, he says, ‘being at variance with itself is in agreement with itself’ ‘like the attunement of a bow or a lyre.’” Plato then comments: “Heraclitus probably meant that an expert musician creates a harmony by resolving the prior discord between high and low notes.”85 Tobin told the kid the judge was the greatest fiddler in the world. The judge’s mastery of the fiddle is mastery of the reconciliation of opposites, “an attunement turning back on itself,” in Heraclitus terms, “like that of the bow and the lyre.”86 The judge reconciles the high and low notes, and these are kid and himself. In the desert they do not speak, and are as opposite as oratory and silence, but come into reconciliation at the end, with their dialogues, and finally the death of the man and the transformation of the two.87 The song the judge plays on the fiddle is the reconciliation of the two men, and of life and death, and its ongoing transformation: “The name of the bow is life; its work is death,” writes Heraclitus.88 And it is within this song upon the fiddle that death becomes life, and life becomes death, and a new game comes now into view. “Immortals are mortal,” writes Heraclitus, “mortals immortal, living the



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others’ death, dead in the others’ life.”89 The judge will never die, but he will live only in the man, and the man will die, but he will be transformed into new form.90 The judge becomes the bear, becomes nature, and the man who was nature becomes law—not a new kind of judge, but a new kind of law, and this law appearing in the curious half-page epilogue to the novel. THE EPILOGUE As the novel ends with the evening, the epilogue begins at dawn with a stunning image of fire-holes from Anaximander’s philosophy. These holes are perforated in the firmament, writes Anaximander, and now “the man” (who was once the kid and the judge) has become a new kind of man, and this man perforating the land and releasing fire from the holes as the perforated holes in the firmament release their fire. In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it in the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there.91

The man is not alone. Like the judge, the new man on the plain leads others over the plain. These others are the wanderers. The judge leading the horsemen killed Indians and left their bones on the plain. The new man on the plain leads the wanderers as they gather the bones of the dead on the plain. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather.92

Like the perfectly round holes themselves, the movement from hole to hole is perfect because each perfect hole owes its existence to the last and determines the perfection of the next. The movement proceeds by necessity as if any last two holes formed premises of a logical syllogism and deductively determined the next hole as conclusion, and yet that conclusion is only ever a new a new middle term in a new deduction determining a new conclusion, and so on over the plain. This succession also reveals a structure like the temporal

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ground of language, even among those silent beings, for one cannot doubt the forward linear movement of words except to speak or think in words, and those words to have followed other words, one after another, out of the past and into the future. The wanderers move “haltingly” and with “escapement,” mechanically and unlike men, almost like robotic birds in cuckoo clocks, or birds freed from the judge’s zoo, and now obeying a law that has become their own, periodically bending down to gather bones and rising to move on again. They move like nomos without physis, doing what they do without rational reflection and yet according to reason, according to the order, the law, much as men and women once came to the bar without reason but according to reason, as the judge describes them: “They do not have to have a reason. But order is not set aside because of their indifference.” Despite their halting motions, the wanderers in their escapement and lack of inner reality seem to move like planets. The word “planets” in Greek means “wanderers.”93 In the desert, on the plain, throughout the novel, the judge appeared to be formed of perfectly rounded glowing stone, as if wrought from the perfectly rounded glowing holes of stone made by the man on the plain. “The enormous dome of his head when he bared it was blinding white and perfectly circumscribed about so that it looked to have been painted.”94 The judge “shone like the moon so pale,” with that “lunar dome” of his head, that “immense and gleaming dome of his naked skull,”95 and which “shone like an enormous phosphorescent egg in the lamplight.”96 He would almost seem to be a gigantic snowman, only made of stone, glowing, dressed as a cowboy, superhumanly brilliant and horrifyingly violent, a fusion of Heraclitean reason, fire, and stone, incandescent and one with the fire that speaks through him. What the man on the plain looks like is not clear, and what exactly is happening is not clear either. The epilogue would seem as short as the kid’s words are brief, a fragment of voice, perhaps, responding in opposition to the whole of the novel. Bloom notes the difficulty and strangeness of this ending of the novel. “The strangest passage in Blood Meridian, the epilogue is set at dawn, where a nameless man progresses over a plain by means of holes that he makes in the rocky ground.” Bloom interprets the image in light of the subtitle of the novel: “The subtitle of Blood Meridian is the Evening Redness in the West, which belongs to the Judge, last survivor of the Glanton gang.” If the judge is the evening redness in the west, and the man on the plain rises with the dawn, and the dawn rises against the evening, then the man on the plain would appear to rise against the judge. As Bloom writes: “Perhaps all that the reader can surmise with some certainty is that the man striking fire in the rock at dawn is an opposing figure in regard to the evening redness in the West. The



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Judge never sleeps, and perhaps will never die, but a new Prometheus may be rising to go up against him.”97 But if the judge and the kid are one child, the child that is war, the king that is war, and that war the game of all things, each side becoming the other, each side changing with each round of the game, then the judge would now seem also to be a new kind of Prometheus, transformed by killing the man who is also transformed by being killed by the judge. In the bar, the judge spoke of the “child’s memory of loneliness such as when the others have gone and only the game is left with its solitary participant. A solitary game, without opponent. Where only the rules are at hazard.” The judge said to the man, “You of all men are no stranger to that feeling, the emptiness and the despair.” The judge is speaking Heraclitus’s philosophy, about the end of the game, and how the one side conquering the other must become an opposite to itself, as it always has. “The judge leaned closer. What do you think death is, man?”98 It is the judge himself who is the game, and who is the kid himself, and they two now become one will divide again into two new beings. The kid was nature. The judge was law. The kid gave himself his own law, becoming his opposite, just as the judge returns into nature, becoming the bear he claims to be. The kid became the man and is now the man on the plain. The man on the plain is coming for the judge. He is coming for the bear. The judge cannot escape him, the man with the instrument striking fire hole by hole. And there is nowhere he can hide. NOTES 1. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (New York: Random House, 1992), 180. 2. Harold Bloom, Introduction, McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (New York: Random House, 2010), vii. 3. Ibid., viii. 4. Heraclitus speaks in mysteries and riddles. The judge himself often speaks in mysteries and riddles. At the fire in the desert, one of the horsemen named Marcus Webster once called the judge “a formidable riddler” (McCarthy, 147). 5. McCarthy, 250. 6. Steven Frye in “Blood Meridian and the Poetics of Violence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), opens this discussion of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Heraclitus as follows: “In the notes that appear with the first draft manuscript of Blood Meridian, McCarthy includes a quote from the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535–475 BCE): ‘War is the father of us all and out [sic] king. War discloses who is godlike and who is but a man, who is a slave and who is a free man.’ McCarthy then writes: ‘Let the judge quote this in part without crediting source.’ In the final novel,

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these words become, ‘war is the truest form of divination. . . . War is god’” (107). See McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 261; see box 35, folder I of the Cormac McCarthy Papers, in the Southwestern Writers Collection, Wittliff Collections, Alkek Library, at Texas State University, in San Marcos, Texas. Later Frye writes: “Although McCarthy’s interest in violence may be in part political, it is in a deeper sense ontological, as the Heraclitus reference suggests” (109). 7. See also Denis Donoghue, “Reading Blood Meridian,” The Sewanee Review 105, no. 3 (Summer 1997): “Nietzsche is Judge Holden’s philosopher” (418). In fact, Heraclitus is Judge Holden’s philosopher, but Nietzsche is important here because Heraclitus is also Nietzsche’s philosopher. 8. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 3. 9. Ibid., 3. 10. See Lydia R. Cooper, No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in Cormac McCarthy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2001): “Blood Meridian’s kid seems to make a journey that is a dark antithesis to the traditional pattern of the bildungsroman, in which a young man leaves his father’s identity and home and ventures into his own future and fortune” (54). 11. McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 123. 12. Heraclitus, Fr. XII, 33. 13. Ibid., 122. 14. Heraclitus, Fr. XXXVI, 45. 15. Aristotle, Parts of Animals I.5, Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. I, ed. Jonathan Barnes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 645a16–25, 1004. 16. McCarthy, 132. 17. Ibid., 131. 18. Ibid., 131. 19. Ibid., 130. 20. Ibid., 129. 21. Heraclitus, Fr. IX, 33. 22. McCarthy, 133. 23. Ibid., 349. 24. Ibid., 133. 25. Ibid., 133. 26. Ibid., 140. 27. Heraclitus, Fr. LXIII, 57. 28. McCarthy, 174. 29. Heraclitus, Fr. CXVII, 81. 30. McCarthy, 319. 31. Ibid., 174, 32. Ibid., 173–74. 33. Ibid., 83. 34. Ibid., 7. 35. Ibid., 348. 36. Ibid., 3. 37. Ibid., 4.



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38. Ibid., 7. 39. Ibid., 146, 40. The unity and opposition of the judge and the kid can be difficult to detect, compared, for example, to that between the white John Jackson and the black John Jackson, each despising the other as a living negation of his being: “bad blood lay between them” (Ibid., 85). 41. Heraclitus, Fr. XCIV, 71. 42. Kahn, “A New Look at Heraclitus,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (July 1964), 200. 43. Heraclitus, Fr. XXXVII, 45. 44. McCarthy, 255. 45. Ibid., 260. 46. Ibid., 261. 47. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXXIII, 67. 48. W. K. C. Guthrie, “Flux and Logos in Heraclitus,” in The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 197. 49. McCarthy, 206. 50. Ibid., 207. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 208. 54. McCarthy, 294–95. 55. Heraclitus, Fr. XL, 47. 56. Ibid., Fr. LXXXII, 67. Guthrie “Flux and Logos in Heraclitus” highlights Heraclitus’s identification of war with justice, in opposition to Anaximander: “In saying that justice (or right) is strife he probably shows himself aware also of Anaximander’s teaching, which branded the warfare of the opposites as a series of acts of injustice. On the contrary, retorts Heraclitus, it is the highest justice” (198). 57. McCarthy, 317. 58. Ibid., 318. 59. Heraclitus, Fr. X, 33. 60. Heraclitus, Fr. CXXII, 83. 61. McCarthy, Ibid., 320. 62. Ibid., 289. 63. Ibid., 322. 64. Ibid., 339. 65. Ibid., 263. 66. Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.5, 1010a7–14, 1594–6. See also Plato’s Cratylus, in Complete Works of Plato, ed. John M. Cooper, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 402a, 120. 67. McCarthy, 341. 68. Ibid., 344. 69. Ibid., 344. 70. Ibid., 344.

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71. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXIV, 63. 72. Heraclitus, Fr. XCIX, 75. 73. McCarthy, 153. 74. Ibid., 345. 75. Heraclitus, Fr. CXXI, 83. 76. McCarthy, 349. 77. Heraclitus, Fr. CXVI, 81. Heraclitus writes: “If it were not Dionysus for whom they march in procession and chant the hymn to the phallus, their action would be most shameless. But Hades and Dionysus are the same, him for whom they rave and celebrate Lenaia” (Fr. CXVI, 81). Kahn identifies “Lenaia” as the “festival of Dionysus, probably characterized by frenzied dancing or ritual madness. The phallic hymn and procession belong to a different festival of Dionysus.” 78. Heraclitus, Fr. XLV, 51. 79. Kahn, 162. 80. McCarthy, 3. 81. If the judge is the Great Bear who fell, yet the constellation remains: “The stars swung counterclockwise in their course and the Great Bear turned and the Pleiades winked in the very roof of the vault” (McCarthy, 222). 82. Kahn, 16. 83. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXXI, 67. 84. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXVII, 65. 85. Plato, Symposium, 187a–b, 471. 86. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXVII, 65. 87. Heraclitus writes, “The counter-thrust brings together, and from tones at variance comes perfect attunement, and all things come to pass from conflict” (Fr. LXXV, 63). 88. Heraclitus, Fr. LXXIX, 65. 89. Heraclitus, Fr. XCII, 71. 90. As Heraclitus writes, “The same . . . : living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping, young and old. For these transposed are those, and those transposed again are these” (Fr. XCIII, 71). 91. McCarthy, 90. 92. Ibid., 351. 93. The throwing and gathering of the bones is a game like “knucklebones.” In ancient Greece children threw animal bones in the air and then gathered them, a game like jacks. Heraclitus himself played this game. 94. McCarthy, 83. 95. Ibid., 124. 96. Ibid., 340. 97. Bloom, Introduction to Blood Meridian, xv. 98. Ibid., 343.



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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. I. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Cooper, Lydia R. No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in Cormac McCarthy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2001. Donoghue, Denis. “Reading Blood Meridian.” The Sewanee Review 105, no. 3 (Summer 1997). Frye, Steven. “Blood Meridian and the Poetics of Violence.” In The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy. Ed. Steven Frye. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Guthrie, W. K. C. “Flux and Logos in Heraclitus.” In The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Kahn, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1979. ———. “A New Look at Heraclitus.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (July 1964). McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West. New York: Random House, 1992. Plato. Complete Works of Plato. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

Chapter Three

Horse Sense Discerning a Dialectic of Human/e Relations from Buck and The Rider Jennifer L. McMahon

Cows are elemental to the occupation of the cowboy, but so are horses. In certain respects, horses are more essential to the figure of the cowboy than cattle, especially when one considers the cowboy as a figure that occupies the popular imagination. On the page, the screen, and in our minds, the presence of a horse is crucial in establishing the character and legitimacy of a cowboy. Various westerns feature characters identifiable as cowboys who deal little, if at all, with cattle but are recognizable due to their association with a horse. Due to this association, one must consider the role of the horse when rethinking the status of American cowboy in the twenty-first century. Has the cowboy been loosed from his horse in this new context? Or is the bond still present? While horses are used less in modern ranching, horses remain a constant in contemporary representations of the cowboy. Thus, the figure of the cow-boy as a horse-man persists. Two films that evidence this fact are Buck (2011) and The Rider (2017). While these films indicate there is an ongoing association between the cowboy and the horse, they also suggest that some changes are afoot in our popular conception of the cowboy, changes that are manifest, among other things, in the way the twenty-first-century cowboy relates to horses.

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I. BUCK AND BIOPICS In Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) asserts that all philosophy is autobiography. He states, “it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.”1 Though Nietzsche’s comments highlight the need to consider whether subjective bias precludes the possibility of objectivity, admitting there is a subjective element in philosophy need not force us to conclude that we reap nothing from it save insight into its author. Instead, as Nietzsche’s successor, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) notes, while existentialism takes “subjectivity [as its] starting point,”2 it can discern features of the human condition that affect all (or most) human subjects. For instance, the documentary biopic, Buck (2011), examines the life and training philosophy of modern day cowboy and natural horsemanship proponent, Buck Brannaman. Though Brannaman credits Tom Dorrance (19103–2003) and Ray Hunt (1929–2009) for his training methods, popular awareness of natural horsemanship techniques can be credited to Brannaman who became known to the general public when Robert Redford showcased his training practices in The Horse Whisperer (1998).4 Buck not only illustrates the way Brannaman’s training philosophy has been influenced by his personal life, it conveys an astute understanding of human psychology, and a changed image of the cowboy. From the opening scene to the film’s final frames, Buck reveals Brannaman to be wholly cowboy, but not the bronc-busting figure audiences have been indoctrinated to expect by traditional westerns. It frames Brannaman as a horse gentler as opposed to a bronc-buster. Foregoing the standard cowboy narrative, Buck illustrates that in educating riders, Brannaman is not so much trying to help humans break horses as he is “trying to help horses with human problems.” As Brannaman explains, the primary problem horses have with humans is the fact that humans project their own issues onto horses, unconsciously using the human-horse relationship to address their psychological needs. Most frequently, humans seek to dominate horses to assure themselves of their own power and influence. Brannaman’s gentler take on horsemanship and aversion to traditional ideas of “breaking” horses move him away from the twentieth-century idea of the cowboy and into a new era. Though he is by all physical appearances a traditional cowboy, Brannaman’s actions and his explanation of the complex relationship that we have with horses are anything but. As Brannaman explains, the interest that humans have in horses is one that can be attributed, in part, to the fact that we are like them. Like horses, we are anxious creatures, social animals whose stature is determined by our ability

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to establish ourselves within our human herd. Nietzsche’s commentary on the “herd instinct”5 and the way in which the weak and strong-willed vie for power comes to mind here. His account of social relations, like that of successors Sartre and Michel Foucault (1926–1984), draws heavily from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) account of sociality and the development of consciousness discussed in the section of The Phenomenology of Spirit titled, “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage.” Here, Hegel asserts that while human relations are initially ones where the domination of others is the primary means through which individuals derive validation and security, humans will eventually transcend this hierarchical dynamic. Instead of seeking personal affirmation through the subjugation of others, Hegel asserts that we will eventually move to a point where we recognize the intrinsic subjectivity of others and seek relations of reciprocity rather than control. Buck not only illustrates how Brannaman was moved toward this method by his personal experience, but also that his training philosophy, when compared to more traditional cowboy techniques, illustrates a Hegelian movement toward more empathetic training methods. Rather than adopt the traditional model of the cowboy, one predicated on subjugation, Brannaman’s methods encourage a model of partnership. This model improves the situation for horses, and it offers an inspiring new vision of the twenty-first-century cowboy as facilitator of more humane relations.6 A similar portrayal of the cowboy is also evident in the recent film, The Rider. First, however, more needs to be said about the psychodynamics of our relationship to horses. II. HUMANS AND THEIR FASCINATION WITH HORSES Humans love horses. Our fascination with them extends back centuries. Their graceful figures appear on cave walls, in Hellenic bronzes, and contemporary paintings. Our preoccupation continues to this day. No animal has captivated Hollywood like the horse. Horses are essential ingredients in Hollywood westerns, and horses have their own genre. Works like National Velvet (1944), and more recent films such as Spirit (2002), Seabiscuit (2003), Hidalgo (2004), Dreamer (2005), Secretariat (2010), and The Mustang (2019), attest to its resilience and the appeal of the horse movie.7 Buck and The Rider both capitalize on and reinforce our fascination with horses through their central focus on the protagonist’s relationship to them. Despite our fondness for cat videos, neither film would have been nominated for awards if their protagonists were cat whisperers. While horses have an enduring appeal, traditional cowboy methods are not kind to horses. These methods are showcased in the “horse-breaking”

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scenes that populate many classic westerns. Shown wild with fear, horses in these scenes are regularly whipped into submission, and sometimes even to death. The figure of the cowboy is elevated through this ritual of dominance and audiences are cued to delight in his victory. This delight begs explanation. If we are so enamored of horses, why do we enjoy witnessing their violent subjugation? Perhaps horses are simply metaphors for primal nature or the regions of North America that the cowboy hero must be “conquer” for civilization to exist. While horses do serve these literary purposes, this function doesn’t explain the disproportionate focus on their subjugation when other animals could serve the same purpose. Moreover, it does not explain why these violent methods continue, indeed are relatively commonplace, in actual practice. As Buck and The Rider suggest, the fascination that humans have with dominating horses may have to do with our mental makeup. It may be rooted in features we share with horses as well as in our desire to appropriate traits they possess. Like horses, our survival depends on establishing ourselves within a “herd.” Like them, we are prone to anxiety and wired to run. One of the things we try to flee is acknowledgement of our physical vulnerability and social dependence. Anything that alludes to our fragility or dependence amplifies anxiety, bringing our attention to what R.D. Laing (1927–1989) refers to as “ontological insecurity.”8 This insecurity motivates an impulse to escape or defend oneself. That defense regularly takes the form of pushing back against the stimulus (or a surrogate) to reassert our power and reestablish agency. Hegel argues this tendency is rooted deep in our consciousness. Consciousness’s predisposition toward defensive resistance explains not only the inclination to dominate horses, a feature that is emblematic of the traditional portrait of the cowboy, but also the tendency to want to dominate others generally. Both Buck and The Rider illustrate an alternative to this type of response. III. HEGEL AND OUR PREDISPOSITION TO DOMINANCE Common to the western genre and the traditional image of the cowboy is the duel. As much as we expect cowboys to ride in on horses, we also expect them to stake their lives in duels that pit the cowboy protagonist against an evil villain. Though it does not feature a cowboy, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit offers an analysis of the primeval duel. The section titled, “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage” is the most widely read and influential section of Hegel’s text. There, Hegel asserts that material reality constitutes in “unity”9 and this unity is “Life.”10 Life

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naturally “split[s]-up . . . itself”11 giving rise to individual things, including conscious entities such as humans. Though conscious beings are like other material entities in that they are dependent upon the material conditions of their emergence, they differ from non-conscious beings in that consciousness makes them “other than [themselves].”12 Consciousness gives them the power to abstract themselves mentally from existence and conceive of themselves as separate from their situation. If a conscious being demonstrates this power to its fullest degree, it achieves an important milestone: self-consciousness.13 The capacity for self-awareness is not intrinsic to consciousness, it must develop, and this development is catalyzed by certain conditions, most notably antagonistic encounters with other conscious beings. A duel is essential for forward progress. Westerns regularly illustrate this in their plot structure. According to Hegel, while individuals need each other to survive and to develop, we do not initially recognize our mutual dependence. Instead, we initially perceive one another as threats. When an individual consciousness first encounters another of its kind, it does not see the other as an “essential”14 subject. Instead, it sees the other as a mere object in its visual field.15 The situation changes when that “object” exhibits symptoms of consciousness. When this occurs, the perceiving consciousness shifts into a new mode of awareness; it becomes conscious of another consciousness. Instead of seeing this other genuinely as other, it sees it as a reflection of “its own self.”16 The sight of another consciousness that mirrors itself, pulls consciousness “out of itself”17 and compels a transition from its primal (and default) state of absorption in the objects of its awareness into a reflexive state in which it thinks about itself. This drawing out destabilizes and decenters consciousness. It reveals the existence of another being with intentional powers. The presence of a new consciousness shows the original consciousness that in addition to being a mind that is conscious of things, it also exists as object for another mind, one it eventually discovers is not a mirror of itself, but a mind it can neither know, nor immediately control. This amplifies anxiety. It arouses anxiety because it discloses the vulnerability of the individual to the contingencies of its environment including other intentional entities for which it is potential prey. Hegel argues that to ameliorate the anxiety generated by the presence of another consciousness, individuals “struggle”18 against one another. They do so to regain “their [self] certainty”19 He describes this struggle as necessary and argues it culminates in the production of what contemporary biologists refer to as a dominance hierarchy, or what Hegel calls the “lord and bondsman relationship.”20 The lord is the individual that overpowers its rival whereas the bondsman is the individual that is overpowered. By dominating its rival, the lord regains self-certainty, proving to be the “independent”21 consciousness. The bondsman is shown “dependent”22 through submission. Due

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to the bondsman’s submission, the lord does not recognize the bondsman as an equal, or even necessarily as a human. Rather, the bondsman is reduced [again] to the mode of a “thin[g].”23 The bondsman exists as an instrument of the lord’s will and for the lord’s convenience and “enjoyment.”24 We can see the rituals of dominance that humans engage in relative to nonhuman animals as expressive of this impulse. Horse-breaking is a classic example. According to Hegel, when it comes to dominance hierarchies, the dominant figure achieves power over the subordinate figure by virtue of its willingness to “stak[e] [its] life”25; the individual who dominates is the one who overcomes the fear of losing its life (e.g., fear of death). This individual stands the greatest likelihood of dominating others because an individual who is wholly identified with its material being is more likely to surrender for self-preservation. The lord succeeds in dominating the other because the lord is not dominated by fear of injury or death. Riding horses, particularly unbroke ones, is high risk and requires one overcome fear. Though the domination of the one consciousness by another one marks the beginning of the journey toward self-consciousness, the Hegelian saga of consciousness is not complete. While the lord holds power over the bondsman and discovers a heightened degree of consciousness through conflict, the establishment of a dominance hierarchy offers neither lord nor bondsman full self-consciousness. Instead, both must develop further. Hegel argues that the bondsman develops an appreciation of his independence through “servitude.”26 Work “transforms [the individual] into a truly independent self-consciousness”27 because it forces the bondsman sublimate desire and hold it “in check.”28 Though Karl Marx (1818–1883) is critical of Hegel on this point, Hegel argues that the bondsman’s “alienated labour”29 is productive in that it forces them to dissociate from “attachment to [their] natural existence”30 thereby creating an opportunity to discover unique “being-forself.”31 Once this occurs, Hegel asserts that the scene is set for a reversal of roles. Just as work has fostered greater agency in the bondsman, the lord’s position of dominance leads them to become reliant on the bondsman’s labor. This compromises the lord’s superior position. Dependency makes the lord vulnerable. Though the lord gained a superior position through independence of mind, if the lord is blind to his material dependence, the lord is dependent, not independent. Without question, Hegel’s dialectic account of consciousness has shaped western intellectual history. It has influenced theorists to assume that social relations are fundamentally antagonistic in nature and that social conflict is inevitable insofar as it is expressive of an existential or psychological need to corroborate individual power. Traditional cowboy narratives reiterate this narrative and reinforce the notion that conflict is an intractable feature of experience. Cowboy narratives capitalize on the vicarious satisfaction that

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audiences derive when the protagonist with whom we identify successfully dominates various hostile “others,” whether those others be human or nonhuman adversaries. What seems to have been overlooked is that while Hegel asserts that individuals are initially disposed toward antagonism, their relations are not ultimately so. Instead, in keeping with his emphasis on dialectic, Hegel asserts that relations of conflict and dominance must be overcome. As Phyllis Sutton Morris explains, “Hegel tells [a] more hopeful story about human relationships”32 than many of his successors. Hegel’s initial emphasis on “unequal power relations”33 is precisely that: initial. Hegel makes it clear that for individuals to become fully self-conscious they must transcend their tendency to exist in dominance hierarchies and move to a state in which they “mutually recogniz[e]”34 one another. Only in this state do individuals discover that they are “both independent and mediated in [their] development to a higher state of self-consciousness by the other for whom [they] perform the same assistance.”35 Until this “reciprocal”36 recognition is achieved, individuals remain incomplete, “unhappy,”37 and in a “petty”38 state characterized by narcissistic “brooding.”39 Indeed, until each individual consciousness sees others as unique and independent, Hegel maintains no one will fully understand their true nature as beings whose lives and capacity for understanding are inextricably tied to one another. The protagonists in Buck and The Rider seem to be aware of this too. For Hegel, the culmination of each individual consciousness is not found in its capacity to dominate, but in its realization of “oneness”40 with the conditions of its existence and its mutuality with other beings. In this, the final state of Hegelian dialectic, each consciousness becomes aware of its embodied nature and connection to others.41 In this state the individual neither reigns over, nor surrenders, to others; instead, the individual “gives thanks [to others].”42 Moreover, the individual also denies itself “the satisfaction of being conscious of its independence”43 through dominance. Moving to this state requires the development a “feeling heart”44 and a willingness to resist acting on the anxiety that other beings predictably inspire. Hegel argues it is only in this state that individuals experience true “joy”45 and can exist alongside others “naturally and without embarrassment.”46 In Buck and The Rider, we see twenty-first-century cowboys who are acquainted with the model of dominance, but who elect to transcend rather than reinstate it. IV. FORCE VERSUS FEEL Certainly, Hegel’s account consciousness, while appealing in its idealism, may also sound naïve and simplistic. It describes an unrealistic scene in

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which two, and only two, individuals encounter one another without ever having interacted with a like mind. The basic demands of human offspring make this account impossible. Before we can explore our environment, we are in the care of others. We emerge within dominance hierarchies as dependent consciousnesses whose survival depends upon more mature individuals. Even when we mature, we continue to exist amongst myriad others in complex and variegated hierarchies, simultaneously lord and bondsman relative to different members of these groups. Hegel doesn’t offer a literal portrait of either our first encounter with another consciousness or the general human state. What he offers is an illustration of the basic psychodynamics that govern inter-conscious relations, particularly relations with new or unfamiliar consciousnesses. These insights can be extended to the interactions between humans and other forms of consciousness, including nonhuman consciousnesses. As Donna Haraway notes, what arouses concern in consciousness is the presence of an unfamiliar consciousness. Animals are “other minds”47 even if not precisely “the same sort”48; the presence of another mind reminds the individual of his or her “sheer animal vulnerability.”49 The individual experiences heightened insecurity, and a tendency to exhibit defensive behaviors as a means of coping with the increased anxiety. This occurs because feelings of insecurity can be temporarily ameliorated through acts of dominance. The individual’s effort to dominate others is not principally an effort to subordinate the other, but to psychologically reappropriate certainty in the self. The other arouses anxiety and is fearsome because the other exposes that one’s being is vulnerable, making one susceptible to fear.50 However, as Hegel makes clear, genuine freedom and security cannot be gleaned through dominance, but can be earned through mutuality. Both Buck and The Rider illustrate the way others arouse fear as well as our desire to avoid it. As existential phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) asserts, humans are uniquely “concern[ed]”51 about their being. This concern is expressed fundamentally by an emotion evident in humans and nonhuman animals: anxiety. Regardless of the species in which it is manifest, anxiety is the emotional indicator of an organism’s vulnerability, its dependence on sources outside itself for survival, and primarily, of the ever-present potential for its own loss (e.g., mortality). Anxiety is the visceral expression of our awareness that our being is tenuous and subject to a high degree of exposure. Until they are familiar with one another, conscious beings engender defensive responses in one another by virtue of their potential for reciprocal impact. As beings-in-the-world whose lives are always “at stake,”52 anxiety is adaptive. It is adaptive because it prompts the organism to display heightened attention to its environment, particularly entities in it capable of causing injury and against which it may need to stake its life to ensure its survival.53 However, while adaptive, anxiety is also unsettling, and

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not a state that the individual wants to persist.54 Anxiety engenders defensive responses that are indicative of the fact that the anxious individual seeks to reduce or eliminate anxiety. An immediate way to achieve this end is through management of what the anxious entity perceives to be the proximal cause of the emotion. For example, an anxious horse will normally flee a perceived threat, if possible, and if avenues of escape are impossible, it may kick, bite, or strike. If the aggressive maneuvers succeed in putting off the threat, the horse will experience a welcome reduction in anxiety, but it will also have learned (a dangerous consequence) that these aggressive maneuvers produce a desirable result. Of course, horses are not the only ones who suffer from anxiety or desire to obtain relief from it. Frequently subject to physical abuse as a child, Brannaman states that he readily empathized with horses and the terror they experience when confronting unfamiliar beings. Though his case was extreme, Brannaman’s childhood experience illustrates another relevant fact: anxiety is amplified in humans. Anxiety is amplified in humans because in addition to humans being subject to bouts of anxiety in response to specific situations, we are such that anxiety can become an object of our thought (we can be anxious about our anxiety), and we can hypothesize about potential situations that could be dangerous, causing actual anxiety about merely possible events. Whereas horses that have a keen visceral sense of their vulnerability (as evidenced by their hair-trigger flight impulse), humans not only have an affective sense of their vulnerability, in humans this sense gives rise to understanding, namely, to formal knowledge of our vulnerable nature. We know that we are susceptible creatures. We are acutely aware of our potential for injury and illness. We are cognizant of our dependence upon others, and perhaps most critically, of our mortality. As such, humans are subject to anxiety not just intermittently, with spikes of anxiety that accompany demanding or dangerous situations; instead, we can become monopolized by anxiety. Terror management theorists55 maintain that humans use various methods to compensate for their hyper-capacity for anxiety. We find various ways to allay anxiety and prevent it from becoming so acute it is debilitating and therefore maladaptive. Humans defend themselves by employing “anxiety buffers.”56 Anxiety buffers operate in two general ways. They either redirect thought from subjects that arouse anxiety or they defend the individual against anxiety by bolstering the individual’s sense of ontological security or power.57 While anxiety can never be eliminated, most humans suppress anxiety to manageable levels in their daily lives. Most are so successful managing anxiety they do so without even registering it, engaging coping mechanisms to suppress anxiety before it even reaches a conscious level. One coping mechanism individuals use to buffer anxiety and bolster their sense of power is controlling other individuals. We predictably exhibit a “sadomasochistic

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impulse,”58 a “desire to dominate,”59 a “propensity to dehumanize,”60 and even a tendency to derive “pleasure,”61 from the subjugation of others.62 Displays of dominance offer a temporary defense against feelings of vulnerability or dependence (as well as a distraction from thinking about the vulnerability of one’s being). Though people spend plenty of their time jockeying for power relative to one another, our power plays are not limited to our own species. Our intuition of reliance upon others, our frequent status as subordinates in existing dominance hierarchies, and social norms (and laws) discouraging aggressive in-group behavior incline us to redirect our psychic energy to the animals that exist alongside us. Cora Diamond recognizes the prevalence of this sort of behavior, stating, relations of power between people and animals are inextricably related to “relations of power between people.”63 Our intelligence gives us an edge controlling many animals, as does our technology, and our prevailing cultural ideology gives us license to dominate them. Moreover, our disempowerment in other social domains may prime our need to exert superiority in other contexts. Unwittingly, animals are convenient scapegoats for compensatory projects aimed at validating our power, and unfortunately for them, the fact they are animals contributes to this response too. Nonhuman animals arouse our impulse toward control because one of the things that humans seek to avoid thinking about is their animal nature.64 Our animal nature arouses anxiety because it reminds us of our material being, its physical susceptibility, and ultimate mortality. Traditional westerns often foreground the human desire to transcend our own animality in horse breaking scenes, but also sadly, in scenes that depict the subjugation of people culturally (though wrongly) identified as primitive, namely Native Americans. Religions also often serve as anxiety buffers insofar as they regularly postulate the existence of a spiritual aspect for humans, one that is more essential to our being and more lasting than our temporary material nature. Speculation regarding some spiritual aspect aside, to the extent we are material subjects, anxiety can be allayed, or repressed, but not destroyed; we remain vulnerable to the return of the repressed. That return can be catalyzed by encounters with animals because they are “reminders of our animal limitations.”65 As long as we feel mastered by our animal nature, fearful of what it destines us to, animals are not only convenient targets for our efforts at demonstrating control, they are also likely targets of those efforts. They are targets because their animality kindles “[our] shame [at] our connectedness to materiality,”66 shame that is anchored in our visceral “horror at the ordinariness [and] mortality of [our animal] flesh.”67 The impulse to dominate animals arises not only from the fact that animals are “convenient”68 and vulnerable targets for efforts to “cop[e] with strain . . . and to manage negative emotions,”69 but because in “exerting power and control over animals”70 we can “compensate for feelings

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of weakness or vulnerability”71 and fulfill our desire to “disavo[w] . . . the animal within the human.”72 By virtue of their size and power, horses have a particularly strong potential to arouse an awareness of our limitations and correspondingly, anxiety. Many people won’t even approach a horse, let alone think of riding it, because their fear is so great. However, what arouses fear, can also confirm one’s strength, if one can dominate it. As Tompkins notes, the special “desire to curb the horse and make it submit to human requirements”73 derives from the fact that the “figure of the horseman . . . [invokes] the possibility of mastery of self, [and] of others.”74 Horses are of interest not merely by virtue of their power, but because that power can be harnessed. It is no accident that we still speak of the power of engines in terms of horsepower. We are captivated by horses because they are simultaneously “dangerous . . . [and] ductile”75; they are ideal targets of our efforts at dominance because we can bend them to our will. Despite the force of their own instincts, they do let us ride them; and this affirms our agency. The inclination to dominate an animal can be amplified if the animal exhibits traits one finds undesirable. For example, a barking dog. A handler may find the barking irritating and want to train the dog not to bark. Foucault’s account of “docile bodies”76 helps illuminate the training situation. A docile body is one that modified from its natural state through “constraint.”77 It is one that is “subjected . . . [and thereby] transformed.”78 Docile bodies are said to be “improved”79 by their subjection. The creation of docile bodies is practical (e.g., harnessing the power of a horse or ox to pull) and psychological insofar as the subjection of one body by another confirms the power of the dominant body. Here we can see a basis for the interest that humans display in horses and our fascination with the cowboy who masters his horse. While we celebrate horses for a variety of inspiring traits, horses also exhibit traits we see as negative. Many of these traits are ones we share with them and wish to eliminate. Horses’ nervousness, their inclination toward flight, and their herd bound character remind us of our anxious and evasive nature as well as the social pressure we experience to stay “in” with our group. Horses mirror qualities we possess, but also do not like. Brannaman notes this, stating, “horses are a mirror to your soul,” and “sometimes you won’t like what you see.” In addition to reminding us, in a formal (e.g., conceptual) sense, of our own sensitivity and herd boundedness, the encounter between human and horse consciousness is powerful because it is physiological. In addition to arousing thought about traits we may possess but want to eradicate, contemporary studies in neurophysiology confirm that when conscious beings interact with one another their mirror neuron systems are activated. In the case of the horse/human connection, the stimulation of the mirror neuron system is such that when a person observes generalized fear or

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social anxiety in a horse then he or she may well have those same unsettling emotions elicited.80 By virtue of the negative felt character of these emotions, the person may react negatively toward the horse exhibiting the unsettlement, as it is the horse’s display that serves as a stimulus for her own stress. To alleviate anxiety and reestablish a sense of security, the individual may experience a corresponding reactive (and compensatory) desire to control or subjugate the horse such that she can defer the negative emotion, transfer her own self-loathing onto the horse, and secure a satisfying sense of control. Though purportedly designed to improve the horse, horse training also serves the vicarious and largely subconscious purpose of training the human self; in working with and disciplining a horse the trainer can discipline their self for the possession of undesirable traits such as fear. We master ourselves through mastery of the other. Various authors agree that this dynamic of projection and transference “color[s] animal/human relations.”81 Twine indicates “affective processes of denial and projection”82 are commonly at work in our relations with animals, and our behavior relative to animals is frequently shaped, albeit unconsciously, by our tendency to “project our own beliefs and desires on them.”83 In addition to the basic (Hegelian) sort of inclination to dominate, another factor that may contribute to a special interest in horses is our unconscious desire to appropriate, via subjection (as described in Hegel’s account), traits we associate with them and want for ourselves. Horses are symbols of freedom and grace, and they also exhibit ease with themselves and others. We may feel we lack these traits and seek them in our relations with horses. Horses inspire a unique sort of “longing”84 in humans, inspiring a desire for “merger”85 as much as mastery. However, because we are often “less good at reciprocal trust”86 than horses are, our desire to master them often dominates us. We unconsciously fall prey to our own impulse for power and seek to appropriate their “force.”87 We seek to possess, via control, the beauty, social solidarity, and serenity88 horses embody. Ultimately, while subjection provides some psychological satisfaction, it offers no real solution. It derives from a reactive response; the largely unconscious inclination toward defensive resistance leaves us prey to our own drives rather than operating as deliberative subjects. We cannot achieve a meaningful sense of independence if our behaviors are determined wholly by external influences or internal drives. As Sartre indicates, our consciousness gives us the ability to affect a “rupture”89 that interrupts the causal influence of factors such as natural drives, introducing another causal factor: consciousness. The more self-consciousness an entity possesses the greater potential it has to choose the manner and mode of its response. While an inclination to dominate that which arouses fear may be a natural impulse born of the perception of vulnerability, defaulting to it is not our only option, and it is not

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the best one given that domination doesn’t eliminate vulnerability.90 Rather, defaulting to domination can galvanize antagonism and render authentic community with other beings impossible. As Hegel realized, community with other consciousness is what will increase our ontological security by fostering trust and solidarity among mutually dependent individuals. In the case of horses and humans, we cannot achieve the relationship of mutuality we desire if horses remain “things.” We cannot because our consciousness naturally seeks the recognition of another consciousness as a consciousness. Even though we may have a defensive inclination to do so, we cannot find fulfillment in a relation if we vilify or objectify the individual (human or nonhuman animal) to whom we relate. When it comes to horses, we cannot “capture” the qualities we love in them if we force ourselves on them; we cannot do so because those qualities erode when we are domineering. Coercion destroys their beauty, grace, and elasticity and replaces it with dullness and perfunctory obedience.91 V. BUCKING THE TREND AND RIDING DIFFERENTLY The model of equine/human relations evident in Buck and The Rider deviates from the tendency toward dominance that prevails in so many contexts, including the classic portrait of the cowboy. Happily, this new image of the cowboy as sensitive horseman is being embraced by the viewers of these films and by an increasing number of horse trainers. Rather than be predicated on domination, this model is based on mutual respect, partnership, and reciprocity. This approach is evident in each film and each work also illustrates how the relation is healing for humans and horses. Buck opens quietly with Brannaman readying himself for a day with clients and their horses. He feeds and grooms his horse, and then tacks him up for the day’s clinic. While Brannaman grew up around horses, he didn’t grow up watching people use the humane techniques he endorses. Rather, he was reared on the model of dominance. His father, Ace Brannaman, was a tyrant, subjecting Buck and his brother to violent abuse; a desperately unhappy man, he took out his frustrations on his sons, terrorizing them with beatings and drunken rages. The severity of these beatings worsened after the death of Ace’s wife, at which time the abuse became so severe that the boys were removed from the home and placed in foster care. During the film, Brannaman talks about his experience informed his training philosophy. He indicates that his father’s abuse led him to have a strong empathetic bond with horses. He says that when he saw unbroken colts as a boy, he immediately recognized that they were “scared for their life,” and says, “I understood that.” Before being placed in foster care, Brannaman regularly

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feared for his life. Once, his father beat the boys so severely with a whip that their shirts were reduced to shreds. Rather than prompt him to reproduce the coercive methods to which he was subject, Brannaman went another way. His personal experience (including the nurturing situation he found with his foster parents) made him more sensitive to the toll of violence and desirous of alternatives. His experience helped him realize that much of the resistant behavior observable in horses (and people) is born of their impulse to “save themselves.” Though many people’s “narcissistic projections”92 lead them to think otherwise, most horses’ misbehavior isn’t intentional disobedience or premediated defiance; it is a natural defensive response born of fear. According to Brannaman, to develop positive relations with horses, we need to resist the temptation to try to “dominate”93 them. We must develop “relations based on trust.”94 He admits that this is contrary, in a sense, to the basic tendencies in both species. He recognizes that horses and humans have an initial inclination to be on the defensive, particularly when in a new situation and in the company of an unfamiliar consciousness. He says, “there is a lot of fear in both the horse and the human.” Rather than trying to scare them into submission, Brannaman says we must “show the horse that he can let down his defenses”95 with us; to do so, we must resist the temptation to act defensively ourselves. We need to resist the temptation to employ what he calls the “macho approach,”96 the approach epitomized by the classic portrait of the cowboy, namely, the use of punitive and coercive methods that involve an element of abuse. Such methods are motivated by the fact that handlers unconsciously (and wrongly) take their horses behavior as intentional derision of their power. According to Brannaman, while horses need guidance and discipline, “you don’t have to . . . try and dominate [them].”97 As social animals, horses are looking for a group and a leader anyway; because of this you can teach a horse to do things “without being domineer[ing].”98 Rather than try and force horses into compliance, which can be dangerous, Brannaman urges handlers understand equine behavior, find ways to frame horses’ choices, and recondition their responses. He says that cognitively horses are like “toddlers.” As such, we need to be like good parents with horses; we simply need to figure out how to “mak[e] the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy.”99 We see this type of responsive interaction evident throughout Buck and The Rider. Consider first the scenes in Buck where Brannaman works untrained horses in the round pen. Rather than try to repress their natural responses, Brannaman works off them. If a horse is anxious, Brannaman allows it to express its natural flight instinct. He even encourages the horse to go ahead with a gentle pat of his rope against his leg. He doesn’t chase the horse in predatory fashion, stop it from running, or punish it for acting on its inclination to flee. With his body language he says, “If you want to move . . . then go ahead.” He applies

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only enough pressure to encourage the horse to explore where instinct will take it; he honors the horse’s natural flight zone by staying at a “comfortable distance.”100 When the horse realizes it is not under attack, stops actively fleeing, and slows down or turns to Brannaman, then Brannaman lets the pressure off by backing up a step or two. This provides a welcome release to the horse. This simple maneuver results in a reduction in ambient anxiety and an invitation for increased trust and responsive interaction (as opposed to purely reactive action). As Brannaman notes, if one is attentive, and develops what he calls feel, one can see the physical symptoms of the horse’s shift from instinctual response (automatic) to evaluative response, or reaction without thinking to more thoughtful response.101 Note the contrast here between the initial combat between consciousnesses that Hegel describes. All the ingredients for conflict are there; there are two consciousnesses with the potential to “vie for dominance.”102 As philosopher and animal theorist, Vicki Hearne, states, we have a situation where “the one thing . . . both [creatures] know for sure about the other is that each is a creature with an independent existence . . . and the ability to think and take action in a way that may not be welcome.”103 Analogous to the primal scene described by Hegel, each figure is cognizant of the potential need for defense. However, rather than force a contest in the way that traditional horse “breaking” techniques do, Brannaman changes the game. Through the patient application of this pressure/release approach, Brannaman reframes the relation with the horse. He gives the horse enough space to see him, an unfamiliar other, as well as time to assess the level of danger he represents. In this way he gives the horses the chance to determine that he is something other than a threat.104 In pacing the horse’s lessons, paying close attention to the horse, and encouraging the horse to associate rest and reward with him, Brannaman fosters the development of a sense of trust and comfort in humans rather than fear.105 This is readily possible with horses because they are already social beings that naturally find comfort and security in social contexts. They aren’t solitary animals. They aren’t predators. They don’t want to eat or hurt us; they just don’t want to be eaten or hurt; they find comfort in community and if they cannot have another horse, they will accept a surrogate. Because horses aren’t naturally out to get us, we don’t need to be on the defensive with them. Force is simply not the ideal way to relate to them (or most other creatures). As Brannaman says, if you use force with horses, “all you’ll do is destroy what was potentially going to be a friendship”106 and we all need more of these. Rather than seeking to subjugate horses, Brannaman indicates that he seeks “partnership” with them. And by all accounts, and in almost every case, he finds it. Without making them fear for their lives, Brannaman inspires horses to work with him and helps others do the same. As Brannaman states, even when we are having difficulty with them, we should treat horses

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with care, not contempt. If we do so we have a better chance of cultivating what Brannaman seeks: “a reciprocal connection to horses, a mutual and harmonious relation of respect”107 that preserves the “dignity”108 of both horses and humans. Arguably, The Rider conveys this message too. Set in the present day in South Dakota, The Rider tells the story of Brady Blackburn, a contemporary rodeo-cowboy. Based on the experience of real-life rodeo rider, Brady Jandreau, who plays himself in the role, the film is not a biopic in the same way that Buck is, but it is not a pure work of fiction either. The film opens with Brady in recovery, working to figure out what to do with his life after a catastrophic rodeo accident. Subject to a traumatic brain injury after getting kicked in the head coming off a saddle bronc, Brady must decide what to do when his physicians tell him that he can no longer rodeo or ride. Brady grapples with the implications of his injury, both persistent physical symptoms and psychological effects. He suffers severe dizziness and debilitating headaches. His means of income and the mechanism by which he previously secured his social standing have been removed. Visiting his friend, Lane, who suffered an even more severe injury while bull-riding, Brady comes to grips with the profound cost of their sport, a sport predicated on the model of dominance discussed here. Though Brady eventually decides not to rodeo anymore, it is difficult for him. It is difficult due to the income rodeoing provides and the social recognition that being a rodeo cowboy gives. It is also hard because of his strong tie to horses. This connection is evident from the very first frames of the narrative where Brady dreams of horses. It is reinforced by scenes with the two main horses in the narrative: Gus and Apollo. Brady’s relations with these horses show audiences that more reciprocal forms of relation are possible. The traditional model of the cowboy frames the narrative in The Rider. The film focuses on contemporary rodeo. All our main characters are involved in rodeo to some extent, either as bronc or bull riders, two rodeo events predicated on the dominance model and in which the traditional stereotype of the cowboy prevails. While acknowledging the ongoing appeal of this sport and the ideology that undergirds it, The Rider does not reinforce its appeal. Rather, the film critiques it. Rather than celebrate the ideal of the bronc-busting cowboy, the film focuses on a character who is literally broken by his adherence to the traditional cowboy ideal. Further, it illustrates that this impact is the norm. It shows that the dominance model implicit in modern rodeo breaks humans as happily as horses and bulls. Brady and Lane, our quintessential cowboys, are rendered by the system just as the animals are; they are shown to be predictable casualties of traditional cowboy culture, a culture that prizes hyper-masculinity over humanity and commodifies people as easily as horses and cattle.

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In this way, The Rider, while clearly a western, also bucks the standard tropes of the genre. It challenges rather than reinforces the dominance model. It does so not only by showing the damaging effects of the traditional model, but also by illustrating the healing powers of the alternative. From the very beginning, it is apparent that Brady is called to horses not principally by a desire to dominate them, but by a deep affinity for them. The dream that frames the opening sequence presents a group of horses, bathed in golden hues, who are drawing together in fear of a storm. Though the scene has an undercurrent of tension, the horses are clearly a balm to each other and to Brady’s psyche. They are far more soothing than the reality to which he awakens—his head crowned in surgical staples. This function of horses is made even more evident as we witness the way in which Brady’s recovery is catalyzed by the interactions he has with Gus, and then Apollo. Struggling with his physical symptoms, and uncertain what course his life will now take, Gus, Brady’s cowhorse, provides an anchor for Brady as he begins his recovery. In the scenes where Brady pets and grooms Gus there is no trace of violence, no element of unease. Rather, there is tranquility, familiarity, friendship. In fact, we see Brady finding his way forward from his injury by finding his way back onto Gus’s back. Like Brady himself, we are devastated when Brady’s father sells Gus without warning and this restorative relationship is cut short. Fortunately, Brady finds Apollo. Proving too difficult for others to “break,”109 Apollo has been cast aside. Brady finds him abandoned in a neighbor’s yard. When Brady finds this horse, he sees how much the horse needs help, and he sees himself in Apollo’s spirit and desperate circumstances. Like Apollo, he has been cast aside. Using the techniques modeled in Buck, Brady trains Apollo. In doing so, he finds a new career, and a new identity for himself. No longer a bronc-buster, he is a horse trainer, and this discovery, even in the wake of Apollo’s injury and death, helps Brady resist the pull back into the rodeo arena. Importantly, the model of human/horse relations celebrated both in Buck and The Rider bears resemblance to the ideal model of social relations that Hegel describes in his Phenomenology. Rather than having the relation between individuals predicated on conflict and subjection, it is anchored in mutual respect. In addition, this model also reflects what many animal rights theorists advocate with respect to an ideal of human/nonhuman animal interaction. As figures such as Ian Hacking and Marc Bekoff note, what is “disgrace[ful]”110 about so many human/nonhuman animal relations is the nullification of the subjectivity of nonhuman animals, and the fact that nonhuman animals are objectified and treated “as if their lives don’t matter to them.”111 Even though nonhuman animals are “constantly telling us what

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they want and need . . . [and] their [basic] desires and preferences are [often] much like our own,”112 we often fail to consider the quality of their experience. Instead, we simply see them as means to our ends. In Hegelian terms, we operate as the essential subject while they serve as inessential objects for our pleasure and enjoyment.113 Instead of acting as if they are in the presence of an object, or “a machine reacting,”114 Brannaman and Brady operate as if they are in the “presence of someone”115 when with their horses. They listen to their horses and treat them as individuals. In doing so, these new cowboys remind us to do the same.116 With their methods, they illustrate a “new and inclusive ethic”117 that animal advocates like Bekoff champion, an ethic of human/nonhuman animal relations that is based on “compassion”118 and committed to minimizing harm. Rather than letting our relations to horses be governed by our own “narcissistic projections”119 and the impulse to use them exclusively as means to our ends, these cowboys suggest we need to slow down, stop projecting, and listen. In doing this, these models of a new type of cowboy fulfill the call to “build corridors of compassion and co-existence,”120 creating “dynamic contact zones”121 within our “common worlds.”122 By foregrounding a model of mutuality, they offer an inspiring illustration of the potential for “new kinds of relations emerging from non-hierarchical alliances”123 between consciousnesses of all sorts, including human/human. These are the sorts of relations that Hegel suggested we would eventually find, but which are still too rarely seen. Clearly, the model of more reciprocal relation evident in these films is advantageous for horses. It reduces the likelihood of abuse, which is an implicit possibility in (if not consequence of) the dominance model. Any trainer cognizant of the sensitivity of horses and concerned with maintaining their dignity will apply methods that respect horses’ needs and interests. Moreover, this approach, by emphasizing the unique nature of each individual horse, encourages individualized attention and a willingness to adjust training techniques and practices to the history, disposition, preferences, potential, and personality of each horse. Interestingly, by virtue of its character, this approach also creates opportunities for horses to develop new and more rewarding relations with the people who care for them. Brannaman argues that cultivating “partnership[s]” with horses based on feel, not on force, lets them discover a new level of independence from their own species. This autonomy is effectively illustrated in The Rider. Both Gus and Apollo display a unique comfort with Brady. Unlike a horse whose allegiance is principally with his equine peers, one who panics at removal from that group, Gus and Apollo move easily into and out of equine groups while with Brady. Arguably, the “independence” of which Brannaman speaks is reminiscent of the heightened autonomy that Hegel asserts develops in and through social relations. While horses do not need this sort of autonomy

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from their peers in the wild, they benefit from it in the context of domesticity given that this situation often requires them to endure separation from their natural cohorts. As Brannaman explains, by gradually reconditioning horses to positive stimuli when alone in the company of their handlers, horses can develop a strong bond of trust with humans. This coupled with the validation they receive from their handlers when they work can help horses “feel good about [themselves]” and feel more confident and happier when separate from other horses. If horses have a trusting relation with humans and obtain positive reinforcement from that relation, these factors can help reduce their anxious reliance on their herd and increase their individual independence by establishing a new basis for social contact (and community) of an interspecies sort: with humans. As Hegel explains, independence is discovered not through liberation from our connection to the material circumstances of our being or the others that exist with us, but in the discovery of one’s abilities, and importantly, in emancipation from the coercive power of fear. To develop independence, one needs to be responsive, not simply reactive. Interestingly, not only can we develop greater autonomy through our relations with other beings if pursue greater mutuality, Brannaman indicates that horses can too. In a manner reminiscent of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of “play”124 and the “transformative,”125 “fusion of horizons”126 that can occur in the “in-between”127 between collaborative subjects, Brannaman notes how working with horses modifies both horse and human. In this way, he echoes not only Hegel, but also contemporary theorist, Donna Haraway, who argues that humans and nonhuman animals, particularly “companion species,”128 shape one another through “reciprocal induction”129 and are, in fact, “freedom-making technologies for one another.”130 Admittedly, at this point, someone might object and assert that the relation that Brannaman has with his horses, while not explicitly abusive, is still exploitive and hardly equal, and therefore fails to illustrate Hegel’s ideal model of social relations, or any ideal of human/animal relations. To be sure, there are some animal rights activists, such as Joan Dunayer, who take a radical position on animal rights, particularly on our relations with domestic and companion species, arguing that these relations are irrevocably exploitive and fundamentally forms of slavery. Though Dunayer goes so far as to argue for the gradual elimination of domestic/companion species to eliminate the potential for exploitation, other theorists such as Haraway and Hearne object to strongly to this sort of approach, arguing it amounts to “genocide”131; Brannaman aligns himself with their line of thinking. Though there are still some wild horses,132 Haraway and Hearne emphasize that domestic horses have been in the care of humans for centuries. During this time, humans have shaped modern horses by “deliberately select[ing] and enhanc[ing] . . . their capacities.”133 The changes observable in them include

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changes in conformation and disposition that are comparable to observable differences between wolves and domestic dogs. Because of the influence of selective breeding, the domestic horse is no longer a mimetic copy of its ancient forebears. Instead, as Haraway asserts somewhat provocatively that modern horses, like other companion species, are “biotechnologies”134 for which we bear responsibility. For Haraway, while horses and other companion species can be subject to abuse while in our care, “degradation”135 is not a necessary consequence of “co-living.”136 Instead of assuming a relation of enmity, Haraway argues that humans and their companion species are “mutually adapted partners.”137 The fact is that we produced these species and as such, we have an obligation to care for them. Haraway argues that we need to “deepen [our] responsibility”138 to them, not abandon it. Brannaman agrees. Because of the role we have played in producing domestic species and expanding their populations in ways that are not sustainable without human support, we have a unique ethical obligation to these creatures.139 Brannaman states we must “take responsibility for horses simply because they are always in our care. They can’t get along without us.” This dependence was made painfully evident in The Rider. Neither Gus nor Apollo had any choices about their circumstances. Domestic animals are forced to live in our world and, for the most part, live and die on our terms, not their own. Admittedly, the dependence that modern horses have on their caretakers creates a relation is asymmetrical. We hold the cards for horses, and many other animals, domestic and wild. However, these “relations of authority”140 heighten rather than trump responsibility, particularly the responsibility to recognize other animals’ ontological equality. As Brannaman states, by virtue of the nature of the relations we have with horses, we must care for them, and we must lead. Because we have placed them in an unnatural context, we have a special obligation to them; we are “responsible for giving [them] guidance, for teaching [them], and for [providing] a safe place to be.”141 Moreover, we have a responsibility to be kind to them, in part because they did not choose to exist alongside us, but also because they, like us, are susceptible to suffering, but do not seek it. For some, Brannaman’s emphasis on acting like a “parent” and establishing a position as a leader might suggest his approach is expressive of the pattern of dominance this essay claims he transcends. Brannaman is quite clear on this issue. He is emphatic that there is a difference between dominance and leadership, and the difference is respect. In a situation of dominance, the dominant party fails to respect the subordinate, and this paves the way for abuses. True leaders, by contrast, respect those who they lead; they understand the abilities and predilections of those they serve as leaders; they appreciate the responsibility associated with leadership. While humans have no greater right to be here than horses; we are different from horses and these differences must be acknowledged to ensure our safety in working with

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them and to fulfill the responsibilities we have to them. Horses are powerful animals with powerful instincts and the same tendency to exist in dominance hierarchies as humans. Failing to acknowledge can be very dangerous to humans, and fatal for horses, as the “stallion scene” in Buck illustrates.142 Horses can be friends and partners with humans, but they aren’t looking for that from humans, or for any relation whatsoever, really. As he states, they “have no choice but to be where we put them.” In equine societies, it is critical to have leaders, and these leaders must lead. Horses look for boundaries in their relationships with one another, and these boundaries provide a basis for their respect for others and their understanding of their place in the “social order” or the hierarchy of the herd. These roles help horses feel secure and have sociable relations with one another. These roles, and the bond between members of a herd, are integral for the survival of horses in the wild and to their psychological security in domestic contexts. As Brannaman explains, it is critical to establish similar boundaries when we relate to horses, both out of respect for their nature and practically out of an interest for our (and their) safety. Happily, as horses are not predators, we can enjoy a safer relationship with them than certain other animals. However, if we fail to establish proper boundaries for them through clear and consistent communication, they will not “respect” us, and this may lead them to endanger us either by accident, as in the case a horse steps on a person’s foot by failing to honor personal space, or on purpose, by aggressively kicking or biting. Setting behavioral expectations for one’s horse is not cruelty, but the basis for a mutually respectful relationship. We do this with other humans, and we need to do this with horses too.143 This is what he calls leadership. Interestingly, Brannaman’s comments regarding the nature of good leadership echoes comments made by Nietzsche. Known for his condemnation of the herd mentality, Nietzsche celebrated what he called the higher type. Though this figure is frequently misunderstood and misrepresented as a domineering, Nietzsche emphasized that there was a difference, as Brannaman states and Brady illustrates, between being strong and being “hard.” Rather than being the sort of person that demands obedience, Nietzsche argues that the truly strong individual is comfortable with others. Indeed, this individual is benevolent and charitable. It is a weak person who demands power in effort to bolster a faltering sense of self-worth. Key to strength is confidence and acceptance of who one is. Only the individual who affirms life can truly partner with others. For Nietzsche, it would seem, human relations with horses all too often express the way in which we are tyrannized by our own sense of weakness, insecurity we seek to escape by domineering others. For Nietzsche, however, true power is found not in dominating others, but in accepting oneself. Only when this happens will we transcend the nausea we have over ourselves, become who we are, and in doing so become capable

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of the star friendship144 of which he speaks. Brannaman seems to be urging us along the same lines, and Brady seems to embody it in his friendships with Gus, Apollo, and significantly, his friend Lane. Brannaman asserts that everything we do with horses “should be a dance.” Though it takes time and effort to learn and hone the steps, the relation should be motivated by a desire to establish a mutual partnership, not a desire to establish dominance. In promoting this sort of interaction, Brannaman urges us to a more self-conscious and humane type of horsemanship, and in the end, also a higher mode of human being. Obviously, in addition to improving the lot for horses, Brannaman’s philosophy and techniques offer an inspiring model for human relations. While Brannaman admits that he got into starting colts to ensure he could always earn a “living” and be “a little better cowboy,” his life’s work has yielded much more. It helped him become a better person and to let go of some of the anger he has over the abuse he experienced. It gave him the opportunity to work with people and help them sort out their personal issues, issues that they were often projecting onto their horses, but not solving because they were not conscious of their behavior. As Brannaman indicates, you cannot really be a good guy if you are a tyrant at the barn, domineering with your kids, indifferent to your spouse, or abrasive with your colleagues. The openness and respect that Brannaman encourages and his emphasis on listening and on generosity of spirit engender positive consequences not only for the horses who are ridden, but also the humans who embrace his approach. In demanding that we respect others and acknowledge their essential being, his model compels us to resist our impulse to dominate and to project our interests onto others, whether that other is a horse or a human. In letting go of this tendency (which arguably doesn’t happen overnight), we actually find greater freedom and we discover ourselves to a greater degree.145 In addition to discovering some of the hidden things driving us, this sort of relation also invites individuals to discover “new tolerance limits”146 for themselves and others. In the “fusion of horizons”147 that is the horse/human relation, new horizons of trust and communication are opened for each party, and the potential for new modes of relation emerges. The equine/human partnerships that Buck illustrates demonstrate that individuals can realize new levels of connection and intimacy through relations predicated on partnership. These promise to be more fulfilling not only for horses, the alternatives illustrated in Buck and The Rider, and their twenty-first-century cowboys, also serve as inspiration for changes in human/human relations that have analogous benefits. Though most of us like to think that humans are equal (or perhaps simply not think about the specifics of their inequality), inequalities between them exist and these inequalities have the potential to be aggravated and amplified by our natural tendency to form dominance hierarchies. While Hegel

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is optimistic that humans will naturally transcend dominance relations, it certainly doesn’t hurt to try and learn from an alternative model when we see it enacted as we do in Buck and The Rider. Both films illustrate that we can choose to adopt a more humane approach with horses and humans. In this regard, these works sound a little less like Hegel and more like an existentialist such as Sartre or Heidegger who emphasize that shifts in social relations are not the inevitable function of dialectic, but the consequence of deliberation and choice.148 While others arouse defensive anxiety in us by virtue of the fact that they remind us of our existential vulnerability and social dependence, to the extent we depend on them, defensiveness is not the best approach to take toward them. Unless we seek to subsist in “bad faith,”149 what amounts to the denial of our true condition, we must try to relate to others as subjects like us. In living alongside them, we need to resist the temptation to seek private advantage, and instead recognize our communal situation and mutual interdependence. Doing so should reduce tensions rather than inflame them. Heidegger, while recognizing the ubiquity and perennial temptation of “inauthenticity,”150 nonetheless urges us to listen to the call of “conscience,”151 the call of our being to become authentic, namely, to move to a state in which we accept our mortal being-in-the world and being-withothers. If we heed the call of conscience, we can experience genuine empathy, the feeling that is the bridge to authentic relations with others. In heeding the call of conscience rather than a defensive impulse, we move past the desire to “subjugate”152 others, an inclination that derives from trying to suppress our own natural anxiety. In accepting ourselves, Heidegger argues that we can learn to “dwell”153 comfortably with others rather than flee or fight. For Heidegger, if we realize our true nature, we will realize that our call is not to dominate other beings, but to care for them, and “keep [them] safe.”154 Rather than succumb to the “will to mastery,”155 authentic being requires that we resist it and exist alongside other beings assisting them in finding their freedom and fulfillment. In the closing scenes of Buck where Brannaman sits quietly astride a gracefully loping horse, or in The Rider, where Brady strokes Gus’s pale neck, this seems to be precisely what has been achieved. In his article, “Companionable Thinking,” philosopher, Stanley Cavell, discusses the human tendency toward “soul-blindness,”156 or limited awareness of, and sensitivity to, the subjectivity of nonhuman animals. Soul-blindness affects not only our relations to nonhuman animals, but also our relation to the environment and members of our own species. Soul-blindness, though natural, is not desirable. While our primary narcissism prompts a myopic perspective and our sensitivity to anxiety may arouse the desire to control, ultimately, “our own survival is tied to a mutual dependent existence with other species [and other humans].”157 If we surrender to our anxieties, we will enact rather than abandon our “fantasies of power”158 and our relations with

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others will erode. When this happens our contact zones with others, whether animal or human, “[will] deteriorate into impoverishing border wars.”159 The traditional cowboy embodies and emboldens our fantasies of power. The new model of the cowboy that takes shape in Buck and The Rider illustrates an alternative. These films offer a new vision of the perennially captivating figure the cowboy. This model is reminiscent not only of Hegel’s model of ideal relations among conscious beings, but it also illustrates the sort of sensitivity to otherness that existential philosophers and contemporary animal theorists regard as emblematic of reciprocal relations and which they suggest is our ethical obligation as humans. Finding the way to reciprocal relations isn’t easy. It lies as much in the effort as in any enjoyment of the result. As Brannaman notes, you “may spend your whole life chasing it, but it’s a good thing to chase.” NOTES 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern, 2013, §6. www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/4363​/4363​-h​/4363​-h​.htm. 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism,” Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Citadel Press, 1997), 16. 3. This essay is dedicated to my wonderful horses, with whom I have had longer and closer friendships than many people. Thank you for your tolerance of my imperfections and for your quiet companionship. Thank you as well to my former student, Alex Grove, who introduced me to Buck Brannaman’s techniques and is a talented horse trainer in his own right. I have learned as much from him as he ever learned from me. Finally, thanks to my children, Gabrielle and Caleb, and partner, B. Steve Csaki, who are so supportive of my love of horses and philosophy. 4. Brannaman served as a professional consultant and stand-in for Redford on this film. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche. Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), 11. 6. Arguably, the cowboy has long been cast as a civilizing force, an agent who enables the establishment of civil society. Historically, this portrait has helped disguise the erasure of indigenous society that colonization and settlement caused. Here, the focus in the change in the means used by the cowboy. See Renato Rosaldo’s “Imperialist Nostalgia” for a discussion of the way in which the popular dissemination of predominantly anachronistic portraits of Native Americans assuages mainstream white America’s guilt regarding the destruction of indigenous culture. Article accessible at: www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/2928525. Whereas the traditional portrait of the cowboy presents a Hobbesian figure who uses force to command civility, Buck offers the ideal of one who uses feel. 7. Seabiscuit was an Academy Award nominee for best picture and grossed over $120 million; Spirit was an Academy Award nominee for best animated picture and

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grossed over $75 million; Secretariat won a Christopher Award and a Movie Guide Award and grossed approximately $60 million. See entry for Secretariat, www​.imdb​ .com​/title​/tt1028576​/. 8. R. D. Laing, The Divided Self (New York: Penguin, 1965), 40. 9. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 108. 10. Ibid., 108. 11. Ibid., 108. 12. Ibid., 107. 13. And if this capacity develops to sufficient degree, it serves as the foundation for another power: freedom. As Hegel’s successor, Jean-Paul Sartre, examines in detail, the reflexivity of consciousness, specifically the fact that consciousness is never coincidental with its object, makes it possible for conscious beings to be free. As Hegel’s account implies, freedom is anchored in the ability to mentally dissociate from the material conditions of one’s being sufficiently to allow one to deliberate regarding one’s actions, and choose one’s desired option, as opposed to automatically reacting on natural inclination. Sartre examines this phenomenon at great length in Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992). 14. Hegel, Phenomenology, 111. 15. For further examination of this dynamic, see Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s analysis of the power of optics in The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies (New York: Open Court Press, 1994). 16. Hegel, Phenomenology, 111. Here, in asserting that the individual initially sees itself in the other Hegel alludes the problem of other minds (e.g., the fundamentally inaccessibility of first-person awareness of any consciousness other than one’s own), and consequently, the tendency to assume parallelism between one’s own mind and that of the other mind and project one’s own interests onto it in a type of psychological colonialism. This is also an issue raised by Thomas Nagel in “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Here, using the example of an “alien” mode of consciousness, Nagel reminds his readers of the difficulty, if not impossibility of true empathy. Empathy requires the reproduction of at least certain aspects of another person’s consciousness in our consciousness. As Nagel explains, because of the fundamentally subjective character of awareness, when we think we are empathizing with someone, or thinking and feeling as they do, it is rather that we are imagining what it is like for us to be them. Nagel argues that while it seems inevitable that we should use the imagination to understand the experience of other, he believes that if there is any possibility of developing “empathic” understanding, the imagination is not the appropriate means because of the element of projection inherent in imaginative enterprises. For access to this article, see doi.org/10.2307/2183914. 17. Hegel, Phenomenology, 111. 18. Ibid., 114. 19. Ibid., 114. 20. Ibid., 115. 21. Ibid., 117. 22. Ibid., 117.

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23. Ibid., 115. 24. Ibid., 115. 25. Ibid., 114. 26. Ibid., 117. I have tried to utilize gender-neutral pronouns wherever possible to highlight that the dynamics described are not specific to gender; however, occasional use of gender-specific pronouns occurs in some cases to preserve continuity with Hegel’s original text. 27. Ibid., 117. 28. Ibid., 118. 29. Karl Marx. “Alienated Labor.” 19th Century Philosophy, eds. Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann (Hoboken: Prentice Hall, 2002), 302. 30. Hegel, Phenomenology, 117. 31. Ibid., 118. 32. Phyllis Sutton Morris, “Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective.” Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. Julien Murphy (University Park: Penn State Press, 1999), 80. 33. Ibid., 80. 34. Hegel, Phenomenology, 112. Hegel argues that history is the plane in which this realization occurs. 35. Morris, 81. 36. Hegel, Phenomenology, 134. 37. Ibid., 126. 38. Ibid., 136. 39. Ibid., 136. 40. Ibid., 128. 41. Though it is well beyond the scope of this essay to discuss it here, Hegel also indicates that “Life” (108), or material existence, is itself part of a larger dialectic process. For Hegel, Nature is a product of the inversion of Spirit, or God, in an effort to realize itself; this realization involves, indeed requires, the development of humans, and the dialectical development of their self-consciousness, insofar as humans eventually become the others who, in developing their reason and self-consciousness in sufficient degree, serve as the counterpoints to Spirit, thereby making God’s self-consciousness, reason, and perfection, not merely possible, but actual. 42. Hegel, Phenomenology, 134. 43. Ibid., 134. 44. Ibid., 132. 45. Ibid., 128. 46. Ibid., 135. 47. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). 236. 48. Ibid., 236. 49. Cary Wolfe, “Exposures.” Philosophy and Animal Life, ed. Stanley Cavell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 8. 50. As Heidegger explains, fear is a second order emotion that is predicated on anxiety. Only beings that are anxious can exhibit fear because only beings that are

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vulnerable in their nature (and somehow cognizant of this vulnerability) will perceive other entities or circumstances as dangerous or fearful. He states, “only a being that is concerned about its being can be afraid” (132). Interestingly, this characterization creates some difficulty for Heidegger insofar as he tries to distinguish human being from other forms of being in Being and Time. Though Heidegger seems to want to privilege human being by virtue of its unique “care” (37) for being, his analysis of anxiety (e.g., the ontological basis for care) in fact justifies the extension of a caring nature to many other animals, principally those that exhibit fear. As such, the unique nature of the human animals lies simply in its heightened potential for self-conscious anxiety (e.g., formal thought about anxiety and its causes), though arguably this potential may be present in other higher primates and cetaceans. See Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). 51. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 39. 52. Hegel, Phenomenology, 114. 53. For further discussion of this topic, see Jenefer Robinson’s article, “Startle,” which analyzes the adaptive function of the startle response. The startle response is a adaptive mechanism that helps the organism apprehend its vulnerability and adopt heightened modes of attention to secure its survival. See The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 2 (1995): 53–75. www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/2940940. 54. Again, this tendency likely has deep evolutionary roots. A surge of anxiety causes various shifts in physiology including, but not limited to, patterns in attention. These have the potential to redirect attention in ways that prompt the organism to respond to dangers in its environment; however, if sustained over time without reduction, high levels of anxiety not only fail to serve their reorienting function, they also can cause physiological and psychological problems. 55. Terror management theorists include Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. Sample articles that outline the theory include A. Rosenblatt, J. Greenberg, S. Solomon, T. Pyszczynski, and D. Lyon, “Evidence for Terror Management Theory I: The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions to Those Who Violate or Uphold Cultural Values,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57, no. 4 (1989): 681–90; J. Greenberg, T. Pyszczynski, S. Solomon, A. Rosenblatt, M. Veeder, S. Kirkland, and D. Lyon, “Evidence for Terror Management Theory II: The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions to Those Who Threaten or Bolster the Cultural Worldview,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58, no. 2 (1990): 308–18; and T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, and S. Solomon, “Why Do We Need What We Need?: A Terror Management Theory Perspective on the Roots of Human Social Motivation,” Psychological Inquiry 8, no. 1 (1997): 1–20. 56. Sheldon Solomon, Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., “A Terror Management Theory of Social Behavior: The Psychological Functions of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24 (1991): 122. 57. Some anxiety buffers do this by denying the conditions that cause anxiety. For example, a religious ideology may deny that marks the death end for the individual and instead characterize it as merely a transition point to a new life. This bolsters individual security by denying one of the most debilitating causes of anxiety: mortality.

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58. Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 107. 59. Robert Agnew, “The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis,” Theoretical Criminology (1998), 187. www​.sagepublications​.com 60. David Livingstone Smith, “Indexically Yours: Why Being Human Is More Like Being Here Than Being Water,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 52. 61. Andrew Linzey, Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 84. 62. Jean-Paul Sartre analyzes this tendency at some length in Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992) and I offer a more thorough account of his discussion in “Beating a Live Horse: The Elevation and Degradation of Horses in Westerns” in The Philosophy of the Western, eds. Jennifer McMahon and B. Steve Csaki (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010). 63. Cora Diamond, “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy,” Philosophy and Animal Life, ed. Stanley Cavell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 55. 64. So much so that many people actively deny that humans are animals. 65. J. Goldenberg, T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, S. Solomon, B. Kluck, and R. Cornwell, “I Am Not an Animal: Mortality Salience, Disgust, and the Denial of Human Creatureliness.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 130, no. 3 (2001): 428. 66. Richard Twine, “Addressing the Animal-Industrial Complex,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 87. 67. Haraway, When Species Meet, 30. 68. Agnew, 197. 69. Ibid., 197. 70. Ibid., 197. 71. Ibid., 192. 72. Twine, “Addressing the Animal-Industrial Complex,” 87. 73. Tompkins, West of Everything, 97. 74. Ibid., 101. 75. Ibid., 93. 76. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans., Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage International, 1995), 135. 77. Ibid., 135. 78. Ibid., 136. 79. Ibid., 136. 80. The reverse is true as well and this helps explain the notorious ability that horses have to sense fear. Certainly, for a socially reliant herd animal, the ability to sense emotional shifts in one’s peer group is critical to survival. Vicki Hearne argues that one of the things that makes horses fascinating and attractive to humans, but simultaneously can arouse defensiveness in us, is “the [equine] capacity to know” (115) our emotional state regardless of the appearances we put up. See Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name (New York: Vintage Press, 1987).

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81. Molly Mullin, “Home Flocks: Deindustrial Domestications on the Coop Floor,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 221. 82. Twine, “Addressing the Animal-Industrial Complex,” 88. 83. Laurie Gruen, “Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Approach to Animal Ethics,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 224. 84. Tompkins, West of Everything, 93. 85. Ibid., 97. 86. Haraway, When Species Meet, 224. 87. Tompkins, West of Everything, 94. 88. As I have mentioned elsewhere, while horses are hypersensitive creatures, humans appear to have an expanded capacity for anxiety. We are more “prey” to anxiety than our herbivore partners because, among other things, we can engender, sustain, and amplify anxiety by contemplating its intractable causes and future occurrences. Because of our capacity for understanding the human condition, including formal awareness of death, humans can apprehend the irrevocable nature of anxiety. As such, we may well envy those creatures, including horses, whose experience is such that they seem to regular reprieves from it and experience extended periods of contentment uncolored by angst. 89. Jean-Paul Sartre. Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992), 70. 90. To be sure, there are situations when defensive response is the appropriate response and where dominating another individual may be the only viable means to insure one’s survival. This essay simply examines the way in which latent anxiety, which is commonplace in humans, may engender an unconscious predisposition to this sort of response, one that is not the most efficacious approach in many situations. 91. Readers are advised to see Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of grace in Being and Nothingness. I am calling up that account here, and have examined at greater length elsewhere, but it is given relatively spare treatment in the existing scholarship on Sartre. While Sartre contends that human relations are largely ones of “conflict” (475) and often reflect dominance patterns consistent with the urge to either be subject (free consciousness) or object (determined material body), he indicates that it is possible for humans to establish reciprocal relations with other humans (and presumably other conscious beings). Though exceedingly rare and highly unstable, Sartre asserts that these relations entail mutual recognition of the sort Hegel describes, and when achieved, are characterized by “grace” (521). In the case of horses, entities that seem to possess natural grace, one can frequently discern the nature of the relation a horse has with its human partner based on the grace it exhibits. Often, when the relation is compromised, grace tends to evaporate, and sullenness or fear takes its place. 92. Gruen, 226. 93. Buck Brannaman, The Faraway Horses (Guilford: The Lyons Press, 2001), 38. 94. Ibid., 2. 95. Ibid., 121. 96. Ibid., 214.

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97. Ibid., 38. 98. Ibid., 38. 99. Ibid., 54. 100. Ibid., 123. 101. See Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011) for a fuller discussion of the difference between primary modes of neural processing. 102. Tompkins, West of Everything, 100. 103. Vicki Hearne, Adam’s Task (New York: Vintage Press, 1987), 109. 104. Brannaman’s technique illustrates what animal theorist, Elaine Kirskey, recommends. She argues that we need to resist the impulse to command when it comes to animals. Instead, she says we should instead establish “respectful distance” (175) and make “tactful proposals that leave room for the possibility of escape” (176). 105. It should be noted that while the process that Brannaman employs can be used to “start” (not “break”) a horse in a single day, the techniques he describes often take much longer and it is assumed that the reciprocal sort of partnership that he seeks takes a substantial amount of time to develop. The overview of his methods is described herein is brief for purposes of expediency. Those interested in more fully understanding his methods should consult his sources at buckbrannaman.com/. 106. Brannaman, Faraway Horses, 214. 107. Ian Hacking, “Deflections,” Philosophy and Animal Life, ed., Stanley Cavell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 155. 108. Ibid., 155. 109. In a 2018 interview with Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Brady Jandreau talks about how his work with horses differs from the traditional approach he grew up watching. He states that many trainers “call it breaking them. And there are many, many trainers who still break horses, meaning, like, almost break their spirit . . . by tying them certain ways or working them so hard to where they’re so tired they cannot—you know, they can’t resist. What I choose to do is just—like I’m hanging out with them, and it’s just training them through the connection . . . breaking is not the right word for it.” See “A Devastating Fall Couldn’t Keep This Rodeo ‘Rider’ off Wild Horses,” NPR (August 2018). www​.npr​.org​/2018​/08​/24​/641550319​/a​-devastating​-fall​ -couldnt​-keep​-this​-rodeo​-rider​-off​-wild​-horses 110. Hacking, “Deflections,” 155. 111. Marc Bekoff, “Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why?,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 122. 112. Ibid., 26. 113. Terror Management theorists would argue that this lack of attention is a subconscious, but quite intentional attitude designed to distance us from having to take responsibility for the conscious instrumental use of other beings that we know bear significant similarity to ourselves (which arouses not only anxiety, but also guilt). The more problematic that use is, for example if it involves killing and consumption, the greater degree of psychic dissociation we will likely seek to achieve from the species in question and the more likely we will produce a rationalization for said use.

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114. Haraway, When Species Meet, 19. 115. Ibid., 19. 116. As Edouard Machery notes in “Apeism and Racism,” learning to see animals as individuals has benefits that extend beyond the animals in question. Seeing animals as individuals improves the way humans treat them and also transfers over into our treatment of other humans. Studies show that learning to regard animals as individuals increases people’s capacity for “empathy” (65) and “decreases [their] prejudices” (62). “Apeism and Racism” can be found in The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 117. Bekoff, “Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why?,” 26. 118. Ibid., 25. 119. Gruen, “Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Approach to Animal Ethics,” 226. 120. Bekoff, “Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why?,” 22. 121. Haraway, When Species Meet, 4. 122. Elaine Kirksey, “Interspecies Love: Being and Becoming with a Common Ant,” The Politics of Species, eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 175. 123. Ibid., 173. 124. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum Press, 2004), 104. 125. Ibid., 110. 126. Ibid., 388. 127. Ibid., 109. 128. Haraway, When Species Meet, 10. 129. Ibid., 30. 130. Ibid., 64. 131. Ibid., 106. 132. Importantly, most of the horses than people think of as “wild,” are the mustangs that populate the western regions of the United States. These horses are in fact descendants of domestic horses that were released or escaped during the exploration and colonization of the Americas. Thus, their genetic ancestry is that of the domestic horse, not of a wild counterpart such as the Przewalski’s horse. 133. Haraway, When Species Meet, 56. 134. Ibid., 56. 135. Ibid., 222. 136. Ibid., 222. 137. Ibid. 62. 138. Ibid., 106. 139. To be sure, this includes setting reasonable limits on the production of new breeds and the expansion of existing populations. Haraway simply wants to emphasize that some of the more radical stances on animal rights fail to offer reasonable and practically feasible solutions to human/nonhuman animal coexistence. Haraway calls for a “refusal of innocence” (92) with respect to our relation to nonhuman animals. While she acknowledges that we should feel shame for some of the things that we do to nonhuman animals and that many deserve our pity, she argues that neither emotion

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is an “adequate response” (23) to the situation in large part because both emotions redirect focus to us. For Haraway, we need to take “responsible” (42) action toward the beings who exist alongside us and with whom are lives are already “entangle[d]” (106). Though some individuals are uncomfortable with the fact, accepting entanglement means recognizing that “nurturing and killing are . . . inescapable part[s] of mortal companion species [relations]” (106). Lori Gruen aligns herself with Haraway, arguing that “we are already in relationships [with] . . . animals . . . and being in relationships always has ethical consequences” (224). Gruen develops a notion of “entangled empathy” (226) to help describe the complex relations that exist between humans and nonhuman animals and outlines a method to help foster “the well-being of those with whom we are entangled” (231) by minimizing the potential for “narcissistic projections” (226). 140. Haraway, When Species Meet, 220. 141. Brannaman, Faraway Horses, 37. 142. In arguably the most powerful segment in the film, Brannaman works with a young stallion whose owner raised him as an orphan after the death of his mother during delivery. As we come to find out, the horse was oxygen deprived at birth and likely has brain damage. Though this information is provided at the opening of the segment, nothing can prepare audiences for the violent, borderline predatory behavior of this horse. He attacks one of Buck’s assistants, biting him in the head and throwing him to the ground so he can paw him with his front hooves. Fortunately, Brannaman intervenes helping his assistant escape permanent injury or death. Brannaman is visibly upset over the event; he leaves for a moment but returns shortly thereafter to talk to owner, and later the spectators at the clinic, about the horse. As he explains, the violent behavior is primarily a function of the owner’s failure to establish boundaries, respect, and discipline from an early age. While horses normally serve this purpose for one another, given this horse’s status as an orphan, his owner had the special obligation to find a surrogate mother (from whom he could learn proper social protocols) or to establish those boundaries herself. Instead of doing so, she offered no limits and he correspondingly learned none. As he grew, she found it harder to moderate his behavior because of his increased size and increased aggressiveness (a function of her decision not to castrate him). As Brannaman notes, while this horse would likely never have the mental potential of some of its peers, there was no reason for it to be a rogue. As he indicates, with the proper guidance, he likely could have been a well-behaved horse. However, by virtue of the lack of leadership and the horse’s cognitive limits, Brannaman concludes that he cannot subject himself, his assistants, or spectators to further risk, and that the only safe option is to euthanize the horse. Despite his obvious pain at this outcome, Brannaman displays extraordinary empathy and understanding toward the owner and her horse. Indeed, in the bonus segment on the DVD we see his extended conversation with her. Here, he encourages her to learn from the situation and stresses that she needs to try to determine what was motivating her to handle the horse in the way she did. At the same time, he tells her not to beat herself up over what happened. He does not run her down, even though it appears that she is more than ready to let him do that. Instead, he treats her with kindness and as

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an equal. He closes their conversation without closing their relation, saying that there is nothing he’d like better than to see her again at a clinic. 143. Most of us bit someone else at some point in our lives, probably before we can remember. Happily, most adults have abandoned this mode of expressing their opposition to someone or something and they have done so because caretakers firmly discouraged this mode of response. Brannaman does the same with horses. He is clear that horses will push the boundaries with us to see what we will permit and what we won’t. He urges his students to not to get angry at the horse when this occurs, but to quickly and decisively make continuance of the objectionable behavior unpleasant, typically by encouraging the horse to move off and away quickly, analogous to the way a horse would be pressed out and away from the herd if not conforming to the behavioral expectations of the dominant mare, and to quickly provide a reward (in the form of release of pressure) immediately upon the cessation of the objectionable behavior. 144. For a thoughtful discussion of this concept, see Ruth Abbey’s “Circles, Ladders, and Stars: Nietzsche on Friendship,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2 (1999): 50–73. doi.org/10.1080/13698239908403291 145. Brannaman makes note of this in Buck when he talks about how some individuals learn to stand up for themselves with other people by first learning to serve as decisive leaders for their horses. He argues that individuals can discover powers they didn’t know they had in the context of their relations with horses, and these include confidence and the right to assert one’s will and interests. 146. Haraway, When Species Meet, 64. 147. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 388. 148. In Hegel’s defense, he is adamant that the evolution of self-consciousness that leads to the production of more reciprocal relations is concurrent with the development of reason, and an increasing reliance upon reason, as opposed to emotion, as the determining force behind our action. In this respect, Hegel’s thinking is largely in alignment with that of his existential successors. 149. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 87. 150. Heidegger, Being and Time, 40. 151. Ibid., 248. 152. Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” Poetry, Language, and Thought, trans. Albert Hofstader (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 150. 153. Ibid., 148. 154. Martin Heidegger, “The Turning” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Tr. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 42. 155. Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans., William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 5. 156. Stanley Cavell, “Companionable Thinking,” Philosophy and Animal Life, ed. Stanley Cavell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 93. 157. Corbey, xiv. 158. Hearne, Adam’s Task, 114. 159. Haraway, When Species Meet, 232.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbey, Ruth. “Circles, Ladders, and Stars: Nietzsche on Friendship.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2 (1999): 50–73. doi. org/10.1080/13698239908403291 Agnew, Robert. “The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis.” Theoretical Criminology (1998): 177–209. www​.sagepublications​.com (accessed May 21, 2009). Bekoff, Marc. “Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why?” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Brannaman, Buck. The Faraway Horses. Guilford: The Lyons Press, 2001. Cavell, Stanley. “Companionable Thinking.” In Philosophy and Animal Life. Ed. Stanley Cavell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Corbey, Raymond and Annette Lanjouw, eds. The Politics of Species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Diamond, Cora. “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy.” In Philosophy and Animal Life. Edited by Stanley Cavell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan New York: Vintage International, 1995. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum Press, 1993. Goldenberg, J, T. Pyszczynski, J. Greenberg, S. Solomon, B. Kluck, and R. Cornwell. “I Am Not an Animal: Mortality Salience, Disgust, and the Denial of Human Creatureliness.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 130, no. 3 (2001). Gruen, Lori. “Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Approach to Animal Ethics.” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Hacking, Ian. “Deflections.” In Philosophy and Animal Life. Edited by Stanley Cavell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Hearne, Vicki. Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name. New York: Vintage Press, 1987. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press,1977. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. ———. “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, and Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstader. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. ———. “The Question Concerning Technology.” In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. ———. “The Turning.” In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

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Jandreau, Brady. “Fresh Air: A Devastating Fall Couldn’t Keep This Rodeo ‘Rider’ off Wild Horses.” Interview by Terri Gross. Fresh Air, NPR. August 18, 2018. www​.npr​.org​/2018​/08​/24​/641550319​/a​-devastating​-fall​-couldnt​-keep​-this​-rodeo​ -rider​-off​-wild​-horses Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. Kirksey, Elaine. “Interspecies Love: Being and Becoming with a Common Ant.” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Laing, R.D. The Divided Self. New York: Penguin, 1965. Linzey, Andrew. Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Machery, Edouard. “Apeism and Racism.” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Marx, Karl. “Alienated Labor.” In 19th Century Philosophy. Edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann. Hoboken: Prentice Hall, 2002. Meehl, Cindy, director. Buck. Cedar Creek Productions, 2011. Morris, Phyllis Sutton. “Sartre on Objectification: A Feminist Perspective.” Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre. Edited by Julien Murphy. University Park: Penn State Press, 1999, 64–89. Mullin, Molly. “Home Flocks: Deindustrial Domestications on the Coop Floor.” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435–50. doi.org/10.2307/2183914. Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Helen Zimmern. Project Gutenberg, 2013, §6. www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/4363​/4363​-h​ /4363​-h​.htm. Ebook. ———. On the Genealogy of Morals. New York: Vintage, 1989. ———. Human, All Too Human. University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Robinson, Jenefer. “Startle.” The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 2 (1995): 53–75. www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/2940940. Rosaldo, Renato. “Imperialist Nostalgia.” Representations 26 (1989): 107–22. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. ———. Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York: Citadel, 1997. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies. New York: Open Court Press, 1994. Smith, David Livingstone. “Indexically Yours: Why Being Human Is More Like Being Here Than Being Water.” In The Politics of Species. Edited by Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Solomon, Sheldon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. “A Terror Management Theory of Social Behavior: The Psychological Functions of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24 (1991).

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Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Twine, Richard. “Addressing the Animal-Industrial Complex.” In The Politics of Species. Eds. Raymond Corbey and Annette Lanjouw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Wolfe, Cary. “Exposures.” In Philosophy and Animal Life. Edited Stanley Cavell. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Zhao, Chloe, director. The Rider. Highwayman Productions, 2017.

Chapter Four

“Should’ve Been a Cowboy” Changing Yet Stable Representations of the Cowboy in Modern American Country Music Gillian Kelly

With an unrivalled sense of rugged individualism, toughness, and virility, the cowboy has long been viewed as the definitive depiction of ideal American manhood. As Buck Rainey notes, it is uncontested that the cowboy remains one the most romantic of all historical figures, with few others appearing as habitually in books, magazines or movies as this “almost legendary vestige of the West” (1996, ix). While cowboys continue to appear in print and onscreen in the twenty-first century, contemporary representations, and their associated tropes, are most habitually and definitively conveyed through the historically male-dominated and male-centric medium of country music. Chris Rojek suggests that music is more than a combination of notes and silence, but a social and cultural phenomenon “inscribed with the flourishes of particular histories, types of creativity, cultures, and emotions” (2011, 15). In country music, this may be through symbolic references such as farms, trucks, dirt roads, cowboy boots, Stetson hats, small towns, and, most importantly for this chapter, the omnipresent figure of the cowboy, acting as both deconstructive and fundamental extensions of the genre’s symbolic codes and making it distinct from rock or pop music. Sonically, the inclusion of steel guitars, mandolins, banjos, and fiddles help to define the genre as “country” for the listener, just as a saloon or desert works visually in suggesting a film’s western location. Contextually, country music is framed by the white, American, and predominantly working-class demographics from which its artists and audiences tend to derive, but it has also hinted at a glamorous otherworldliness since around 67

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the 1950s through associated excesses like rhinestone suits, expensive boots, and multimillionaire artists singing about working-class roots. By using textual analysis to “read” both the song lyrics and artists’ images, this chapter draws on methodologies developed across studies of history, popular music, gender, and stardom in popular culture, suggesting what this tells us about the figure of the cowboy in country music today. To place the genre and its contemporary artists within their historical, cultural, and geographical frameworks, the chapter begins by summarizing dominant representations of American masculinity and the positioning of the cowboy within popular culture. Since the genre’s own history is key to country music, a brief outline of the music as a commercial form follows, before moving on to focus more specifically on the songs and images of contemporary male performers. This brief history helps illustrate the genre’s continuous development and deferential relationship with its own past while it simultaneously moves forward so as to remain relevant and timely for contemporary audiences. Performers discussed include George Strait, Toby Keith, Jason Aldean, and Luke Bryan, who have all successfully, but variably, integrated the cowboy myth into their careers, thereby symbolizing a nostalgic but unattainable past while concurrently rethinking, remaking and reimagining the cowboy to allow it to continue to “fit” within modern society. While desirability (to both genders) remains central to the cowboy image, country music’s modern incarnation allows the existence of a manliness harking back to traditional ideals of western folklore while paradoxically adding complex layers which reflect the struggles of modern masculinity. The chapter concludes with a detailed case study of Brad Paisley which ties these discussions and themes together. Beginning his recording career in 1999, on the cusp of the twenty-first century, Paisley is now one of the genre’s leading superstars and an important figure in exploring how the image of the cowboy continues to be ever-present and yet ever evolving in country music. MASCULINITY AND THE COWBOY In 1995, Fred Pfeil’s pioneering work White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference explored changing representations of white straight masculinity in contemporary popular culture. Almost two decades later, the anthology White Masculinity in the Recent South sought to do “what no other single work has done” in exploring white southern manhood and masculinity through a variety of contexts since World War II (Watts 2008, 6). Since the publication of this ground-breaking work, further developments of white southern masculinity have transpired, not least through the progressive but perhaps paradoxically backward subgenre of country music.

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Correspondingly, gender studies has recently taken an interest in the body image and, as Niall Richardson and Sadie Wearing suggest, “while the body was once theorised as a given—something fixed and essential—we now view it as something which is constructed and regimented by culture” (2014, 93). The presentation of the body also includes how it is clothed, with cultural references often being correlated to modes of dress, as will be explored later. Sheila Whiteley, Andy Bennett, and Stan Hawkins suggest that popular music not only becomes fundamental in framing discourses around national identity but “carries a similar currency in relation to the construction of gender identities and the gendering of place” (2004, 6). Using the Austin, Texas, music scene as an example, they highlight how the cowboy song (dating back to the 1800s) draws on facets of folklore tradition and popular discourse through its depiction of the cowboy as a “strong masculine hero” and character traits which still inform the Texas male’s identity (2004, 6). Although discussions of gender are both essential to and underappreciated in the production and consumption of contemporary country music, gender division has always been particularly strong within the genre. We need only compare Johnny Cash’s tough hypermasculine “man in black” persona with Dolly Parton’s painted face, bouffant hair, and figure-hugging dresses for reference. Nevertheless, country music scholarship has mostly failed to engage with debates of gender constructions of femininity and, particularly, masculinity with one clear exception: Kristine M. McCusker and Diane Pecknold’s aptly titled A Boy Named Sue: Gender in Country Music (2004) which aims to investigate “how gender operates throughout the whole constellation of images, attitudes, and operations attendant to country music” (2004, xiv). Aside from this collection, and their follow-up Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music (2016), discussions of gender within contemporary country music is an area still grossly understudied given that most accounts of the genre are historical in nature, contemporary male performers, in particular, have received the least attention.1 Influences from Art, Literature, and Cinema At the turn of the twentieth century, artists Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington helped bring the romanticized image of the cowboy into the American public’s imagination, and homes, with paintings and sculptures depicting the Old West. Focusing on the image of the cowboy, frequently shown riding over rough terrain on horseback while dressed in jeans, western shirt, cowboy boots, and Stetson hat, these art pieces allowed men to furnish their homes, offices and dens with décor that not only confirmed their manhood, but sold them an inspirational, if unattainable, link to ideal American masculinity, allowing them to engage with and, temporarily, feel connected

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to it. This archetypal image was granted a wider audience through the more accessible and affordable novels of Zane Grey, who helped idealize the western frontier while reinforcing the cowboy as its ultimate symbol. Grey’s novels were not only extremely popular with males of all ages, but several were adapted for cinema, thereby allowing the cowboy image to reach an even broader audience than ever before.2 Thomas Schatz views the western film as “without question the richest and most enduring genre of Hollywood’s repertoire” (1981, 45). Although Hollywood’s major studios produced a steady flow of westerns, most early films were low-budget “B” movies that ran before the main feature. In 1939 out of forty-eight westerns produced, only nine were big-budget “A” productions (Coyne 1997, 17). The first of these was Twentieth Century Fox’s Jesse James (dir. Henry King), which starred glamorous leading man Tyrone Power in his western debut.3 That same year saw James Stewart making his first western, Destry Rides Again (dir. George Marshall), and Stagecoach (dir. John Ford) was not only John Wayne’s star-making film but perhaps the best known cinematic western of all time. When Robert Taylor portrayed the title character in Billy the Kid (dir. David Miller) two years later, it became obvious that the cowboy was being given the full Hollywood treatment, with the industry’s most popular and attractive romantic leading men portraying the West’s most notorious outlaws.4 Thus, while westerns had historically been a male-driven genre, the established target audience for these stars meant that more women would also be attending theatres to watch their performances, thus expanding the audience for westerns and the depiction of the cowboy in popular culture. John Wayne arguably possesses the most recognizable cowboy image of the twentieth century, making a career out of playing onscreen cowboys for over fifty years from an uncredited role in the Tom Mix vehicle The Great K & A Train Robbery (dir. Lewis Seiler, 1926) to his final film, The Shootist (dir. Don Siegel), in 1976. It seems fitting that Wayne should die in 1979 as this was the last hurrah for the Hollywood western as a prominent genre. Although westerns did continue to be made in the 1980s and beyond, they were no longer as prolific or popular as they had once been. Many were hybrid films containing elements of comedy or horror, some were even animated, such as An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (dir. Simon Wells and Phil Nibbelink, 1991), which provided James Stewart with his final film role as the voice the cartoon dog Sheriff Wylie Burp.5 The early 1990s also saw country singer George Strait making his movie debut in Pure Country (dir. Christopher Cain, 1992), a telling title for a film which juxtaposes generic features of the western with the musical, romantic comedy, and drama, knowingly playing with generic conventions throughout. Strait’s recording of the soundtrack became the bestselling album of his career and, with 60 million copies sold, it has gone platinum six times. The

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album not only reached number one in the Billboard charts, but its two lead singles, “I Cross My Heart” and “Heartland,” also went to number one in the singles chart. Since his 1981 debut, Strait has remained true to his country roots and helped the genre return to a more traditional sound and away from the increased pop influence of the 1970s and 1980s, thus earned him the label of “neotraditionalist.” It is a formula that has served him well since Strait now holds the record for having more number-one singles than any other artist in any genre in history, amassing an unprecedented sixty number-ones by the age of sixty and selling over 100 million albums worldwide.6 Rainey suggests that cinema has “perpetrated, perfected, and extended the cowboy myth” so much that it has now become hard for us to differentiate reality from myth (1996, ix). The cowboy has become “part of a make-believe world” in which we all fashion him in a way that “suits our own requirements” (Rainey 1996, 4), which almost makes him a God-like figure. Rainey adds that the cowboy has captured the world’s imagination in a way that few others have; he has appeared in thousands of books and while millions of dollars have been spent on cowboy toys, regalia, and paraphernalia, the public still has “an insatiable appetite” and continues to “devour every morsel of cowboydom put on the market” (1996, 4). This unique contribution to American culture means that the cowboy “is destined to live forever in that favored corner of our hearts reserved for vicarious thoughts about experiences that . . . we shall never personally have” (Rainey 1996, 4). This desire for the ideal, but unattainable, image is explored through the lyrics of many contemporary country songs, including that mentioned in the title of this chapter: Toby Keith’s “Should Have Been a Cowboy.” Written and performed by Keith, the song combines mythical tales and figures of the Old West (such as outlaw Jesse James) with the personae of early cinematic singing cowboys (Gene Autry and Roy Rogers)7 and fictional western characters (Marshal Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke)8, while bringing them up-to-date through Keith’s contemporary performance style. Familiar tropes are used throughout, such as six-shooters, cattle drives, campfire singing, Texas Rangers, “Go West Young Man,” California gold and chasing outlaws through the hills. It is both a song about the glorious West and about wishful thinking, one that the men who bought a Remington painting or a Grey novel could easily relate to. Keith is telling us that he should have been a cowboy, thus seems painfully aware that his culturally encoded Stetson and cowboy boots are a façade and part of his constructed image, while also a way for him to connect with this unattainable life that he, and listeners, desire. Joseph A. Kotarba and Philip Vannini see culture as a way of life and, therefore, view musical choices as cultural choices since music is both a form of communication and “part of the way we choose to live our life”

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(2009, 7, 88). This is particularly true of country music, which is well known for its story songs which work as “a more direct and personal expression of the current, the everyday, and the mundane” (Horstman 1986, xix). Indeed, the numerous songs about small towns, hard work, Saturday night bars, and Sunday morning churches are more applicable to the listening public than most other genres. Similarly, the “costume” of the contemporary male country performer (jeans, cowboy boots, shirt/t-shirt, and Stetson/trucker cap) can easily and cheaply by replicated by audience members of either gender, unlike those worn by pop or rock artists like Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. In fact, the authenticity of clothing artists and audiences may already wear in their everyday lives legitimises the genuineness of country performers, creating a sense of self-recognition in the audience. Yet, we cannot overlook the fact that country music has become such a highly commercialized and extremely lucrative business that its leading performers are now multimillionaires, some even ending up on the Forbes Richest List. In 2019, Forbes’ list of highest earning musicians included Luke Bryan at $42.5 million, slightly less than Jennifer Lopez and more than Lady Gaga.9 Hence, although artists often sing about being broke or living from pay check to pay check, it is not something the genre’s superstars (now) have to worry about. Jason Aldean, for example, has made a career out of such songs, but recently put his Tennessee mansion on the market for $7.8 million, and his Florida “beach house” (a four-story home) for $2.95 million after purchasing a $4.1 million home on the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, although their lyrics may be familiar and applicable to many listeners, their lifestyles are as unattainable for most audience members as being a cowboy in the Old West. “THIS IS COUNTRY MUSIC”: A BRIEF HISTORY Country music’s history is deeply rooted in Celtic folk and Appalachian Mountain music, but its first commercial recording can be traced to 1922 with fiddle player “Eck” Robertson’s “Sallie Gooden” (Joyner 2009). As with all genres, country has gone through some significant changes and developments since its inception as a commercial form almost a century ago; but southern history, particularly the inclusion of cowboy imagery to symbolize western masculinity, continues to play a significant and integral role today. Daniel Kingman suggests that America has “long pursued a love affair with its own romantic conception of the West and the cowboy” and that “the ‘Western branch’ of country music has played its part in the propaganda of this romanticism” (1979, 191), while Bill C. Malone declares that Americans have “long had a love-hate relationship with their rural past, alternately romanticizing or rejecting it” (1993, 71). According to Malone, it was not

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until the mid-1940s that the “neutral and relatively respective term ‘country’ won general usage” and musicians and promotors began exploiting images of America’s most romantic groups: mountaineers and cowboys (1993, 72–73). This was because these figures valued, and presumably embodied, “freedom and independence”; were heroic and fearless, preserved the “manly traits that had ensured survival on the frontier” and were distinctive and defining ingredients of American life (1993. 74). In other words, they were profoundly American. Malone argues that by drawing persistently upon these “powerful cultural figures for sustenance, definition and identity,” country music “exhibited a symbiotic relationship” while helping to shape popular conceptions of these romantic symbols (1993, 74). Although the mountaineer has dropped out of favour in today’s music, the cowboy remains a key element of the genre. Malone sees Jimmie Rodgers as “the first anticipation of the powerful role that the cowboy mystique would play in country music” (1993, 89), while Richard Carlin calls him “perhaps the most influential country singer of all time” (1995, 396). As with most country performers who followed, Rodgers “turned his gaze westward, and was drawn irresistibly toward the image of the man on horseback,” thus, the cowboy influenced Rodgers’ dress and choice of songs (Malone 1993, 90). Rodgers became country music’s first superstar in the 1920s, so it follows that both he and the cowboy image created for him continue to influence generations of emerging artists to this day.10 Kingman suggests that Rodgers’ stardom “marked the passage of country music into full-fledged commercialism” without it ceasing to be “a genuine ‘people’s music’” (1979, 190), which remains true to this day. From the 1950s onward, the influence Hank Williams has had on the development of the genre has been unprecedented, and he still is the single most referenced artist in country music history (Kelly 2021a). In her monograph on Rodgers, Jocelyn R. Neal discusses a 1950s reappearance of his 1928 song “In the Jailhouse Now” fashioning Rodgers as “an important figurehead in the industry’s rush to canonize its own past” (2009, 174). The song continues to be sampled by artists today, and on Brad Paisley’s 2007 album 5th Gear, a reimagined version follows Paisley’s guitar solo at the end of “Mr. Policeman.” Neal suggests that Paisley embodies country’s new approach better than any other artist, with his debut album Who Needs Pictures (1999) “laced . . . with retro sounds: western swing, honky-tonk two-steps, an unabashedly sincere gospel tune, and his own blistering performance on the pink paisley Fender guitar, itself a throwback to the 1960s” (2009, 116). In his book Diary of a Player (2011), an account of the musical heroes who shaped his guitar playing and performance style, Paisley proves his overt awareness of his predecessors, citing Buck Owens,

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Chet Atkins, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash as not only his grandfather’s favorite artists, but “all people I aspire to imitate to this day” (24–25). In the early 1990s, now known as the era of “New Country,” the genre reached new heights, mostly due to the unexpected global success of Garth Brooks. Brooks’s second album No Fences (1999) began what Carlin calls “Garthmania,” selling 70,000 copies during its first ten days of release and staying on the pop charts for over a year. Brooks’s third record, Ropin’ the Wind (1991), became the first country album to ever enter the pop charts at number one which, Reebee Garofalo says, “caused the pop side of the industry to stand up and take note” (2008, 422). She highlights that of all the “column inches devoted to alternative music” they “tended to obscure the biggest commercial breakthrough of the 1990s—country music” and Brooks in particular, whom she feels “the early 1990s belonged to” (2008, 422). And yet, aside from a cover of Billy Joel’s “Shameless,” the album looks and sounds “country.” The cover art features Brooks in a black Stetson, black and blue vertically striped western shirt, and both hands gripping a belt buckle on his black jeans while standing against a blue and white background representing the sky, with nothing outstanding or unique about the look of the album sleeve.11 The opening track, “Against the Grain,” is a fast-paced country song which references John Wayne and highlights Brooks’s Oklahoma twang, but also suggests he is going to shake up the genre by going “against the grain.” The second track, “Rodeo,” includes a checklist of western tropes: boots, chaps, belt buckles, spurs, Stetsons, bulls, mud, and so forth. The song’s ultimate message is that neither a cowboy nor woman is ever fully satisfied, both being hurt by what they love the most: “a woman wants her cowboy like he wants his rodeo.” This is followed by a beautifully poignant song about reminiscing (“What She’s Doing Now”), which could have been sung by the rodeo rider of the earlier track. A song about mistakes and regret (“Burning Bridges”) is followed by a dark track about murder (“Papa Loved Mamma”), longing for home (“Cold Shoulder”), and a tongue-in-cheek relationship song (“Bury the Hatchet”). The penultimate track, “In Lonesome Dove,” is both a story song, something country music does extremely well, and one with a clear sense of nostalgia for the Old West and its people. The album ends with what would become Brooks’s career song, “The River,” an analogy for the journey of life. In 1993, Malone observed that the cowboy image “aggressively and persistently enveloped” country music (89), and this stays true almost thirty years later with the repeated use of “cowboy” in the title or lyrics of songs acting as a shortcut for a virile, desirable, but somewhat unobtainable, ideal of western masculinity, while being altered for different scenarios. In Mark Wills’s “He’s a Cowboy” and the Dixie Chicks’s “Cowboy Take Me Away” the cowboy symbolizes a young girl’s idealized romantic fantasy, while

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Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” and Big and Rich’s “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” portrays him as a manly man with a sexual prowess that also attracts grown woman. Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” positions the cowboy as the familiar, heroic, and romantic figure of western folklore, whom men want to be and women want to be with, while Garth Brooks’s “Cowboys Forever’” and George Strait’s ‘“Cowboys Like Us” use these modern performers as symbols of the western myth, positioning them as part of their own cultural history. Tim McGraw’s “The Cowboy in Me” uses the figure as a metaphor for modern man’s stubborn pride, while Strait’s ‘“The Cowboy Rides Away,” Jessica Andrews’s “Cowboy Guarantee,” and Kacey Musgraves’s “Space Cowboy” explore the well-rehearsed image of the self-sufficient loner riding off into the sunset and leaving the woman behind, the prevalent ending of western movies. Through these incarnations, references to hard work, hard loving, and strength (of character, as well as physical) situate the cowboy as paradoxically traditional and nostalgic while also modern and progressive, allowing the image to both resonate with the cultural history of America and the genre while remaining relevant and relatable to contemporary audiences without feeling old-fashioned or kitsch.12 (Everyday) Clothes Make the Cowboy Malone stresses that none of the genre’s early performer could have foreseen the allure that images of rural and working-class life would later have on the American public (1993, 71). While profits were key to the commercial fraternity, “the recording men, radio executives, publicists, promoters, ad men, sponsors, and booking agents” dealing with folk music had freely “manipulated symbols, images, and public perceptions in order to sell their products” (1993, 72). Despite country music’s longevity, it was not until the 1930s that cowboy imagery began to be used in ways still stereotypically associated with the genre today (Hughes 2000). The country style itself was derived from the popular singing cowboy films of the interwar year, particularly those starring Autry and Rogers, and although elements of this style are still evident in today’s performers, the late 1980s and early 1990s was the final time that this style enjoyed widespread success. At this time, clichéd and negative associations of wearing a Stetson resulted in artists who did so collectively and derogatorily being labeled “hat acts.” This term suggests the difficulties audiences may have faced when attempting to differentiate between these performers, whose physical appearances and clothing were similar, while also suggesting they were using image to compensate for a lack of talent. But this period produced some of the genre’s (and the world’s) most successful and influential male artists who have enjoyed some of the longest careers in

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history, including Strait, Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Clint Black, all of whom were at one time labeled a “hat act.” With their cowboy boots, blue jeans, and Stetsons, artists like Strait, Brooks, Keith, Aldean, and Paisley seem to perfectly embody the mythical cowboy image, while their songs confirm their Southern roots and small-town backgrounds. But these men are also painfully aware that, although they may dress the part, they are not “real” cowboys, as Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” reveals through its nostalgia look at the past which underscores the rugged image of the cowboy with unquestionable masculine virility. Indeed, with his outspoken attitude, large frame, and masculine prowess as an artist who appeals to both men and women, Keith seems to effortlessly fit the prototypical cowboy image as the ultimate symbol of traditional white, heterosexual, and desirable American masculinity. Yet, if we examine contemporary performers more closely, they reveal a more urbanized identity than in previous decades, aside from the cowboy boots most still favor. For example, while Strait still wears loose-fitting blue Wrangler jeans, Luke Bryan, who is known as the “pin-up boy” of country music and the genre’s present leading heartthrob, favors black skinny jeans which help move his image away from traditional association with the cowboy. Like many contemporary males, Bryan also favours t-shirts over western shirts and, if he wears a hat at all, it is a trucker cap and not a Stetson. Bryan’s frame is rather slight, and we cannot imagine this man with the million-dollar smile and designer stubble working as a farmhand, and yet he owns a farm and has become a multimillionaire through the success of songs like “What Makes You Country,” “Country Man,” “We Rode in Trucks,” and “Huntin,’ Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” which explore the simple life of a country boy. The continual growth of country music as a particularly attractive and sellable genre in the twenty-first century is displayed through the television talent show Nashville Star, a country music specific version of American Idol, which ran for five seasons.13 When Tennessee native Chris Young was crowned the winner of season four in 2006, his vocal style and image suggested an authenticity associated with the state. During his time on the show and for the first few years of his career, Young consistently wore a Stetson, helping to emphasize and complement his traditionally encoded musical sound and the building of his initial star persona as a Southern gentleman. However, after the release of his second album, The Man I Want to Be (2009) Young rejected this symbol of tradition and has subsequently worn either no hat or a trucker cap on and off stage. During the past decade, trucker caps have become an increasingly popular choice of headwear for male performers, with very few emerging artists donning Stetsons. Dustin Lynch and Justin Moore are rare examples of emerging twenty-first-century artists who have consistently worn Stetsons on their album covers, as well as in most music

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videos, publicity photographs, and on stage, although even they have been seen sporting trucker caps on occasion. Moreover, since trucker caps are not encoded with the same traditional western values that Stetsons are, artists are able to embrace a modern, universal look while wearing them. They also prove easier to wear and maintain than Stetsons, are an almost global unisex wardrobe staple, and can be personalized to the individual via logos or images.14 Although the clothing favored by today’s male artists may be overtly casual and “everyday,” it remains strongly coded in ways that it speaks to fans, many of whom dress similarly when attending concerts and/or in their everyday lives. But even this basic clothing is styled in ways which consciously emphasises and highlights the artist’s physique, making them appear manlier by consequence. For example, t-shirts or shirts tend to be worn close to the body and are of a skinnier fit than the traditionally shapeless garments of earlier decades. This helps accentuate the upper body (particularly their arms and torso) in still photographs, in action on stage, in music videos, or on television interviews and performances. Furthermore, the short-sleeved nature of t-shirts help expose men’s arms, a typically sexualized part of the male body and a key area in differentiating them from women. In terms to the lower body, while jeans have been traditionally and consistently associated with the genre, today’s emerging artists no longer wear typically starched and pressed jeans tapering off at the bottom to allow boots to be worn underneath. Instead, jeans now tend to be tightly fitted around the thighs and buttocks, with belt buckles further drawing attention to the crotch, another central area in highlighting gender difference. In music videos and recorded stage performances the preferred camera angle for filming male artists tends to be from crotch level up. This both draws attention to the area and makes the artist appear taller and manlier. This gender-specific fetishization allows the sexualized and objectified male to retain a sense of masculinity, as does the genre’s typically masculine-loaded lyrics about drinking, women, and trucks. Thus, although this clothing appears normal and everyday, the deliberate styling of outfits, use of props such as microphones, and the positioning of the artist, audience, and camera angles both invite the audience’s voyeuristic gaze at the male body while subsequently allowing the artist’s masculinity and sexual difference to be comfortably retained. The marketing of contemporary male country singers as objects of the erotic gaze is particularly successful in the constructed star persona of Bryan with his strong female fanbase and a blatant sexual objectification of him through fans’ continued, and highly publicized, obsession with his buttocks. This has resulted in numerous internet memes which fetishize his backside and include phrases like “No Luke, you can’t fit into these. Said no jeans ever!”; “Luke Bryan—ain’t a pair of jeans

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that disagree with his ass,” and, the worryingly intrusive, “Keep calm and touch Luke Bryan’s butt,” a problematic phrase, to say the least.15 Paisley Patterns In the words of Malone, while 1970s television shows like Hee Haw suggested the “impulse towards self-burlesque and parody remained strong in country music” they concurrently expressed a “countervailing desire to stress the dignity of mountain life” and its traditional values of “morality, stability, and home-centreredness” through the songs, styles, and star personae of the show’s artists (1993, 79–80). Contemporary artist Brad Paisley notes that, while he found the show extremely appealing as a child, when revisiting it as an adult he saw the artists resembling “complete hillbillies” in overalls and with straw in their mouths, which perhaps may “not have been the best idea for these musicians in terms of mystique” and their “obvious musical genius” (2011, 113). One positive element of the show, however, was that it exposed millions of people across the United States to a style of music they may not normally have heard, while personally teaching Paisley “something wonderful about how fantastic the combination of country music and comedy could be” (2011, 113). This influential blend of country music and comedy has helped set Paisley apart from his peers within a burgeoning industry. Extremely aware and respectful of the genre’s history, Paisley has worked with some of country music’s most legendary figures and cites his favorite album as Buck Owen’s 1966 Carnegie Hall Concert (2011, 119). A former host of Hee Haw, Owens pioneered the genre’s Bakersfield Sound and collaborated with Paisley late in life. When the twenty-nine-year-old Paisley was invited to become a member of the prestigious Grand Ole Opry, he asked to borrow the highly decorative yellow jacket the now seventy-two-year-old Owens had worn for the Carnegie concert thirty-five years previously for his induction (2011, 120). Although Owens had worn the jacket as a full yellow suit along with a formal, white-collared shirt,16 Paisley gave this historical piece his own interpretation. Wearing the loud jacket over a plain blue t-shirt and jeans, paired with his signature white Stetson, Paisley paid homage to Owens and the genre’s history without resembling an Owens impersonator or allowing his unique personality to become overpowered by such a distinct and eye-catching garment. By wearing Owens’ jacket with his own, more modern, style of clothing while becoming an Opry member, Paisley proved he had found his own persona as he gives a respectful nod to the past. Paisley appears keenly aware of this component of his image, and when he discusses his song “Old Alabama,” a collaboration with his musical heroes Alabama, he says it let him express “creativity, collaboration, and the

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feeling of something unique. Combine that with nostalgia as well, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime musical moment” (2011, 129). For the song’s music video, this sense of nostalgia is expanded when the present-day Paisley is superimposed into Alabama’s old music videos which are being projected on the screen of a drive-in movie theater where Paisley is watching the show with his friend, NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon. Paisley also becomes part of the performance he is watching as he performs live in front of the screen with Alabama, whose younger selves are projected behind them. During this segment Paisley wears his signature white Stetson, boots, and blue jeans paired with a vintage Alabama t-shirt, again paying homage to the genre and his roots. Thus, the video presents us with three different Paisleys: the spectator, the screen version, and the live performer. The identity of the “real” Paisley is blurred even further when a police officer approaches the two spectators and ask which one is Jeff Gordon. Gordon points at Paisley who looks confused as the officer hands him a speeding ticket (clearly an in-joke referring Gordon’s career); however, Paisley does not correct the officer, nor does he hand the ticket to Gordon. He sarcastically thanks Gordon before commenting that “176 mph is lame and that he should have been doing at least 200 mph.”17 In 2000, when Paisley accepted the Horizon Award for the most promising new artist of the year at the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, he wore a dark pink suit in the style of Owens with elaborate paisley pattern embroidery; it with paired with a black shirt and tie and his white Stetson. In this outfit, Paisley resembled his heroes of yesteryear and not a twentyeight-year-old at the turn of the twenty-first century. He looked more like Owens, Little Jimmy Dickens, George Jones, or “Whispering Bill” Anderson, all of whom he has collaborated with, while clearly still trying to find his own identity. In time, Paisley obviously came to regret the suit, noting that the moment “was absolutely perfect—if you can overlook that fuchsia suit I wore that night” (2011, 180). The western suits and gaudy shirts Paisley wore at the start of his career suggest that he was perhaps trying too hard to show his knowledge of the genre’s past, while almost losing his own identity in the process. Today, Paisley has found his own style, and it is one which both reflects the past and the present; he has even created his own clothing line called Moonshine Spirit, named after his 2014 album Moonshine in the Trunk.18 When Paisley got to perform on the Opry stage for the first time in 1999, he says he was “in complete and utter awe” but it made him feel like “a true part of the history of the music I love” (2011, 182). Referring to his third album, Mud on the Tires, he calls it more “earthy, rootsy, and even outdoory” than his previous work since his music was now grounded more in reality as he wrote and sang about his future wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, whom he was dating at the time (2011, 201). Furthermore, he highlights that the song

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“Celebrity” starting him down a path “of not being limited to traditional country themes” and was his first attempt at “depicting the world outside country music, all the while keeping the style of country” (2011, 202). This is not an easy task and, arguably, also a risky one when you have an established audience. He calls “Celebrity” a country song about “the whole insane pop culture phenomenon that was becoming more and more a part of my life” but that its ultimate success gave him license to write about the things around him “and still have it feel like a real country song” (2011, 202). Perhaps this is most obvious in “Welcome to the Future,” which begins with Paisley comically reminiscing about his childhood fantasies of about being able to watch television during a long drive and wishing he could play Pac-Man at home without having to go to an arcade. His ending the verse by joyfully announcing that he now has the game on his phone will resonate most obviously with those born in the 1970s, like Paisley. Moving onto heavier topics, he compares a recent video chat with a company in Tokyo with the letters his grandfather sent to his grandmother while stationed in the Philippines during World War II. In the final verse, he turns to focus on racism and when he sings about “a woman on a bus” and “a man with a dream” there is no need to name Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr.—we know exactly who he is talking about and he presents us with some extremely powerful imagery while demonstrating not only his ability to write and perform comedic and serious songs, but his aptitude in seamlessly combining the two within the same song. When writing the song, Paisley wanted to “serve up a little multigenerational truth with a strong sense of hope and possibility” by showing today’s world not just through his own eyes, but also of his grandfather and his young sons (2011, 222). As Daniel Kingman notes, country music “is steeped in a unique and somewhat paradoxical blend of realism and sentimentality,” with human situations in songs but with a tendency toward sentimentality (1979, 185). With Paisley calling his aptly titled “This Is Country Music” a “true love song written for the music that changed my life forever and to the millions of people out there who feel exactly the same way about it that I do” (2011, 239), he proved that he was not just a country singer but the personification of the genre’s legacy. His music and star image blend the authenticity of a multitalented singer-songwriter and guitar player with a keen knowledge and respect for the genre’s past, while adding his own modern take and style in the present and inspiring artists of the future. This is country music, and it is in the capable hands of a twenty-first-century cowboy and all his rowdy friends.19

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NOTES 1. I explore the role of religion in the careers and images of contemporary country music artists Eric Church, Brad Paisley, and Alan Jackson in chapter 3 of the edited collection Exploring the Spiritual in Popular Music: Beatified Beats (2021). 2. Zane Grey’s bestselling novel, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), has thus far been adapted to screen five times: as a silent film with cowboy star Tom Mix in 1925; two sound versions in 1931 and 1941 starring George O’Brien and George Montgomery, respectively; and, most recently, a television movie starring Ed Harris in 1996, eighty-four years after the book was originally published. 3. For more on the film Jesse James (1939) and Tyrone Power’s embodiment of the screen cowboy in his western films see chapter four of my monograph Tyrone Power: Gender, Genre, and Image in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2021b). 4. For a discussion of Billy the Kid (1941) and how Robert Taylor’s work in westerns helped toughen up his star image for more male-driven audiences, see my monograph Robert Taylor: Male, Beauty, Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood (2019). 5. In the post–World War II years James Stewart had successfully reinvented himself as a tough, antihero western star through his association with Anthony Mann. 6. Other country artists have also made the occasional films, including Toby Keith as a fading country singer in Broken Bridge (dir. Steven Goldmann, 2006) and Kix Brooks as a US Marshall in Ambush at Dark Canyon (dir. Dustin Rikert, 2012), all sticking close to their constructed star images as country music performers. Tim McGraw has also made several films, some which are country themed, such as Country Strong (dir. Shana Feste, 2010) and others which are not, for example, The Blind Side (dir. John Lee Hancock, 2009). His wife, fellow country musician Faith Hill, also appeared in The Stepford Wives (dir. Frank Oz, 2004). 7. Rogers and Autry are mentioned in first name terms only (Roy and Gene), thus it is assumed by writer Keith that the listener will know who he means. It also suggests a closeness with the artist, and the audience, as if these men are friends and not performers from decades past. Furthermore, it also hints at the fact that they are heroes of Keith’s and, possibly, of the audience’s too. 8. Gunsmoke was both a radio and television series. The radio series ran over nine seasons between 1952 and 1961, producing 480 episodes, while the television show ran for twenty years, between 1955 and 1975, producing 635 episodes. The longevity of these two series aired via two different mediums and over three different decades means that no doubt most audiences for Keith’s song would also be aware of the characters from the series. He starts the song by discussing the complicated relationship between “Marshal Dillon” and “Miss Kitty” but never once mentions Dillon’s first name or Gunsmoke. 9. At the top of the list is country-turned-pop singer Taylor Swift, who began her career wearing cowboy boots and sundresses on stage, her first single being titled “Tim McGraw” after her fellow country artist. In 2019 alone, Swift earned $185 million. For the full Forbes list of the highest-earning musicians of 2019 see the following link: www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/zackomalleygreenburg​/2019​/12​/06​/the​-worlds​ -top​-earning​-musicians​-of​-2019​/​#6ff2b98f164e [accessed 8/9/2020].

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10. As country music’s first star, but with a career that only lasted six years, due to his premature death in 1933, Jimmie Rodgers recorded 111 songs, sold 20 million records, “became internationally famous, and led country music into greener pastures than it ever dreamed existed” (Kingman 1979, 190). 11. Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind album art looks like a stereotypical country album, unlike the more controversial “navel bearing” offerings from 1990s female artists such as Shania Twain and Mindy McCready whose images caused a sensation in country music. 12. Similar terms to cowboy are often used to convey the same messages, with Trace Adkins’s “Ladies Love Country Boys” and Luke Bryan’s “Country Man” exploring the western man’s sexual potential without using the word “cowboy” directly. Likewise, Alan Jackson’s “Small Town Southern Man” and Tim McGraw’s two tracks “Southern Voice” and “Southern Girl” highlight the folk culture of the South that long helped to shape the genre. Although cowboy becomes just “boy,” or the more masculine “man,” in these examples, the inclusion of the words “country” or “southern” helps to convey the type of song and genre the listener expects to hear. 13. Although Miranda Lambert was a contestant on the show in 2003, she did not win but has gone on to break many country music records, including being nominated for a record-breaking fifty-five awards from the Country Music Association (CMA); her receiving seven nominations in 2020 alone is also the record number for any artist in the show’s impressive fifty-three-year history. In addition to winning more Female Vocalist of the Year CMAs than any other woman in the genre’s history, Lambert has also won more Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards in history, with thirty-two wins. 14. Indeed, most country music artists sell trucker caps at their concerts and in their online merchandise stores featuring either a photograph, their name, logo, slogan, song title, or lyrics strongly associated with them. 15. Some country music videos present artists in full traditional cowboy gear and settings, much like watching a western film set in the Old West. In the music video for “Straight to Hell,” Black singer Darius Rucker (formerly of the band Hootie and the Blowfish) is joined by Jason Aldean, Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum, and Luke Bryan in a traditional saloon setting with whiskey flowing, gamblers, a sheriff, and bar brawls. Likewise, Randy Houser’s “Like a Cowboy” also pays homage to the western film of yesteryear, including a three-minute narrative before the song begins. 16. Owens’s band, The Buckaroos, wore blue versions of the suit along with matching ties. 17. The song itself is about a woman who prefers the country-encoded tropes of cut-off jeans, driving down Tennessee backroads, drinking beer, campfires, and listening to Alabama’s music to evening gowns, wine, and candlelight. 18. Several female artists have collaborated with clothing brands or released their own range, for example, Idyllwild Fueled by Miranda Lambert which manufactures country-themed clothing such as cowboy boots, fringed jackets, and denim items. Additionally, several female artists have released cookbooks (including Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, and Little Big Town’s Kimberly Schlapman) but so has one contemporary male artist: Kix Brooks of the duo Brooks and Dunn. McBride’s

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Around the Table has chapters dedicated to separate occasions and eating around the family dinner table and Schlapman’s Oh, Gussie! is named after her grandmother and includes recipes from her childhood. Both cover images show the women wearing an apron and smiling as they prepare a bowl of food in a pristine kitchen, while Brooks’s Cookin’ It with Kix: The Art of Celebrating and the Fun of Outdoor Cooking takes cooking out of the domestic space and into the outdoors, thus making it “safer” for a male artist to release and men to purchase. The book aims to “celebrate life and the joy of good food, tailgating, BBQ-ing, and parties on the patio for 2 or 20” and has a cover design of dark colors and wood patterns, giving it a much more rustic, natural, and outdoorsy feel, which allows Brooks to retain his masculinity. 19. This is a reference to Hank Williams Jr.’s song “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” released in 1984. The song’s music video features many of Williams’s peers making cameo appearances, including George Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, Kris Kristofferson, Grandpa Jones, and Porter Wagoner, all men who have helped to shape the genre. A Cadillac flying into the sky at the end of the video is an obvious reference to his father, Hank Williams, who died in the back of a Cadillac on January 1,1953, while traveling to play a New Year’s show.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Carlin, Richard. The Big Book of Country Music: A Biographical Encyclopedia. New York and London: Penguin, 1995. Garofalo, Reebee. Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the USA. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2008. Grey, Zane. Riders of the Purple Sage. London: Harper Brothers, 1912. Horstman, Dorothy. Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, 2nd edition. Nashville: Country Music Foundation, 1986. Hughes, Michael. “Country Music as Impression Management: A Mediation on Fabricating Authenticity.” Poetics 28 (2000): 185–205. Joyner, David Lee. American Popular Music. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Kelly, Gillian. Robert Taylor: Male Beauty, Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. ———. “Hank and Jesus: The Integral Roles of Religion and the History of Country Music in the Lives and Careers of Contemporary Country Artists” in Exploring the Spiritual in Popular Music: Beatified Beats, edited by Mike Dines and Georgia Gregory. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021a. ———. Tyrone Power: Genre, Gender and Image in Classical Hollywood Cinema. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2021b. Kingman, Daniel. American Music: A Panorama, New York: Schirmer Books, 1979. Kotarba, Joseph A., and Philip Vannini. Understanding Society through Popular Music. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. Malone, Bill C. Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music. Athens, GA, and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1993.

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McCusker, Kristine M., and Diane Pecknold (eds.). A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. ———. Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Neal, Jocelyn R. The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country Music. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009. Paisley, Brad with David Wild. Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me. New York, Nashville, and London: Howard Books, 2011. Pfeil, Fred. White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference, London: Verso, 1995. Rainey, Buck. The Reel Cowboy: Essays on the Myth in Movies and Literature. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 1996. Richardson, Niall, and Sadie Wearing. Gender in the Media, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Rojek, Chris. Pop Music, Pop Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011. Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking and the Studio System, New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1981. Watts, Trent (ed.). White Masculinity in the Recent South, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Whitely, Sheila, Andy Bennett, and Stan Hawkins (eds.). Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity. Hants: Ashgate, 2004.

Chapter Five

Can You Hear Me? “Outlaw Pete” as American “Hero” Lilian Haney and John Thompson

Deep in the heart of the West, a cry echoes across a desolate landscape: “Outlaw Pete, Outlaw Pete, can you hear me? Can you hear me?” Clocking in at just under eight minutes, Bruce Springsteen’s “Outlaw Pete” is less a song than a musical epic. The opening track from Working on a Dream, Springsteen’s sixteenth studio album, was expanded into a picture book by Springsteen and illustrator Frank Caruso in 2014. Ostensibly a simple “cowboy story,” both song and storybook tell the tale of a man trapped by his violent past, drawing freely from a line of gunslinger sagas stretching back to dime-store novels, folk songs such as “Jesse James,” and brought to life by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Yet this surface simplicity masks a deeper (and more troubling) complexity. In “Outlaw Pete,” Springsteen combines literary, musical, and visual elements to explore a quintessential American icon: the gunfighter. A figure born of nostalgia for simpler times, the gunfighter embodies our legendary “rugged individualism” and insatiable desire to take matters into our own hands. Always an outsider, his sheer audacity in making his name, even if that means breaking the law, appeals to anyone who feels cheated by a system where only a select few succeed. Ironically, though, while the gunfighter seems free, his lonely existence perpetually on the run renders any meaningful family (or community) life impossible. In the end, this makes “Outlaw Pete” not a rebel who plays by his own rules but a critique that calls into question deeply rooted American ideals. This essay examines aspects of American identity as articulated in Springsteen’s song and story. After discussing “myth” and its role in American culture, we turn to “Outlaw Pete” itself, providing a brief summary before digging into points of plot, picture, and music that make the work so 85

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rich. We then examine Outlaw Pete as “gunfighter,” a latter-day version of the “hunter/warrior,” the stoic hero of the American frontier myth. According to Richard Slotkin, the frontier myth defines American identity as a continual struggle of civilization over savagery in which the former triumphs through self-assertion and violence.1 As the archetypal gunfighter, Outlaw Pete personifies the darkest aspects of the hunter/warrior as he stalks his way through pop culture, particularly in his propensity toward violence. Finally, we suggest that “Outlaw Pete” is not so much a myth as a parable inviting us to respond to America’s violent mythos by taking responsibility for our past and reimagining who we could be. MYTH AND AMERICA Few words are as fraught as myth. Most people regard myth as “false,” something to be debunked (cf. “MythBusters”), or as an entertaining story about gods and monsters that we need not take seriously. In fact, though, myth is far more complex. Contemporary scholars regard myths as narratives that provide answers to our perennial questions: where did we come from? Why are we here? How should we live? All societies have myths, even those that claim to be based on rationality and science. Historically speaking, the term myth derives from the Greek mythos (“story”), and contrasts with logos (“reason”). Early Greek thinkers associate mythos with poetic utterances inspired by the muses, which necessarily differed from the everyday discourse of logos. However, both Xenophanes and Plato are critical of the fanciful dimensions of mythos, and thus proclaim logos as the way to truth. Aristotle extends this focus on “reason” by narrowing myth to its purely literary dimension, defining it as “plot.” Even with Aristotle’s narrowed definition, though, his focus on myth as a type of narrative remains with us. While scholars have yet to agree on a satisfactory definition of the term, myth retains something of its mysterious origins, holding a unique attraction by concealing deeper meaning than first meets the eye. Myth defies neat summary while its connection to the divine suggests that it transcends simple rationality. We typically consider myth to be ancient, but actually myth is part of everyday life. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) speaks of myth as a “living reality”: Studied alive, myth, as we shall see, is not symbolic but a direct expression of its subject matter . . . it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man . . . it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked active

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force; it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom.2

While the explicit role of myth has diminished by modernity’s shift away from the poetics of mythos and toward the concrete and practical determinations of logos, this does not mean that we are beyond myth. Myths continue to provide answers to our persistent questions about meaning, serving as guideposts along life’s way. Scholar David Leeming speaks of myth as “a collective authorship, the human mind, wrestling en masse with the mysteries it confronts, attempting to make the Earth conscious of itself.”3 Myth presents in story-form the values and ideals of a community, promoting a widely shared pattern of life that enable us to live together. All people have myths (explicit or implicit), and they are a major way of forming collective identity. Nations certainly have their myths—stories about their origins, significant places, struggles, and heroes who are honored for their achievements. These stories explain to their citizens and the larger world who they are, and why they are important. In fact, most “history” taught by schools is mythic; “Old myths never die—they just become embedded in textbooks.”4 The events these in tales may be exaggerated (often with little basis in fact) and the figures portrayed are always larger than life. And as most everyone knows, America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” is also the world’s most mythical nation. Over the years scholars have identified various American myths,5 among them the European “discovery” of the “New World,” the establishment of democracy by the “Founding Fathers,” and the “rags to riches” saga of the “self-made man.” As with all myths, the alleged historical “truth” of such tales is beside the point. Together they provide a storehouse of narratives that we draw upon, learning in childhood and integrating them into our lives. Moreover, even while myth in traditional literary or ritual form has faded (to the extent where many people do not consider stories like “Outlaw Pete” to be “myths”), these narratives still influence us through music, writing, film, and art. Stories like “Outlaw Pete,” thus, are significant not only for their messages but because they keep myth alive in a world desperately ignorant (or in denial) of its continuing presence. PLOT SUMMARY In keeping with Aristotle’s identification of “myth” with “plot,” we begin our discussion of “Outlaw Pete” with a brief summary. Springsteen tells the story chronologically, starting with Pete’s childhood on the Appalachian Trail and his first crime (robbing a bank), a feat which lands him in jail. At the tender

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age of six months, Pete is already a convicted criminal. Years later, he steals a horse and embarks on a relentless career as an “outlaw, killer, and a thief,” perpetually on the run, spreading blood and sorrow wherever he rides. That is, until he one night he wakes from a vision of his death that goads him to flee deep into the West. Eventually, he settles down with a Navajo girl, and together they have a beautiful daughter. Pete has finally found love and a home and has left his outlaw days behind. This idyll shatters, however, when a man named Bounty Hunter Dan hunts Pete down, confronting him as he sits fishing by a river. Gun drawn, Dan says, “Pete, you think you’ve changed, but you have not.” Before Dan can shoot, though, Pete draws a knife and stabs him in the heart; as Dan lies dying, he tells Pete that neither of them “[can] undo the things that [they’ve] done.” Kneeling in the sun over Dan’s body, Pete realizes his past still haunts him. Horrified, he takes off again, riding nonstop until he comes to a halt on an icy mountain peak. What happens next is unclear; Pete either rides over the edge or remains frozen on the precipice. The story ends with a young Navajo girl with “skin so fair” (presumably Pete’s daughter) crying out over and over: “Outlaw Pete / Can you hear me?” All told, this is quite a story, filled with many amusing, fantastic, and horrific details. While we may be inclined to question whether these events actually happened (“Wait a minute—how could a baby still in diapers rob a bank?”), that approach prevents us from engaging the tale in all its strange richness. Instead, we do better to accept the tale as given and look more closely at it, delving into some particularly salient points. The tale starts off by introducing Pete soon after his birth on the mountainous frontier, although the year or exact place are unknown. He is alone, without parents or even a name at this point, left to make his way in the world clad only in a diaper. The details of his early life are vague and jumbled: “Baby Pete” has already done a hitch behind bars by the time he is half a year old, yet somehow, he manages to successfully rob a bank. After this improbable feat, he proclaims his identity by literally making a name for himself, which he cries out far and wide. By the next verse, Pete has grown into a young man fully identified with his new name, committing himself to life as “a killer, outlaw, and a thief.” Always on the run, Pete is wracked by guilt, confessing his sins yet unable to stop while his fearsome reputation spreads: wherever he goes, women weep, and men die. Finally, the looming threat of Pete’s own death as a result of his crimes (the book depicts a red-eyed skull hovering in the dark as Pete sits up next to a dying fire) drives him “deep into the West,” far from the havoc he has wrought. At this point Pete finds a haven beyond the reach of the society he previously terrorized. He marries a Navajo woman and together they have a

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beautiful daughter whom he deeply loves. But this peaceful life cannot last; Pete’s bloody past invades his quiet and happy home in the person of Bounty Hunter Dan, who comes from “out of the East” to hunt Pete down. Dan is a foil to Pete, acting as retribution for Pete’s crimes while also being bound by his own identity as something of an “outlaw” (a bounty hunter is a private citizen operating outside the legal constraints governing the police). By killing Dan, Pete tries to deny his past, but Dan knows that Pete cannot change; there is no avoiding fate. Pete now realizes this too, which drives away from his family and eventually up a mountain with the possible intention of committing suicide. We leave Pete here, alone, before switching scenes to a Navajo girl washing in the same river where Pete faced off with Dan. Braiding her hair with a piece of Pete’s chaps, the girl is also alone as her cries of “Can you hear me?” echo unanswered. As the song ends, we wonder what becomes of Pete, his family, and the survivors of his criminal reign of terror. Visual Analysis The picture book illustrated by Frank Caruso furthers the story with fifty pages of powerful images, many of which warrant special attention.6 The most prominent is the portrait on the book’s cover, which sets the tone for the entire story: Pete, as a baby in diapers and an oversized cowboy hat whose brim covers his eyes while a white cloth covers his mouth. Pete seems just another boy playing cowboy, but we can’t help noticing that he stands in a gunslinger’s pose, legs spread wide, hands poised for a quick draw despite his missing gun belt. The uncanny air of humor and menace is emphasized by Pete’s looming shadow. This shadow, like the Jungian archetype, signifies his criminal reputation and the consequences which follow him everywhere. As with the cover image, so throughout the book, we never see Pete’s full face; rather, he is obscured in shadows or riding, running, or simply facing away from the frame. Visually, this suggests Pete’s unformed and untrustworthy nature—a deliberately hidden quality particularly noteworthy with respect to his eyes, the “mirrors of the soul.” We cannot look Pete directly in the eyes (can Pete see us or the effects of his actions?), so we never see into Pete’s soul.7 The continual obstruction of his face requires us to fill in Pete’s features, inserting ourselves into his shoes (cowboy boots?), furthering our identification with this character. Most pictures of Pete depict him in action—from crawling as a babe to joyfully skipping along after robbing a bank, to riding at a blistering pace through the landscape. Always on the move, Pete is so quick that we only see him from behind as he hurdles along. Yet he does stop at certain points, with panels depicting him praying before a rack of flickering candles, on a cliff shouting his name into an empty landscape, or just after waking from his

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nightmare of death. These contrasting images show Pete driving incessantly forward with only a few short rests during which we glimpse his loneliness and fear. Such extremes bespeak a man under constant tension, dealing with conflicting forces whose explosive combination threatens to tear him apart. Pete always being on the run highlights the fact that despite the powerful impact he has on everyone around him, he never lingers long in their lives. Instead, Pete is alone, riding across the page even as we see women crying in horror and men dying by his hand. Pete only finds a respite in the brief four pages at the book’s center, where we see him with his wife and daughter.8 Immediately after, though, Dan bursts on the scene, and again Pete is alone. The contrasts between Dan on his galloping steed and Pete calmly fishing mark the stark contradiction between outlaw and home life while also being a grim prelude to more death. Frenetic activity and its horrific consequences always push Pete on, demonstrating that despite asserting himself in word and deed, he is not in control. And when the consequences of his past catch up, he must kill again and leave behind the only love he has ever known. The last few pages are quite poignant, beginning with Pete on his horse alone, shrouded in fog on a mountain ledge. Pete looks up at a hawk soaring into the sky while he remains stuck at the edge of nothingness. We zoom in on his horse as it rears in a scattering of pebbles while Pete is barely visible in the swirling snow. Our final glimpse of Pete is the vague outline of his two possible fates: plunging into an abyss or frozen stiff in the cold and dark. The scene then changes to the Navajo girl, eyes obscured (just like Pete’s). She sits beside still waters, gazing at her reflection, before braiding a tattered piece of Pete’s clothes into her dark tresses. The next image spreads across two pages, showing the girl on a mountain ledge (the same one?), calling out for Pete over and over in the red light of a setting sun. One last turn of the page shows a starry sky as the light fades, leaving us in blackness. Visually, this is where Pete’s story ends. Musical Analysis The musical format of “Outlaw Pete,” including the song’s rhythm and tone, provides additional dimensions. It has five verses, each punctuated by a chorus, as well as a short bridge. The verses themselves chronicle each stage in Pete’s life: his origin and childhood, his criminal career (culminating in his vision of death), his desperate attempt to escape and “go straight” with his new family, his epic showdown with Dan (when he confronts the consequences of his sins), and Pete’s final furious flight to meet his fate. The song’s structure is dramatic, a Shakespeare play in five acts set to a rock-and-roll beat. What’s more, the song’s arrangement reflects developments in Pete’s life. The music opens with a simple hoof beat rhythm that recalls the scores of

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the infamous “spaghetti westerns” of the 1970s, setting the basic pattern. In the first verse, we meet Pete as baby who precociously begins to make his mark, bragging in the first chorus that he is a real honest-to-God “outlaw.” The second verse continues, but in a darker vein as Pete assumes the role of cowboy criminal, with all the blood and violence it entails. We then come to the short bridge, a scant two lines summing up Pete’s lifework thus far: “He cut his trail of tears across the countryside/And where he went, women wept and men died.” These verses belong together, as they introduce Pete and convey what sort of man he is, and along with the bridge, perfectly encapsulate Pete’s life as a gunfighter. Musically, this section drives steadily forward, with distinctly western elements integrating a hoof-beat rhythm that builds in volume to carry us along with Pete’s ride. Up to this point the song has featured little instrumental variation. This quickly changes with the third verse, where bass guitar and drums emerge as Pete runs to some unknown future “in the West.” Pete marries and settles into family life, trying to make a new identity while the music echoes this plot twist with orchestral elements slowly rising to the fore. Will the song end here, with Pete finding a home at last? Alas, it is not to be. The elegiac interlude at the end of the verse shifts to a swifter pace and higher volume, as Dan rushes out of “the East,” the tempo reflecting his stallion’s gallop and his quickening heartbeat in anticipation of collecting yet another bounty. As Dan finds Pete by the river, the music builds to a peak until cutting out almost all of the instruments when Dan cocks his gun. Suddenly, the song switches to half-time, sliding into a classic western showdown tune that pulls the audience into a tense moment. A lone harmonica sounds as Pete draws his knife and throws it into Dan’s chest, the killing strike marked by another harmonica note. Now the music slows to the cadence of a death march as the dying Dan pronounces Pete’s doom as well. After Dan’s death, Pete flees into the wilderness, the music picking up speed to match his pace as he scales his final mountain. The song builds to a peak when Pete approaches the crest, coming to a crescendo as he reaches the ledge. Again, almost all the instruments cut out and the song enters half-time, only now instead of western drawl we hear the tolling of a bell (accented again by a lone harmonica) signifying that Pete is gone for good. The music conveys a sense of loss in the grave silence following the fervent build-up of the last chorus, its notes swelling as the words “can you hear me?” repeat desperately to the end. The choruses punctuating each verse further dramatize Pete’s saga, having several variations with each variant reflecting crucial aspects of the story at specific points:

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1.  In the first chorus, Pete is establishing his identity as an outlaw, proudly declaring, “I’m Outlaw Pete” two times, followed by a single “Can you hear me?” Overall, this chorus is a gleeful boast with an endearing plea to see that we know Pete’s name. 2.  The second chorus has the exact same wording as the first. Pete again declares “I’m Outlaw Pete” twice followed by a single, “Can you hear me?” Yet this refrain sounds a note of resignation and warning, giving the words a heaviness as Pete realizes what outlaw life really means. Appropriately, this chorus leads to the bridge that so pithily sums up what Pete’s career has been. 3.  With the third chorus we enter fresh territory, just as Pete has made a home with his wife and daughter. Again, we hear “I’m Outlaw Pete” twice but, in contrast to the preceding variants, this chorus repeats “Can you hear me?” three times. This repetition calls us to pay special attention to what is going on, a plea that we really listen. Even more, the repetition recalls the common mythic trope that saying something three times lends them mystical power. Is Pete desperately casting a spell to guard his new family and keep the outside world at bay? 4.  The fourth chorus plays after Pete has mortally wounded Dan, but with a notable change: Dan says, “You’re Outlaw Pete,” repeating this accusation while informing Pete that his self-created identity has trapped him. To underscore his point, Dan draws out the phrase “Can you hear me?” three times (just like Pete in the previous chorus), making clear that Pete’s hopeful “spell” was in vain. 5.  The final chorus is the longest, given voice by the Navajo girl and stretching out into plaintive echoes. This time, instead of “I’m” or “You’re,” the chorus calls out “Outlaw Pete!” two final times before repeating, “Can you hear me?” over and over with full orchestration until it fades—a call in the dark for someone who isn’t there. As we can see, the music relates Pete’s exploits and the changes he undergoes as the plot unfolds while enabling other characters to chime in to address Pete and us. Truly, “Outlaw Pete” is a masterful composition of carefully arranged vocal and instrumental moments linked by recurring musical motifs. Indeed, it reminds us why people jokingly called westerns “horse operas,” a remarkably apt moniker given operas’ mythic tendencies.

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OUTLAW PETE’S MYTHIC DIMENSIONS— THE TRAVAILS OF THE “GUNFIGHTER” “The grim fightin’ hero’s troubles Are always private” —Jack Kerouac, “Old Western Movies”

A defining feature of any myth is how such tales compel us to live through their characters. In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong argues that myth satisfies the human need to find deeper meaning within the bare confines of a mortal lifetime.9 Bruce Springsteen, creator of “Outlaw Pete,” is a himself a prolific mythmaker, a rock-and-roll bard who liberally sprinkles mythic motifs throughout “Outlaw Pete,” from its timeless setting, its orphan hero with extraordinary powers who embarks on a series of adventures, to the odd biblical phrase “forty days and forty nights.” Even more mythic is how “Outlaw Pete” speaks to our common experiences of birth, love, parenthood, and death. We follow Pete through these familiar milestones, feeling every moment—in a sense, experiencing it ourselves. Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud argue that living through a character allows us to enact our subconscious desires without the consequences of doing so in real life.10 Springsteen seconds this notion, writing in the picture book’s afterword that he wishes his readers “well as [they] ride,” while he includes in his autobiography a photo labelled “Outlaw Pete” that depicts young Bruce in a cowboy outfit and riding a hobby-horse.11 Pete’s story is clearly Bruce’s story but really it is OUR story, and in telling it Springsteen challenges us to see what we are running from and (hopefully) avoid Pete’s demise. The song’s chorus, then, is a direct question to us: are you hearing the message? “Outlaw Pete” also exemplifies the “hero’s journey,” a narrative structure popularized by Joseph Campbell. Based on his extensive studies, Campbell identifies a common core (the “monomyth”) that repeats over and over throughout the world’s mythologies. For Campbell, the “monomyth” points to the deep psychological truth of humanity’s innate drive for self-knowledge and realization.12 As Leeming says, “the hero with a thousand faces . . . lives within us all.”13 While Campbell’s work remains controversial in some circles, in the hands of Hollywood scriptwriters (notably Christopher Vogler) the hero’s journey has become THE blueprint for many pop culture franchises, from Star Wars to Harry Potter to practically every Disney production in the past few decades.14 It is little wonder that Springsteen, whose work is so steeped in such lore that it has become an integral part of pop culture, should craft “Outlaw Pete” along similar lines. Indeed, we can discern many typical elements of the hero’s journey in Pete’s tale, including hints at his kinship

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with the Divine (he prays to “Father Jesus”), his magic flight from demonic forces, even his apotheosis on a distant mountain peak.15 Yet “Outlaw Pete” is not just a generic hero tale but a riff on American hero myths, its name checks of American places (Appalachia, “the res”) and events (“Trail of Tears”) as well as “Indians” (Navajos) being obvious clues. “Outlaw Pete” is a rock song (rock-and-roll is an American musical genre), and the events play out against a background of stereotypical “cowboy movie scenery.” Springsteen traces Pete’s story to various sources, among them “The wild, colorful characters of my second record, The E Street Shuffle (sic), every western (spaghetti or otherwise) I’ve seen since I was a kid, and probably all the way back to the bedtime story Brave Cowboy Bill my mom used to recite from memory to me as a child.”16 All of these are American, however, a fact crucial to understanding “Outlaw Pete.” Cultural historian Jim Cullen notes that Springsteen has a long-standing fascination with the West,17 so his writing about a “cowboy” comes as no surprise. Frank Caruso, Springsteen’s coauthor/illustrator, says that “like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Dorothy Gale and for me, even Popeye, Outlaw Pete cuts deep into the folklore of our country and weaves its way into the fabric of great American literary characters.”18 Indeed, America has a penchant for heroizing figures that represent values such as “freedom” and “progress,” among them Paul Bunyan, the rough and tumble lumberjack who is also a powerful businessman, and George Washington, our most mythologized figure.19 America likes to imagine itself as part of some grand epic involving godlike characters such as these, a veritable “hero nation.” Theologian Richard Hughes, however, argues that America’s mythic self-conception is more troubling than we might suspect.20 In examining myths such as the Chosen Nation, Nature’s Nation, and the Millennial Nation, Hughes notes that all of them can inspire us to realize America’s promise of freedom and equality even as they seduce us into believing we have already achieved these ideals. Hughes singles out in particular the “Myth of the Innocent Nation,” the belief that unlike other nations with their corrupt histories America’s inherent nobility always preserves our fundamental purity. For Hughes, this myth encourages denial of the harsh realities of our past and its continuing destructive effects. This image of America as “innocent,” unmarred by the muddiness of history, promotes the dangerously uncritical veneration and imitation of its heroes. Aside from the obvious mismatch between the pristine narrative ideal and the dirtiness of actual life, such idealizing overlooks the fact that even traditional mythic heroes are not always “good.” In fact, heroes are often flawed, regularly transgressing laws and social norms only to be brought down by hubris (excessive pride). Scholars also note that cultural shifts accompanying the spread of democratic notions (and the decline of the pre-modern

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aristocracy) led to the rise of the antihero, a protagonist lacking the courage and idealism of traditional heroes. In surveying twentieth-century literature, Richard Barksdale suggests that the pervasive alienation of modern society feeds antihero ideas, noting that it is particularly strong in America, with roots reaching back to the nation’s founding.21 American folklore definitely has its share of antiheroic characters, some of whom we could call “social bandits,” Robin Hood-types like “Pretty Boy Floyd” who “rob from the rich and give to the poor,” but these figures are more the exception than the rule. According to psychoanalyst Barry Spector, Americans admire outlaws like Tony Soprano, someone who “takes whatever he wants, has no responsibilities and transgresses all moral codes.” That is, we esteem the outlaw (who could be a hedge fund CEO these days) because he doesn’t feel bound by society’s rules and so can act as he wishes, consequences be damned.22 In light of such considerations, Richard Slotkin’s claim that the frontier myth is the definitive American story becomes especially relevant. Slotkin identifies the ongoing struggle between civilization and savagery as central to this myth, tracing the motif from the earliest European settlements to the late twentieth-century rise of the United States as the world’s sole superpower. The hero of the frontier myth is the “warrior/hunter,” a figure who appears in various guises, from the “Indian fighter” (Daniel Boone) to the “cowboy” (lauded by both Buffalo Bill and Teddy Roosevelt), to the “self-made man” who heeds the call to “Go west, young man” to find fame and fortune. While these characters span a range of contrasting views of America, at bottom they all offer redemption by “playing through a scenario of separation, temporary regression to a more primitive or ‘natural’ state, and regeneration through violence.”23 His most recent and troubling incarnation is the “gunfighter,” a professional killer beholden to no one whose psychic isolation from society stands as a sharp critique of a culture that produces such men.24 American culture is riddled with gunfighters, mainstays of comic books, movies, and video games, but Pete is the most striking gunfighter imaginable. We meet him as a babe in diapers—a literal “kid” who recalls other American desperados like “Billy the Kid” or “Baby-Face Nelson” whose exploits echo throughout western lore. A denizen of the frontier from the getgo, Pete’s uncanny abilities enable him to singlehandedly rob a bank while just a toddler, then steal a mustang and range freely across the countryside. Pete always evades capture, dealing out death and grief (via his preternatural skill with weapons) while remaining unscathed. Even the picture book makes Pete look cool, clad in cowboy regalia (hat, boots, spurs) with his trusty sixshooters always at his side. No doubt about it, “Outlaw Pete” romanticizes

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Pete’s life, much as “B westerns” glorify their gunfighting heroes: Pete is one bad-ass hombre! This impression, however, sets us up for serious cognitive dissonance on further reflection. For starters, Pete never rests, has no joy (at least after his brief childhood), and always ends up alone. These facts alone should give us pause. Morally, the tale raises numerous issues, as it doesn’t revolve around a “good guy”; Pete is neither a “social bandit” whose crimes serve the poor, nor a wounded man who returns to visit justified revenge on those who done him wrong. Instead, our “hero” is a violent criminal with a history of harming ordinary folks like us. As upstanding citizens, we want or at least expect that Pete will be punished (either by the law, or through “frontier justice” via a showdown with another gunslinger like Dan) yet neither happens. Instead, the story has Pete abandoning his family, hints of his suicide (both social taboos) while denying us an ending in which Justice triumphs or Pete gets his “happily ever after.” By leaving things unresolved, “Outlaw Pete” proves not so much a guilty pleasure where we vicariously “get back” at those “bad guys” as a sad story where the “hero” is doomed. There is a decidedly nihilistic streak here—do we anticipate sharing Pete’s fate? Regardless of our answer, “Outlaw Pete” makes for uneasy reading/listening, bringing us up short like Pete on the cliff’s edge staring into a bottomless chasm. OUTLAW PETE’S VIOLENT HEART— “SLAP LEATHER, AMIGOS!” “You have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” —D. H. Lawrence

“Outlaw Pete” is a complex literary, visual, and musical work centering on a figure at once familiar, and terrifying: a boy gunfighter. Like all American myths, this story dramatizes confused and conflicting notions rooted deeply within America’s cultural DNA. As a version of our primal frontier myth of savage conflict, “Outlaw Pete” shows that which we seek to deny in our protestations of perennial innocence: an almost gleeful history of violence personified in a diaper-wearing killer who leaves naught but blood and grief in his wake. Violence, of course, remains notoriously difficult to define but like pornography, we tend to know it when we see it. Physical violence figures

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prominently in most mythologies and is an inherent part of the hero’s journey with its struggles against beasts, men, and gods. “Outlaw Pete,” though, is shot through with violence on multiple levels. Not only is the “hero” a career criminal who commits violence indiscriminately, but narratively speaking, the tale constantly violates our expectations with a plot that is a series of ruptures. We open on a child who suffers violent punishment (solitary confinement in jail), breaks the law in a daring hold up and then skips nimbly off into the wilderness, shouting his name everywhere. Pete’s life takes a dark turn as he embarks on a ferocious rampage that destroys peoples’ lives. Again, contrary to expectations, this hardened killer is torn by guilt yet continues his evil ways. Suddenly, he receives a horrific vision that provokes him to renounce outlaw life for family, hearth, and home. Yet this new life ends abruptly when a stranger shows up gunning for him. After killing yet again, Pete takes off without so much as a goodbye, abandoning his family and riding nonstop into the wild until being forced to halt at the edge of a cliff, where he teeters on the brink of life and death. Rather than leaving the audience satisfied with a happy or wistful ending (like a typical western), “Outlaw Pete” is a tattered tale of pain and broken lives. Slotkin says that in the frontier myth the hero succeeds by resorting to violence to revive his spirit and moral character, noting that overtime, “the myth of regeneration through violence became the structuring metaphor of the American experience.”25 This makes violence central to American culture. Slotkin adds that “What is distinctively ‘American’ is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced.”26 Pace Slotkin, though, America is unique in the sheer amount of violence it experiences. In an editorial in tracing America’s violent history (with some appalling statistics), philosopher Ira M. Leonard shares a telling line from legal scholars Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins: “What is striking about the quantity of lethal violence in the United States is that it is a third-world phenomenon occurring in a first-world nation.”27 “Outlaw Pete,” thus, is truly an American tale, its violence being the axis around which the entire story revolves. We see this violence everywhere in “Outlaw Pete,” beginning with guns, those central props in any western. Guns are ubiquitous in American society,28 exerting an almost mystical aura with the common fantasy of “the good guy with a gun” attesting to how pervasive the theme of regeneration through violence is. In the book, guns are ever-present,29 beginning with baby Pete making a “gun” with his fingers to rob the bank (this literal “gunplay” is remarkably effective). For most of the story, Pete’s guns are always at his side even when he is praying, sleeping, and fishing. Ironically, though, we never see Pete holding a gun (let alone pulling the trigger), once again violating our

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expectations. However, we do see guns falling impotently from the hands of the men he kills, including Dan, whom Pete slays before the bounty hunter can get off a single shot. Is Pete such a quick draw that we cannot see when he shoots, or is it that we don’t want to? This strange absence compels us to conjure these death scenes in our minds—something we can easily do given how common shootings are in America. Little wonder that guns with their threat of violence haunt “Outlaw Pete” as well. Pete’s violence also manifests in the patriarchal assumptions informing the plot, with men and boys literally calling the shots yet giving little thought for women and girls. Such pointed exclusion is a type of literary violence. Pete first appears as the archetypal “motherless child” who makes his own name while all the female characters—even his wife and daughter—remain nameless. In the picture book, most of the women are wailing in mourning, impotent rage, or both. The only other named figure is Dan, Pete’s dark double who comes gunning only to be dispatched quickly with no foreplay. Pete takes what he wants from the ladies (and gentlemen?), not even leaving them the words of a sad country song. “Outlaw Pete” follows the arc of American conquest, itself just one long campaign of violence. It opens on the very first frontier, pushing ever Westward into lawless territory beyond the (temporarily) set bounds of civilized society. Yes, there are a few “Indians,” but they are conquered people, confined to “the res” while Pete can come and go. Dan rushes out from the East, but we know that the West will be the setting where the inevitable violent confrontation takes place. And Pete repeatedly disappears into the wilderness, the wide-open spaces being a haven where he can wander unmolested. In this regard, Pete’s career is an allegory of America’s imperial expansion, with the land and its resources always assumed to be ours for the taking. Finally, “Outlaw Pete” also expresses the violent ideology of White supremacy underlying so much of American culture. The song does not speak of Pete in racial/ethnic terms but by identifying his wife on “the res” as “Navajo” and describing his daughter as “a young Navajo girl” with “skin so fair,” the song all but says Pete is “white.” Pete’s default “whiteness” is quite evident in the picture book, which only features other “white” characters. The absence of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians amounts to a virtual obliteration—quite a feat given how prominent such peoples actually were in frontier times among cowboys, railroad crews, and so on and their common presence as stock characters in TV shows and movies. As noted, “Outlaw Pete” does have “Indians,” however, they are nameless women who provide Pete the closest thing he has to “home.” Pete mixes freely with them, “playing Indian” and finding temporary solace. In so doing, Pete resembles his literary ancestor, “Hawkeye” from James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales,” a man who “knows Indians” so well he can pass as one. Hawkeye

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as a racial purist eschews marriage with a “redskin,”30 but as a gunfighter given to violating social rules, Pete has no such qualms—and perhaps that is the real reason why Dan comes to kill him (and why Pete kills Dan “Indian fashion,” with a knife). Regardless, we know Pete’s family only in relation to him, they are not “real” characters. While Pete may intend to “save” his family from further (White) violence, he still abandons them, leaving behind a “half-breed” daughter screaming his name vainly into empty space. Violence permeates Pete’s story. By themselves, none of these examples make “Outlaw Pete” unique but in combination, they reveal vicious and dangerously unstable aspects of the American mythos. Pete’s story relates the destructive fall-out of America’s frontier myth, implying that those who live by it will bring harm and end up estranged from family, friends, and community. In an interview about the song and book, Springsteen says, “The characters are outlandish. They’re not real. They’re mythical. The tale is a fable.”31 Perhaps, though, “Outlaw Pete” is not so much a myth or fable as a parable, a story that subverts the seeming stability of myth. In the words of theologian John Dominic Crossan, “Parables are fictions, not myths; they are meant to change, not reassure us.”32 A “CHILDREN’S STORY” FOR EVERYONE “Uh uh. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk??” —Clint Eastwood as “Dirty Harry” Callahan

“Outlaw Pete” is an epic saga about a man seeking redemption yet stalked by death. Bruce Springsteen tells this story musically and visually, using elements from both mediums to amplify crucial points. The story echoes tales of other figures from folklore, reinforcing aspects of American culture like the belief in sin and redemption, as well as ideals like freedom and individualism. Certainly, we can enjoy it as a “ripping yarn” with rocking riffs, but “Outlaw Pete” actually calls us to reexamine the American mythos, revealing our enduring frontier myth to be a pastiche of grim notions centering on violence and death. Instead of a traditional hero whose journey helps establish a lasting community, we have a violent man-child whose life is saddled with pain and paradox—an abandoned baby who grows into a killer addicted to a lawless life. Wracked by guilt at the blood on his hands, he becomes a haunted family man forced to flee his home when his past finally catches up to him.

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Pete is not just an “outlaw” but a “gunfighter,” a distinctly American figure—menacing yet attractive to something deep within our collective psyche. Gunfighters are damaged, dangerous, and damned people, unable to live as part of a family or community. This is exactly what we see in “Outlaw Pete,” as Pete is invariably alone, a rolling stone with no connection home; Pete has no friends or neighbors, while his “family life” is confined to less than one verse of the song and only four pages of the picture book. What an unbearably sad existence. Bruce Springsteen has long been drawn to America’s mythic western heritage, and his entire oeuvre consists of songs focusing on people (typically “kids”) struggling to make their way only to be trapped by rules and limits imposed by others. Often fun-loving, his characters exist at the mercy of powers beyond their control, counting themselves lucky to catch an occasional break. Regarding “Outlaw Pete,” Springsteen says, “It’s not easy and I’m not sure this is a children’s book, though I believe children instinctively understand passion and tragedy. And, a six-month-old, bank-robbing baby is a pretty good protagonist.”33 Children truly are innocent, seeing and acting out freely the world in which they live. In this vein, “Outlaw Pete” is Springsteen’s dire warning, a tale of a boy “gunfighter” personifying the violence haunting American culture that gives no thought to consequences. Indeed, violence (particularly by guns) is peddled so freely in popular culture that we scarcely notice it. That is, until we see young (white) men like Dylann Roof or Kyle Rittenhouse, “kids” abandoned to this violence who act it out in real life. Like Pete, they aspire to glory, and end up achieving notoriety. By turns lauded and condemned by their peers and elders, they show us who we really are. Artists always create stories that draw us in, heart and soul, to connect to one another and the world—an increasingly rare experience as our nation seems in the process of being sucked into a maelstrom of violence fueled by fear and denial. Since prehistoric times myth has been tied to creation, so our modern forms of creation are more valuable than ever to keep myth alive and “bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world.”34 As Outlaw Pete rides off to join other legendary gunfighters, we recognize that we are Pete— caught between our desire for freedom and need for community, wrestling with demons who urge us to strike out for fame and glory by whatever means necessary instead of joining with others to build a good life for all people. This brings us back to our suggestion about “Outlaw Pete” being a parable rather than a myth. Parable, from the Greek parabolē (lit. “throwing alongside”), refers to a simple story that uses metaphorical language to convey a truth for reader/hearers to apply to their own lives. Parable undercuts the comforting “truths” of myth, revealing them as inadequate to our situation and asking us to live differently. “Outlaw Pete” as a parable calls

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for a response. What might that response be? Barry Spector addresses the contemporary crisis of American society (the same crisis dramatized in “Outlaw Pete”) and offers us a way to deal with it, saying, “I invite you to plunge on with a characteristically American, foolish optimism tempered by an unveiled knowledge of the hideous darkness in our national soul.”35 Spector goes on to explain that we must “re-imagine the story that we have told about ourselves . . . we must re-learn to facilitate renewal.”36 Although it is impossible to determine how this process will turn out, we know that it will require reinterpreting our myths, rejecting what is harmful or channeling such elements constructively to build what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. calls “Our Beloved Community.” So, let’s reimagine Pete’s story. Let’s have Pete call upon both his wife and daughter by name in their homestead on the res and unburden himself to them. In a painful, even dramatic scene, Pete’s family joins him in the lengthy process of mourning, drawing on rituals of confession, cleansing, and reconciliation. Over time, with repeated practice, they together reach acceptance (if not forgiveness). Maybe when Dan comes calling, all three face him and when he draws his pistol and snarls, “Let it start!” they will reply “No, let it end here and now!” as Pete disarms Dan but does not harm him. Perhaps they even invite Dan to stay for a meal (or longer). Alternatively, they send him on his way with the message of a community with a different way of living, one that remembers its past while looking toward a future for anyone who wishes to join. Is such a story foolish? Of course, but all hero tales are foolish, as they are about daring to do the impossible. In the end, that is what America seems unable to achieve but is nonetheless called to do. As an audience we must respond to Pete and his story—OUR story—by speaking back to him in our shared pain and on behalf of all those whom he abandoned or harmed: “Outlaw Pete, Outlaw Pete, we can hear you!” Let’s hope that wherever he is, Pete can hear us, too. NOTES 1. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 5. 2. Bronislaw Malinowski, “The Role of Myth in Life,” in Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 98. 3. David Adam Leeming, The World of Myth: An Anthology. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2019), 5. 4. Thomas Bailey, “The Mythmakers of American History,” Journal of American History 55, no. 1 (June 1968): 18.

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5. See, for example, Heike Paul, The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript-Verlag, 2014). 6. For the sake of brevity, we confine our discussion to the picture book. As of this writing, however, there are half-a-dozen videos of the song on YouTube. 7. Technically we see Pete’s eyes twice—on the book’s title page (a “Wanted Poster” of Pete in oversized hat with only his right eye peeking out), and again just before his showdown with Dan, where his eyes are mean slits. 8. The two pictures of Pete with his family (one of them huddled in a teepee while it snows, the other showing them wrapped in a Native American blanket on a cliff illuminated by a full moon) are back-to-back on the same page, marking an all-too-short moment of peace in the midst of life of relentless motion. 9. Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (New York: Canongate, 2005). 10. Robert A. Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 93–94. 11. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016). 12. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968). 13. Leeming, The World of Myth, 207. 14. Vogler runs workshops as a “writer’s consultant,” and his bestselling book based on Campbell’s work was recently released as a special “25th anniversary edition.” See Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 25th anniversary edition (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2020). 15. Apotheosis (lit. “from/to god”) marks the hero’s ascent to immortality, often taking place on a mountain, a common symbol of the axis mundi (“world axis”) connecting our world to the Heavenly Realm. 16. Bruce Springsteen, “Afterword,” in Bruce Springsteen and Frank Caruso, Outlaw Pete (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). 17. Jim Cullen, “‘Outlaw Pete’: Springsteen Makes a Western,” American History Now—Classroom Conversation and Cultural Commentary, February 4, 2009, amhistnow.blogspot.com/2009/02/among-many-virtues-in-bruce.html. 18. Andy Greene. “Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Outlaw Pete’ Reborn as Children’s Book.” Rolling Stone, 28 August 2014, www​.rollingstone​.com​/music​/music​-news​/bruce​ -springsteens​-outlaw​-pete​-reborn​-as​-a​-childrens​-book​-89283​/ 19. The perfect example is “Enthroned Washington” a statue commissioned by Congress in honor of the centennial of Washington’s birth and which, in historian James Loewen’s words, “exemplifies the manner in which textbooks would portray every American hero: ten feet tall, blemish-free, with the body of a Greek god.” See James E. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2007), 25. 20. Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning, 2nd ed. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018). 21. Richard K. Barksdale, “Alienation and the Anti-Hero in Recent American Fiction,” CLA Journal, 10 (September 1966): 1–10. 22. Barry Spector, Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence (Berkeley, CA: Regent Press, 2010), 274–75.

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23. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 12; Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968). 24. Ibid., 383. 25. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 5. 26. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 13. 27. Ira M. Leonard, “Violence Is the American Way,” AlterNet, April 22, 2003, www​.alternet​.org​/2003​/04​/violence​_is​_the​_american​_way​/. 28. According to a 2018 report, America has more civilian-owned guns (120.5 per 100 people) than any other country. Thomas Black, “Americans Have More Guns Than Anywhere Else in the World and They Keep Buying More,” Bloomberg News, May 25, 2022, www​.bloomberg​.com​/news​/articles​/2022​-05​-25​/how​-many​-guns​-in​ -the​-us​-buying​-spree​-bolsters​-lead​-as​-most​-armed​-country​#xj4y7vzkg. 29. The only times Pete does NOT carry a gun is when he is a baby and in scenes with his wife and daughter. 30. Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 504–5. 31. Nora King, “Bruce Springsteen on ‘Outlaw Pete’ and Not Sheltering Kids from the Realities of Life,” The Washington Post, November 3, 2014, www​.washingtonpost​ .com​/lifestyle​/style​/bruce​-springsteen​-on​-outlaw​-pete​-and​-not​-sheltering​-kids​-from​ -the​-realities​-of​-life​/2014​/11​/03​/877967a0​-6394​-11e4​-836c83bc4f26eb67​_story​ .html. 32. John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story (Farmington, MN: Poleridge Press,1988), 39. 33. Springsteen, “Afterword,” in Outlaw Pete. 34. Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 149. 35. Spector, Madness at the Gates of the City, 392. 36. Ibid., 395.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. New York: Canongate, 2005. Bailey, Thomas. “The Mythmakers of American History,” Journal of American History 55, no. 1 (June 1968): 5–21. Barksdale, Richard K. “Alienation and the Anti-Hero in Recent American Fiction,” CLA Journal, 10 (September 1966): 1–10. Black, Thomas. “Americans Have More Guns Than Anywhere Else in the World and They Keep Buying More,” Bloomberg News, May 25, 2022. www​.bloomberg​.com​/ news​/articles​/2022​-05​-25​/how​-many​-guns​-in​-the​-us​-buying​-spree​-bolsters​-lead​-as​ -most​-armed​-country​#xj4y7vzkg. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Crossan, John Dominic, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story. Farmington, MN: Poleridge Press, 1988.

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Cullen, Jim. “‘Outlaw Pete’: Springsteen Makes a Western,” American History Now—Classroom Conversation and Cultural Commentary, February 4, 2009. amh istnow.blogspot.com/2009/02/among-many-virtues-in-bruce.html Greene, Andy. “Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Outlaw Pete’ Reborn as Children’s Book.” Rolling Stone, 28 August 2014. www​.rollingstone​.com​/music​/music​-news​/bruce​ -springsteens​-outlaw​-pete​-reborn​-as​-a​-childrens​-book​-89283​/. Hughes, Richard T. Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning. University of Illinois Press, 2018. King, Nora. “Bruce Springsteen on ‘Outlaw Pete’ and Not Sheltering Kids from the Realities of Life.” The Washington Post, 3 November 2014. www​.washingtonpost​.com​/lifestyle​/style​/bruce​-springsteen​-on​-outlaw​-pete​-and​-not​-sheltering​-kids​ -from​-the​-realities​-of​-life​/2014​/11​/03​/877967a0​-6394​-11e4​-836c​-83bc4f26eb67​ _story​.html. Leeming, David Adam. The World of Myth: An Anthology. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Leonard, Ira. “Violence Is the American Way,” AlterNet, April 22, 2003. www​.alternet​.org​/2003​/04​/violence​_is​_the​_american​_way​/. Loewen, James E. Lies My Teacher Told Me. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2007. Malinowski, Bronislaw. “The Role of Myth in Life.” In Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays, 29–37. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Paul, Heike. The Myths That Made America. Bielefeld, GR: Transcript-Verlag, 2014. Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions). New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America New York: HarperCollins, 1992. ________. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973. Spector, Barry. Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence. Berkeley, CA: Regent Press, 2010. Springsteen, Bruce. Born to Run. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. ________. “Outlaw Pete.” Spotify. open.spotify.com/track/2XgXCt48WUKclfuHCfb Q3h?si=a32d4a1f6c6540d5. ________, and Frank Caruso. Outlaw Pete. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 25th anniversary ed. (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2020).

Chapter Six

“I Can’t Go Back” The Reimagination of Space in Feminist Westerns Karen Adkins

The development of the western in American popular culture was from its inception an act of nostalgia. Frederick Turner’s observation in 1893 that the American frontier had closed was a literal claim about the closure of space that functioned to valorize manifest destiny, thus ignoring the reality of diverse and preexisting communities fighting for recognition and against oppression on western soil.1 But twentieth-century western novels and movies generally fantasize about a pre-Turner West: particularly in movies, space signifies isolation, the power of the autonomous individual, and untamed nature. The frontier represents freedom: to move, to think, and to develop one’s own distinct character against an encroaching and corrupt city.2 Feminist western movies explicitly undermine this identification by revealing it as a privilege reserved for white men, and in so doing, they undermine the whole problematic set of nostalgic western oppositions. In other words, feminist westerns demonstrate that freedom comes not in a mythical underpopulated out there of moving into unoccupied frontier, but rather in the in here of the assertion of embodied autonomy, wherever one is. True freedom, in feminist westerns, comes from self-mastery and self-control against oppressive norms of sexism, but a more nuanced and layered self-mastery, that doesn’t hide its interdependence on others, or the fragility and contingency of its attainment. The template for this reimagination starts with two late-twentieth-century movies, Thelma and Louise (1991) and The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), which both make similar cinematic moves in how they depict space, individuality, and community.3 Using Jane Tompkins’s analysis 105

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of the codes of westerns as a framework, we can see the ways that the movies simultaneously quote and complicate or parody these tropes. The films demonstrate that the West’s “openness” is artificial and achieved in part by those who were subjugated; they viscerally illustrate the vulnerability of those who try to make space for themselves in the ostensive space of rugged individualism. Both films successfully parody tropes of masculinity and femininity in particular, and their narrative arcs undermine the fetishization of the individual in the western, as well as the value of violence as a resolution. Their emphasis is less on the possibilities for individual expression in space, and the ways in which gendered and raced bodies get entangled and constrained no matter what space they occupy; bodies move according to the relationships and structures that confine them. This feminist reappropriation of space is reworked and extended in twenty-first-century pop culture texts that aren’t overtly “western” in construction. The book Dietland (2016) and the television show Good Girls (2018–2021) demonstrate the enduring challenge of independent assertion of self against oppressive norms.4 Dietland and Good Girls explicitly quote Thelma and Louise, but are set in dense city spaces; the escape characters seek is internal, from the endless judgment and limitations of gendered and gendering eyes. Most tellingly, neither text features dramatic shifts in location. Both concentrate on shifts in identity; it is this which follows the key insight of feminist westerns. Good Girls’s repeated allusions to the prominence of money as a constraint of freedom provides the ultimate rebuke to the classic western fantasy of freedom. The uncertain possibility of individual transformation in an unknown and hostile world is the enduring philosophical contribution of the western, and it is this possibility that feminist pop culture texts have made their own, whether or not cowboy hat–wearing characters ride horses.5 TROPES OF WESTERNS FOR SPACE For this discussion, I will utilize Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything to illustrate tropes in westerns that feature space and masculinity as mutually reinforcing features. Tompkins argues that westerns’ plots are propelled by scenes set either outside or in public places; physical conflict propels the story; homoerotic male bonding features prominently; masculine power is equated with silence; and the natural landscape dominates not just the aesthetics of the western but its metaphysics: “the landscape “dwarf[s] the human figure with its majesty, the only divinity worshipped in this genre other than manhood itself.”6

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Her key insight is the sexual opposition built into this genre; she observes that westerns, which first emerged as novels, depict in their codes a point-by-point opposition to the domestic novels that are their immediate predecessor. In other words, the western as a literary and pop cultural artifact emerges as a carving out of masculine space.7 For instance, Tompkins observes that the valorized silence of western men is “in revolt against a Victorian culture where the ability to manipulate language confers power.”8 Silence’s gendering as masculine in the western is explicitly a criticism of garrulous women (indeed, women in westerns are often portrayed as pointlessly talkative). The open and empty natural landscape of a western is the ultimate silencing of culture; “[n]ot fissured by self-consciousness, nature is what the hero aspires to emulate: perfect being-in-itself.”9 In landscape terms, the role of the town in westerns often occupies a feminizing category; it is where people congregate, where they submit to social and political order, where people restrict their impulses.10 The asceticism of the cowboy in nature is tidily opposed to the self-restricted citizen of a western town in this myth.11 Thus, whether the space is presented visually or aurally, the effect is the same; heroic, ascetic males conquer it through isolated struggle, against a cluttered, noisy, background of feminized and dependent cities. And yet, there is an implicit paradox in this gendered representation of nature. For nature does not merely sit as a silent immensity in the western; it exists to be manipulated and dominated by its male characters. The purpose of the western hero in nature is not simply to survive or to endure, but to control. As Tompkins says, “the western both glorifies nature and suppresses it simultaneously.”12 The western hero achieves independence with and through nature, by changing it or making it feminized. He tames or domesticates nature. While the western hero may periodically engage with or assist others, it is generally from a position of mentoring or dominance, and as an ascetic hero. Think of the concluding images of both John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) or George Stevens’s Shane (1953), in which heroic leads restore peace to communities and then return to a life of isolation. Social interaction is a minor key in westerns that reminds us of a need for pure but sacrificial isolation. This ascetic life is the price of western independence; western heroes crave a life on their terms, rather than a town’s; this life must be lonely. Recent scholarship has established that these tropes are based on a highly nostalgic and cherry-picked reading of the past. Patricia Limerick iterates the ways in which women’s experience in the West was more complex than that of the dependent frail females of westerns.13 Most crucially, with respect to the role of space and nature, Limerick thoroughly debunks the nostalgic imagery of a kind of raw ascetic independence achieved through pure masculine isolating dominance, noting instead how central government subsidies were to western lives, and the ways in which western landscapes were already

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occupied, and their inhabitants ejected from their land and culture in the name of independence.14 Classic westerns often obscure this more complicated and violent reality. Even considered simply as fictional constructions, the logic of these western tropes struggles for internal consistency, Tompkins notes. “Logic would suggest that in his flight from women and children, family life, triviality, and tameness, the western hero would run straight into the arms of the Indian, wild blood brother of his soul, but it doesn’t happen. Indians are repressed in westerns—there but not there—in the same way women are.”15 The ostensive idealization of living among nature should result in a companionship with indigenous people, as opposed to their erasure or vilification. With respect to gender, Tompkins argues that the very rigidity of the western narrative, while certainly objectifying women and native Americans, also functions perversely to objectify its male characters into a parody of masculinity: western movies “force men into parts that are excruciating to perform, parts that, given the choice, they probably would not have wanted to play.”16 This mastery or asceticism, in other words, comes at a cost; male heroes suffer, are forced into an unwelcome isolation, or to make impossible choices, by submitting to the paradoxical logic of the western.17 FEMINIST REIMAGINATION OF SPATIAL TROPES IN WESTERNS On the surface, both Thelma and Louise and The Ballad of Little Jo seem to fit conventional western narratives. Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer flee their confined and contemporary city lives for an outlaw ride through the West; society woman Josephine Monaghan escapes the Victorian East Coast for an independent life as a cowboy.18 Visually, both movies toggle from initial scenes of constraint and confinement to wide open western vistas that seem to follow the genre. And yet, both announce their feminist perspectives in multiple ways. Primarily, both films’ plots are driven by their characters’ sexual vulnerability; women assert themselves and claim autonomy in response to rape or attempted rape (both movies), or social ostracism from unmarried pregnancy (The Ballad of Little Jo).19 But the common theme is clear; whether we are in the nineteenth or twentieth century, women’s bodies can be claimed, assaulted, and valued according to men’s preferences, and traditional feminine roles allow for no autonomy. So in both films, our women strike out for less populated spaces as a means of escape from their gendered fates. In particular, women’s inability simply to be in space is relentlessly and efficiently emphasized in both films; both films regularly feature sustained

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shots of hostile male gazes. Little Jo opens with an image of gendered obscurity; the camera looks down on Jo Monaghan’s lacy, inefficient parasol, not her, as she goes West. Her isolation and alienation are established; she walks alone, clumsily carrying a large suitcase, as men on horses fly past, kicking up dust. The first dialogue in the movie is dehumanizing harassment from a passing man (“pretty little filly . . . traveling all alone”). Jo is routinely scrutinized by men in Ruby City, even well after she has been accepted as just another man. Thelma and Louise not only features sustained male gazes (Louise snapping, “What are you looking at?” to a man staring at her puts the viewer in the position of the voyeur), but also emphasizes the ways in which women prepare for the male gaze. Among several shots of the women grooming themselves, one stands out—Louise in a bar bathroom, the camera tightly focused on a scrum of women jostling for mirror space as they frantically primp.20 The films emphasize the ways, large and small, that women cannot move freely in the world without scrutiny and judgment. Both films appear to follow western conventions by having the women transform as the action shifts from the East to the West; Tompkins’s framing of the opposition of the domestic sphere to the open West tracks. And yet, the transformations in these feminist movies are more characterological than spatial; heroines transform how they move and present themselves. In Ballad of Little Jo, this is done through cross-dressing and mutilation; Jo protects herself by dressing as a man and scarring her face with a razor. Tania Modleski observes that, while cross-dressed women can be found in other western artifacts, it’s used distinctively in Greenwald’s movie, most crucially because the cross-dressing is not simply a temporary deviation from an ultimate restoration of traditional femininity.21 Thelma and Louise are physically transformed, if less permanently: both abandon their conventional trappings of femininity (makeup, jewelry, sparkly clothes) for simpler and less feminized clothes. In particular, both women rework men’s clothes for themselves; JD’s denim shirt gets torn into straps the women tie around their necks, Louise trades her jewelry for a battered cowboy hat, and Thelma steals a trucker cap from a deeply misogynistic passerby. The effect for Callie Khouri, the screenwriter, is deliberate; she wanted “to see them become more and more natural but more and more beautiful as the movie goes on.”22 How the women move in space shifts; Thelma has traditional feminine mannerisms in the opening scenes of the movie (smiling, winking, speaking tentatively) that gradually fall away throughout the movie (she adopts a more confident swagger, the tone of her voice lowers). Bodies move within grand landscapes in western movies. As John Ford has famously said, “the real star of my westerns has always been the land.”23 Privileging open and wild space generally comes at the expense of towns or

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Eastern cities, and both movies structure scenes to avoid this easy opposition. Initially, Thelma and Louise appears to reproduce the contrast; the opening scenes of the movie all feature crowded interior shots that are cluttered in ways that mirror the characters’ disorderly lives. This is no accident; the film’s set designer notes that the house is deliberately chaotic and constraining to illustrate the chaos of Thelma’s life, and placed a kitschy Lucite lamp whose base was a fishbowl prominently in several scenes, to illustrate the ways in which Thelma was trapped and confined by her gendered domesticity.24 And yet, the West Thelma and Louise escape to is not simple; Old West and New West are constantly if not absurdly juxtaposed (one scene’s backdrop features a horse and rider at a dusty gas station, Louise avoids the police by driving through a dusty prairie filled with natural gas derricks). This set design is both deliberate, and contains the overlay of surveillance; the set designers used these modern implements “to project the feeling that no matter how remote the territory, the outside world was encroaching, even watching, as the heroines tried to disappear.”25 Crucially, the modern West is no friendlier to women than the old West; Texas haunts the movie as not just western but dangerous. Louise refuses to talk about her past in Texas, though it’s clearly implied she was raped there, simply saying that, “you shoot up a guy’s head with his pants down, believe me, Texas is not the place where you want to get caught.” Wildness is always already gendered in Thelma and Louise, and the women’s attempt to escape gendering leaves them on an aporia, a pathless path.26 Similarly, Greenwald explicitly rejects this sort of tidy opposition of nature to town, even though her film contains beautiful shots of wilderness. When asked why she didn’t shoot in Cinemascope so as to maximize the beauty of the landscape, she replied that to do so would have been “out of proportion with the story. . . . It would destroy the intimacy.”27 The easy opposition of town to nature as representing limits versus freedom is unsettled in both movies. For women, moving West does not represent automatic liberation from a crowded and constraining city. Even though they shift how they move and act, the landscape doesn’t provide freedom. Tompkins argues that the freedom westerns offer is individual and ascetic in nature; relations that exist are asymmetric (mentoring, or simple dependence), and heroes often withdraw from communities periodically or permanently to indicate their differentness. The possibility of shared mutual interdependence is fundamentally absent from westerns; cowboys’ closest relationships often seem to be with their animals. While there are clearly elements of this asymmetry and asceticism in both pictures, both films simultaneously demonstrate the ways in which humans are always already entangled in complicated intimacy even as they assert independence. Little Jo’s initial foray into economic self-sufficiency comes through the job of shepherding, the isolation of which her new boss Frank Badger warns her about: “No one

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but you, a dog and sheep for four months . . . do you have any idea what that kind of aloneness will do to a man?” This sustained isolation, that viewers have just seen totally undo another cowboy, comes as a relief for Little Jo; she has been so buffeted by men’s aims and intentions for her that she welcomes the ascetic challenges of spending the winter caring for a flock. The film offers a brief sequence demonstrating Jo’s being challenged by the elements of her job, and mastering them. This sequence emphasizes both the humor and the pathos of Jo’s plight; she gradually and comically gains skills at protecting her flock, and is emotionally undone not by the isolation (we see her contentedly working in her shelter at night), but by her initial failure to protect the animals (the camera pauses on a weeping Jo clutching a sheep that has been killed by a wolf). But her isolation is neither permanent nor total. While she continually keeps her distance with Frank Badger, she develops reciprocal relationships with an immigrant homesteading family, and with Tinman, a Chinese immigrant she saves from being lynched and takes on as a household servant. Her relationship with Tinman, which turns into intimacy, changes the tone of the second half of the movie. Conventional male-female western relations follow the Victorian separate-spheres model (with nature substituting in for the public realm for men). Little Jo and Tinman reverse this polarity, and most crucially, seem to recognize and appreciate each other’s contributions; one extended scene shows Tinman smiling as Jo returns from a successful hunt, and then a beaming Jo appreciating Tinman’s freshly baked pie.28 By contrast, long-married Frank and Ruth Badger have a more conventional relationship, and the periodic comparisons of these relationships serves to remind us of just how unconventional Jo Monaghan’s life is. While the film appreciatively shows Ruth Badger’s competence at frontier medicine, it also is unacknowledged and unseen by the men. Ruth shoos Frank and Jo out of the cabin as she works to tend a desperately sick Tinman, and Frank shows no recognition or appreciation of his wife’s clearly substantial skills. While the plot of Thelma and Louise is driven by escape from domesticity (both women hope a weekend getaway will prompt their neglectful partners to appreciate them more), the primary intimate relationship in the movie is between Thelma and Louise. Thelma and Louise’s relationship undergoes repeated shifts in dominance, but the entire film is premised upon their intimacy and mutual trust. They each know the other’s worries and insecurities, argue and cry together, and generally display more authentic intimacy and interdependence with each other than they do with either of their romantic partners. The closing scene of the movie, with the women kissing affectionately and then driving off a cliff with their hands firmly clasped, highlights this intimacy. Conventional westerns often portray towns in confining tones that mirror their resistance of the constraints of family. Towns in westerns stand in opposition to the wildness of the West and its heroes. westerns are often apolitical

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spaces, at least technically; the struggles are violent and existential. Just as feminist westerns are comfortable with intimate constraints, they accept and demonstrate that the town-nature relationship is not oppositional. Ruby City, the setting for most of the action in Little Jo, is presented as integral and symbiotic with western wildness. We see Ruby City grow from a grubby mining camp to a fully developed town by the end of the movie, with brick buildings, resources (dentist, undertaker, laundry). Crucially, we see the town gain in diversity; Ruby City in its first instantiation is a miner’s camp filled almost exclusively with men; by the close of the movie there are women and children moving throughout the town, and immigrants from Eastern Europe, China, and the Jim Crow south. But the town doesn’t just develop physically; importantly, Greenwald has the characters talk about the town as a site of political value. While the Eastern speculators are seen as a threat to their western way of life in a way that perfectly conforms to western norms, Frank Badger’s response is not. He regularly canvasses for Jo (and presumably others) to vote in upcoming elections in the same conversation where they discuss the threat of the speculators, arguing that they can elect a mayor and make it a real town. In other words, Frank sees the response to developers as a collective, strategic, and political response, which is entirely opposite the conventional western approach. Even in all his socially clumsy buffoonery, Frank Badger recognizes and actively solicits political interdependence; it is not merely a virtue for the physically weak or excluded. Successful politics minimizes the need for violence, which traditionally plays a cathartic role in western plots. Conflicts develop, shootouts occur, bad guys are killed, good guys may be martyred, but the violence ultimately serves to restore order that has been dislodged by the plot. In both these films, violence is much more ambiguously treated. Thelma and Louise’s conclusion presents the uninhabitability of the modern western for women. They are given an impossible choice after becoming outlaws: to submit themselves to inaccurate and sexist male judgment, or death by the police. The women choose death as the least terrible choice, but death on their terms. The conclusion has set us up for a more conventional ending that recalls Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)—upon realizing that the heavily armed officers have cornered them on the edge of a canyon, Louise loads her pistol, announcing, “I’m not giving up.” The actual freeze-framed conclusion, in which the car is frozen in air driving into a canyon, formally recalls Butch Cassidy (Butch and Sundance frozen with their gun as they run toward a shootout). But it both quotes a conventional western and upends it; the women don’t feel compelled to up a body count to prove themselves.29 In this, they resemble the horses in Frank Dobie’s The Mustangs (1934), which tells the improbable story of a wild horse (Scarface) that escapes capture while releasing horses from ranches. He is finally, after a days-long chase, pursued to a dead end in

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a canyon, into which Scarface leaps to his death. Dobie’s portrayal of the leap features a kind of frozen-in-time depiction, that Dobie describes as “ultimate defiance” fittingly parallels this final scene.30 Thelma and Louise directly extends this ultimate defiance to women who want autonomy from men. The defiance and suffering in Thelma and Louise is tragic, not glorious, which importantly departs from western codes. As Tompkins describes it, violence is the courageous price heroes pay for their heroism; the suffering of the hero is valorized. By contrast, the feminist code problematizes suffering, in part by regularly showing us suffering from exploitation and oppression. While the camera doesn’t linger on Thelma’s bruises from her rape, it makes a point of showing them multiple times in the film. Similarly, Jo’s relationship with Tinman is premised upon his suffering at the hands of white men. She initially encounters him as a group of men are attempting to lynch him for racist reasons; as an Asian man, they worry he is going to steal their jobs. Frank Badger successfully manipulates her into hiring him as a houseman as the only way to keep them from killing Tinman. Both Louise and Jo use parallel language in challenging male violence. Frank minimizes the attempted lynching, and Harlan the attempted rape, as just “fun”; Thelma and Jo acidly say that this is not their idea of what counts as fun. In a similar transition as in Thelma and Louise, Tinman’s scars are part of a love scene, as he cites his abuse at the hands of his railroad bosses. In other words, both movies make a point of reminding us that suffering is not something to valorize, but also that suffering does not have to be something that is erased, ignored, or sublimated. While characters’ sufferings are clearly lodged in systems of oppression (the exploitation of immigrant labor in the nineteenth century, misogynistic sexual violence in the twentieth), none of the main characters (Thelma, Louise, Jo, Tinman) define themselves primarily in terms of their suffering and exploitation. They seek identities apart from this oppression. By contrast, male characters in both movies are often parodically and foolishly masculine—they define themselves by their ostensive dominance over women and each other, and compete in often pointless and ridiculous fashions. When Hal and the FBI agents go to Darryl’s house, they engage in a foolishly zealous race to get to the door first, with the otherwise sympathetically played Hal pushing Max aside to get there first. Middle-aged Darryl still has his high school sports trophies prominently displayed in the living room. Jo faces a “dude test” in her first appearance in Ruby City; Frank Badger draws guns to have her remove her boots so they can make sure she is wearing appropriately western socks. The viewer feels the second layer of menace here, but this is one of many instances of quick threatened violence to serve no meaningful purpose. Jimmy resorts to violence as a response to feminist independence; he responds to Louise’s refusal to tell him where and why she and Louise are running by knocking over furniture in the hotel room. None of

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the white male characters in these movies demonstrate any significant awareness of their pointless participation in macho violence. When the women resort to violence for essential purposes, both movies pause to show the effect of it. At the climax of Little Jo, Jo and Frank Badger’s ride to vote is interrupted by three armed and masked thugs from the Eastern developers. Jo has seen them murder homesteaders, so it’s clear they intend to murder Jo and Frank to claim their property. Jo shoots them (one in the back), and the camera immediately cuts to a close-up of Jo’s crying face. No western stoicism for her. Louise’s murder of Harlan after his rape of Thelma, which is the catalyst for their flight, comes with extended internal repercussions; the camera shows us Louise’s shaking hand after she fires the gun, and she vomits shortly after the rape. Finally, both movies are refreshing for the way in which they present women choosing life on their own terms, even within structures of oppression. Jo’s final significant plot decision comes when she is tempted to sell her homestead to a developer and move back East. She changes her mind at the last minute for reasons that indicate both what she is turning away from and turning toward. The camera follows Jo’s gaze through a warped window toward the developer’s wife, dressed in confining crinolines, and sitting miserably in a wagon outside, insisting that her son not dirty himself with the world. The preening developer’s flattery of Jo that “educated men” such as them can never truly be comfortable in this “wild country” clearly unnerves her. Then Tinman, who has been desperately ill, gets out of bed and smiles at her from a doorway, which reminds her that she still has something and someone to live for and with in the West. As Modleski phrases it, what was initially a choice of desperation has become an affirmative choice; “Jo has grown to love her way of life.”31 Thelma’s much-quoted observation (which forms the title of this chapter) that she “can’t go back,” while less affirmatively phrased, similarly represents a kind of affirmation of new identity. She has become a different person through this coerced chase, and rejects the old life as intolerable. Jo’s choice is distinctively feminist, as it does not require an ascetic rejection of intimacy or domesticity. She inhabits the space of the West until her pacific death from old age (a very different resolution to a conventional western). This western tells us that freedom comes from how we inhabit the space given to us, not simply that we choose openness for its individualistic promises. CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST “WESTERNS” At first blush, Sarai Walker’s novel Dietland (2016) and Jenna Bans’s television series Good Girls (2018–2021) would seem completely incompatible

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with a discussion of westerns. Both are set in densely populated cities east of the Mississippi (Brooklyn and Detroit, respectively), horses and livestock are utterly absent from the stories, and nary a cowboy hat is to be seen. And yet, both works explicitly quote Thelma and Louise and, more substantively, make use of the tropes of reimagined space, bodies, and intimacy as we see it in feminist westerns. Dietland’s heroine Plum learns to reject the ways in which the world sees her only as an obese body, through a mysterious woman (Verena Baptist) who renounced her mother’s Weight Watchers–style empire. The women of Good Girls (Annie, Beth, Ruby) resort to crime out of financial desperation, and discover they have a taste for it. Images and references to spatiality dominate Dietland, but they are entirely about mobility and surveillance, as opposed to external constraint and openness. Alicia “Plum” Kettle, the novel’s heroine, sees herself entirely through the eyes of others, and pre-constricts her actions based upon their judgment. Plum’s obesity, and gendered judgment of her, constrains her for half of the novel. The theme of containment is announced early; Plum describes her life pre-transformation as “contained within a box,” and herself as a figure in a diorama, images of artifice, simulation, and stillness.32 The eyes of others are omnipresent and hostile in this novel, and control Plum’s daily routine; she describes taking a detour to get to a meeting so as to avoid hostile and judgmental eyes from loitering teenaged boys.33 Similarly, Annie’s manager Boomer casually ogles her at work, clearly indifferent to the fact that he is at a grocery store and surrounded by coworkers.34 Tellingly, the surveillance in Dietland is often from fellow women; women observe each other closely to impersonate a more palatable version of themselves. Just as Little Jo initially impersonates a man, only to transform into a fuller version of herself, themes of impersonation and authenticity drive Dietland.35 Plum impersonates editor Kitty; she fantasizes about a “real” Plum post-weight-loss surgery, and most crucially, the world of feminine culture is relentlessly mocked as one of impersonation or drag. One character describes makeup as “drag,” and notes that she herself impersonates a conventional woman so that she can gain intelligence on the teen media corporation.36 Plum’s plan of personal transformation, which hinges on bodily transformation (she will get weight-loss surgery), predicates her future self on the absence of hostile observation and taking up less space; “I would get smaller so I wouldn’t be seen,” she decides.37 And yet, even ideal women’s bodies are objectified in this novel; Plum walks down a hall plastered in magazine covers with glamorous models, and compares the women to prey. They have “glazed-over looks, like the heads hanging on a hunter’s wall,” she observes.38 The future self she aspires so strongly to become, even from the beginning, seems more like a more attractive form of caging than true liberation. Plum’s mentor Verena Baptist efficiently points this out to her,

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arguing that “Dietland is about making women small.”39 Even the name of the book, which is what Verena Baptist called her book-length debunking of her mother’s weight-loss scheme, recalls theme parks: Dietland is a place you visit periodically to immerse yourself in fantasy. It is not real life. The transformation Plum seeks in Dietland is ostensively external, but even so it is clear she seeks to be a different person internally. Plum methodically accumulates a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes for “Alice,” who she will be post-surgery, as opposed to her “uniform” of plain, dark clothes. Her encounter with a feminist collective prods her to see herself and the world differently, and this difference is experienced bodily for her. Plum tapers off the psychotropic medication she has been taking since she first became obese in her adolescence, and she experiences physical pulses of electricity and increased sensation. Her body, it appears, is literally waking up after a kind of medically imposed dormancy. As this happens, her relationship to space changes; the café in which she works seems suddenly small and constricting, and her apartment seems small to her.40 She has not shifted spaces as in a western; she has shifted her orientation with respect to space. As we saw in the feminist westerns, autonomy is the goal of the feminist reappropriation of space, and Plum gets a taste of this after she moves to the feminist collective Calliope House. When she shops for clothes after being steeped in the feminist atmosphere, she is struck by the effect of the clothes she chooses (clothes she never would have chosen before); “[i]t made me feel that my body had borders. . . . I didn’t mind taking up space,” she observes.41 An effect of integrity is a sense of autonomy, self-sufficiency. Plum describes herself as “made over” after Verena’s feminist New Baptist Plan, but it is clear that the makeover is internal, not external—what is transformed is how she inhabits space and thinks about herself, not how she physically presents herself or where she is.42 She is “a different kind of outlaw.”43 Good Girls’s Beth experiences this as well; as she tries to recruit women to what appears to be a secret shopping business, but is in fact a money-laundering scheme for the trio’s ill-gotten gains, she makes an appeal for their hopes for independence. She tells their recruits that “this isn’t about your husband or your kids. We are giving you an opportunity to make your own money. To do something for yourself. . . . Ever since I’ve been doing this my perspective has totally changed.”44 The force with which she says the last line reveals this as more than a mere (successful) sales pitch. Space isn’t automatically liberatory to the women of these artifacts any more than it is for Thelma, Louise, or Jo. To the extent that spatial metaphors dominate in Dietland, they are vertical, representing status and control. Teen magazine workers love their Manhattan office tower because they “get to look down on everyone,” just as the horse-riding and truck-driving men look down on Jo, Thelma, and Louise.45 But hidden in Dietland’s towers are underworlds

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of rebellion; the basement of this teen media empire, the Cosmetics Closet, is where a rebellious worker bases her spying operation. westerns are invoked here; Plum hears the heels of the approaching spy before she sees her, and compares the sound to horses in a film.46 “New York was full of these dark places,” Plum observes of the many undergrounds she has experienced.47 Good Girls neatly contrasts the infinitude of feminist ambitions with the reality of constrained domesticity; the series’ opening paean to women’s contemporary liberation is voiced over a panning shot of the sky, which immediately cuts to a shot of Beth’s chaotic kitchen, as she attempts to get four children and her husband out the door with their sack lunches.48 Of all the women in Good Girls, it is Beth the housewife who transforms the most; she regularly displays remarkable calm during police interactions or an ability to improvise that recalls Thelma’s admiring realization that she’s “just got a knack” for outlaw behavior.49 Both works complicate violence, but in ways that are modulated from what we see in Thelma and Louise and Ballad of Little Jo. Good Girls often presents violence in a safely comic context; Beth expresses her anger at her husband’s infidelity and financial irresponsibility by driving her minivan into a cardboard cutout of him; a terrified Ruby defends her house with a toy bat; the women use their kids’ plastic guns with the tips covered over as their “weapons” for their robbery.50 When Ruby does actually injure someone (shooting a money launderer in the foot), it is by accident.51 Implausibly, no one dies in ten episodes of criminality and gang involvement. Dietland juxtaposes two very different kinds of violence, showing us both the self-destructive violence of women who hate their bodies, as well as the anarchic and cathartic violence of feminist revenge. Self-destructive violence is omnipresent throughout the novel. Plum is contemplating surgery, after all, to change her body (which will forever limit how much and how she eats); her youthful experience with the weight-loss business is grimly recounted for all the harsh physical effects Plum experiences as a result of her undereating, and her diet of costly and tasteless “lite” foods. Plum’s day job consists of answering emails teenagers send to teen magazine editor Kitty. The teenagers overwhelmingly email Kitty about their deeply personal and private issues, often around bodily issues like rape, sexual trauma, or cutting. Plum reads and answers these emails in public (a café), with premade files of canned, if helpful, responses. The magazine does not need publicly to address systematic self-directed violence, merely privately acknowledge its existence. As Plum begins her feminist transformation, a diet drug emerges on the market that is effective but highly dangerous; its deadly side effects include blood vessels tightening to the point of choking women.52 In other words, women’s bodies are turned into weapons deployed against them, all in the name of weight loss. Plum dreams of her fantasy future self, and the dream is revealing; after

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the deadly drug restores her “factory settings,” she steadily and consistently loses weight until she disappears. Men find her more attractive as she gets smaller, to the point where they actually eat her.53 These periodic displays of self-destructive violence are juxtaposed in the text with a series of feminist vigilantism that is a more straightforward response to male sexual violence. The “Jennifer” series of murders (of rapists and porn producers) is a response to pervasive sexist oppression, and on its surface, echoes the feminist vigilantism of Thelma and Louise. The novel efficiently connects stark violence against women (the first murders are clearly done in vengeance of a rape and murder of a woman that was never prosecuted) to the ways in which a misogynistic culture trains our eyes not to register gender violence. The second series of Jennifer murders on their surface seem less well justified; family members of an editor who publishes topless photos of women in daily papers are kidnapped, and one is killed, to coerce the editor into ceasing the practice. And yet Walker reminds us of the connections between pervasive, lower-stakes misogyny and the higher-stakes violence against women we see. The women who pose for these topless photos seek fame; while a few of them achieve some measure of fame, some end up violently killed by boyfriends or stalkers. But “that could happen to any girl,” the text coldly reminds us.54 Dietland casually operates a thought experiment: what would it look like if sexism against men were as omnipresent as sexism toward women? The Jennifer murders succeed not just in eliminating topless photos of women in daily papers, but actually replacing them with comparable pictures of men. Walker reminds us of how casually violent sexual objectification is—“men’s body parts were scattered around the city”—as well as emphasizing its potentially liberatory ramifications; “the default Londoner, the implied viewer of everything, was no longer male.”55 For its part, Good Girls exaggerates traditional masculinity to the point of revealing inner weakness. The refrigerator in Beth and Dean’s home is decorated with gender-stereotyped children’s art; “Daddy’s #1” and “Daddy’s a winner!” announces two kid drawings, while a third simply says, ““I love mom.” Even one of the ostensibly threatening characters, a gang member left bleeding and unconscious in Beth’s home, is mocked as a mama’s boy; his phone history consists almost entirely of calls to his mother.56 None of this stops the men from having exaggerated impressions of their own masculinity; when manager Boomer reports the women’s activities to the FBI, he pathetically begs to do undercover work “like Donnie Brasco.”57 Dean’s passwords for all his accounts are “2Fast4U, like the movie,” prompting an eyeroll from Beth.58 The teenaged security guard for the grocery store the women repeatedly rob is portrayed as comically incompetent (running a single aisle before stopping for breath). but describes himself boastfully; “in my job, the key is

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to think of yourself as already dead.”59 After a second robbery, he happily lets Annie escape as long as she falsely praises his heroism to the police.60 Feminist westerns debunk traditional masculine tropes of independence by showing the existence and value of interdependence and intimacy; Dietland and Good Girls foreground these same relationships. Calliope House functions as a kind of feminist retreat within a hostile and sexist New York, and it is literally a site of women’s healing; shared intimacy and trust suffuses the house. The women of Good Girls, while all in various tangled romantic relationships, have a kind of primordial bond of friendship that recalls the strength of Thelma and Louise’s connection. While Thelma and Louise, The Ballad of Little Jo, and Dietland focus on sexist systems and structures that limit women’s ability to occupy space freely, Good Girls extends this feminist analysis in two crucial respects. While it is by far the least interesting of the feminist texts I have discussed here (it copies Thelma and Louise’s rape scene almost line for line; characters enact similar patterns of panicked preparation multiple times; characters tell you their inner conflicts instead of them being illustrated in the text), it explores two themes that deepen this feminist critique of independence versus interdependence. First, it emphasizes the ways in which gendered economic constraints limits women’s options and imaginations, and second, it focuses on the ways in which motherhood as a gendered activity complicates moves toward gendered autonomy. While financial pressures play a key role in the plots of both Thelma and Louise and Ballad of Little Jo, they are also treated unrealistically. Despite the reality of many homesteaders struggling and failing in the West, Maggie Greenfield’s Jo Monaghan manages to establish a thriving domestic haven for herself. And while certainly Thelma’s robbery heightens police attention on them, it is the rape that drives the plot, and most crucially, the robbery is played purely for comedy—there is never a hint of menace in this scene, merely the amusement of her quoting JD’s cocksure Southern swagger. For its part, Dietland is a total financial fantasy; Verena Baptist’s weight-loss wealth seems unending, and she has infinite resources to underwrite a Manhattan brownstone and to subsidize feminist resistance. Thus, the downwardly mobile lives of the women of Good Girls are a welcome burst of realism. It seems likely that none of the heroines attended or graduated college; the two who work for wages (Annie and Ruby) have menial, hourly-wage jobs. This work is portrayed far from glamorously; Annie is shown cleaning bathrooms and urinals, and Ruby is regularly shown with a food-stained uniform, and once, tells a memorable story of her penny-pinching boss forcing her to use her arm to stir a massive vat of sauce after a paddle breaks, to keep the sauce viable for serving.61 Beth’s status as middle-class housewife is precarious; her husband takes advantage of his breadwinner status to control all the finances

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(disastrously, as it turns out), and patronizingly gives his wife an allowance. When two of the three main characters experience serious health catastrophes in the family, their first responses are to ask about costs. Good Girls doesn’t let us forget that outlaw actions aren’t only done from anarchic impulses, but sometimes from desperate need. The women of Good Girls, particularly Beth (so domestic that she is described by her sister and fellow aspiring outlaw as a “Stepford mom without a pulse”), define themselves by their status as good mothers, while simultaneously straining against their roles.62 But their family obligations are harder to escape, which the series regularly reminds us. At its cleverest, the series shows the women taking advantage of their roles as mothers to commit crimes undetected. They set up a fake secret shopper scheme as a way of cleaning more counterfeit money without diminishing their principles, and a recruitment evening illustrates and pokes fun at women’s willingness to participate in dubiously profitable side hustles just for the sake of some independently earned pocket money.63 More perilously, when a third robbery results in the women’s being trapped in the store as the police arrive, Beth and Ruby pose as fellow terrified shoppers and aren’t given a second look as they escape the store.64 As the women mask up for their first robbery, they trade mom chat about their kids’ lives, they wear kitchen gloves as part of their outlaw attire, a crafting table does double duty as a cache for counterfeit money, and Beth nixes one proposed robbery site because the owner has agreed to be a sponsor for the school auction. While Good Girls deploys comedy to demonstrate the absurdly commingled roles mothers play in the world, the darker edges are evident. The women often plan their crimes out in the open, but are camouflaged by the dross of motherhood; they meet at playgrounds, in minivans, in shopping center parking lots. They are both immersed in the minutiae of motherhood, and simultaneously seek to escape its confinement. They are regularly diminished by men characters (called “girls” or “little ladies”) and underestimated. Annie’s misogynist manager, who attempted to rape her, belittles the women after they’ve subdued and contained him, saying, “Girls like you, you never think things through.”65 Beth’s husband Dean ridicules her plans to restore the family’s finances by saying that she has no public role or value.66 By contrast, Beth uses her skill as a mother to justify their ability to commit crimes; she points out that anyone who can bake 300 cupcakes in one night that are nut- and gluten-free can plan and execute a robbery.67 The comedy leavens the real discomfort and confinement mothers face at trying to inhabit space and roles on their terms. It is this toggling between spheres that I want to conclude by emphasizing. Thelma and Louise had no opportunity fully to inhabit a different way of being, and Jo’s happiness requires both the sacrifice of her son, and holding

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part of herself back from her community. While autonomy is the goal in Dietland and Good Girls, both works also emphasize the ways in which this autonomy comes at great cost to themselves and their families. Walker has written previously about the impact Thelma and Louise had on her, and two of her characters cite that they can’t go back to their old, conventionally gendered lives, in ways that recognize how much this liberation represents a painful and total break with the past.68 Good Girls quotes the same line; Ruby warns the women that if they kill someone, even gang leader Rio who wants them dead, they have crossed a line from which there is no going back.69 While Beth initially describes their work as a move of desperation, she very clearly revels in her outlaw life and profits, just as her husband very clearly resists (going so far as to leave and take the children, sending the unsubtle message that Beth can choose between being an outlaw or being a mother).70 This is true for all the women in these feminist westerns; having gained a taste of living on their own terms, no matter the challenges and pains, they all choose this autonomy over gendered constraints. But the constraints of a sexist world, particularly one that obligates women to gendered family roles and limited financial power, makes feminist autonomy a precarious and costly choice. NOTES 1. Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 2000 [1987]). 2. Annette Kolodny argues that this pairing isn’t accidental; the harmonic view of men and nature is based upon an appropriation of land as essentially feminine. One consequence of this is to erase or minimize women’s actual experience of land and nature. In Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 4. 3. Ridley Scott, Thelma & Louise (Beverly Hills: MGM Studios, 1991), and Maggie Greenwald, The Ballad of Little Jo (Burbank: Warner Bros., 1993). 4. Sarai Walker, Dietland: A Novel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2016), and Jenna Bans, creator. Good Girls (Burbank: NBC Universal Studios, 2018–2021, four seasons). 5. I should note an obvious exclusion from this discussion: the TV series Godless (2017), which has been widely celebrated as explicitly bringing a feminist perspective to the western. In my view, this is entirely incorrect; Godless merely mimes feminism by having multiple female characters, rather than explicitly inhabiting a feminist perspective like Thelma & Louise or The Ballad of Little Jo. To be specific, while the town of La Belle is occupied almost entirely by women and children, the actions and motivations of women in response to men actually drive very little of the plot; the plot

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is principally motivated by a quasi-Oedipal conflict between Frank Griffin and Roy Goode (subtlety in naming is not a strength of this series). One of the major women characters, Alice Fletcher, is entirely reactive and male-dependent. She is widowed by her first husband, injured and knocked unconscious by a train accident and assaulted by a band of natives, rescued by her second husband, and when he dies, is the object of affection and contest between Roy Goode and the man who will apparently become her third husband at the series’ close. While she is ostensively independent (she owns a small ranch), her skills are minimized, and it is Roy Goode’s superior skills (in horse-breaking) that give her a financial future. In short, Godless doesn’t fit the parameters of a feminist western as I describe them here. 6. Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 38–39, 55. 7. Just as western codes are parodic and mythical, Tompkins argues that the codes of domesticity presented in the feminine domestic novels are equally parodic. West of Everything, 42–44. 8. Tompkins, West of Everything, 55. 9. Tompkins, West of Everything, 57. 10. Tompkins, West of Everything, 86. 11. Annette Kolodny contends that women writers in the nineteenth century were equally guilty of a western nostalgia, attributing mythical qualities to the West to heal social ruptures in families and a slave society. This fantasy, she efficiently demonstrates, ignores the real drudgery women in the West experienced. In Annette Kolodny, The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 161–77. 12. Tompkins, West of Everything, 76. 13. Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 48–54. 14. Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 78–96, 182–200. 15. Tompkins, West of Everything, 9. 16. Tompkins, West of Everything, 17. 17. Tompkins, West of Everything, 125. 18. Josephine “Little Joe” Monaghan was a real homesteader in Idaho, who lived as a man. The obituary is available online at https:​//​www​.findagrave​.com​/memorial​ /124040988​/josephine​-monaghan. 19. While rape also drives plot narratives of conventional westerns like John Ford’s The Searchers, it typically does so in chivalric fashion, where a courageous cowboy rescues a damsel in distress. Thelma, Louise, and Jo rescue themselves. The vulnerability in conventional westerns is a fact, not a problem. 20. To be clear, Thelma & Louise humorously points out that men can primp just as much for women’s attention. Darryl, J.D. and Jimmy routinely adjust their hair in ways that suggest imagined approving female admirers. When Louise calls Jimmy in desperation during her and Thelma’s flight, her asking if he loves her makes him respond as if he’s being looked at; he pauses, sucks in his stomach, and fluffs his hair before saying yes. The men of Thelma & Louise are no less liable to primp for women’s admiration; the difference is that women’s admiration is not all that defines their public value.

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21. Tania Modleski, Old Wives’ Tales and Other Women’s Stories (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 161–62. 22. Becky Aikman, Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge (New York: Penguin, 2017), 88. 23. Nancy Schoenberger, Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero (New York: Nan Talese, 2017), 17. 24. Aikman, Off the Cliff, 162–63. 25. Aikman, Off the Cliff, 188. 26. Leo Braudy makes a similar point about this scene, noting that “the refusal of Texas is a refusal of those wide open genre spaces as a solution” (Greenberg et al. 1991–1992, 29). 27. See Modleski, Old Wives’ Tales, 174. 28. Some scholars argue that this gender reversal is less liberatory than it appears, because Tinman is feminized, and thus reinforces stereotypes about Asian Americans. See Chiung Hwang Chen, “Feminization of Asian (American) Men in the U.S. Mass Media: An Analysis of The Ballad of Little Jo,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 20, no. 2 (1996): 65–67. 29. And, of course, Butch and Sundance do not hold hands and kiss before they meet their doom. 30. Frank Dobie. The Mustangs: A Novel (Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2005 [1934]), 186. 31. Modleski, Old Wives’ Tales, 170. 32. Walker, Dietland, 5. 33. Walker, Dietland, 6. 34. Good Girls, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” directed by Dean Parisot, written by Jenna Bans, aired February 26, 2018. 35. Modleski acutely observes that Suzy Amis’s performance as Little Jo becomes more natural throughout the film, reflecting her growing comfort with her new self. Old Wives’ Tales and Other Women’s Stories, 170. 36. Walker, Dietland, 75, 76, 246. 37. Walker, Dietland, 40. 38. Walker, Dietland, 27. 39. Walker, Dietland, 64. 40. Walker, Dietland, 125, 288. 41. Walker, Dietland, 221–22. 42. Walker, Dietland, 215. 43. Walker, Dietland, 243. 44. Good Girls, season 1, episode 6, “A View from the Top,” directed by So Yong Kim, written by Marc Halsey, aired April 2, 2018. 45. Walker, Dietland, 24. 46. Walker, Dietland, 68. 47. Walker, Dietland, 305. 48. Good Girls, “Pilot.” 49. See in particular, Good Girls, season 1, episode 2, “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” directed by Alberto Del Rey, written by Jeannine Renshaw, aired March 5, 2018.

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Season 1, episode 3, “Borderline,” directed by Kenneth Fink, written by Jenna Lamia, aired March 12, 2018; and “A View From the Top.” 50. Good Girls, “Pilot.” 51. Good Girls, “Borderline.” 52. Walker, Dietland, 104. 53. Walker, Dietland, 170–72. 54. Walker, Dietland, 93. 55. Walker, Dietland, 96. 56. Good Girls, season 1, episode 4, “Atom Bomb,” directed by Dean Parisot, written by Nicole Paulhus, aired March 19, 2018. 57. Good Girls, “Atom Bomb.” 58. Good Girls, “Pilot.” 59. Good Girls, “Pilot” and “Mo Money, Mo Problems.” 60. Good Girls, season 1, episode 10, “Remix,” directed by Sarah Pia Anderson, written by Jenna Bans, aired April 30, 2018. 61. Good Girls, season 1, episode 7, “Special Sauce,” directed by Sharat Raju, written by Bill Krebs, aired April 9, 2018. 62. Good Girls, “Pilot.” 63. Good Girls, “A View from the Top.” 64. Good Girls, “Remix.” 65. Good Girls, “Mo Money, Mo Problems.” 66. Good Girls, “Borderline.” 67. Good Girls, “Pilot.” 68. Walker, Dietland, 240, 292. 69. Good Girls, season 1, episode 9, “Summer of the Shark,” directed by Michael Weaver, written by Bill Krebs & Jeannine Renshaw, aired April 23, 2018. 70. Good Girls, season 2, episode 8, “Thelma and Louise,” directed by Michael Weaver, written by Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins, aired April 21, 2019.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aikman, Becky. Off the Cliff: How the Making of Thelma & Louise Drove Hollywood to the Edge. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. Bans, Jenna, creator. Good Girls. NBC Universal Studios, 2018–2021. Four seasons. Chen, Chiung Hwang. “Feminization of Asian (American) Men in the U.S. Mass Media: An Analysis of The Ballad of Little Jo.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 20, no. 2 (1996): 57–71. Dobie, Frank. The Mustangs: A Novel. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2005 (1934). Ford, John, director. The Searchers. Warner Bros, 2015 (1956). 1 hr., 59 min. Frank, Scott, director. Godless. Netflix, 2017. Greenberg, Harvey, et al. “The Many Faces of Thelma & Louise.” Film Quarterly 45, no. 2 (1991): 20–31. Greenwald, Maggie, director. The Ballad of Little Jo. Warner Bros, 1993. 2 hr, 1 min.

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Hill, George Roy, director. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 20th Century Fox, 1969. 1 hr., 50 min. Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. ———. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Lenhardt, Melissa. Heresy: A Novel. New York: Hachette, 2018. Limerick, Patricia. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 2000 (1987). Modleski, Tania. Old Wives’ Tales and Other Women’s Stories. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Schoenberger, Nancy. Wayne and Ford: The Films, The Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero. New York: Nan Talese, 2017. Scott, Ridley, director. Thelma and Louise. MGM Studios, 1991. 2 hrs., 9 min. Stevens, George, director. Shane. Paramount Pictures, 1953. 1 hr., 58 min. Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Walker, Sarai. Dietland: A Novel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2016.

Chapter Seven

“They Forgot to Put in the Quit” Representations of Whiteness and Foundation Myths in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Misty L. Jameson

Produced almost eighty years apart, John Ford’s prototypical romance western Stagecoach (1939) and the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) may seem to have—aside from certain generic conventions—relatively little in common. However, the Coen brothers’ film, opening the first vignette “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” with Monument Valley as a backdrop and ending “The Mortal Remains” with a spectral stagecoach ride, frequently references Stagecoach as its urtext.1 Despite, or even because of, this relationship to Stagecoach, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has been discussed as a “thoughtful but imperfect effort to return to the roots of the western genre,”2 and many critics have dismissed readings of this film as a “revisionist” western but have been unsure as to its place in the canon of western films. The Coen brothers themselves have claimed that “westerns used to be free to be not important” and that “We’re not commenting on the genre,”3 and their film seems to be part of the broader reflexive tradition in westerns that combines comedy, satire, and revisionist notions of western myths.4 However, instead of being primarily a comedic examination of western conventions as are most reflexive westerns—David Lusted lists titles such as City Slickers (Underwood 1991), Three Amigos! (Landis 1986), and Hearts of the West (Zieff 1975) as examples—the Coen brothers run the gamut of western narrative types, characters, and settings in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which seems to follow Jean Renoir’s suggestion that “the marvelous thing about westerns is that they’re all the same movie. This gives a director unlimited 127

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freedom.”5 The Coen brothers use this “unlimited freedom” to celebrate the western in practically all its forms, proving that “reflexive westerns demonstrate that Hollywood itself holds” the “western in affectionate memory.”6 Like the Coens’ previous forays into the genre, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs does seem to have an affectionate, even nostalgic, relationship to the western.7 Indeed, according to Michael Koresky, “Themes of the American white man’s bumbling attempts at realizing his own ‘manifest destiny’ can be detected through all the Coen films we might dub westerns: Raising Arizona (1987), No Country for Old Men (2007), and True Grit (2010).”8 To further understand The Ballad of Buster Scruggs as a western, then, we must first understand its notions of whiteness. Starting with the murderous singing cowboy Buster Scruggs dressed all in white, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs presents its audience with a series of narratives in which the tenacity and ostensible naïveté of its white characters serve as a façade for the desires and obsessions that underlie their endeavors; as each narrative becomes darker in tone, we are reminded that what lies underneath the invisible norm of whiteness in the traditional western is death and destruction. Thus, as a reflexive western, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an homage film that reproduces traditional western landscapes and characters, but it does so in order to reconsider how these elements have come to form and represent American foundation myths. The eponymous first vignette opens with the cover of the invented book The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier, immediately reminding viewers of the famous line from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” This is the territory of tall tales, myths, and campfire stories, not the world of factual accounts. This context is also one of the first echoes from John Ford’s Stagecoach. Just as “Ford invokes our knowledge of [western] stereotypes quite deliberately, presenting them concisely and with an apparently naïve forthrightness that invites viewers to accept the film as a folk tale or fable rather than as a serious attempt at historical realism,”9 the Coen brothers use the book device in a similarly self-reflexive way, placing their film into a metafictional context, suggesting that the film audience not take it too seriously and giving the Coen Brothers free reign to do as they please with western clichés and imagery. We dissolve from the text of the story “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” in the book to an iconic extreme long shot of Monument Valley—very similar in setup to the shots Ford used in Stagecoach, firmly establishing this earlier film as the Coens’ primary “source.” We are then introduced, via diegetic song, to the diminutive, white-clad character Buster Scruggs (played by Tim Blake Nelson) riding a white horse through this setting. Like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, or Tex Ritter, he rides and sings, his voice echoing off the rock walls of the buttes. As he rides along, Buster Scruggs addresses the

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audience—another self-reflexive move on the part of the Coen Brothers— arguing that he is good natured, a friendly sort of killer, and not the “misanthrope” his reward posters claim him to be. Unlike earlier singing cowboys and in contrast to his own self-image, however, Buster Scruggs reveals himself to be a nonchalant, cold-blooded killer whose ego dominates both his personality and the landscape he inhabits; it seems to be the ego, not just of a stereotypical gunslinger, but of Manifest Destiny itself, assured of its rightness and righteousness moving westward. The narrative follows Buster first killing everyone in a small, absurdly placed cantina in the middle of nowhere and then arriving in the town of Frenchman’s Gulch, hoping to play poker but only ending up in more deadly shootouts. Commenting on one of the men he has shot, Buster claims, “When they made this fella, they forgot to put in the quit.”10 This description could easily fit each main character in the entire film—whether gunslinger, bank robber, traveling show performer, gold prospector, wagon train leader, or stagecoach rider, all of these characters simply do not give up. This description also thematically and symbolically ties the idea of whiteness in the film with the “inevitability” of Manifest Destiny and establishes whiteness as destructive, as it seemingly can only perpetrate violence, regardless of its “intent.” Aside from these notions of whiteness that “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” introduces to the audience, this narrative also serves as an encapsulation of the history of the western hero within its fifteen-minute plot time. Buster Scruggs, our likeable psychopath, combines many of the traits associated with the typical western hero from the 1930s forward such as individualism, simplicity, and good humor, but he is primarily defined by his skill with a weapon, which is, in the western, typically the marker of the hero’s manliness and courage but is sometimes the cause of his downfall as well. When the new cowboy (The Kid) rides into town, dressed in black and riding a black horse, to call out Buster Scruggs for a duel, he first appears on screen in an extreme long shot, coming into town from a distance, the dust from his horse’s hooves rising in visual cliché. This new cowboy plays the harmonica, providing his own rather ominous entrance music, but also linking him directly to Charles Bronson’s character Harmonica from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and to Clint Eastwood’s characters in Leone films such as A Fistful of Dollars (1964). These spaghetti westerns are often seen as a significant turning point in the genre; the questing western hero of romance, typified by John Wayne as Ringo in Stagecoach, is displaced by the dystopian hero whose very existence questions American foundation myths and legends such as that of Buster Scruggs. At the end of this vignette, Buster Scruggs, killed by his replacement, ludicrously soars into “heaven.” After all the murder and mayhem Buster has caused, the audience is left to assume that

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his whiteness—both his race and his being dressed in white like a stereotypical “good guy”—is the only ostensible reason for this ascent. This opening story establishes a western space shaped as much by what it excludes—primarily women and Native Americans—as by what it includes—seemingly heterosexual white males. It also suggests an “active” idea of whiteness, not a “passive” one; for most of the history of the Hollywood western (or any type of Hollywood film), whiteness has been the invisible “norm,” what Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin see as “the Hollywood assumption that all viewers, whatever their racial identification, should be able to identify with white characters.”11 This film begins with a self-conscious, or at least highly visible, idea of whiteness, one that we must acknowledge as central to the characters’ place of dominance in this world. Overall, the story “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” has an ironic tone of cheerful nihilism, and this continues to be born out in the next vignette, “Near Algodones.” This story provides audiences with the western trope of the bank robbery; like “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and Stagecoach before it, the natural landscape is a sweeping one, but in this narrative, human settlements mar the natural world, seeming more like a sore upon it and less like an oasis. Our unnamed would-be bank robber hero (played by James Franco) proves inept; his attempt to rob the lone, unprotected bank framed against a monochromatic plains backdrop fails miserably, and he is hanged twice—the first attempt to hang him ending in his escape and the second ending in his death. Clearly, we are still in the territory of legend and myth; this is important because it contextualizes our first encounter with Native Americans in this film. As our main character sits astride his horse, noose around his neck, a stereotypical “Comanche war party” descends upon the group gathered to hang him for the attempted bank robbery, killing these other white men and scalping one or two for good measure. This moment is presented almost as a nightmare or hallucination, as we see much of this through direct or implied point-of-view shots from the main character’s perspective. As this war party starts to ride away, the Comanche chief rides back to face our main character but neither kills him nor sets him free, instead leaving him to suffer his fate surrounded by dead men. Suddenly shaking his staff, the Chief yells loudly to scare the horse, laughs, and then rides away, his laughter echoing maniacally. This portrayal of Native Americans seems deliberately stereotypical, the kind that would, indeed, be found in a volume of “Tales of the American Frontier” written in 1873. As Declan McGrath claims in his review of the film, this “portrayal is comic rather than offensive and in keeping with the caricatured, cartoonish manner in which all the film’s characters are presented.”12 Read this way, “Near Algodones” continues the haplessly destructive notions of whiteness established in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and uses Native Americans simply as agents of a “natural” chaos coming from the landscape

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itself as opposed to the white characters who act as agents of an “artificial” chaos, which is the product of their own corrupt civilization. Like Native American communities in this world, the Native Americans in this story are marginalized within the narrative structure—only appearing onscreen for less than two out of approximately twelve total minutes. However, notions of “justice,” tied directly to whiteness, are also given marginal treatment, as our main character is not allowed to defend himself at his second “trial” before a judge for the crime of cattle rustling. He is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit (the white man who helps him escape after the “Indian” attack is a cattle rustler) because the judge pronounces the prosecution’s case “good enough.” This second vignette, darker in tone and more bitter in its comedy than the first, provides audiences with a landscape both deeply imbued within its time period and timelessly absurd—it also establishes the mythic, stereotypical representation of Native Americans in the film as part of the violent, hostile environment facing white settlers as they move across the frontier. Placed alongside this idea of “Native American-ness,” however, whiteness fares no better in the Coens’ film; whiteness is seemingly given agency, power, and control over the landscape, yet can do very little, if anything, productive with it. Whereas Ford’s Stagecoach emphasizes the sometimescontradictory notions of community, responsibility, and individuality among its white characters, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, from its opening two stories and continuing with “Meal Ticket” and “All Gold Canyon,” primarily emphasizes the dissolution of whites as they pursue their ambitions, greed, needs, and desires throughout the western territory. As “Meal Ticket,” the third vignette, opens, the narrative returns to the book The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier to reveal an illustration of a white man with his face upturned in awe, a quote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice serving as the caption: “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”13 As in The Merchant of Venice, the title character (the “Meal Ticket”), is in need of mercy; however, the narrative will later belie this sentiment—that mercy should flow freely, blessing both the giver and receiver—making it an ironic commentary on the relationship between the two main characters, the limbless travelling performer known as Professor Harrison (played by Harry Melling) and his grizzled, laconic caregiver and stage manager, referenced only as the Tall Man in the book (played by Liam Neeson). The ironic, and tragic, tone of the narrative is initially established by the oratory of “the Wingless Thrush,” as Harrison is known. While he recites from a mix of works, the three that are most prominent are Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert”), Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” with its double entendre (“I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries”), and the Biblical story

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of Cain and Abel. This last story is the most important for “Meal Ticket” as it recalls earlier versions of the western landscape as a symbolic garden of Eden, a “blank natural slate,”14 where man might escape what Doc Boone in Ford’s Stagecoach sarcastically calls “the blessings of civilization.” However, the notion of a western “Eden” is also presented ironically in “Meal Ticket,” as the mise-en-scène of this vignette is tinted by the muted palette of winter, primarily through shades of gray and dull evergreen, but even the acting style of the main characters is restrained, seemingly hindered by the bitterness of the weather. Much of this section is also literally dark, as Harrison’s performances are at night; these night scenes compliment the overcast, snowy days when the two men travel.15 The daytime traveling scenes also provide us with glimpses of the new “Eden” of the West, and we watch while Harrison curiously, contemplatively looks upon the scenery as the men’s wagon dots its way across the vast and empty frontier. As in Stagecoach, the sublime mountains and open country contrast with the confines and claustrophobic settings of the wagon and of the towns the men visit. While these settlements are dirty and muddy with clapboard fronts proclaiming the goods of the sellers, such as “Cigars and Tobacco” or “Meat and Fish Processing,” they—as well as the crowds that gather for Harrison’s performances (at first fairly substantial but lessening in each subsequent location)—are reminders of the need for community, for the contradictory “blessings of civilization” that come with westward expansion. They are also a reminder of the economic necessity, the capitalist system, that drives these two men from town to town to eke out a living. Like a western revision of Cain and Abel, these two outcasts—Harrison and the Tall Man—wander across this promised land, one of them blessed with memory and eloquence and the other serving as his “brother’s keeper.” While the Tall Man’s actions toward Harrison at first do seem merciful, as the narrative moves forward, the real relationship between the two men becomes more apparent—and more strained. During the narrative, the Tall Man has talked to his horse and to the customers who gather to watch Harrison’s performances, and he will later talk about Harrison to the prostitute whom he visits—but he does not speak to him. Thus, when the silence between them is finally broken by the drunken songs of the Tall Man and his announcement that “We’re going into town,” Harrison views this performance with incredulity; his eyes widen when he realizes he is being addressed directly.16 Ironically, Harrison, who makes his living through his oratorical performances, never speaks when off stage; his eyes and facial expressions primarily convey his emotions until his final recitation. This last performance is linked to the Tall Man’s visit to the brothel through a sound bridge; we see the prostitute’s room, marked by its warmer tones of red and yellow, but we hear the sounds of the wind and Harrison’s voice, cracking with anger and frustration before cutting to his

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performance: “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state.”17 With only three people in his audience and no money collected for the night, Harrison finally falters, ending his closing speech in confusion and bitter disappointment. After this final act, the Tall Man visits the more successful traveling show in town, the “Genius of the Barnyard,” a chicken with “no formal education” that can add and subtract. As the Tall Man approaches the show, the color scheme of the setting and lighting again changes to the warmer red and yellow tones used earlier with the whorehouse, suggesting the corrupting influence civilization has upon the Tall Man. Revealing a surprising amount of money, he purchases the “calculating capon,” itself a mixture of golden brown and red. The next morning, the Tall Man breaks the standing routine he has with Harrison; we see him feed the chicken, not Harrison, who only looks on with tears in his eyes. Thus, the chicken becomes a “harbinger of doom” for Harrison.18 As the two men travel on, the vast landscape that once seemed to captivate Harrison becomes instead “a wilderness prison, the open range entrapping its subjects rather than releasing them.”19 The ending of “Meal Ticket” is the bleakest within The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; as the Tall Man walks away from the ravine toward Harrison in the wagon, the false smile he attempts to put on his face finally reveals the true nature of their relationship. It is not mercy that has guided him in his actions toward Harrison but greed— their relationship was secure so long as it was mutually beneficial. Once he is no longer their “meal ticket,” Harrison is simply surplus, excess baggage that must literally be discarded. In the final moments of the narrative, as the Tall Man once again drives the wagon across this “new Eden” but now with only the chicken for company, Harrison’s recitation of the story of Cain and Abel seems a sad, yet appropriate, commentary on his fate: “And the Lord said unto Cain, ‘Where is Able, thy brother?’ And he said, ‘I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?’” While the ironic Eden of “Meal Ticket” is presented through the literal darkness of winter and the emotional darkness of greed and betrayal, “All Gold Canyon,” the fourth story, is set in a green, lush paradisiacal valley inhabited by a deer, butterflies, fish, and an owl, a kind of “curated wilderness” for the main character to inhabit.20 As The Ballad of Buster Scruggs book pages indicate before the start of the narrative, “in all that mighty sweep of the earth” there was “no sign of man nor the handiwork of man.”21 The vignette begins with the sun rising on this green paradise, providing a sharp contrast to the landscapes and colors of “Meal Ticket.” Even the nameless main character, a prospector played by Tom Waits, takes his hat off in reverence when he first views the sunlit beauty of this “all gold canyon.” More than any other character in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, he seems to have

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found the promise of the western landscape, freedom from civilization and its contradictory “blessings.” Similar to “Meal Ticket” in its treatment of language, this section of the film has no real dialogue; it instead includes only the monologue of the prospector, who sings, talks to himself, and talks to animals, but mostly addresses “Mr. Pocket,” the vein of gold he knows, through both intuition and experience, is hidden somewhere near the clear stream running through the valley. If the main characters of “Meal Ticket” are a kind of revisionist Cain and Abel, then the prospector of “All Gold Canyon” is a sort of Adam of the American West, taking only what he needs from the animals around him—and no more—but also shaping, even marring, the landscape to suit his needs and desire for gold. His attempts to find “Mr. Pocket” are usually presented in a series of dissolves, with the once-perfect countryside becoming more pock-marked by his digging each time. While the prospector may have approached this untouched Eden with reverence, it is really only a paradise to him if it reveals its secret cache of gold, its “good” knowledge, but—like a true Eden—this knowledge will also bring possibilities for evil. Once the prospector finds a gold nugget (not simply flakes but “keepers”), then a chunk of gold inside a rock, and then finally “Mr. Pocket” itself, his joy does not last for long—a shadow flits across the elusive gold vein. In a low angle shot, we see the cause of the shadow, a young man (played by Sam Dillon) dressed in black, looming above the grave-like hole and pointing a gun down at the prospector. As the prospector begins to shake his head no, the young claim jumper shoots him in the back and sits down to smoke and calmly watch the prospector die, the blood from his wound spreading rapidly across his back, his face pressed into the gold vein he so diligently sought. This attempted murder simply for avaricious purposes strikes a similar chord to that of “Meal Ticket,” but it lacks the betrayal of the murder of one companion by another; it is instead simply the “law of the West,” the survival of the fittest.22 However, if Harrison in “Meal Ticket” does not protest his mistreatment, the prospector does. Once he has killed his young attacker, the prospector yells out, “You measly skunk, camping on my trail, letting me do all the work, and shooting me in the back!”23 For all their differences, these two narratives are of a pair thematically, connected by the brutality and greed that oppose romanticized notions of the western Eden as being a place of freedom from Eastern constraints, of white redemption and renewal. Both narratives make use of the idea of the West as an idealized landscape where man can make his fortune, but both narratives also include characters who attempt to (or succeed at) taking advantage of someone else’s hard work and resort to violence when someone stands in the way of their success.

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While “All Gold Canyon” has a happy ending for the protagonist, the true happy ending comes when he bids farewell to the canyon, taking with him the contamination of humanity and allowing the wildlife to thrive again: [T]hrough the silence crept back the spirit of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted air fluttered the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies drifted in and out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet sunshine. Only remained the hoof-marks in the meadow and the torn hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the peace of the place and passed on.24

These closing words of the narrative, taken directly from Jack London’s original short story, suggest that the American West could have been a paradise—so long as, again in the words of Michael Koresky, “the American white man’s bumbling attempts at realizing his own ‘manifest destiny’” did not ruin the beauty and perfection of the landscape,25 even if that landscape is now just “a sentimental idealization.”26 In the fifth (and longest) vignette, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” there is a shift in tone, particularly in attitudes toward community, and the reason for this shift is the emphasis on a woman, Alice Longabaugh, as the main character. In this story, partners Mr. Arthur and Mr. Knapp lead a wagon train (symbol of Manifest Destiny) heading to the Oregon Territory, bringing with it the “civilizing” influence of settlers—families, women, and children. Alice is traveling with her brother Gilbert not only for his business prospects but also with the intent to marry Gilbert’s potential business partner. She fits securely in the tradition of earlier “schoolmarm” (cultured) western women from Lucy Mallory in Stagecoach to Alma Garret in Deadwood; in fact, her situation is particularly like Lucy Mallory’s in that, after the sudden and unexpected death of Gilbert from cholera, Alice is determined to travel alone, to continue forward into an uncertain future. Unlike Lucy Mallory, however, because Alice has no husband and “no people,” she is an outsider, and she is keenly aware of her precarious position. This precariousness is something that she shares with Mr. Knapp, and their courtship is at least partly the result of his desire, as he has gotten older, to settle down and to enjoy the comforts of “civilization” and not simply be the conveyor of them. While her ridiculously inept brother Gilbert dismisses Alice as “wishy-washy,” she is given a good deal of control over her situation based on decisions she must make for herself; for Alice, it’s not simply a matter of continuing on the Oregon Trail but of survival. This agency, however, is what ultimately causes her death; her story, were it to have appeared in a book of “Tales of the American Frontier” would have been a cautionary one, warning

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the unprepared, particularly women, of its dangers. From its opening, the narrative provides several warnings for her—and foreshadowing for the audience—that something is going to go awry in her journey. As she and her brother eat their last meal at Mrs. Halliday’s Boardinghouse, the conversation is of a boarder who died, as Mrs. Halliday claims, of a “nervous cough.” This conversation is directly linked to two later events. First is the discussion Alice and Gilbert have about President Pierce, Gilbert’s annoying little dog, who is a “nervous creature” that barks at everyone and everything in the wagon train. The second comes later that night when Alice is awakened by Gilbert’s severe coughing, which turns out to be the cholera that kills him by morning. Upon Alice’s decision not to mark Gilbert’s grave, Mr. Knapp gives us our first suggestion of an “Indian threat”: “better anyway not to advertise to the Indians. They don’t bother us none. It’s too much trouble attacking a wagon train. They will scavenge.”27 Once he gets Alice’s permission to “put down” Pres. Pierce, Mr. Knapp emphasizes (as he did with Gilbert) that, with death, “faster is better.” However, the dog escapes, but he, like the chicken in “Meal Ticket,” then becomes a “harbinger of doom” in the narrative.28 When Mr. Knapp proposes marriage to Alice, they hear Pres. Pierce barking in the distance, and his barking is the ultimate cause for Alice—though cautioned not to—to wander off alone to find him. In a final warning about her fate, Mr. Knapp discusses his notions of certainty and uncertainty with Alice, and he feels that uncertainty is best: “certainty about that which we can see and touch in this world is seldom justified if ever. Down through the ages from our remote past, what certainties survive? And yet we hurry to fashion new ones wanting their comfort. Certainty is the easy path.”29 The great irony, then, is that this woman who has been uncertain, even “wishy-washy,” is so certain of what she sees that she believes Mr. Arthur has been killed, ambushed by a Sioux warrior, when, in reality, he was simply playing dead. Because the reticent Mr. Arthur had previously told Alice about what might happen to her, replete with gory detail, if she were to be captured by the “war party,” she is prepared to do what he instructed her—shoot herself to avoid being captured. Here, Alice’s situation is again similar to that of Lucy Mallory in Stagecoach. Each woman finds herself surrounded by a Native American “war party,” and each one has a gun pointed at her or handed to her in order to save her from “savagery.” In Stagecoach, the gambler Hatfield has one bullet left for Mrs. Mallory while Mr. Arthur in “The Gal Who Got Rattled” has two—one for Alice and one for him. The main difference between these women is agency—Mrs. Mallory is not allowed to choose; fate chooses for her as a bullet kills Hatfield before he can pull the trigger. But she, at least, survives. Alice, who has called herself “nervous” and “full of nerves,” finally finds her moment of certainty and kills herself because, as Mr. Knapp had said, with death, “faster is better.”

Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.2.  Lucy Mallory (fig. 7.1.) has a gun held to her head while Alice Longabaugh (fig. 7.2.) holds the gun given to her by Mr. Arthur. Both women face dying in order to avoid being captured by Native Americans. Source: Screenshots from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).

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Clearly, this vignette continues the clichéd representation of Native Americans from “Near Algodones,” that of “devilish marauders that threaten the hardy pioneers,”30 but because of the more somber tone in “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” it is much harder to see any of these characters as comical or “cartoonish.” The ironic distance and absurdity of “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “Near Algodones” is not sustained in the three episodes that follow so that, when presented with the Sioux in “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” we must take these representations more seriously than before, and because they rely rather mindlessly on previous western tropes, they seem simply racist repetitions of stereotypes. The Sioux warriors do serve a narrative purpose, however, in giving this narrative its “cautionary” quality and, in some ways, reinforce the metafictional, reflexive, context of these “frontier tales.” “The Gal Who Got Rattled” also reinforces traditional notions of white womanhood as being encoded with the values westerns ostensibly support—community, compromise, idealism, and social responsibility.31 However, with the death of Alice by her own hand, our hope for these principles vanishes; because she dies, this film seems far less optimistic and, ultimately, a bit less feminist perhaps than Stagecoach. The women in Ford’s film not only survive; they thrive—the baby that Lucy Mallory gives birth to is a girl, symbolically the bearer of civilization and the continuation of the western enterprise. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs allows no such reassurance for the whiteness it presents; the wagon train brings disease and violence westward just as surely as it does the furniture, clothing, and other trappings of “civilization.” In the end, we are left with much uncertainty—uncertainty of Mr. Knapp’s fate and his desires for a settled life and uncertainty about the basic drives pushing these white characters across the frontier in the first place. Overall, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs does not make any new, groundbreaking statements about gender or race but serves as a reminder that the “invisible norm” of whiteness is anything but. Like John Ford in Stagecoach, the Coen brothers’ “deliberate play” with various western tropes “is a way of invoking the memories that such movie-stereotypes contain, the framework of associations with earlier stories that defines each character’s meaning and mode of action.”32 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs relies on this framework to move the audience deftly from one setting to another and to change narrative tone and focus dramatically. One constant throughout this film, however, is the notion of a self-destructive, even self-conscious, whiteness linked to death in some way, often through violence. The final vignette, “The Mortal Remains,” does much to provide a sense of narrative closure as it contains many echoes from the five previous stories—from songs to character types and direct references to John Ford’s Stagecoach—and marks a return to the bleak humor of the first two stories, providing a kind of bookend to the narrative as a whole. This segment

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contains two of the longer monologues in the film; the first comes when the ostensible main character of this story, the Trapper, tells his fellow stagecoach passengers of his life with his Native American “consort.” Because neither can speak the other’s language, their “companionship” relies on facial expressions and varying intonations to communicate until she finally leaves him one day. Based on this experience, the Trapper philosophically claims to have realized that “People are like ferrets or a beaver. All pretty much alike. Yeah, one like the next. I don’t doubt it’s the same even if you travel to Siam.”33 This announcement, one supported by all of the narratives that we have seen thus far, riles his fellow travelers, particularly the Gambler and the Lady, who also give their views on humanity, their specific assessments of human nature. Above their chatter, however, lies death—literally, as a dead man is riding atop the carriage, but also figuratively as the English bounty hunter in the stagecoach interrupts with a description of his job, which is trading in death. He explains his process of distracting those he and Clarence, his partner, seek; he does so by telling the wanted man a story, that of the “Midnight Caller”: people “connect . . . stories to themselves, I suppose, and we all love hearing about ourselves so long as the people in the stories are us, but not us. Not us in the end especially. The midnight caller gets him, never me. I’ll live forever.” After Clarence has “thumped” their distracted victim, the English bounty hunter goes on to describe “watching [these people] negotiate the passage . . . from here to there. To the other side. Watching them try to make sense of it as they pass to that other place. I do like looking into their eyes as they try to make sense of it. I do.”34 He delivers this speech as did Buster Scruggs, directing his comments to the film audience, putting us in the same place of discomfort and uncertainty as his fellow passengers. His direct address to the camera also reminds us of the self-reflexive layers of this narrative, first the film (and decades of western filmmaking in general) and then the “literary” context, the book The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier. Within both of these contexts, this final vignette, a fascinating exercise in the use of color, lighting, sound, and silence within a claustrophobic space, seems to take place in the phantom stagecoach of a ghost story similar to “The Midnight Caller.”35 Its title is ironic, however, for it is not the “mortal” that “remains” at all; instead, it is the legends and tall tales that survive and proliferate, that have shaped our notions of American history and given us our foundational myths of Manifest Destiny and the promised land of a western Eden. The Coens’ film, then, seems both their sentimental participation in this tradition and their reflection on its tropes—giving their twenty-first-century audience a chance not only to witness the blundering, often grasping, whiteness that helped to shape our nation but also to hear “about ourselves so long as the people in the stories are us, but not us.”36

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NOTES 1. Stagecoach marked a turning point not only in John Ford’s career as the first western he directed in the sound era but also, according to many filmmakers, critics, and film historians, in the western genre itself. The Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, originally conceived of as a Netflix limited series, marks a turning point in their careers as well; it is not only the first film they shot digitally but may also be their last project as a directing team—at least for a while—with Joel Coen most recently directing The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) and Ethan directing Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (2022). 2. Jared Lucky, “The Place Up Ahead,” Commonweal 146, no. 2 (2019): 28, EBSCO. 3. Ben Walters, “Trigger Happy,” Sight and Sound, December 2018, EBSCO. 4. David Lusted, The Western (Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2003), 232. 5. Jean Renoir, quoted in Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 1981), 54. 6. Lusted, The Western, 232. 7. In “Revision as Nostalgic Practice: The Imagined Adaptation of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” Wiebke Schniedermann considers how The Ballad of Buster Scruggs fits into adaptation studies, not simply with the adaptation of the fictional book that serves as the device holding the various narratives together but of the western itself as a nostalgic adaptation of an imaginary past. While the focus of my study is not adaptation, I do appreciate Schniedermann’s examination of the relationship of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs to nostalgia, particularly in a twenty-first-century context. 8. Michael Koresky, “The Paragon of Animals,” Film Comment, September 2018, 37, EBSCO. 9. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 304. 10. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen (Annapurna Pictures, 2018), 12:18 to 12:21, www​.netflix​.com​/watch​/80200267. 11. Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2009), 52. 12. Declan McGrath, Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (film), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Cineaste, Spring 2019, 45. 13. The Ballad, 29:25. 14. Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon, “Six Creeds That Won the Western” in The Western Reader, ed. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight, 1998), 73. 15. Wibke Schniedermann (in “Revision as Nostalgic Practice: The Imagined Adaptation of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”) also notes the different “colour palette” of this episode (78–79), but Schniedermann’s focus is on how color relates to the narrative’s shift in tone: “‘Meal Ticket’ functions as an anti-nostalgic pivot within the movie” (80). 16. The Ballad, 39:15 to 40:25.

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17. The Ballad, 42:00 to 43:05. 18. Ryan Gilbey, “Dance Macabre.” New Statesman, November 16, 2018, 54, EBSCO. 19. Lusted, The Western, 178. 20. Wibke Schniedermann, “Revision as Nostalgic Practice: The Imagined Adaptation of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” Adaptation 15, no. 1 (2022): 78, doi:10.1093/ adaptation/apaa032. 21. This quotation is the caption for the book’s illustration of the prospector looking across the valley and comes from Jack London’s original short story; the pages that follow in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs repeat the opening paragraphs of London’s story exactly. 22. In the western, the “fittest” might be the cruelest, the greediest, or at least the best fighter; as Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon claim in “Six Creeds That Won the Western,” “failure, in the Social Darwinist and Puritan world of the western, means death” (74). 23. The Ballad, 1:06:15 to 1:06:25. 24. The Ballad, 1:10:11. 25. Koresky, “The Paragon of Animals,” 37. 26. Schniedermann, “Revision as Nostalgic Practice”: 77. 27. The Ballad, 1:17:00 to 1:17:09. 28. Gilbey, “Dance Macabre.” 29. The Ballad, 1:37:50 to 1:38:37. 30. Jim Kitses, “Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western.” The Western Reader, ed. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight, 1998), 61. 31. Kitses, 59. 32. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 304. 33. The Ballad, 1:52:29 to 1:52:39. 34. The Ballad, 2:03:17 to 2:04:14. 35. Like the ending of Stagecoach, which is “filmed in an expressionistic style” once the passengers reach the town of Lordsburg, “The Mortal Remains” also suggests “a journey into hell” for its diverse passengers (Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 310). 36. This essay is an expansion of the conference paper (“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Representations of Whiteness”) I presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association on November 16, 2019, in Atlanta, Georgia. I am indebted to the audience and panel discussions after the presentations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Benshoff, Harry, and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2009. Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen, directors. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Annapurna Pictures, 2018. 2 hr., 13 min. www​.netflix​.com​/watch​/80200267.

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Durgnat, Raymond, and Scott Simmon. “Six Creeds That Won the Western.” In The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, 69–83. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998. Ford, John, director. Stagecoach. Criterion Collection. Uploaded to YouTube by София Кудрявцева on July 28, 2017. 1 hr., 36 min. www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =9YrPnKTgrSo​&t​=4s. Gilbey, Ryan. “Dance Macabre.” New Statesman, November 16, 2018, 54, EBSCO. Kitses, Jim. “Authorship and Genre: Notes on the Western.” In The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, 57–68. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998. Koresky, Michael. “The Paragon of Animals.” Film Comment, September 2018, 36–41, EBSCO. Lucky, Jared. “The Place up Ahead.” Commonweal 146, no. 2 (Jan. 2019): 28–29, EBSCO. Lusted, David. The Western. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2003. McGrath, Declan. Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (film), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Cineaste, Spring 2019, 44–45. Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1981. Schniedermann, Wibke. “Revision as Nostalgic Practice: The Imagined Adaptation of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” Adaptation 15, no. 1 (2022): 68–83. doi:10.1093/ adaptation/apaa032. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Walters, Ben. “Trigger Happy.” Sight and Sound, December 2018, EBSCO.

Chapter Eight

Slow Cowboys and New Men Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and First Cow Wendy Chapman Peek

A commonplace about the westerns of Kelly Reichardt is that her work redefines the mythology of the West. She engages in “an askance reimagining of the foundational myths of American virtues of ambition and self-reliance” (Olsen); she “subvert[s] traditional western conventions” (Hall); “She came untethered not from her past but from America’s, unencumbered by national myths unless she’s upending our assumptions about them” (Bramesco). While many praise these efforts, others see them as a “threat,” as in Armond White’s criticism of her “anti-westerns,” characterized by him as a “rejection of genre tradition,” that “separate[s] her queer feminist agenda from Hollywood convention.”1 Yet one person’s “threat” may simply be another’s variation. The western has always been a capacious genre whose members are linked by a loose, even shaggy, collection of plots, locales, character types. Like another gendered and oft-derided genre, the romantic comedy, the western operates in the creative tension between convention and innovation. Assessing whether a film tips too far toward one pole or the other is a subjective exercise. To further complicate our understanding of the western, the reception of cultural objects changes through time, so that post-Stonewall moderns might find homoerotic tension in Warlock (1959), for example, that its original audiences missed. As Josh Garrett-Davis writes, “We live in the afterglow of the western’s once-blazing sun, and this moment casts anything we call ‘western’ in a queer light.”2 143

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In considering the claims about myth-asserting and myth-rejecting westerns, it may be useful to think of tradition as a verb, not a noun, as in Richard Slotkin’s use of the term “traditionalized” to speak of the way stories gain traction with audience sensibilities.3 As the verbal form suggests, tradition is not inert, though conservative interests often regard it as such. What is considered “traditional” typically arises out of forces creative, intellectual, emotional, and commercial that seek to place characters and plots within fixed and familiar categories. I would suggest, though, that labels such as “traditional” or “anti-traditional” should remain provisional in a genre as labile as the western. Only those unfamiliar with the rich play of myths within the western might see Reichardt’s films as a break with, rather than continuation of, genre tradition. With these thoughts in mind, I argue that Reichardt engages more with western traditions than critics often give her credit for. I will focus on her films’ formal and thematic links to westerns of the Golden Age (late 1930s to early 1960s), specifically in their representation of western masculinity and labor, which find kinship in the writings of Owen Wister and the postwar cinematic westerns Red River (1948), The Man from Laramie (1955), and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Reichardt does not deny these influences, noting that teaching at Bard College has given her a deep familiarity with touchstones of the genre, such as Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), films that have become important to her own work. Western paintings, too, shape her vision, and she has spoken of the influence of Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer on First Cow. Rather than being simply a reactionary, then, Reichardt hybridizes conventional and innovative motifs to make her westerns richer than the simple prefix “anti-” captures. In pursuit of this thesis, I focus on two Reichardt westerns, Certain Women (2016) and First Cow (2019). On the surface, these two films are quite different. Certain Women comprises three interlocking stories of women in present-day Montana. First Cow is situated in 1820s Oregon and involves the theft of milk from a prized cow. Both, however, draw on older models to reimagine the western hero, in a manner that is consistent with, rather than in defiance of, the work of earlier westerns. NEW MEN: FIRST COW Based on the Jon Raymond novel The Half-Life, First Cow recounts the entrepreneurial efforts of two men, far from their homelands, who meet by chance in Oregon Country: Otis Figowitz or “Cookie” (John Magaro), a gentle man who has worked his way west from Maryland by hiring on as a cook for a band of trappers, and King-Lu (Orion Lee), an optimist from China

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who dreams big about the opportunities offered by the West and who seeks to profit from them.4 Following King-Lu’s urging that “we have to take what we can when the taking is good,” Cookie surreptitiously milks the first cow to arrive in the territory in order to make delicious “oily cakes,” which they sell at the nearby fort. Their theft of the milk puts them in direct opposition to the Chief Factor, owner of the cow and territorial representative of the Royal Western Pacific Trading Company (RWP), the powerful English firm that organizes the local beaver trade. This conflict will prove deadly. Reichardt regards First Cow more as a heist film than a western, and it employs recognizable conventions of that genre: the symmetrical relation between risk and reward; the cheekiness of the theft (i.e., selling oily cakes back to the man they stole the milk from); the old “let’s do it just one more time.”5 There is no denying, though, that western characteristics and themes shape this film. It takes place in the historical West, where motley bands of frontiersman—Russian trappers, English and Irish traders, Chinese adventurers—interact with Chinook tribespeople using the shared pidgin Wawa. Yet its most compelling tie to the western genre, in my view, is its engagement with “the problem of what it means to be a man,” which in Lee Clark Mitchell’s analysis, “‘subsum[es]’ all other features of the genre.”6 From its inception, the western has functioned as a proving ground where various models of masculinity battle for dominance, much like gentleman Gregory Peck and cowboy Charlton Heston savagely fight in William Wyler’s The Big Country (1958). The OK Corral, the saloon, the dusty streets of town—all these are arenas where men return in film after film to perform their masculinity for audiences of other men, under a patriarchal “regime of scrutiny,” in sociologist Michael Kimmel’s phrase.7 Who is better? The hired gunslinger or the honest farmer? The symbol of disorder or the representative of the law? In these contests, the western functions as a site for philosophical confrontation between competing models of masculinity. First Cow joins their ranks in staging its own competition. To better appreciate the connections between Reichardt’s westerns and the tradition, it is first necessary to revise our understanding not of the myth of the West, but the myth of the western. When critics of the western condemn or extol salient features of the genre, they often fail to acknowledge the huge variation possible within a genre that ranges from James Fenimore Cooper to Bertha Muzzy Bower, Westworld to Yellowstone. Yet this variety was present from the very start. For example, the early cinematic cowboy, given shape by popular western literature, “was not an homogenous figure,” as Peter Stanfield notes.8 His research identifies three early types of fictional cowboys that appealed to three distinct audiences, differentiated by class: the dime novel for working class and immigrant readers, which sometimes, as in the case of the Deadwood Dick books, offered “less stories of the Wild West

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than stories of Labor and Capital”9; magazine fiction created for a “newly formed professional middle-class,” which was further divided into stories of adventure and romance; and “eastern establishment” novels, like The Virginian (1902) which “represented an embourgeoisement of the western—a middle-class appropriation of the cowboy.”10 From these beginnings, then, the cowboy, like the western genre itself, was a malleable figure, able to serve as a vehicle for various, even contradictory, values. With that heterogeneity in mind, is it completely outrageous to call Cookie Figowitz a cowboy? True, Cookie subverts the expectations one may have for a cowboy in several ways: as his nickname indicates, he’s a skilled chef trained in Boston; he never rides a horse onscreen; he avoids rather than creates confrontation; and his relationship is not with cattle, but with just one cow, the beautiful Jersey, Evie. That this kind of man is the protagonist of a western surprises some. Orla Smith writes, “It’s hard to overstate what an unconventional male lead Cookie is: by centering the narrative around him, Reichardt insists that we should be interested and invested in this man who is docile and sensitive.”11 Chance Solem-Pfeifer also points to Cookie’s unlikeliness, “It’s a western about the people westerns are historically never about: a Chinese immigrant on the run and the meek cook of a trapping party.”12 Reichardt acknowledges this challenge to settled expectations, saying “The heroism of masculinity, white masculinity, it never dies. It just doesn’t die. . . . For someone like Cookie to survive, that’s more heroic to me.”13 That last line gets to the gist of Reichardt’s conception of Cookie. She seeks to redefine what we think of as ideal manliness, maybe even what we think of as a cowboy, to heroize the gentle and kind masculinity of Cookie. Cookie’s masculine style is established in his first scene, which focuses on his hand close to the ground, as he crisply snaps a mushroom off its stem. The nondiegetic music is gentle, almost playful, as Cookie forages in the lush, dark forest. The camera moves with Cookie’s feet along the forest floor, finally to reveal his face as he tastes one of the mushrooms, demonstrating his expertise in distinguishing it from a toadstool. He is at home in the natural setting, even taking time to right an upturned salamander so it can return to its business. The mildness suggested by the music and Magaro’s performance is heightened through contrast with the following episode in which rough, abusive trappers bully Cookie about the lack of provisions. They yell and grunt like animals, brandish weapons with alacrity, and physically fight over trivialities. Rather than exemplars of an admirable western type, they appear filthy and stupid; Reichardt has called them “silly Muppets.”14 As Cookie retreats into his tent to avoid them, the camera retreats with him. When the flap closes, the barrier created fills the screen, to the relief of both Cookie and the viewer. Reichardt literally draws the curtain on a masculine style that does not interest her.

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A similar depiction of bullying men occurs when Cookie ventures into the bar at the fort. A man brings his baby into the saloon and is cruelly teased by another man until a fistfight ensues. Reichardt here invokes a classic sequence from countless westerns, the barroom brawl. She defuses its significance, however, by recentering the camera in relation to the violence. The fight is staged off screen, at the margins of the frame, or in the background, partially blocked by the body of Cookie, who stands in the foreground cooing at the baby. So great is Cookie’s desire to evade the bullying scrutiny of other men that, at another time, upon receiving one too many comments on his new boots, Cookie temporarily leaves the fort to untuck his pants’ legs so that they cover the too-noticeable footwear. Thus, it is no surprise when, later, as Cookie surreptitiously goes to milk Evie, he woos her with his gentle manner and kind conversation. “Sorry about your husband,” he whispers to her about the bull that died en route. “I heard he didn’t make it all the way . . . and your calf . . . it’s a terrible thing. Terrible. But you got a nice place here.” The second night of milking, he quietly praises the quality of her milk in helping the sale of oily cakes: “It was your milk in the batter that did it.” While Cookie’s masculinity is unusual in stereotypes about the western, the gesture of creating a new sort of western hero is, however, not new to the genre. Reichardt’s heroizing of the gentle Cookie picks up from the work done in the 1950s by Anthony Mann, Delmer Daves, and a handful of other directors and screenwriters, such as Borden Chase, who worked to reimagine the western protagonist. Their effort often begins with a critique of what, for convenience’s sake, I call “phallic masculinity.” Men who perform phallic masculinity maintain dominance over others through a masculine style that is violent, destructive, and emotionally barren. In previous work, I have focused on a group of postwar westerns that both critiqued this model of a domineering, violent, hard-edged masculinity and sought to develop alternative masculine ideals.15 Some of the westerns I write about deliver their critiques of phallic masculinity through the figure of the titanic father, a patriarch who rules through terror and force. This father typically serves as the antagonist to a son or younger man who offers a different type of masculinity. Examples compose a robust catalog: Burl Ives’s Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country (1958); Spencer Tracy’s Matt Devereaux in Broken Lance (1954); Ward Bond’s Dan Halliday in The Halliday Brand (1957); Donald Crisp’s aging rancher Alec Waggoner in The Man from Laramie (1955); John Wayne as Thomas Dunson, father figure to the orphaned Matt, in Red River (1948) and as racist Comanche hunter Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956); and the performances of Walter Huston portraying T. C. Jeffords in The Furies (1950) and Lee J. Cobb as Dock Tobin in Man of the West (1958). These men compose a clearly recognizable type, for they are the spiritual kin of the violent,

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abusive men in First Cow. Nevertheless, although the fathers in the ‘50s films are ferocious in their brutality, at the conclusion of the films they are either dead or diminished. Their rage and violence serve only to alienate them from their children. Through them, then, these films signal that such displays of dominance are outmoded, unnecessary, and even harmful in what is figured as a changed world. Who replaces them? Often it is a son who rejects the paternal model of masculinity. But what type of masculinity will take its place? That is the tricky part. Often these younger men struggle to find an alternative ideal that is as powerful and charismatic as the image of the titanic father. The famously unsatisfying conclusion of Red River speaks to the challenge faced by these sons.16 While narrating a fictionalized account of the first cattle drive along the Chisolm Trail, Red River stages a struggle between the masculinity of tough Thomas Dunson and that of his adopted son, Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift), with Clift playing the role of a cowboy exactly as you imagine Montgomery Clift would play a cowboy. The film begins by extolling the outsized nature of Dunson’s accomplishments. He successfully cleared prior claimants from the land of pre–Civil War Texas—Mexicans and Indigenous people—in order to fill it with lowing cattle. Proving himself both more violent and more competent with violence than his adversaries, Dunson’s power of will and body makes the wasteland bloom, like a fully potent Fisher King. He is the Platonic ideal of the western hero, as Virginia Wright Wexman describes: the man whose “power to use force is typically perceived as virtually limitless.”17 But the film soon discloses that there are limits to Dunson’s power: though his great masculine force served well in the past, it cannot realize the fruits of his labors. After the Civil War, Dunson has no easy way to move his cattle to market, until he seizes upon the idea of driving the herd to a railhead in Kansas. Yet Dunson’s increasingly tyrannical methods on the drive lead his men to near mutiny. When he and Matt disagree about which route to take, Matt assumes control of the cattle and the men. Unlike Dunson, though, Matt governs the cowboys through a comparatively relaxed and cooperative managerial style, which enables him to successfully bring the herd to market. Though Dunson and Matt face each other in a classic shootout at the film’s conclusion, Dunson’s desire to kill Matt is interrupted by the feisty love interest Tess, who tells them that their hostility is really a sign of mutual affection. All the homicidal rage that had been building for two hours is diffused in a laughable dénouement. Were the narrative, however, to follow the logical course it charted from the outset, Matt would kill Dunson, laying to rest the unprofitable phallic masculinity that his success superseded. Although Borden Chase’s novel, on which the film is based, does have Dunson die after his showdown with Matt, director Hawks could not bring himself to kill

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off John Wayne. As attractive as Montgomery Clift is in the role of the new masculine type, Hawks could not allow the son to eradicate the powerful father completely. In Patrick McGee’s summation, “Red River expresses a kind of nostalgia for the founding father of capital, even though it repeatedly calls into question the validity of [Dunson’s] authority and claim to power.”18 It is no coincidence that three of the titanic fathers mentioned above appear in films directed by Anthony Mann (The Man from Laramie, The Furies, Man of the West). In many of his westerns and even in his “sword and sandals” epic, The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Mann focuses his characterizations on generational conflicts between fathers and sons, literal and metaphoric. Just as Hawks struggled in Red River to find a charismatic masculinity to counter that of John Wayne, Mann in The Man from Laramie (1955) offers up Jimmy Stewart to be physically brutalized onscreen to demonstrate his fitness to represent a new masculine ideal.19 In this film, aged patriarch Alec Waggoman rules his ranch with abusive violence, behavior that turns his son Dave into a dandified sadist and which draws the attention of Will Lockhart (Jimmy Stewart), the “man” of the title, who has come to town to learn who supplied the Apache with guns used to kill his brother. Through the paired figures of the father Alec and son Dave, the film splits the phallic masculine ideal into two figures, one of whom is powerful and charismatic (Alec), the other (Dave), who demonstrates the capricious, cruel, and narcissistic potential of unchecked masculine power. Dave will ultimately be killed by his own foreman, Vic, while patriarch Alec slowly moves toward a gentle twilight, going blind and finally marrying the fiancée he left many years before. Both of these failed models of phallic masculinity, Alec and Dave, are supplanted by the new masculine ideal represented by Lockhart, whose difference from them is marked by his manner. Lockhart listens to and engages with people, and for his trouble, endures horrific treatment at Alec’s hands. The scenes of torture in the film seem designed to prove that Lockhart, despite rejecting phallic masculinity, is still tough enough to serve as the protagonist. Though he is neither powerful nor dominant in those particular scenes, Lockhart will in the end be successful in his quest—sort of. While his main goal is to kill the party responsible for his brother’s death, and indeed the climax of the film occurs when Lockhart corners foreman Vic on a mountaintop and powerfully asserts, “I came a thousand miles to kill you,” he will in fact kill no one in the film. Instead, he turns Vic over to the Apache, who have their own issues with him. As the look on Lockhart’s face suggests, he simply does not want to be a man who kills; he refuses to be an Alec or a Dave. Lockhart’s action repairs the integrity of the Waggoman family: the evil Vic and Dave have been purged, and the patriarch Alec has been domesticated through marriage. While Lockhart can be seen in some ways to have

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failed—again, he kills no one directly, despite his pledge—he offers a model of masculinity that is restorative, rather than simply destructive. This look at just a couple of postwar films demonstrates the range of masculinities possible in the western, even in the 1950s. It also places Cookie and King-Lu in a continuum with the effort to redefine a masculine ideal in the western. In visually blocking or relegating phallic masculinity to the margins, as in the episodes discussed earlier, Reichardt replaces it with gentle domestic scenes: Cookie sweeping their cabin while King-Lu chops wood; Cookie decorating the cabin with a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace from the forest; and mostly, Cookie cooking, swathing fresh oily cakes in sweet honey and grating a dusting of cinnamon atop. Cookie and King-Lu cannot, however, shut out all the violence. They will not achieve even the limited success of Matt or Lockhart, for theirs is not the changed world that some ‘50s westerns sought. Instead, the film closes by explaining the origin of the bodies revealed in its prologue: the modern-day discovery of the skeletons of two men holding hands, buried in the woods. Those skeletons are Cookie and King-Lu. Their murderer is Thomas, a junior guard for the RWP, who serves as the avenging angel of phallic masculinity. A youth on the cusp of manhood, Thomas feels his masculinity slighted by others. Like Cookie, he is bullied by violent men—shoved out of line for oily cakes, ordered about and yelled at by traders. Unlike Cookie, however, who navigates the perils of masculine brutality by hiding in plain sight, Thomas will claim his entry to the masculine fraternity through violence, hunting down Cookie and King-Lu after their caper has come to light. Although their murders are offscreen—Reichardt’s own way of “closing the flap” against violence in the name of masculinity—she draws a clear line between the skeletons found in the film’s prologue and the success of Thomas’s vengeful hunting. An earlier exchange haunts their deaths. King-Lu asserts that Oregon Country “is still new,” especially compared to all the other places that have “been touched by now”: “History isn’t here yet. It’s coming, but we got here early this time. Maybe this time we can be ready for it. We can take it on our own terms.” Cookie, however, responds, “Doesn’t seem new to me. Seems old.” This conversation recalls the dialogue between Prospero and Miranda in The Tempest, when Miranda declares “O, brave new world/ that has such people in ‘t!” to which her father responds, “‘Tis new to thee.”20 Prospero and Cookie are correct. History has already arrived in Oregon in the form of the RWP, created by those already wealthy, supported by colonizing armies already powerful. The innocent ambitions of King-Lu are no match for the force of the nineteenth-century global economy, eager to dispossess the natives and exterminate the beaver as long as money is to be made. In Reichardt’s ending, there is no new masculinity that succeeds, however

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tentatively, to displace the old. The old men and old ways of Europe are too powerful. When I taught this film, I opened discussion with a history of the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, named for Serranus Hastings, whose donation founded the law school and who later served as the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. In the late 1850s, Serranus Hastings arranged massacres of Yuki Indians in Round Valley, not only organizing the ranchers and cowboys who joined the hunts, but also getting the state of California to reimburse the murderers for their ammunition.21 Although the college’s board recently (November 2021) voted to change the name of the school, history often honors men like Hastings who use violence to make their way through the world. Their names are on buildings, on statues, on diplomas, including that of Vice President Kamala Harris. By contrast, the lives of men like Cookie and King-Lu escape acclaim, in part because the world seemingly cannot move past its attraction to phallic masculinity. As Reichardt has said in an interview: “Even in the face of the politics we live in, in our government, that image [of the powerful white man] in filmmaking always gets a roar of applause.”22 Her film, however, makes a cinematic monument to the lives of those who resist that image and offer another way to be men. SLOW COWBOY: CERTAIN WOMEN While First Cow focuses on masculinity, Certain Women concerns the lives of women in modern day Montana, all of whom have taken on traditionally male roles.23 Attorney Laura (Laura Dern) laments that her good legal advice to clients goes unheard because she is female. Gina (Michelle Williams) is the “boss” in her family business. And the character whose labor names her, The Rancher (Lily Gladstone), lives alone on a ranch, caring for horses through the winter when she meets Beth (Kristen Stewart), an attorney from Livingston, who comes to town twice a week to teach a night class. This last story, of the female cowboy, and its connections with traditional representations of cowboys, is the focus of this section. Just as Reichardt crafts a new kind of heroism for Cookie, she draws on the inherent and inherited power of earlier westerns to elevate the character of The Rancher. The visual and narrative treatment of this cowboy figure link her in mien and manners to traditions that go back to Owen Wister’s Virginian. Through attention to the beauty of her labor and her dignified sobriety of purpose, Reichardt’s film asserts that not only is being influenced by classic westerns not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, those associations can heroize a figure not often included in the lore of cowboys.

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The episodes in Certain Women are drawn from three stories by Montana writer Maile Meloy, with Reichardt adding the interlocking elements and changing salient details. While, for example, retaining from Meloy’s story the Rancher’s identity as an Indigenous person through the casting of Lily Gladstone, who grew up on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, Reichardt changes the sex of the character, from an ardent male admirer of Beth to a woman who expresses, albeit silently, a charged yearning for the young lawyer. The plot, though, largely remains the same. The lonely Rancher stumbles across Beth’s class in “school law” when, killing time in town, she notices several cars turning into the school at night, a rarity in tiny Belfrey, Montana. Though not enrolled in the course, the Rancher sits in, finding the subject matter and Beth interesting. She also joins the lawyer for meals at the local diner before Beth’s long drive home, one time bringing her horse to ferry them across town. When Beth stops teaching the class without warning, the Rancher drives through the night to Livingston to find her. After an awkward morning encounter in the parking lot at Beth’s firm, the Rancher drives home, falling asleep at the wheel, which results in an anticlimactic accident, in which she simply drives off the road and knocks down a barbed wire fence before coming to a stop. Part of what disables critics from seeing the tether between Reichardt’s work and the tradition is her commitment to what has been dubbed “slow cinema,” a style of filmmaking that, like her work generally, “sits at the cusp of experimental and classical film traditions.”24 In slow cinema, time and space are treated differently than is common in commercial moviemaking. Minimal camera movement and fewer cuts decelerate the pace of action. In the proxemics of slow cinema, long shots are more common than close-ups. The immobile frame and longer than usual shot duration mean that mise-en-scène becomes more pronounced, a stronger presence in the narrative. This focus on visual detail tracks with cinematic practices that are “fascinated by the physicality of animate and inanimate matter, bodies and landscapes, all enhanced by slow and/or static long takes that deflate narrative progression, and through which the perceptual and material qualities of the image are enhanced,” in the words of Tiago de Luca.25 An “aesthetics of austerity,” in Gorfinkel’s words, complements Reichardt’s slow cinema, influencing production design, sound, and camera work.26 Reichardt typically adds an additional element, one might call it “quiet cinema,” which serves as the sonic partner to the slowness. Diegetic sound, precise and sharp, often functions like a musical score, while dialogue is pared away to virtual silence. Slow cinema is not, however, a prescriptive practice with sets of dos and don’ts, like the Danish Dogme 95 movement. Rather, it is an approach that “can be variously embedded in local roots and indebted to distinct cultural,

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intermedial and cinematic traditions,” while at the same time offering new ways of seeing those traditions.27 The question then arises, to what extent do these slow cinema practices indicate a rupture with the western tradition or a continuation of it? One answer is offered by Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour, writing about Reichardt’s 2010 western Meek’s Cutoff. They argue that quick and sustained action is a generic trait demanded by the western. Thus, the slow-moving Meeks is a “revisionist Western”: “of all the genre tropes that the film overturns, Meek’s most directly subverts the pacing of the western” (emphasis in original).28 Is pacing, however, a generic or stylistic feature? Edward Buscombe has argued, and I agree, that “To the extent to which a film can be said to have rhythm, this depends not upon the conventions of the genre . . . but upon the artistic personalities of the director and editor.”29 By way of example, I turn to Delmer Daves’s 3:10 to Yuma (1957), whose visual and narrative rhythms expand beyond the stereotype of the rapidly paced western.30 Based on an Elmore Leonard short story, 3:10 to Yuma concerns the relationship between a notorious outlaw, Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), and a poor farmer, Dan Evans (Van Heflin), who, desperate for cash, volunteers to guard Wade until the train to Yuma, and a proper trial, arrives at 3:10. Action episodes bookend the film, as it begins with the violent robbery of a stagecoach by Wade’s gang and ends with his men’s frenzied attempt to free Wade before he boards the train to Yuma. At the film’s heart, however, resides the emotional and psychological relationship that develops between the outlaw and the farmer while they wait for the train and share the bridal suite of a hotel in Contention City. The dialogue in these middle scenes is crucial for the plot, since these interactions lead Wade to change his mind, his life, and ultimately his moral character. With so much talk at the center of the film, Daves and his editor Al Clark no doubt realized that they had to prepare the viewers for a film that relied less on action and more on the slow pace of dialogue. The credit sequence begins that lesson. It opens with a high-angle shot of salt-lines on the ground, the barren earth suggesting an overwhelming psychological bleakness. The camera slowly tilts up to reveal, in an extreme long shot, a parched landscape in all directions. The forbidding prospect overwhelms the small overland stage in the distance. As the stage approaches the camera, which moves with a barely perceptible pan and nary a jump cut, the perspective does not become more human and intimate but less, as Daves cuts to a silhouette of the horses against the wavering lines of dried salt. The title song’s emphasis on ghosts, buzzards, and dying cattle establishes the tone of weary despair. As this opening makes clear, this is a region immobilized by drought. Families like Dan’s are nigh hopeless, as there is literally no money remaining in the town bank and no rain on the horizon. The slow pace, stark framing, and desolate

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imagery of the opening sequence communicate the moral seriousness of the story onscreen. This ‘50s version of slow cinema prepares the viewer for one of the film’s key sequences, when outlaw Wade and bar maid, Emmy (Felicia Farr), meet. As Wade’s gang enters the barroom, the episode initially promises to be a raucous celebration after their successful heist, suggested by the crowd burble of excited men. Daves, however, immediately quiets and slows the pace with a slightly elevated long shot of the bar, lined with outlaws on one side, and Emmy on the other, as she moves slowly down the length of the counter, pouring shot after shot, while the camera languidly dollies back. For two and a half minutes, the camera follows her movements up and down the bar, as she serves more whiskey and converses with the outlaws. A nondiegetic solo guitar, playing lyrically, contributes to the stillness. This quiet moment sets up an even slower scene, a few minutes later, when Ben and Emmy act on their mutual attraction. The later bridal suite sequence with Wade and Dan also has minimal nondiegetic music. The hotel is so spare and quiet that one character comments that the place is “like a tomb.” The austere scenes in the hotel depict the slow and deliberate shift in Ben Wade’s motives, a reversal that leads to the central twist of the plot: Wade’s determination not to board the train, but instead to save Dan from being shot by his gang, a decision that requires Wade to sacrifice his own freedom. When he chooses not to return to his men and instead literally leaps to join Dan on the train, Wade symbolically leaves his outlaw life for the world of domestic comforts offered by Emmy. As with The Man from Laramie, the climactic moment of action at the film’s conclusion is not violent, but rather restorative. Lest the viewer miss the regenerative nature of Wade’s gesture, as the train pulls away toward Yuma, a drenching rain begins to fall. In Certain Women, Reichardt makes similar formal choices to focus attention on the Rancher. These decisions affirm the Rancher’s kinship with the tradition of cowboys, even though she is unconventional in several ways. As an Indigenous woman managing animals on a ranch, she is both cowboy and Indian, merging categories typically opposed in westerns. As a queer desiring woman, she upends conventional expectations for heterosexual romance in the western. She is neither the “good woman,” representative of civilization and order, as exemplified by Cathy in My Darling Clementine, nor the bad woman, like Chihuahua of the same film, who signifies the moral degradation enabled by the freedoms of the West.31 Nor is she the woman who demonstrates a “failure to understand” the values of the hero, in Robert Warshow’s formulation.32 Instead of just a symbol in relation to the hero, Reichardt makes the Rancher herself the hero, imbuing her with characteristics classically associated with male cowboys. These efforts do not masculinize her, but rather serve narratively to depict this woman’s full and rich personhood.

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The segment telling the Rancher’s story, which at forty minutes is the longest of the three in the film, opens with a close-up of two pairs of feet standing in straw, the Rancher’s and those of a horse in her care. As with Cookie’s first onscreen appearance, Reichardt’s camera here focuses on a detail: the work boots, solid, scuffed, and worn. The Rancher’s insulated workpants are frayed on the bottom; she is not new to this labor. As she continues with her chores, a cut reveals a workspace framed in a symmetrical long shot, with stables opening to the left and the right. With minimal cuts, the Rancher is shown simply doing her work: currying a horse; mucking out the stalls; replenishing the straw. The gorgeous Montana landscape is reduced to a small opening at the center back of the barn. It is the work, not the setting, that will be the star of this western. Crisp diegetic sound—boots on wood planks, horse hooves squeaking on snow, the plastic wrapper of a microwaved burrito—composes the soundtrack. While the television program the Rancher watches while eating dinner lauds outer space as “full of danger and full of promise, a new frontier just waiting to be explored,” her work links her to the old frontier, with just a few modern devices (a truck, a four-wheeler, that microwave, etc.) to betray the age. Employing slow cinema techniques, the film lavishes attention on the diurnal quality of the Rancher’s labor. Her efforts are not presented in a quick montage; rather, the camera follows her work over several days as she repairs fences, exercises the horses, grooms, and feeds them, in a mesmerizing ritual that confers honor on the work and the worker. Through the Rancher, Reichardt taps into the western’s tradition of celebrating professional expertise, what I have dubbed elsewhere “the romance of competence.”33 Ryan Gilbey’s statement that Reichardt “favours chores over rehearsal” for her actors is no mere glibness.34 Tales abound of actors spending days learning to drive teams of oxen, start fires without matches, or bake bread in the ground. The powerful dramatic effects of this practice are fully on display in “The Rancher” sequence. Indeed, Reichardt reports she had enough footage of Gladwell caring for the horses to make a separate film.35 Like well-made heist movies, some of the most engaging westerns offer viewers “inside baseball” of cowboy life. In depicting the rigors of the cattle drive, the building of railroads, the plowing of the land, westerns often feature people laboring together, in scenes that can have the feel of a YouTube instructional video set to stirring music. How else to explain the extraordinary sequence in Shane of the removal of the tree root? While the power of the activity comes in part from the symbolism of clearing the wilderness, it is as well the skill and labor of the men who remove the stump that is celebrated in this segment. While some critics argue that violence, specifically and solely gunplay, marks the hero of a western, I have argued instead that it is competence in a range of tasks—working around the ranch, handling animals, performing jobs essential to survival in the West, including the use of weapons—that

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distinguishes the protagonist.36 It is how a task is done, rather than simply what is done, that makes the hero distinctly meritorious. In this respect, the Rancher is a classic figure of western competence. The routine she embraces day after day establishes her as a character of enormous sympathy. She needs no boss to check her work or punch her timecard. Though her comforts and likely her pay are meager, she is “a figure vivid, keen, remarkable,” to quote from Emerson Hough’s 1897 description of the cowboy ideal.37 This focus on expertise was shaped by the urtext for many a western, Owen Wister’s The Virginian. The opening chapter, whose title “Enter the Man” has a simplicity that belies its symbolic power, details the Virginian’s competence in ranch work while also emphasizing the beauty of the worker. The narrator, while riding a train, watches cowboys breaking horses outside his window, when he notices one particular man, a man who sat on the high gate of the corral. . . . For he now climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin. The others had all visibly whirled the rope, some of them even shoulder high. I did not see his arm lift or move. He appeared to hold the rope down low, by his leg. But like a sudden snake I saw the noose go out its length and fall true; and the thing was done.38

Once he deboards the train, the narrator again espies “the man”: Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back; a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat, and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge-belt that slanted across his hips. He had plainly come many miles from somewhere across the vast horizon, as the dust upon him showed. His boots were white with it. His overalls were gray with it. The weather-beaten bloom of his face shone through it duskily, as the ripe peaches look upon their trees in a dry season. But no dinginess of travel or shabbiness of attire could tarnish the splendor that radiated from his youth and strength. . . . Had I been the bride, I should have taken the giant, dust and all.”39

The scene is an audacious way to begin the novel, both for its length, its detail, and its unselfconscious eroticizing of “the man.” Like the heist film, the passage offers the reader access not only to what may be an unfamiliar way of life but also to a culture that honors a type of labor and laborer that are foreign to the visitor from the East. Though the work is grubby, the worker is not diminished by it. Rather, his expertise elevates him in the regard of onlookers, in much the same way that the detailed depiction of the Rancher’s work enhances her in the viewer’s eyes. The passage ends with a second observer from the train declaring “That man knows his business,” perhaps the

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highest form of praise in the story.40 The necessity and power of competence in tasks associated with the West are iterated throughout the novel, as in this passage spoken by The Virginian: “Now back East you can be middling and get along. But if you go to try a thing on in this western country, you’ve got to do it well. You’ve got to deal cyards [sic] well; you’ve got to steal well; and if you claim to be quick with your gun, you must be quick.”41 Though Robert Warshow famously identified the Westerner as a “man of leisure,” I would wager he had only My Darling Clementine in mind, with Henry Fonda lounging on the sidewalk, since countless westerns (and my experience growing up on a farm) belie that fantasy of western ease.42 Hard work, expertly executed, is what the West requires. In contrast with the assured skill of the Rancher, those who work in the towns and cities of Certain Women are objects of gentle amusement. The lawyer Beth reveals herself to be an insecure and barely competent worker. Her first words to her class are “I’ve never done this before. I don’t quite know where to start,” and she confesses to the Rancher both that she doesn’t “even know school law, I’m going to have to learn enough to teach it every time,” and that she took the job based on the mistaken assumption that it was in Belgrade, Montana, rather than Belfry, a four-hour drive each way from Livingston. She eventually quits after the third class because of the difficult commute. While Beth crams her hastily composed lectures with Supreme Court decisions, the teachers who attend her class pepper her with more mundane concerns—parking spots, student insubordination—thus establishing a humorous gap between the expectations of instructor and students. Beth’s replacement will announce at the start of his class that “As some of you know and the rest of you will find out soon enough, I am recently divorced”—a line that opens up sitcom possibilities. Town life cannot compete with the sober competence that ranch life demands. Reichardt photographs the school building and the stable similarly so as to bring these two workplaces into conversation with one another. As Beth and the Rancher leave the school to eat at the local diner, the symmetrical long shot of the hallway recalls the layout of the stables, with lockers rather than stalls lining the sides. There is even a similarly shaped window at the back of the hallway. It does not, however, frame the mountains, as the barn window did, but simply darkness, suggesting the contracted lives of the people who labor there. The dissimilitude implies that there are consolations to ranching not offered by life in town, represented as comparatively barren and ugly, especially under the ghastly fluorescent lighting of the classroom. In the past Reichardt has expressed skepticism of majestic, expansive panoramas, which have historically underwritten myths of limitless possibility. She has said, “I had a rule that there would be no vistas [in Meek’s Cutoff] because I didn’t want to be romanticizing the West.”43 Indeed, Meek’s is

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renowned for its unappealing, desolate landscapes. In Certain Women, however, and especially in this segment, the framing of the landscape serves not to feed a national myth of unlimited opportunity, but rather to represent the possibilities of desire. While the introductory scenes of the segment constrain the viewer’s access to these vistas, which can be glimpsed only through the small stable window or are obscured by objects in the barnyard, once the Rancher has met Beth, Reichardt allows the expansive beauty of the West to emerge. Starting her chores the morning after attending the first class, the Rancher pushes open the sliding door of the barn to reveal a winter landscape. The panorama is showcased in a stunning shot. The mountains, crisp and clear in their frigid beauty, frame the valley, a pastoral image enhanced by the happy nickering of the horses. Here the natural beauty of the West fills the frame, following the encounter with Beth, a pattern that will continue until the epilogue of the film, after Beth rejects the Rancher’s attention. As part of the practice of slow cinema, Reichardt here alters her usual style to embrace the specifics of the locale, and thus reveals her indebtedness to the visual traditions of the cinematic West, because they serve the development of this character and this story. The practice of slow and quiet cinema, with its careful mise-en-scène and composition within the frame, temporally dilates the Rancher’s courtship of Beth, enabling an appreciation of the nuanced communication between the two women. Over the course of three nights, the Rancher will court like a cowboy, showing up on horseback the third night, to convey Beth from the school to the diner. The camera confers dignity upon the character and this courtly act. In a dramatic low angle shot, Reichardt has the viewer look up to the Rancher on horseback, whose competence at handling the animal is on full display. As she smiles, secure in her powers at that moment, the object of her affection clings to her behind the saddle. When this gesture occurs in Meloy’s original short story, “Travis, B,” the male protagonist will dismiss it later as “cowboy antics.”44 In Certain Women, however, the deed is filmed heroically and gracefully, from the long shot of the horse and rider moving down the barren highway at dusk, with literal “purple mountain majesties” in the background, to the low camera angle looking up at the Rancher and Beth when they ride to the diner. Our Rancher is proud, in control, confident. Despite her skill with horses, however, romantic gestures will not ensure success in love. On the ride back to the school after the diner, though the Rancher is once again pleased to have Beth behind her on the horse, Beth’s coming rejection is delicately foreshadowed by the screaming horns of semis on the nearby highway which remind the viewer that this is not the Old West. The Rancher’s use of the horse is anachronistic and might be regarded by Beth as inappropriate. Rather than traversing a beautiful vista in this second

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ride, the women now move past a motor garage dotted with dirty oil drums and old trucks. While the journey begins in a seemingly timeless western atmosphere, it ends in the ugliness of the twenty-first century. Through this second contrast between an idealized image and its opposite (ranch/school, pleasure/failure on the ride), Reichardt invokes traditional associations to refigure them, grounding them in the specifics of this scene and these people. After Beth’s rejection, the landscape, seen once again from the stable, is, as before, glimpsed only through the small window in the background of the shot. The expansive possibilities of romance have been foreclosed. Rather than avoiding the referential potential of the western landscape, Reichardt here redefines the symbolism. She is not “subvert[ing]” or “upend[ing]” its mythic associations, but rather harnessing its power in order to redirect it in the service of story and character. As she admitted in an interview about Certain Women, “The beauty of the place overwhelms the roughness of the chore and sort of cancels it.”45 The landscape here serves, then, as a personal, rather than a national, metaphor, signaling the amorous opportunities opened and then closed for the Rancher. Reichardt has often mentioned her anxious relation to the cinematic tradition of the West. Speaking at Oxford University in 2014, she voiced worries while filming Meek’s Cutoff of “falling into the trap” of representing the West, specifically Indigenous people, like “Channel 6 cowboys and Indians movies when I was a kid.” There are, she noted, “things that were so built into the language of cinema” that “I didn’t realize until I was shooting” how images would read to audiences raised on earlier westerns.46 In the two westerns she made after those comments, however, Reichardt has demonstrated, that, like all great directors, she has eluded that trap not by jettisoning the tradition, but rather by crafting her own idiom within it. In First Cow and Certain Women, Reichardt reimagines the cowboy, the lonesome, laboring figure who dreams of what is possible. As her work demonstrates, traditional cinematic imagery of the West can be more than simply the residue of a moribund tradition. It can also serve as a signpost that leads to the next imagining of the American West. NOTES 1. Mark Olsen, “How Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow Keeps the Legacy of Alternative Westerns Alive,” The Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2020, www​.latimes​.com​ /entertainment​-arts​/movies​/story​/2020​-03​-10​/first​-cow​-kelly​-reichardt​-john​-magaro​ -orion​ -lee; E. Dawn Hall, ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 93, www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/10​.3366​/j​.ctv7n0brz; Charles Bramesco, “Kelly Reichardt, ‘First Cow’ and the New Western Cinema,” Inside

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Hook, 6 March, 2020, www​.insidehook​.com​/article​/movies​/kelly​-reichardt​-first​-cow​ -western; Armond White, “First Cow Is an Anti-Masculine, Anti-Western,” National Review, July 17, 2020, www​.nationalreview​.com​/2020​/07​/movie​-review​-first​-cow​ -anti​-masculine​-anti​-western​/. 2. Brad Garrett-Davis, What Is a Western?: Region, Genre, Imagination (Norman, OK; University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 4. 3. Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (Norman, OK; University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 16. 4. First Cow, directed by Kelly Reichardt (2019; Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate, 2020), DVD. 5. Olsen. 6. Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3. 7. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 26. 8. Peter Stanfield, Horse Opera: The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy (Champaign, IL; University of Illinois Press, 2002), 4. 9. Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1998), 163. 10. Stanfield, 3. 11. Orla Smith, “Modern Westerns: How Andrew Haigh and Kelly Reichardt Are Deromanticizing the West,” Seventh Row, April 8, 2020, seventh-row. com/2020/04/08/haigh-reichardt-modern-westerns/. 12. Chance Solem-Pfeifer, “With the Captivating Western ‘First Cow,’ Kelly Reichardt Mines Oregon Once Again for Its Landscape,” Willamette Week, July 7, 2020, www​.wweek​.com​/arts​/2020​/07​/07​/with​-the​-captivating​-western​-first​-cow​ -kelly​-reichardt​-mines​-oregon​-once​-again​-for​-its​-landscape​/. 13. Olsen. 14. Olsen. 15. Wendy Chapman Peek, “The Romance of Competence: Re-thinking Masculinity in the Western,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 30, 4 (Winter 2003). 16. Red River, directed by Howard Hawks (1948; Culver City, CA: MGM/UA Home Video, 1990), videocassette (VHS). 17. Virginia Wright Wexman, Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood Performance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 91. 18. Patrick McGee, From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 89. 19. The Man from Laramie, directed by Anthony Mann (1955; Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 2005), DVD. 20. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. J.F. Bernard and Paul Yachnin (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2021): 5.1.185–87. 21. Thomas Fuller, “He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him?” The New York Times, Oct. 27, 2021, www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​/10​/27​ /us​/hastings​-college​-law​-native​-massacre​.html.

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22. Olsen. 23. Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt (2016; Film Science), www​ .criterionchannel​.com​/videos​/certain​-women. 24. Elena Gorfinkel, “Exhausted Drift: Austerity, Dispossession and the Politics of Slow in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff,” in Slow Cinema, ed. Tiago De Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 123, ProQuest Ebook Central. 25. Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge, Slow Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 17, ProQuest Ebook Central. 26. Gorfinkel, 124. 27. de Luca and Barradas Jorge, 17. 28. Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour, Kelly Reichardt (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 44, ProQuest Ebook Central. 29. Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre,” in Film Genre Reader II, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas, 1995), 13. 30. 3:10 to Yuma, directed by Delmer Daves (1957; Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures,2002), DVD. 31. My Darling Clementine, directed by John Ford (1946; Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2003), DVD. 32. Robert Warshow, “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner,” in The Western Reader, ed. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight, 1998), 36. 33. Peek, 208. 34. Ryan Gilbey, “Kelly Reichardt: The Quiet American,” BFI, May 25, 2021, www​.bfi​.org​.uk​/sight​-and​-sound​/interviews​/kelly​-reichardt​-first​-cow. 35. Kelly Reichardt, “Interview with Kelly Reichardt, Director of Certain Women,” Culture Whisper, April 3, 2017, www​.culturewhisper​.com​/r​/things​_to​_do​/new​_kristen​ _stewart​_film​_certain​_women​_director​_interview​/8888. 36. Peek, 208. 37. Emerson Hough, The Story of the Cowboy (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1897), vii, books.google.com/books?id=w6gWAAAAYAAJ&q=vivid%2C+keen#v= snippet&q=vivid%2C%20keen&f=false. 38. Owen Wister, The Virginian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11. 39. Wister, 12–13. 40. Wister, 12. 41. Wister, 261; italics in original. 42. Warshow, 37. 43. Hall, 95. 44. Maile Meloy, “Travis, B,” The New Yorker, August 8, 2002, www​.newyorker​ .com​/magazine​/2002​/10​/28​/travis​-b. 45. Reichardt, “Interview.” 46. “Kelly Reichardt ‘In Conversation,’” interview, Humanitas—Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, University of Oxford Podcasts, posted June 12, 2014, podcasts.ox.ac.uk/kelly-reichardt-conversation.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bramesco, Charles. “Kelly Reichardt, ‘First Cow’ and the New Western Cinema.” Inside Hook, 6 March, 2020. www​.insidehook​.com​/article​/movies​/kelly​-reichardt​ -first​-cow​-western. Buscombe, Edward. “The Idea of Genre.” In Film Genre Reader II, edited by Barry Keith Grant, 11–25. Austin: University of Texas, 1995. Daves, Delmer, dir. 3:10 to Yuma. 1957; Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 2002. DVD. de Luca, Tiago and Barradas Jorge, Nuno, eds. Slow Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central. Denning, Michael. Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1998. Ford, John, dir. My Darling Clementine. 1946; Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2003. DVD. Fuller, Thomas. “He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him?” The New York Times, Oct. 27, 2021. www​.nytimes​.com​/2021​/10​ /27​/us​/hastings​-college​-law​-native​-massacre​.html. Fusco, Katherine, and Seymour, Nicole. Kelly Reichardt. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. Garrett-Davis, Brad. What Is a Western?: Region, Genre, Imagination. Norman, OK; University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Gilbey, Ryan. “Kelly Reichardt: The Quiet American.” BFI, 25 May 2021. www​.bfi​ .org​.uk​/sight​-and​-sound​/interviews​/kelly​-reichardt​-first​-cow. Gorfinkel, Elena. “Exhausted Drift: Austerity, Dispossession and the Politics of Slow in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff.” In de Luca and Barradas Jorge. Slow Cinema, 123–36. Hall, E. Dawn. ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/10​.3366​/j​.ctv7n0brz. Hawks, Howard, dir. Red River. 1948; Culver City, CA: MGM/UA Home Video, 1990. Videocassette (VHS), 134 min. Hough, Emerson. The Story of the Cowboy. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1897. boo ks.google.com/books?id=w6gWAAAAYAAJ&q=vivid%2C+keen#v=snippet&q= vivid%2C%20keen&f=false. “Kelly Reichardt ‘In Conversation.’” Interview. Humanitas—Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. University of Oxford Podcasts. Posted June 12, 2014. podcasts.ox.ac.uk/kelly-reichardt-conversation. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Mann, Anthony, dir. The Man from Laramie. 1955; Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 2005. DVD, remastered HD. McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Meloy, Maile. “Travis, B.” The New Yorker. August 8, 2002. www​.newyorker​.com​/ magazine​/2002​/10​/28​/travis​-b.

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Mitchell, Lee Clark. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Olsen, Mark. “How Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow Keeps the Legacy of Alternative Westerns Alive.” The Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2020. www​.latimes​.com​/entertainment​-arts​/movies​/story​/2020​-03​-10​/first​-cow​-kelly​-reichardt​-john​-magaro​ -orion​-lee. Peek, Wendy Chapman. “The Romance of Competence: Re-thinking Masculinity in the Western.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 30, 4 (Winter 2003): 206–19. Reichardt, Kelly, dir. Certain Women. Film Science, 2016. www​.criterionchannel​.com​ /videos​/certain women. ———, dir. First Cow. 2019. Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate, 2020. DVD, 1080p HD. ———. “Interview with Kelly Reichardt, director of Certain Woman.” Culture Whisper, April 3, 2017. www​.culturewhisper​.com​/r​/things​_to​_do​/new​_kristen​ _stewart​_film​_certain​_women​_director​_interview​/8888. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Edited by J.F. Bernard and Paul Yachnin. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2021. Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Smith, Orla. “Modern Westerns: How Andrew Haigh and Kelly Reichardt Are Deromanticizing the West.” Seventh Row, April 8, 2020. seventh-row.com/2020/04/08/haigh-reichardt-modern-westerns/. Solem-Pfeifer, Chance. “With the Captivating Western ‘First Cow,’ Kelly Reichardt Mines Oregon Once Again for Its Landscape.” Willamette Week, July 7, 2020. www​.wweek​.com​/arts​/2020​/07​/07​/with​-the​-captivating​-western​-first​-cow​-kelly​ -reichardt​-mines​-oregon​-once​-again​-for​-its​-landscape​/. Stanfield, Peter. Horse Opera: The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Warshow, Robert. “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner.” In The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, 35–47. New York: Limelight, 1998. Wexman, Virginia Wright. Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage, and Hollywood Performance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. White, Armond. “First Cow Is an Anti-Masculine, Anti-Western.” National Review, July 17, 2020. www​.nationalreview​.com​/2020​/07​/movie​-review​-first​-cow​-anti​ -masculine​-anti​-western​/. Wister, Owen. The Virginian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Chapter Nine

Rewriting the Western Myth Marcia Muller’s Private Eye on California Cynthia S. Hamilton‌‌‌

“America transformed the detective hero by supplying him with the accoutrements of an ethnic past,” Ruehlmann wrote in Saint with a Gun (1974). “The private eye novel was a Western that took place somewhere else.”1 Ruehlmann took his title from D.H. Lawrence’s famous essay, “Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels” in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) which describes Natty Bumppo as a “saint with a gun.”2 This linkage, which postulates resemblance and progression, provides a useful framework for analyzing Marcia Muller’s detective series featuring Sharon McCone.3 The McCone series utilizes the conventions of the private eye novel while reinterpreting the tropes of hardboiled detective fiction in ways that look backward through Ruehlmann and Lawrence to Zane Grey and Cooper. Muller gives her detective a ranch in the high desert near Mono Lake as well as a house in San Francisco. While McCone’s office library contains volumes on criminal law, her ranch has a well-stocked library of colorful westerns in the lounge, on either side of the large fireplace. MULLER AND THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE Muller’s hardboiled detective novels engage with nature as a crucial element of composition. Her presentation of landscape helps establish tone. At times, nature also becomes a protagonist, shaping the actions of her characters. Muller’s shifting descriptions of Tufa Lake in Where Echoes Live (1991) and 165

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Burn Out (2008) provide a good example of the way landscape both reflects and influences her detective’s perceptions. In Where Echoes Live, Muller’s description echoes Mark Twain’s assessment in Roughing It (1872). Indeed, after a corpse has been found in Tufa Lake, Muller has one of her characters agreeing with Twain’s assessment. Twain, he notes, describes the area as “a lifeless, hideous, treeless desert . . . wild, gloomy, foreboding . . . suggestive of sterility and death.”4 Although McCone protests that Twain did not see the beauty of the place, the description of her first visit suggests an eerie and somewhat threatening place. “Ahead of me loomed a petrified forest of twisted, surreal shapes,” McCone reports. “They stood alone, their knobby limbs raised high, some in interlocking groups—eight, ten, twelve feet tall, stained pink and gold by the setting sun.”5 As the wind rustles the sagebrush, McCone looks around: “The tufa was fully as beautiful as I had expected, but also grotesque and eerie. I felt a chill on my shoulder blades that had little to do with the wind.”6 Muller emphasizes the sparseness of humanity within this landscape, making Zelda’s restaurant seem an oasis with its “red-and-gold neon sign flash[ing] a welcome against the black sky.”7 This is where people congregate, refugees from the isolation of homes set well apart within the landscape. By contrast, in Burn Out, Tufa Lake becomes a picturesque backdrop nostalgically associated with McCone’s memories of her first encounters with Ripinski, now her husband. As she studies Tufa Lake from a bluff by her husband’s ranch, the tufa blends indistinguishably into the landscape. McCone recalls the role her husband played in saving the ecosystem of the lake. Now “the streams flowed freely, the lake teemed with life.”8 On this visit, McCone has not been summoned to investigate criminal activity; instead, she has come to recover from “fear and nightmares” and from “the grinding day-to-day effort of managing a growing investigative agency,” an effort that had “sucked [her] spirit dry.”9 In Burn Out, her husband’s ranch, something of a pastoral space with its Paiute shepherd and flock of sheep in Where Echoes Live, is now her place of refuge and renewal. For McCone, the old-fashioned kitchen speaks “of continuity and an acceptance of the past.”10 Such descriptions show the way Muller synchronizes landscape and emotion. But Muller’s landscapes are not only a way of creating atmosphere and reflecting her detective’s emotional responses to events. Muller invests landscapes with something like a lingering consciousness of past human activity. “I don’t believe in the supernatural,” McCone comments in Where Echoes Live, but I do believe that sometimes places can absorb the emotions surrounding events that have happened there.”11 Standing in Stone Valley near the Hopwood cabin, McCone registers a “sense of wrongness” that is particularly strong.12 In Listen to the Silence (1999), when McCone

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and Ripinski first encounter the unmapped ghost town of Cinder Cone, they explore the deserted gas station and general store. Stepping into the derelict house, McCone “couldn’t shake the notion that something bad had happened here—so bad that even the passage of decades couldn’t eradicate its emotional traces.”13 Landscape can also be treated as an adversary contributing to the dangers facing the detective. In Wolf in the Shadows (1993), McCone is acutely aware of the natural perils of “night creatures,” scorpions, coyotes, and rattlesnakes as she crosses the borderland with Mexico.14 As she tries to put these out of mind, the steep slope of the canyon itself becomes an adversary. McCone fights for balance, pitches forward, is “plunged into a stand of dry, prickly vegetation” and has her clothes pierced by cactus spines.15 The grounds of a derelict mansion in The Color of Fear (2017) become a formidable obstacle course in the darkness of a stormy night when McCone is chased by a murderer. She climbs into what remains of a large fountain, boosting herself up “between two of the nasty-looking fish” and is wounded as “one of their sharp marble teeth opened a gash in my cheek.”16 Muller makes skilled use of the dynamics of landscape within her novels. Her descriptions also echo the complex representational strategies that present ideas of nature resonant with conflicted and conflicting conceptualizations of the American West. In Wilderness and the American Mind (1973), Roderick Nash points toward wilderness as a site of primitive regression, referring to a habitat without men where wild beasts roam, one where people are “likely to get into a disordered, confused, or ‘wild’ condition.”17 He also associates wilderness with Edenic purity, where “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”18 As Richard Slotkin has demonstrated, associations of untamed nature with savagery retain a strong component of Puritan thinking about the wilderness as the devil’s territory. The Edenic view of wilderness owes much to tracts promoting the benefits of removal to the “new” world. As Leo Marx and Lawrence Buell point out, both the association of American wilderness with “Arcadian utopia” and with “dystopian desert” go back beyond the dawn of American settlement.19 Ideas of wilderness as arcadia feed into notions of the benefits—including spiritual benefits—of nature; those of savagery feed into constructions of otherness and the gothic. Inextricably linked to both constructions is the positioning of Native Americans as denizens and representatives of wilderness and nature.20 James Fennimore Cooper was a key figure in fixing the mythology of the frontier, as Richard Slotkin recognizes, but one should not overlook the painters of the Hudson River School whose visual images and treatises about nature painting had a profound influence on public taste, even to the point of spurring wilderness tourism.21 Thomas Cole’s description of the aesthetic

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and moral inspiration to be had from Nature reinforced Edenic aspects of the wilderness myth. In his “Essay on American Scenery” (1836), Cole credited “rural nature” with being “the exhaustless mine from which the poet and the painter have brought such wondrous treasures—an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoyment, where all may drink, and be awakened to a deeper feeling of the works of genius, and a keener perception of the beauty of our existence.”22 Cole argued for the morally restorative power of nature. “For those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature’s loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation.”23 This sentiment is illustrated in The Deerslayer (1841) when Leatherstocking stops paddling his canoe on Lake Champlain to admire the scene. “This is a sight to warm the heart!” he exclaims, “the lake seems made to let us get an insight into the noble forests; and land and water, alike, stand in the beauty of God’s providence!”24 Zane Grey speaks of the “dominating power of wild, lonely, desolate places” in “What the Desert Means to Me” (1924).25 And in Muller’s novels, McCone learns to value wilderness as well. “Years ago, before I met Hy, I’d been a confirmed urbanite,” she confesses in Listen to the Silence. “Wide open spaces made me edgy, their silence drove me to distraction. But Hy, an environmental crusader, had flown me off to some of the most remote parts of the state: the White Mountains, the Trinity Alps, Death Valley. He’d shown me the comfort of their vastness, taught me to find peace in their silence.”26 Savagery, degeneracy, and evil are just as integral to the idea of wilderness, however. William Bradford describes the New England landscape in the seventeenth century as “a hideous & desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts & wild men.”27 Cotton Mather refers to New England settlers as “a People of God settled in those which were once the Devils Territories.”28 This is the view of the wilderness that one finds in the Indian Captivity narratives from that of Mary Rowlandson onward, as Richard Slotkin argues in Regeneration through Violence.29 Such expressions of Puritan thinking retained their strength within an increasingly secularized Puritan heritage. In Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799), Charles Brockden Brown stated his intention to replace the tropes of the European gothic with those of the American wilderness with its perils and “incidents of Indian hostility.”30 The guilt and unrestrained freedom of the Puritan’s wilderness, together with the Puritan penchant for metaphor, facilitated the use of external wilderness as a fitting ground for the exploration of inner nature, endowing savage landscape with gothic instrumentality. The tufa formations in Where Echoes Live where McCone senses but cannot see the presence of another; the lava beds in Listen to the Silence where she is pursued by an unknown assailant; and the grounds of the Bellefleur mansion in The Color of Fear where the vegetation seems

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actively malignant: all are examples of landscapes that have become gothic territories where the hunter has become the haunted as well as the hunted. The lava beds of Listen to the Silence were the battlefield for the Medoc War. When McCone surveys the landscape for the first time after her truck has been sabotaged, she feels “hideously alone” despite Ripinski’s presence. “This might have been a landscape after the end of the world as we knew it; I might have been the sole survivor,” she thinks as she stares, mesmerised by the “torturously twisted rock formations, towering domes, and chasms that cut deep into the earth.”31 She thinks of the landscape as one where “a giant hand had spilled a noxious liquid,” where “the formations stretched their gnarled limbs toward the sky, as though struggling to pull free.”32 When McCone returns to the lava beds alone at night and is pursued by a man with a gun, she runs toward a lava tube and crawls deeper and deeper into the darkness. “I pawed frantically for an outlet,” she says. “Solid rock wall. Dark subterranean trap, so dark I could feel it, hear it, smell it. Taste it, even.” This is a landscape where she is pursued as much by her fears as by the man who has already wounded her. “Now I knew what hell was like,” she comments, “not fire and brimstone, but complete, endless darkness.”33 Regression and progress have both been associated with American thinking about the wilderness from the Puritan’s “errand into wilderness” onward. Most famously, in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1894), Frederick Jackson Turner postulated that every phase of settlement had brought “a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line,” that “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier.”34 This was an idea central to Zane Grey’s portrayal of the west. “In every man and woman there survives the red blood of our ancestors, the primitive instincts” Grey wrote in “What the Desert Means to Me.” “In these hides the secret of the eloquent and tremendous influence of the desert.”35 Grey’s interest in and commitment to Social Darwinism maintains Turner’s conceptualization of regression as reinvigoration and renewal. But Muller’s view is much closer to the jeremiad contained in Thomas Cole’s painting series “The Course of Empire” (1836) with its notion of cyclical history. In Cole’s series, canvases depict the inevitable progression from the savage state to pastoral idyll and then to the consummation of empire. These are followed by destruction and desolation.36 It is this image of progress leading to desolation that one sees as an important component in Muller’s portrayal of the West. It endows her work with a strong element of environmental and social criticism. Both Where Echoes Live and Listen to the Silence have plots that revolve around plans for renewed development in remote locations, plans that threaten the local ecology, both social and natural. In Where Echoes Live, the

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crimes committed against people are associated with abuses of the environment, deepening the environmental criticism. The book’s action takes place during a campaign by an environmental protection group to save Tufa Lake from destruction. Published in 1991, Muller’s novel is contemporaneous with the battle to save Mono Lake. The corporation involved has portrayed their enterprise as a mining development. They have done this to get access to the land, but their actual plans involve building a high-end resort on the mesa. The environmental coalition begins by fighting the supposed mining development. A member of the coalition tells McCone that while some residents see the proposed resumption of mining as a boost for the economy, most “of the intelligent people” see the dangers: “Not only is open-pit mining noisy and disfiguring to the landscape . . . but the cyanide leaching process they use poisons the air and ground water.”37 The planned luxury resort with an airstrip on the mesa, McCone realizes, will also be destructive: “Promiseville will be ruined, and the ecosystem of Tufa Lake is sure to suffer.”38 In Listen to the Silence¸ the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana is threatened with an unwanted luxury resort development. “Our old way of life is over,” the proprietor of the lodge at which McCone is staying tells her. He fears that the new development will bring traffic and destroy the peace of the area. When McCone asks about the potential benefits to the local economy, he replies that the resort will be self-sufficient with “everything they need, from film to fancy restaurants.” He also fears that it will destroy a good seasonal economy based on fishermen and hunters: “a big development with an airstrip and all, it pollutes and messes with nature,” he says. “Pretty soon the fishermen and hunters’ll go someplace else. And then Sage Rock’ll be on its way to being just a memory.”39 It is the idea of progress leading to desolation that Muller embodies in her portrayal of the abandoned settlements of the desert. Ghost towns leave ugly ruins in the landscape as the desert reclaims the land. “An ancient, rusted gas pump stood in front of one [of the buildings], the canopy roof of the station collapsed around it,” McCone observes as she surveys Cinder Cone in Listen to the Silence. “A weathered sign sagged across the facade. On the opposite side of the road loomed a volcanic dome. Corroded metal showed through the dry, dense thicket at its base—an old dumping ground.40 Muller’s ghost towns emphasize the dangers of a boom-and-bust economy. The ironically named Promiseville in Where Echoes Live, like Cinder Cone in Listen to the Silence, is a landscape of death: “The valley was depressingly barren. Not a tree, not a blade of grass grew there; the only living things were the sagebrush and mesquite that clung to the dark hills.” As she drives toward the town, McCone passes the cemetery with its “wind-scoured tombstones and a sagging iron fence.”41 The abandoned houses are littered with the detritus of a vanished community: “corroded iron bedsteads; once-fancy curtains hanging

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in tatters at the windows; a cookstove with a skillet still standing on one burner; rodent-gnawed armchairs; the smashed head of a child’s doll.” The skeletal remains of the buildings reveal “caved-in ceilings, wallpaper hanging in great peeling swaths, broken floorboards, [and] exposed lathe.”42 A cabin further up the valley is constructed from materials scavenged from the town and surrounded by “rusted prospecting gear, tools, and cast-off automotive parts.”43 The few remaining inhabitants are themselves leftover from another life. Lily, an aging former prostitute turned prospector, looks out from the porch of the derelict house in which she camps toward the cemetery. “It’s full of people whose dreams all died,” she tells McCone. “Some nights the only thing I can think of is those people who came to get rich and never got nothing but a pine coffin. And I worry that someday that might be me.”44 Bayard is described as a “cross between a desert rat and one of the area’s leftover hippies.” His eyes are “dull and burned out” from too much drug abuse.45 Hopwood is a man who has lost his family, whose dreams have died, leaving him with a monomaniacal determination to restore Promiseville’s mining industry or destroy it utterly. In Where Echoes Live and Listen to the Silence, Muller uses her characters’ attitudes toward the environment as something of a moral litmus test. In Where Echoes Live, she examines two different approaches to environmental campaigning. McCone’s husband is a committed environmental activist who has placed himself in jeopardy because of his beliefs, serving time in prison for his activities. One of McCone’s best friends does legal advocacy for the California Coalition for Environmental Preservation. Then there is the hypocritical Sanderson, “one of the new breed of environmentalists: logical, unemotional, equipped with the latest technology, and with an eye for the bottom line.”46 McCone comes to view him as someone working for a program rather than a cause, not something believed in, but “merely an exercise in management skills and control.”47 In Listen to the Silence, Muller uses McCone’s birth mother, an advocate for environmental protection, to examine a third approach to environmental activism. Both McCone’s birth parents are Shoshone. In her depictions of them, Muller employs what Shepard Krech labels the trope of the “Ecological Indian.” In keeping with Krech’s model, McCone’s parents serve as a counterpoint to a dominant, more environmentally exploitative economy. Derived from and related to the idea of the “noble savage,” the ecological Indian who “understands the systemic consequences of his actions, feels deep sympathy with all living forms, and takes steps to conserve so that earth’s harmonies are never imbalanced and resources never in doubt.”48 McCone’s birth father is a successful artist who had studied in New York as a young man, but who turned his back on the city and returned to the reservation. After acts of self-destructive despair following the loss of his wife in a car accident,

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he studied traditional ways and began observing “all the old Shoshone customs.”49 McCone’s sessions with her newly discovered birth father force her to slow down and observe nature. “I felt at peace in this beautiful place, listening to the water lap at the rocks and the birds cry overhead,” she says. “I felt a reassuring connectedness—to the water, the earth, the trees, the creatures that lived here. A connectedness to all people who loved such places and sought to preserve them.”50 SHARON MCCONE AND LEATHERSTOCKING When Marcia Muller shifted her detective’s ethnic identity in Listen to the Silence from one-eighth Indian to full-blooded Shoshone, she engaged one of the central concerns of frontier literature and its descendants. In this novel, the central conspiracy that McCone investigates and unravels is a conspiracy of silence that erases her true racial identity. When McCone finds her adoption papers in a box of documents following her adoptive father’s death, she must rethink every aspect of her identity and family relationships. With continuing bonds to the Scotch-Irish family in which she was raised and her slowly developing ties to her Indian birth parents, Muller places McCone between two worlds in a way not dissimilar Cooper’s positioning of Leatherstocking. Richard Slotkin credits James Fennimore Cooper with giving race a central role in the mythology of the West. In Cooper’s Leatherstocking romances, the boundary between the races is tested, most especially by Leatherstocking himself. “He is a white man raised among Indians, but he continually identifies himself as ‘a man without a cross,’” Slotkin writes, both in the sense of “his non-Christian nurture (and perhaps his Adamic innocence)” and in relation to the “purity of his blood line.”51 Leatherstocking’s racial purity and allegiance to white values is problematized by his adoption of Indian ways, as Slotkin notes.52 McCone moves in the opposite direction, but her allegiance with her birth heritage is, in many ways, as tenuous. Her conflicted identity is particularly visible in Listen to the Silence when her investigations into her parentage necessarily shift toward learning about Shoshone culture and practices. “I’m so out of touch with my Indian side that I couldn’t find it with both hands,” she remarks early in her quest.53 She worries about facing new expectations that she cannot meet. “As a white woman, an Angla, I’d dealt with mainstream issues,” she muses. “Now, if I were to find a place among my people, I’d be expected to identify with their concerns and move as easily from one world to another as they did.” At this point, she feels “trapped in a cultural no-man’s-land, with no assurance of arriving safely at either border.”54 Everything she knows about the Shoshones has been garnered from the internet supplemented with a few books. On her first visit to the Flathead

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reservation, she feels alien, other: “Here in Indian country lived my people, and yet I had nothing in common with them. I’d been raised to think of myself as Scotch-Irish with a touch of Native American blood, and nothing in my background had prepared me to understand their world or way of thinking.”55 “Leatherstocking’s obsession with the question of his racial loyalties,” Slotkin argues, is posed again and again in the Leatherstocking romances.56 It is a problem that critics have wrestled with as well. D.H. Lawrence sees Leatherstocking’s ultimate allegiance as being to the white race. In an early published version of his famous essay, Lawrence writes that Leatherstocking “knows at last that there are two ways, two mysteries—the Red Man’s and his own. He must remain true to his own way, his own mystery. But now at last he acknowledges perfectly and in full the opposite mystery—the mystery of the other.”57 However, in a later version of the same essay, he holds out a more optimistic idea of a new consciousness: “The white man’s spirit can never become as the red man’s spirit. It doesn’t want to. But it can cease to be the opposite and the negative of the red man’s spirit. It can open out a new great area of consciousness, in which there is room for the red spirit too.”58 It is a new consciousness that enables McCone to embrace two families—and two worlds. In this respect, she is mentored by Will Camphouse who has one foot in the world of commercial advertising in Seattle and the other in the society and culture of the Flathead reservation. Muller plays knowingly and politically with McCone’s dual heritage. It allows her to comment on racist stereotypes and expectations. She uses humor to undercut assumptions and stereotypes. In answer to a challenge, Camphouse grows a beard to prove that Indians are capable of doing so; he looks forward to collecting on the fifty-dollar bet.59 When McCone’s husband serves him a glass of wine, Camphouse raises a toast “to the death of another bit of erroneous popular wisdom about Indians: that one whiff of alcohol makes us all turn into slavering drunks.”60 Ramon Perez, a Northern Paiute, tells McCone that “her people” are good with horses; she comments that she must be “a piss-poor Shoshone” because she doesn’t like the creatures.61 McCone is less amused when the sheriff suggests that she will be better at questioning an Indian than a white deputy. “When, I wondered, would people stop assuming that because you’re Indian, other Indians will feel a natural connection with you?”62 When McCone stops at a café to ask for directions to the reservation in Listen to the Silence, the counterman is surprised. “I might feel like an alien, but to his eyes I fit right in,” McCone comments as she feels the white man’s gaze slide over her, then shift away, dismissing her. She realizes that “to him I simply didn’t count, and it made me wonder how many other such looks I’d received in my lifetime but never noticed.”63 Muller chronicles virulent racism as well. When McCone meets a bigot who fears she is his granddaughter in Listen to the Silence, she comments that “to

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Joseph DeCarlo I wasn’t human, merely some strange hybrid created by the tainting of his family’s blood.”64 Muller also includes historical references that expose the impact of unjust federal policy on Native Americans, that reveal the exploitation and neglect Indians have suffered. “Joy and optimism, my ass!” McCone exclaims when she reads an article puffing the termination of federal oversight of the reservation system, “I had enough of a sense of history to know that the Indians had seldom had occasion for either, before or after termination.” She goes on to catalogue a history of shameful treatment: While under the auspices of the federal government, they’d waited desperately for food, clothing, and medical supplies that arrived late or not at all. They’d lived in substandard housing, been forced to convert to Christianity by missionaries of every stripe, and had their children snatched from their homes and shipped off to boarding schools designed to eradicate every trace of their traditional culture. And then, in the 1940s and ‘50s, came termination. The Indians found themselves “emancipated,” all right—of their access to the Indian Health Service and educational assistance programs. Their lands became subject to state taxation, and many tribe members were forced to sell to outsiders. State laws were extended to their territories, and they lost the right to police their own communities.65

She also references court judgments against Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in relation to his handling of Indian Affairs.66 And she notes the role of Sacajawea in guiding the Lewis and Clark expedition and recounts Chief Tendoy’s unsuccessful efforts to enable his people to stay on their land in the Idaho River Valley—and his ignominious death in 1907.67 Muller’s use of McCone’s dual heritage to explore issues of identity, stereotyping, and racism are not the only link between McCone and Leatherstocking. As D.H. Lawrence recognized, Cooper’s hero was also endowed with moral ambiguity. He describes Cooper’s hero as “a man who keeps his moral integrity hard and intact. An isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man, who lives by death, by killing, but who is pure white.”68 We often see the pride Leatherstocking takes in his skill as a hunter. In The Pioneers (1823), the first published novel of the series, he proves the accuracy of his boasts in the turkey shooting competition.69 In The Deerslayer (1841), the final published novel of the series, Leatherstocking is described as a “noted hunter” and proudly explains to Hetty Hutter that he has earned his sobriquet, the Deerslayer, through his skill.70 When Leatherstocking kills a man in self-defense, his mortally wounded opponent confers the name of Hawk-Eye upon him in recognition of his penetrating vision and lightening reflexes.71 But Leatherstocking’s deadly skill is mitigated by his deep respect

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for his victims, whether they be animal or human. He kills animals for food, not for sport. And he refuses to take the scalps of the fallen. Muller handles violence differently. McCone’s moral stance and ethical concerns are revealed through internalized conflicts expressed through first person narration, but they still reflect the problematic nature of vigilante justice. When Ruehlmann pointed to a significant continuity between the western and the private eye novel, he did so in terms of the moral polarities involved. He saw the private eye novel, like the western as “a morality play whose end is retribution, not redemption” and attributed the moral ambiguity of the private eye to the corruption that accompanies his “well intentioned yet dangerous application of his self-justifying moralism.”72 In Wolf in the Shadows (1993), McCone kills, in cold blood, the gangster who is lying in ambush, knowing that if she does not kill him, he will kill her lover. “Everything I believed in told me this was wrong,” she comments. “Everything I cared about told me this was right.”73 In Trophies and Dead Things (1990), McCone succumbs, for a time, to atavistic rage when she brings down the sniper who has shot her close friend. She pursues the sniper, shoots him twice, pins him to the ground by sitting on him and places the gun at the base of his head when he struggles. She lifts his head so that she can stare him in the face, then releases it, letting his head smack the pavement. At this point she looks around to see the circle of people watching her. “They were silent,” she says, “watching me guardedly; in the eyes of some I saw accusation. It was as if I, not the sniper, were the person to be feared.”74 McCone’s behavior distances her from her colleagues. “To them I was not the same person they thought they’d known before last night,” she admits.75 In Where Echoes Live (1991), she confesses that she has come very close to killing two people. “Each time,” she tells Ripinski, “I really wanted to do it. I was completely in control. All I felt was this ice-cold rage. I wanted to . . . act as an executioner.” When Ripinski points out that she refrained, she says, “I still have nightmares in which I pull the trigger.”76 In some respects, McCone’s admission of rage and guilt is closer to Zane Grey than to Cooper, though Grey uses third person narration to comment on his hero’s thoughts. In Wanderer of the Wasteland (1923), Adam faces the “terrible reality” of his brother’s hate. Motivated by “the imminence of a mortal blow,” he feels “a gathering fury, as terrible as [his brother’s] hate.”77 In the murderous struggle that follows, the “dark crimson spot” spreading on his brother’s shirt and his brother’s fading eyes convince Adam that he has killed him. Thereafter, he feels himself branded with the mark of Cain, doomed to wander the wilderness, isolated from his fellows and tortured by the demon of remorse.78

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THE MORAL WILDERNESS Both the classic western and the hardboiled detective novel take place in border areas where violence from one world invades another. In the western, this is a physical frontier where the nascent, fragile institutions of society are vulnerable to unrestrained violence. In the hardboiled detective novel, the border is more problematic because the two worlds occupy the same space. Here the unrestrained criminality and corruption that remain hidden within society threaten the work-a-day world with violent disruption, revealing the powerful undercurrents of violence below the surface of society. Like the western hero, the hardboiled detective is a figure equipped with an integral moral compass who exists between the world of the law abiding and that of the lawless. Muller’s series shows the continuities between the literature of the frontier and the hardboiled detective novel more fully than many. Not only does Muller draw directly on the tropes associated with wilderness, but she also engages the central issue of frontier literature, the identity and affiliation of the western hero. In The Color of Fear (2017), Muller brings the tropes and issues of frontier literature to the urban world of San Francisco and its environs. The plot of The Color of Fear is set in motion when McCone’s birth father, Elwood Farmer, comes to San Francisco for a visit just before Christmas. During one of his night-time rambles, he window-shops for Christmas presents at a jewelry store near McCone’s house and is set upon by a group of thugs who beat him and leave him unconscious. The last words her father hears before losing consciousness are: “You’re lucky we don’t kill you, Geronimo. The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”79 A determined McCone enlists her investigative agency and its staff in tracking down those responsible. As this suggests, issues of identity and racism are central to the novel. When the police show up at McCone’s house, they do so because Elwood has one of her cards in his pocket. They have no idea who the man is and are shocked to learn that he is her father. “We had no idea, Ms. McCone,” the detective says. “The way he was dressed, we took him for a derelict.”80 The discourse of otherness that this implies is carefully deconstructed in the novel. McCone’s birth family—her mother, half-sister, and honorary cousin—are brought to San Francisco to keep vigil over Elwood while he fights for his life in hospital. Their competence and normality are in sharp contrast to McCone’s delusional adoptive mother who also appears on the scene. Ma, as McCone continues to call her adoptive mother, draws both families together as they work to manage her outbursts. She has conjured a fantasy engagement with Elwood, a delusion she only releases reluctantly when he regains consciousness. Muller uses humor to underscore the

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absurdity of othering based on race. At an early stage of her investigation, McCone visits a do-gooder in her Pacific Heights mansion. The woman is about to hostess a benefit for Indian orphans. She studies McCone’s features, her eyes narrow and she asks McCone whether she has Indian blood. When McCone responds in the affirmative, the hostess comments that she does not know much about McCone’s tribe. “We’re very peaceable,” McCone replies sardonically, “The most notable thing we’ve done was introduce the horse to the other tribes in the Old West.”81 Although she offers McCone a seat while she directs the activities of those preparing for the event, she does not offer McCone a glass of the champagne she is herself drinking. Her casual racism is also apparent when she explains her charitable activities. “You know how it is with charities in this town, Ms. McCone,” she says in explanation for her motivation. “Unless you’re a true do-gooder or high up on the social ladder, you take what you can get. I ended up with Indian orphans.” She admits that she does not know any of the ostensible beneficiaries of her event, but tells McCone that “there’ll be a couple of them at the fund-raiser, cleaned up and dressed decently.”82 This woman is the rough equivalent of Sanderson in Where Echoes Live, working not for the benefit of a cause, but for her own aggrandizement. As McCone researches the shadowy world of hate groups, she enters a border territory that has existed below her consciousness. “The membership lists of some hate groups contained the names of people I had heard of, whom I never would have suspected of being bigoted,” she comments. “Worse were the names of individuals I knew or had thought I knew fairly well: a friend from college; a police officer whom I trusted; a neighbor of Rae and Ricky; a member of the board of supervisors; several people I’d read about in the newspapers; a neighbor of mine who was eighty years old and confined to a wheelchair.”83 This is the border region where those guilty of undermining the civility of society hide within the everyday world of work and family. It is the violent racism that has erupted from this shadow world that provides the central crime in the novel. The detective’s quest to discover the guilty and bring them to account keeps racism as a primary focus within the novel. McCone learns that the attack on her father is not an isolated instance, but one of a series of racially motivated attacks. Her own racial identity makes her—and those around her—vulnerable. Her nephew and coworkers return home to find his garage door graffitied in large red letters: INJUN LOVER. GET OUT OF OUR TOWN.84 The car belonging to one of her operatives, a Hispanic, is blown up outside of McCone’s office. Her birth mother and sister are attacked in a break-in at McCone’s house. Her dining room is violated by the presence of a perverse dream catcher: “Entangled in its weblike interior and held on with staples were plastic replicas of dismembered body parts, bloody knives, weapons of all kinds. A cloth that I supposed was

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intended to resemble a blood-soaked shroud was pushpinned below the painting.”85 Finally, her office computer system is hacked and frozen; the ransom demand for three million dollars is received as an email on the frozen screen: “We will restore your acess to them when you agree with our terms. If you do not agree, we will step up our personal attacks on you, your family, and your asociates. We guaranty that at least one of these new attacks will be fatal.”86 The identities of the those who work to exploit the potential of what had been a random racist attack is telling. The most violent of the group is an atavistic ex-con who “got into the white supremacist crap in prison.”87 Another is “a high-end techie called King of the Blogs” who writes “an unpleasant blog under an alias” that “regularly posts inflammatory opinions.”88 The third, and the leader, as described by a neighbor is “an asshole bigot with too much money, and a rabble-rouser.” He has a history of “protesting things like gay marriage and civil rights issues.”89 He is also mentally unstable and currently off the meds that are designed to “treat aggressive and antisocial behavior, depression, and certain forms of psychosis.”90 He is the last decaying branch of the family tree. Although McCone has two supportive families and the full resources of her detective agency, at crucial moments she is the typical lone hunter of the western and hardboiled traditions. Her employees do background research and routine surveillance. It is McCone who pulls the available information together to solve the crime and steps forward for key confrontations. It is she who secures crucial evidence in the decaying mansion of Bellefleur. As she moves through the upstairs rooms, she discovers the badly beaten body of a Hispanic man who had come to apply for a job as a gardener. She learns the circumstances of his murder as she hides upstairs and listens to their boasts. “My God,” McCone thinks as she listens to them, “partying with a battered corpse upstairs in the bathroom. What kind of people were we harboring in our society, so full of hate, so lacking in empathy, so soulless? I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to live in their skins.”91 As McCone leaves the house to contact the police, she is pursued by the most brutal of the gang, the man who has killed the gardener and beaten her father. For a time, the hunter becomes the hunted within the gothic wildness of mansion’s untended garden, where decadence has given way to desolation and decay. “The gazebo was wrapped in shadow,” McCone notes as she looks for a hiding place, “but the faint putrid smell remained in spite of the rain, warning me away.”92 As she gropes her way toward the derelict fountain, her foot snags on a “vine or something” and she falls into the mud. “Something that turned out to be a fallen tree limb stopped my forward slide—with a sharp blow to my forehead that jarred the .38 out of my hand.” As McCone recovers her muddy gun and rights herself, she thinks, “Jesus, it was as if this place were trying to claim me!”93

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The final confrontation between Jerzy and McCone takes place in the disintegrating fountain. As he lunges toward her, catching hold of her leg, McCone slams her gun against his hand, breaking his hold, then draws both legs up and kicks out, catching him on the forehead. Jerzy’s head hits the concrete, and he lies there unconscious. She leaves him, unsure of whether he is dead or alive, and makes her way toward the boundary wall. The result is a more restrained “saint with a gun” than McCone has portrayed in earlier novels. In part, McCone’s reason not to shoot despite threatening to do so is strategic; the noise could bring the rest of the gang out of the house. In part, however, it is a measure of Muller’s awareness of the increasingly fraught issue of gun crime in the United States. “Professionals who need a handgun on the job should undergo stringent background checks, rigid training, and frequent checkups,” she has told her nephew. “Responsible citizens should give a legitimate reason for having a handgun and also be meticulously backgrounded. Hunters—they’re usually responsible, although you hear about all the accidents when they shoot each other rather than their prey. But anybody else—strictly no.”94 In The Color of Fear, Muller has represented and reinvigorated the genetic heritage of the private eye novel, incorporating key tropes from earlier manifestations of the literature of the west in a way that looks backward generically. Her treatment allows us to see the earlier literature of the frontier through the lens of the private eye novel. In this novel, Sharon McCone as Leatherstocking’s descendent embraces D.H. Lawrence’s new consciousness, with an identity that includes both her Indian heritage and that of her Scotch-Irish family without the need to choose between them. It is those who demand a strict allegiance based on race who are criticized and at times vilified. The Color of Fear is also a novel that fully recognizes the savage forces inherited from Puritan conceptualizations of wilderness. But here the savagery is not Other; it is a potentiality within ourselves. The garden of the neglected house in the affluent suburbs is no longer Edenic. Whatever Bellefleur had been in the past, decadence and declension have turned it into a fleur de mal. NOTES 1. William Ruehlmann, Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye (New York: New York University Press, 1974), 5. 2. D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books Ltd, 1977), 55. 3. Marcia Muller has not been well-served by criticism, but she is often noted in passing as one of three women writers of detective fiction, along with Sue Grafton

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and Sara Paretsky, who transformed the hardboiled detective novel from one that privileged masculinity and the male gaze to one capable of a more feminist perspective. Indeed, Muller’s Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977) was the first book in this new wave to be published. Since then, Muller has published over thirty novels featuring her private investigator, Sharon McCone. Like Paretsky, she has always been acutely aware of the gender politics implicit in her reworking of the private eye and her novels offer a feminist critique of gender expectations and discrimination. See, for example Kathleen Gregory Klein, The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre, Second (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 202, 206–9; Priscilla L. Walton and Manina Jones, Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 15–33. 4. This is part quotation, part paraphrase. See Marcia Muller, Where Echoes Live: A Sharon McCone Mystery (New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1991), 54. See Mark Twain, Roughing It (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1872), chaps 37–39. 5. Muller, Where Echoes Live, 11. 6. Muller, 11. 7. Muller, 46. 8. Marcia Muller, Burn Out (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 4. 9. Muller, 4. 10. Muller, 9. 11. Muller, Where Echoes Live, 41. 12. Muller, 41. 13. Marcia Muller, Listen to the Silence (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 2000), 245. 14. Marcia Muller, Wolf in the Shadows (New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1993), 284. 15. Muller, 284. 16. Marcia Muller, The Color of Fear (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017), 242. 17. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, Third (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 2. This is a revised edition of his book, originally published in 1967. 18. Nash, 5; he is quoting from a legislative act of 1964 creating the National Wilderness Preservation System. 19. See Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, Reprint 1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1964), 36–43. See also Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture, New edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 60. 20. For example, the discussion of the fascination of the painters of the Hudson River School with Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic, see Kerry Dean Carso, “Gothic Castles in the Landscape: Sir Walter Scott and the Hudson River School of Painting,” Gothic Studies 14, no. 2 (2012): 1–22.

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21. See, for example, Diana Strazdes, “‘Wilderness and Its Waters’: A Professional Identity for the Hudson River School,” Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal 7, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 333–62. 22. Thomas Cole, “Proceedings of the American Lyceum. Essay on American Scenery,” The American Monthly Magazine 1 (1836): 1–2. 23. Cole, 2. 24. James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, or, The First War-Path: A Tale, vol. I (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1841), 33. 25. Zane Grey, “What the Desert Means to Me,” The American Magazine, November 1924, 5. 26. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 93. 27. William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Charles Deane (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1856), 78. 28. Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New England and of Several Remarkable Curiosities Therein Occurring, third edition (Boston: n.p., 1693), 11. 29. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier 1600–1860 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 178–79. 30. Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, vol. I (Philadelphia: H. Maxwell, 1799), 4. 31. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 242. 32. Muller, 242. 33. Muller, 285. 34. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894), 200. 35. Grey, “What the Desert Means to Me,” 6. 36. For more on the social significance of Cole’s series, see Angela Miller, “Thomas Cole and Jacksonian America: The Course of Empire as Political Allegory,” Prospects 14 (October 1989): 65–92. 37. Muller, Where Echoes Live, 16. 38. Muller, 168. 39. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 248. 40. Muller, 243. 41. Muller, Where Echoes Live, 31. 42. Muller, 32. 43. Muller, 41. 44. Muller, 36. 45. Muller, 65. 46. Muller, 21. 47. Muller, 253. 48. Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 21. 49. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 86–87. 50. Muller, 93.

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51. Richard Slotkin, Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994), 91. 52. Slotkin, 91. 53. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 75. 54. Muller, 96. 55. Muller, 78. 56. Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 493. 57. D. H. Lawrence, “Studies in Classic American Literature (v): Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels,” The English Review, March 1919, 219. 58. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 57. 59. Muller, The Color of Fear, 170. 60. Muller, 170. 61. Muller, Burn Out, 8. 62. Muller, 91. 63. Muller, Listen to the Silence, 79. 64. Muller, 299. 65. Muller, 122–23. 66. Muller, 198. 67. Muller, 66, 68, 69. 68. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 69. 69. James Fenimore Cooper and J. Seymour, The Pioneers: Or The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale, vol. I (New York: Charles Wiley, 1823), 249. 70. Cooper, The Deerslayer, I:88, 64. 71. Cooper, I:120. 72. Ruehlmann, Saint with a Gun, 7,8. 73. Muller, Wolf in the Shadows, 288. 74. Marcia Muller, Trophies and Dead Things (New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1991), 193. 75. Muller, 219. 76. Muller, Where Echoes Live, 77. 77. Zane Grey, Wanderer of the Wasteland (Toronto: The Musson Book Co. Ltd., 1923), 58. 78. Grey, 68, 149. 79. Muller, The Color of Fear, 6. 80. Muller, 8. 81. Muller, 95. 82. Muller, 95. 83. Muller, 104. 84. Muller, 116. 85. Muller, 142. 86. Muller, 215. Spelling errors are in the original text. 87. Muller, 160. 88. Muller, 76. 89. Muller, 187. 90. Muller, 231–32.

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91. Muller, 234. 92. Muller, 239. 93. Muller, 239. 94. Muller, 120.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation. Edited by Charles Deane. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1856. Brown, Charles Brockden. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker. Vol. I. Philadelphia: H. Maxwell, 1799. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture. New edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Carso, Kerry Dean. “Gothic Castles in the Landscape: Sir Walter Scott and the Hudson River School of Painting,” Gothic Studies 14, no. 2 (2012): 1–22. Cole, Thomas. “Proceedings of the American Lyceum. Essay on American Scenery,” The American Monthly Magazine 1 (1836): 1–12. Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer, or, The First War-Path: A Tale. Vol. I. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1841. Cooper, James Fenimore, and J. Seymour. The Pioneers: Or The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale. Vol. I. II vols. New York: Charles Wiley, 1823. Grey, Zane. Wanderer of the Wasteland. Toronto: The Musson Book Co. Ltd., 1923. ———. “What the Desert Means to Me,” The American Magazine, November 1924. Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. Second ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Krech III, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books Ltd, 1977. ———. “Studies in Classic American Literature (v): Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels.” The English Review, March 1919. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Reprint 1980. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1964. Mather, Cotton. The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New England and of Several Remarkable Curiosities Therein Occurring. Third edition. Boston, 1693. Miller, Angela. “Thomas Cole and Jacksonian America: The Course of Empire as Political Allegory.” Prospects 14 (October 1989): 65–92. ​​​​​​ Muller, Marcia. Burn Out. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009. ———. Listen to the Silence. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 2000. ———. The Color of Fear. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017. ———. Trophies and Dead Things. New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1991.

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———. Where Echoes Live: A Sharon McCone Mystery. New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1991. ———. Wolf in the Shadows. New York: Mysterious Press, Warner Books Inc, 1993. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. Third edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Ruehlmann, William. Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye. New York: New York University Press, 1974. Slotkin, Richard. Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. ———. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier 1600–1860. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996. Strazdes, Diana. “Wilderness and Its Waters’: A Professional Identity for the Hudson River School.” Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal 7, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 333–62. Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893, 1894, 199–227. Washington: Government Printing Office. Twain, Mark. Roughing It. Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1872. Walton, Priscilla L., and Manina Jones. Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Chapter Ten

The Lone Wolf and the Wild West How Private Eyes Became the New Cowboys Dahlia Schweitzer

From Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe to Michael Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer” (also known as Mickey Haller), the figure of the renegade sleuth driving around the winding, crime-ridden streets of Los Angeles has remained a favorite for almost a century. Despite the popularity of this figure, the connection between him (and it is almost always a “him”) and the American cowboy is rarely addressed. Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) may have shaped the mold, giving us the lasting visual of the trench-coated private eye with rain dripping from the brim of his hat, but detectives have continued to roam the streets of Los Angeles ever since, traversing what has become of the Wild West. Despite all the ways society has changed over the last hundred years, the conventions of the genre, the character of our hero, and the trappings of the city have remained consistent, as well as the private eye’s connection to the cowboy legacy. Despite their enormous popularity on both large and small screens during the first half of the twentieth century, traditional cowboys, much like traditional westerns, faded away from the box office and the cultural consciousness, but they have not disappeared. Instead, they have been repurposed. They may not wear a cowboy hat. They likely do not own a horse. But that same spirit of independence and grit lives on in the character of the private eye. As Edward Margolies describes, “With fewer and fewer animals to hunt and rustlers and Indians to shoot, the western hero turned to the city to pursue other prey. No longer a lone ranger of sorts, he became a private eye—still outside organized society, but curiously trapped inside as well.”1 185

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In this essay, I will examine detectives as diverse as Jim Rockford (James Garner) from The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974–1980), Deputy Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) from Justified (FX, 2010–2015), Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) and Frank (Vince Vaughn) from season two of True Detective (HBO, 2014–2019), and Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey) from The Lincoln Lawyer (Brad Furman, 2011) in order to demonstrate how these detectives are our new cowboys. A symbol of independence and grit, courage and integrity, defiance and determination, the cowboy reflects the freedom and romance inherent in the way many saw the “Wild West” long before the emergence of the Marlboro Man in 1954. His image (and everything it represented) would spread internationally through American popular culture, creating a legend that, as legends usually go, was much grander than the reality. The way Hollywood saw the cowboy became the way the world saw the cowboy, and even America itself. For many, the cowboy represented the best that America had to offer. As described by Jun Joseph Nimmo for Harper’s Bazaar in 1886, cowboys were seen as “true and trusty men, in whom the dangers and fortunes of their lives developed generous and heroic traits of character.” They also, Nimmo continues, “by virtue of their courage and recklessness of danger, their excellent horsemanship, and skill in the use of firearms” played an important role in terms of preserving justice and order, protecting frontier settlements and cattle from predatory incursions and massacres.2 Much of Nimmo’s description (with the exception of the part about frontier settlements) applies to the private detective. In the decades since Philip Marlowe emerged as an icon in The Big Sleep, first published in 1939, the figure of the private eye continues to appeal for many of the same reasons we were drawn to the cowboy. In a world that seems to lack reason and morality, there is comfort in the consistent logic and integrity of our detective. We observe human nature through his keen eye and detached perspective, and it somehow makes sense. We respect his devotion to the case and his corresponding disinterest in money. He is the Lone Ranger in a Cadillac or Lincoln, or, more recently a Dodge Charger. A hero who reports to no one, he is his own boss, a loner with no obligation other than to the truth. He may not be educated, and may even have a healthy skepticism about so-called experts and their affiliated institutions, but he has street smarts, and those always prove more useful in the end. He operates via his own code, a deeply personal determination of right versus wrong. Unlike a policeman, whose actions are constricted by rules and regulations, the private eye only has his own code to follow, and we respect that code, much like we respect the private eye, because he is true, trusty, generous, and heroic. In Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye, first published in 1953, Marlowe knows he is different. Unlike other people, who shut their windows and turn

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up the TV when they hear someone crying, Marlowe goes to see what happened, even if he realizes that “You don’t make a dime that way. You got sense. . . . Stay out of other people’s troubles. All it can get you is the smear.”3 But Marlowe has something stronger than “sense.” He has his code. In their book Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights, Robert A. Baker and Michael T. Nietzel describe this code of conduct as reminiscent of knights “who pledged to protect the weak and oppressed—the poor, the widow, and the orphan. . . . Like their chivalrous predecessors, our modern knights are loved by us because at times it seems they are the only defenders of truth, justice, and morality in a world of deceit, senseless cruelty and immorality where life is never fair and nice guys finish last.”4 While we know that cowboys, like private detectives, are similarly seen as defenders of truth and justice, Chandler makes the knight metaphor literal in The Big Sleep. When Marlowe first arrives at General Sternwood’s mansion, he notices a stained-glass panel over the entrance doors. This panel depicts a knight in armor trying to rescue a lady tied to a tree. Noticing the knight’s apparent lack of success, Marlowe thinks to himself that the knight might need his help, and so is born “the private eye as knight figure, as rescuer of the weak and defenseless.”5 The link from knight to cowboy had already been established in countless westerns. Now the link from knight to detective has been made clear, as well. As I discuss in my book L.A. Private Eyes, Los Angeles provides the perfect backdrop for the private eye-as-cowboy with its combination of “anything goes” Wild West mentality and get-rich-quick aspirations. David Fine describes L.A. as “a big city layered on a Wild West frontier town,” complete with “a corrupt municipal government,” gangsters and gamblers, drug addicts and prostitutes, all part of a web of collusion and scandal. Everything was for sale, including police protection.6 For instance, mob activity in Los Angeles began around the start of the century, and the mob was heavily involved with trucks and truckers in Hollywood. It was also common for mobsters, moguls, and movie stars to commingle, crossing paths at “nightclubs, bars, clandestine gambling establishments, and private parties” their interactions often including alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and blackmail.7 In 1950, when the Los Angeles Police Department seized a phone book belonging to gangster Mickey Cohen, they found contact information for a variety of Hollywood celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Joan Collins, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall, revealing just how commonplace interactions had become between gangsters and movie stars.8 Los Angeles, despite the cars and freeways, was still the Wild West. And the updated Wild West needed an updated cowboy to maintain a semblance of order. Enter the hardboiled private eye. First popular in pulp classics and cheap magazines, he soon became a money-making machine for Hollywood. The detective, as originally envisioned by Dashiell Hammett and

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Raymond Chandler, was a man of simple tastes and modest salary. His vices were smoking and/or alcohol. He was at least somewhat self-destructive. The original concept has not changed much over the years. Even now, anything highly technological is usually beyond him, as if he literally came out of another era, but just like the detective of yesteryear, he can find someone to help, by enhancing surveillance footage, hacking into email, or tapping someone’s phone. If he uses a computer at all, it is usually only to access records from the Department of Motor Vehicles or to search for a name or an address. This is not a character who feels at home in prestigious institutions or amongst the social elite. After all, he is a cowboy. He is rugged, unpolished, and meant to be outdoors. This applies regardless of whether you are talking about Philip Marlowe, Mickey Haller, or even author Michael Connelly’s other main character, surly, rule-defying homicide detective Harry Bosch. In True Detective, not only is Los Angeles the setting of the series, but precisely those elements of Los Angeles that make it such a perfect fit for noir film are emphasized. The setting is urban, but unlike an urban environment such as Manhattan, Los Angeles is isolating. Frequent aerial shots of cars driving the endless freeway loops further emphasize the rootlessness of a Los Angeles existence, the constant movement to and fro without ever really being anywhere. After all, a freeway is merely demarcated by exit numbers. Until you get off, everything else is the same—and in LA, how often do you really take an exit that is not your own? We see exactly these same kind of shots in Furman’s Lincoln Lawyer or in the Amazon series Bosch (2014–2021), in which, to the surprise of no one familiar with the private eye tropes, Bosch eventually quits the force (where he was never a “team player” anyway) to become a private detective. Many traditional detective stories, often described as “cozy mysteries,” frequently feature detectives with sidekicks, such as with Agatha Christie’s Poirot (who had Captain Hastings) or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (who had Doctor Watson). In contrast, the cowboy-type of detective mainly works alone. In order to solve crimes, he has no one to rely on other than himself, which may partially explain why he so frequently is cynical, jaded, and/or irritable (although he works so poorly with others that it is not clear if he even wants someone else to be around). The detective’s loner status is an integral component of his personality and another link to the cowboy archetype. He cannot be seen as too attached to children, family, significant others, or colleagues. It is precisely his stance as an outsider that provides him with the unique perspective that enables his effective observations, as well as keeps him objective and clear-headed. As Mareike Jenner writes, the TV detective is “a maverick outsider who is frequently defined through eccentric behavior and a superior mental ability (often in stark contrast to the inevitably slow-witted policeman he reluctantly has to deal with).”9 In this

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way, too, the detective is the modern-day cowboy, riding into town as needed, keeping everyone at arm’s length, and always just a bit cooler and smarter than anyone around him. There are numerous examples of fictional characters who blur the lines between cowboy and detective, but one of the most memorable is Jim Rockford from The Rockford Files, cocreated by Roy Huggins. Huggins also created the television show Maverick (ABC, 1957–1962), which played a central part in the Warner Bros. roster of westerns. Significantly, Huggins described The Rockford Files as a modern-day Maverick, and to make the link explicitly clear, both shows starred James Garner as the lead (although Garner would quit Maverick after the show’s third season over a contract dispute). Both Maverick and Rockford—the lead characters of the two shows—are loners, with Rockford an outsider because of his background as an ex-con and Maverick an outsider by choice. Clearly, Huggins felt that the best way to modernize a western hero was to make him a private detective, thus reinforcing the notion of the private eye as the natural successor to the cowboy. The Rockford Files even managed to repurpose plots from Maverick, as well, emphasizing just how much the two shows had in common, despite the fact that one was about a private detective in the 1970s and one was about the American frontier in the 1800s. A wrongfully sentenced ex-con, Rockford focuses on “cold cases,” also known as cases that the Los Angeles Police Department could not solve. He intentionally does not pursue cases that are under open investigation so as to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes, a sense of decorum unusual for a private eye. Huggins created the show with Stephen J. Cannell, who was determined to reinvent the detective genre by making private detective Jim Rockford an atypical private eye. For instance, integrity is not always his leading motivator. Nonetheless, he still rarely makes money as many of his clients avoid paying their fees, so he is frequently as broke as the more typical private eye. The trope of the cowboy detective, a rugged loner playing by his own set of rules and keeping his own moral code, remains so compelling that it shows up even within the police force, not just limited to the role of the private eye but a useful trope for troublemaker loner cops, as well. It is impossible for the cowboy detective to be a team player, even if he plays on a team. As mentioned earlier, the character of Harry Bosch (played by Titus Welliver in the Amazon series but also the subject of over twenty books by Michael Connelly) is a classic example, but other examples are Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) in season two of the HBO television series True Detective and Deputy Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) in the FX television series Justified. John Irwin emphasizes that the private detective represents the “desire for personal freedom” which “has been central to American identity from the outset” and which can be reflected by the private eye’s move from

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“salaried employee of a large private agency or of the DA’s office to being a self-employed, independent contractor,” as seen, for instance, in the stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett10 or in the television show Mannix. The protagonists in True Detective and Justified similarly work for themselves—even when they officially have employers. Ray leaves the police force; Ani, as part of her punishment is metaphorically removed from the police force, stripped of any police authority; and Frank’s attempts to “go straight” by going into business with others fail, forcing him to work on his own to try and recover his money. Givens may work for the US government, but his lax adherence to policy and protocol implies the opposite. The cowboy aesthetic is perhaps most literal in Justified, where Kentucky-born Givens wears his trademark Stetson hat throughout the rural countryside. He maintains justice the old-fashioned way, by always being ready for a quick draw. The show’s title seems to refer to a shootout that happens at the start of the pilot episode, a shooting that Givens keeps insisting was justified. Despite the fact that Tommy Bucks (Peter Green) did, as Givens persists in pointing out, draw first, Givens had arrived at the restaurant to enforce a classic western ultimatum: “twenty-four hours to get out town.” Even though Bucks draws first, he leaves in a body bag. As Curtis Mims (Page Kennedy) puts it in the episode “Fixer” (FX, Mar. 30, 2010), Givens “Gary Coopered up some badass in Miami a few weeks ago,” yet another overt cowboy reference—and there are more! In the same episode, Arnold Pinter (David Eigenberg) describes Givens as “pulling a Wild Bill” on Bucks, while in episode two, “Riverbrook” (Mar. 23, 2010), Douglas Cooper (Chris Ellis) even asks if Givens is a Marshal like in the long-running television show Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–1975). Cowboy references are everywhere. The central conflict between Givens and his old friend Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), now a neo-Nazi and one of the most powerful criminals in Harlan County, brings to mind powerful feuds in such films as Shane (George Stevens, 1953) and My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946). As Eric Deggans writes for NPR, “Like all good westerns, it’s a story of the white hat versus the black hat, with a beautiful, strong-willed woman in the middle.” Deggans goes on to say that Justified’s producers have done such a good job staying true to their source material—author Elmore Leonard’s work—that they have created “a smart, engaging modern day western that feels classic as a John Wayne shoot ‘em up and modern as the next season of True Detective.”11 In other words, a cowboy detective—which should not be surprising, given that Leonard’s earliest novels were westerns. While Justified has more in common with classic westerns in terms of plot, costume, and dialogue, season two of True Detective reinvigorates many of the tropes familiar to hardboiled detective dramas and noir film, such as The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) or even L.A. Confidential

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(Curtis Hanson, 1997), which, as a period piece, was a nod to the classics. A dark and cynical tone, full of pessimism, fatalism, and paranoia, saturates all the episodes of season two and defines the protagonists, Ray, Ani (Rachel McAdams), Paul (Taylor Kitsch), and Frank (Vince Vaughn). While only Ray is actually a private eye, and he does not become one until halfway through the season, Ani, Paul, and Ray are rogue actors, working outside the police force but also literally removed from it in order to work on their “off the books” investigation. There do not appear to be any benefits to being part of an institution, and in fact, it is the institution that is corrupt, just like in L.A. Confidential, where the police captain himself is planning to take over for Mickey Cohen, the head of organized crime in Los Angeles, once Cohen goes to prison. As James Ellroy, author of the original book upon which the film was based, explains, “I’ve long held that hard-boiled crime fiction is the history of bad white men doing bad things in the name of authority.”12 The analogy of the detective as cowboy also helps to explain the problematic representations of women within the genre. Margolies links the hardboiled detective’s ambivalence toward women to that of the frontiersman, who identified women “with organized social institutions such as family, church, the schools, and the arts.” As a result of their affiliation with these institutions, Margolies continues, women threatened to imprison men “in a tainted polity and dampen their idealism with the pragmatic demands of a domestic life.”13 Frontiersman averse to such imprisonment had no choice but to flee. Similarly, the hardboiled detective must avoid affiliation with institutions such as family or the church. If the private eye is foolish enough to get married, the marriage cannot last, and a complicated relationship with the ex—or multiple exes—is guaranteed. This plays out front and center in both season two of True Detective, with Ray and his ex-wife, Gena Brune (Abigail Spencer), and in the Lincoln Lawyer, between Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) and his ex-wife, Maggie (Marisa Tomei). Frank, in True Detective, is an excellent example, because throughout season two, his wife, Jordan Semyon (Kelly Reilly), tries repeatedly to get Frank to leave his life of crime, to be domestic with her. Even though he claims he wants that, he repeatedly finds reasons why he cannot do it—until finally, crime kills him. In a way, he manages to avoid the imprisonment of domestic life by dying. Similar to The Big Sleep and L.A. Confidential, the initial mystery of True Detective’s season two—who killed Ben Caspere, the corrupt city manager of the town of Vinci—is only the tip of the iceberg. Before long, we discover money laundering and prostitution, human trafficking and drug deals, corrupt government deals and even more corrupt government officials. The plot quickly grows convoluted, complex, and disorientating, as characters you do not even remember end up significant, and characters you thought would be significant disappear.

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Despite borrowing liberally from the noir handbook, True Detective still owes a vast debt to all things western, not only in terms of costume but also in terms of theme, where the persistent theme of reclaiming masculinity, claiming a sense of agency in a world that seems determined to take it away, is pervasive. There is a remarkable scene at the beginning of season two’s episode six (“Church in Ruins,” July 26, 2016) which feels like a good old-fashioned duel, cleverly concealed in a warm and sunny kitchen. Ray and Frank are sitting at Frank’s kitchen table, facing each other. The two of them each have their gun at the ready, just out of sight below the table. Each one knows that the other is armed, and each one knows that the only thing standing between life and death is the speed it will take them to draw. Despite the oddly cheerful setting, the tension between the two men feels right out of High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), where the climax features a standoff between Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) and Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), an outlaw sent to prison by Kane. Ray keeps asking Frank questions, the answers of which will determine if he moves to draw. Frank keeps his eyes on Ray, searching for the slightest hint of Ray’s next move, waiting for the sign to draw. The tension is taut. When putting together Ray’s look, Alix Friedberg, the show’s costume designer, borrowed heavily from the cowboy aesthetic. Ray’s jackets, for instance, often have western details, such as pointed front yokes. Ray even has shirts with western yokes, further complemented by a bolo tie. His signature pants are, naturally, blue jeans, and his shoes are cowboy boots. Kit Hamlen notes that, “While Ray Velcoro swayed from good to bad and back again, his penchant for western wear never faltered. With the occasional bolo tie, cowboy hat, denim, and sturdier tweed, Velcoro’s wardrobe was authentically desert wrangler dry. In addition to his characteristic scowl and slicked back hair, Velcoro proved to be the new sheriff in town. At least, until, he wasn’t.”14 Much like in Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep, there is no happy ending to True Detective’s season two. The corruption of the world is simply too vast. It cannot be fixed. There is merely a temporary reprieve for some of the characters, while others are forced to pay for their transgressions. In Double Indemnity, it was, in fact, a demand of the Production Code that the criminals pay on screen for their transgressions. In order to get the script approved, the two protagonists needed to die as punishment. In True Detective, despite the fact that contemporary Hollywood usually avoids killing off most of the leads, only one of the four characters at the show’s center survives. Significantly, the two involved in the dramatic final heist are killed before they can enjoy the money, perhaps a warning to other future cowboys that money should never be a motive. The last episode of the season leaves us with the potential

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hope that a journalist will expose the town’s corruption, but since he had already kept quiet about the corruption, it is hard to be optimistic. Ray B. Browne writes that Ross MacDonald chose Los Angeles as the location for his famous Lew Archer detective series because, with their backs to the sea, people were “unable to run any farther,” and they would have no choice but “to confront the forces that seemed set to destroy them.”15 There is this sense of unavoidable reckoning in True Detective, as Ray, Frank, and Paul are unable to escape their pasts, and characters like Ben Caspere (Bo McCann) and Dr. Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield) are murdered as a result of previous actions. Ironically, the only way Ani manages to escape is by boat, defying Browne’s claim that the sea prevents escape. However, most of the time, one of the special characteristics of the Wild West, regardless of the century, is the feeling of it as the final frontier, as far as man can go, the freedom of the unexplored and untamed combined with the absolute limit that there is nowhere else to run. This sense of the unexplored, which, in turn, must be explored to be understood, pervades westerns and detective stories alike. While the traditional detective narrative relies on a detective whose keen insight and powers of deduction enable him to solve crimes even while miles away from the actual crime scene (like Holmes or Poirot), the hardboiled detective must utilize physicality to traverse the urban landscape in search of clues, witnesses, and the truth. He cannot solve cases in a vacuum. The answers come as a direct result of physical exploration. As Fredric Jameson describes in his book Raymond Chandler: Detections of Totality, the “detective no longer inhabits the atmosphere of pure thought, of puzzle-solving, and the resolution of a set of given elements. On the contrary, he is propelled outwards into the space of his world and obliged to move from one kind of social reality to another.”16 He must traverse the expanse of Los Angeles in order to collect the right information, speak with the right people, and initiate the right results. Only then can he drag the criminal rich out of the safety and exclusivity of the hills, back down to the flatland, “back to their histories, their crimes,” demonstrating the inescapabilty of their transgressions and the inability of their wealth to protect them from him.17 Literally and metaphorically, the male private eye conquers space, traverses frontiers, and pushes the limits of physical boundaries. It is not only that the detective can traverse the physical terrain of Los Angeles, but that he can take people with him, either rescuing them or bringing them to justice. The good must be rescued and the bad must be captured, and in order to do so, the private detective penetrates physical facades that might keep others out. He also penetrates mental facades, discovering secrets that might be hidden from everyone else. And he takes us with him on his journey. This physicality is also reminiscent of knight and cowboy imagery,

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as both are similarly compelled to traverse the landscape in pursuit of truth and justice. Their code cannot be upheld from the comforts of the home or an office. Their code can only be upheld by physical action and pursuit. Taking things to the extreme, in the television show The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974–1980), James Garner lives and works in a mobile home parked somewhere in Malibu. In the episode “Backlash of the Hunter, Part 1” (NBC, March 24, 1974), a potential client asks, surprised, if this trailer is also his office. Rockford replies: “Yeah, it’s cheap, tax-deductible, earthquake-proof . . . I get a job out of town, I take it with me.” His entire life is transitory. In his “Lincoln Lawyer” series of books, author Michael Connelly does away with the office altogether, making his detective fully mobile professionally. Realizing that he is never in his office, the character of Mickey Haller converts his car into an office, hence the name “Lincoln Lawyer” for his choice of car. Driven by former clients working off their debts to him, Haller conducts meetings and phone calls from the back seat of his car as he moves through the streets of Los Angeles. The Lincoln Lawyer film is not only an adaptation of the book of the same name by Michael Connelly but a fascinating example of the private eye’s continued appeal, so much so that Netflix made its own adaptation in 2022, which will return for a season two in 2023. As a contemporary incarnation of the classic Phillip Marlowe character, Mickey seems equally in control with the family of his wealthy client as with the local biker club, too rough around the edges to play by all the rules but not so rough as to disregard his own personal code. As befits the archetype, Haller has a complicated relationship with his ex-wife (played by Marisa Tomei) and daughter (played by Mackenzie Aladjem). He loves them both but seems incapable of having a functional relationship with either. Lorna Taylor (Pell James), Haller’s secretary and case manager, is his second ex-wife, and while they get along as colleagues, it is clear that their romantic relationship had been a disaster. During the 1950s, westerns and detective stories—both of which had been hugely popular in radio—became the backbone of television programming. They were fun to watch and did not require expensive special effects. While Dragnet also made the move to television, it was the western that seemed to represent American patriotism and nationalism, a yearning for the “Old Frontier” while everything off screen appeared to be marching solidly toward the John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier.” This rapidly changing era offered the promise of international expansion, racial desegregation, and a modernized economy. In other words, a lot of rapid change that made many Americans yearn for an older way of life. Westerns appealed precisely because they represented the reassurance of tradition. They may have been overly simplistic and a little bit dated, but that

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is precisely why people watched. In a conservative fashion, they emphasized the power of the individual, the benefits of small government, and a fear of outsiders that reflected the Cold War paranoia of the era. The western grew so popular, in fact, that in 1959, there were twenty-eight different westerns appearing on primetime television, and eight of these were among the ten most highly rated shows on the air. Despite the fact that Gunsmoke was on the air until 1975, westerns started to feel sexist, racist, and very dated during the 1960s. A combination of events—the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, feminism, and even a growing distaste for loners and rugged masculinity— started to make westerns feel like an uncomfortable part of the past. Cowboys would be replaced by aliens and special agents as westerns almost completely disappeared from television screens. With the occasional exceptions, like the miniseries Lonesome Dove (CBS, 1989), and the more recent Yellowstone (Paramount, 2018–present), the western seems primarily a relic of the past. However, as these various detectives demonstrate, the archetype of a lone hero with a strong moral code, determined to impose justice in whatever way possible, has not died out. He has merely changed clothes. NOTES 1. Edward Margolies, Which Way Did He Go? The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross Macdonald (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), 6. 2. Jun Joseph Nimmo, “The American Cowboy,” Legends of America, last modified September 2019, www​.legendsofamerica​.com​/we​-americancowboy​/. 3. Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 229. 4. Robert A. Baker and Michael T. Nietzel, Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1985), 7. 5. Edward Margolies, 71–72. 6. David Fine, Imagining Los Angeles (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004) 118. 7. Jon Lewis, Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017) 52. 8. Lewis 69, 208n27. 9. Mareike Jenner, “The Detective Series,” in The Television Genre Book, 3rd edition, ed. Glen Creeber (London: BFI, 2018), 20. 10. John Irwin, Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 36, 77.

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11. Eric Deggans, “The ‘Justified’ Finale Brings an End to Another TV Western,” NPR, last modified April 14, 2015, www​.npr​.org​/2015​/04​/14​/399402377​/the​-justified​ -finale​-brings​-an​-end​-to​-another​-tv​-western. 12. Quoted in Michael Sragow, “City of Angles,” Dallas Observer, last modified September 11, 1997, www​.dallasobserver​.com​/film​/city​-of​-angles​-6402511. 13. Margolies 6. 14. Kit Hamlen, “Style Guide: The Neo-Noir Fashion Behind True Detective’s Season 2,” Paste Magazine, September 2, 2015, www​.pastemagazine​.com​/style​/true​ -detective​/style​-guide​-the​-neo​-noir​-fashion​-behind​-true​-detec​/. 15. Ray B. Browne, Heroes and Humanities: Detective Fiction and Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1986, 4. 16. Fredric Jameson, Raymond Chandler: Detections of Totality (London and New York: Verso, 2016), 24. 17. Fine, 125.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, Robert A. and Michael T. Nietzel. Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1985. Browne, Ray B. Heroes and Humanities: Detective Fiction and Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1986. Chandler, Raymond. The Long Goodbye. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973. Deggans, Eric. “The ‘Justified’ Finale Brings an End to Another TV Western.” NPR. Last modified April 14, 2015. www​.npr​.org​/2015​/04​/14​/399402377​/the​-justified​ -finale​-brings​-an​-end​-to​-another​-tv​-western. Fine, David, Imagining Los Angeles. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004. Hamlen, Kit. “Style Guide: The Neo-Noir Fashion Behind True Detective’s Season 2.” Paste Magazine. Last modified September 2, 2015. www​.pastemagazine​.com​/ style​/true​-detective​/style​-guide​-the​-neo​-noir​-fashion​-behind​-true​-detec​/ Irwin, John. Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Jameson, Frederic. Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality. London and New York: Verso, 2016. Jenner, Mareike. “The Detective Series.” In The Television Genre Book, 3rd edition, edited by Glen Creeber, 20–22. London: BFI, 2018. Lewis, Jon. Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Margolies, Edward. Which Way Did He Go? The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross Macdonald. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982.

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Nimmo, Jun Joseph. “The American Cowboy.” Legends of America. Last modified September 2019. www​.legendsofamerica​.com​/we​-americancowboy​/. Sragow, Michael. “City of Angles.” Dallas Observer. Last modified September 11, 1997. www​.dallasobserver​.com​/film​/city​-of​-angles​-6402511.

Chapter Eleven

Deadwood’s Return to Authenticity Mark Walling

To know the western is to know the sound of its journalistic death knell, a toll delivered repeatedly during the last half-century in such prophetic tones as to make one long for the sun to set on critical assessments of the western regardless of how many rides await the last cowboy. While the western feature film did appear to fall out of favor with production companies following the economic bust of Heaven’s Gate (1980), the successes of Dances with Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992) revived the genre’s shrinking title list during the 1990s.1 The revisionist western of the ‘60s and ‘70s became mainstream, opening the gate for new interpretations of cowboy tropes and storylines. The western’s dry gulch was restored with hits both dramatic and comic, Tombstone (1993) and Maverick (1994), heartwarming and disturbing, The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Ride with the Devil (1999), establishing a new middle age for exploration of the Wild West that welcomed irreverent newcomers fascinated by the genre’s vast history and populous conventions. Independent filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and John Sayles all made westerns in the ‘90s that ridiculed and satirized its values but also embraced and extended them. The number of good westerns made after the turn of the century and the success of Brokeback Mountain (2005) continued to throw back the door of nostalgia, welcoming an invigorating diversity, effectively transforming the genre into a living history that should not be mistaken for “America” but must be acknowledged as one of this country’s relevant and vital cultures. However, it is fair to say that even though the miniseries production of Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Lonesome Dove (1989) created enormous critical and financial rewards for CBS, it also seemed to 199

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have penned the concluding chapter to the TV western.2 Compared with the ranch of riches the genre enjoyed during the golden age of television when more than twenty gun-toting series ran for over 100 episodes each, including Gunsmoke’s (1955–1975) astonishing total of 635, the list of TV westerns from the 1990s looks like drops left in the last horse trough. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993–1998) was the only series to run for over three years, and its high profile look and focus on social themes suggested that the financial and social constraints imposed on network television could not provide a believable setting for the explicit and unsettling cowboys who ride into the murky, bloody, low-lit location towns of revisionist westerns. Yet the expansion of the western film into a living history opened the cultural territory for unchartered explorations. As one millennium ended and another began, Americans were becoming obsessed with technology yet demanded livestock products in record numbers, and few might have predicted an East Coast writer of urban TV dramas would not only sojourn into the Wild West but contribute an authentic world against which all other westerns would be measured.3 A graduate of Yale where he studied literature with Robert Penn Warren, David Milch became a celebrated writer for the innovative police crime drama Hill Street Blues (1981–1987), where he formed a partnership with Stephen Bochco with whom he created NYPD Blue (1993–2005), a series that, according to Mark Singer, “looked and sounded different from anything that had previously appeared on network television.”4 The show’s first season alone produced twenty-six Emmy nominations.5 Milch won the Emmy for best writing two years in a row.6 After working himself to exhaustion, going to rehab for drug addiction, and teaching the art of writing in 2001 at the Writers Guild in Hollywood, Milch recovered stability, energy, and imaginative curiosity. Having grown up in the gambling world of the racetrack and associating with drug makers, dealers, and users for years, Milch developed a fascination with people living in places where law was not present and order arbitrary and precarious. He knew the pathways characters tasked with enforcement might chart through this uncertain terrain from his extensive work on cop shows. He pitched to HBO a series about such characters set in Rome during the time of Nero before laws had been codified with the tagline, “St. Paul gets collared.”7 He was interested in “how people improvised the structures of a society when there was no law to guide them. . . . How the law developed out of the social impulse to minimize the collateral damage of the taking of revenge.”8 HBO already had a series about Rome in the pipeline so the heads of the network’s entertainment division wondered if Milch might be able to explore the same themes in a different location.9 The question prompted a two-year research program. Milch not only read extensively about the place and people who became the Deadwood mining camp during the gold rush of 1876, but



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he also traveled to Deadwood to examine artifacts and historical documents. He employed a world champion bull rider and numerous additional cowboys to offer insight and guidance as he imagined the felt worlds of the historical characters he read about. He found similarities in the lives of rodeo performers who relieve the physical and psychological demands of the work through excesses of pleasure with those of late-nineteenth-century miners.10 Through research Milch located several primary characters: Wild Bill Hickok, Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Charlie Utter, and Calamity Jane. From Hill Street and NYPD Blue, he had learned the value of an integrated authenticity that wove thematic concerns of communal order, a sprawling ensemble cast, kinetic camerawork, and close details of setting and costume into an intricate design. Seeking unity in every element of mise-en-scène was not a new concept, but it looked new when Bochco and Milch’s crime dramas presented their committed approach on network television. Yet achieving it in an urban setting with contemporary characters posed artistic challenges more than logistical ones. A period piece set in a mining camp eleven years after the end of the Civil War was another matter. For the characters and storylines to evoke the authenticity Milch desired, the set, costumes, and props had to be accurate. In his view fictional characters attain credibility by an intuitive sense that they could live in the world that is presented to the viewer.11 Step one was the construction of a set that extended well beyond the range of those constructed for previous television series. Production Designer Maria Caso, who envisioned the camp itself as a character, attended to the color and shape of every design, including the font of every sign.12 Costume Designer Katherine Jane Bryant insisted that actors routinely be subject to the “dirt machine” to ensure the convincing distribution of dust on clothing, hair, and skin.13 Their achievements did not go unnoticed. Writing for National Public Radio, Andrew Wallenstein claimed the “real triumph” of the series was the set design: “Every scene is so mired in the grime and guts of this godforsaken town you might feel like wiping down your TV set after each episode. The series reaches such a realistic recreation of the Old West, you could practically smell the blood, sweat and beers permeating the saloons.”14 “Deadwood stinks,” wrote Matthew Gilbert in the Boston Globe, “which is one reason it’s so good.”15 The series claimed the Emmy for Art Direction and Costume Design for each of its three seasons.16 Ultimately, though, Deadwood is an imaginative construct not a documentary. It is a fictional presentation of a world and people that have a historical presence. To replicate that presence, the story told of them must become a living history. To achieve this end, Milch utilized an approach described by numerous novelists of historical fiction:

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The first thing you do is try to encounter all of the materials that are trustworthy . . . and then you try to forget it. The most important part is to forget it. And to allow it to become an imaginative reality. The truths of storytelling are not the truths of reportage. The truths of reportage finally depend upon their correspondence to an externally verifiable reality . . . The truths of storytelling may incorporate the so-called real event but they don’t depend for their effect on the fact that a researcher can corroborate the event occurred. They have to come alive in the imagination of the viewer. For that to occur the necessary precondition is that they come alive in the imagination of the storyteller. Once I knew the facts I tried to let the reality of the facts come alive in my imagination. Certain times at certain places certain events lacked a kind-of living reality . . . and that’s when the characters who hadn’t happened in real life came to be.17

In the world of the TV western, which had been restrained by so many moralistic and financial constraints, the triumphs achieved by this approach are startling and profound. An array of critics declared Deadwood to not only be an immediate revival of the TV western but also the best western ever made, and such claims were not diluted fifteen years later when the concluding two-hour movie was finally released. Even critics such as Rachel Syme of The New Republic, who didn’t watch the series until the film appeared, admitted a reluctance to enter a world dominated by violent men yet found the complex probing of the characters, the resilience of the women, and the rare accomplishment of a “true ensemble show” exhilarating.18 And yet, the brilliant accomplishments of Deadwood were shrouded for many by its language. The characters’ mixture of high and low frontier dialects, Victorian embellishment, and vulgar slang is approximated most closely not by a film or TV series but by the novels of Cormac McCarthy. But in McCarthy’s work, language is delivered to the audience primarily through a third-person narrator, whereas in Deadwood every word is spoken, and many utterances strike other characters and the viewers repeatedly like a slap, jab, or pistol-butt in the forms of fuck, cunt, and cocksucker. In fairness to the critics who questioned the explicit language on historical grounds, where might the person be who didn’t wonder after spending ten minutes in Deadwood of the incongruity of such blue language in a setting associated with Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, and John Wayne? Whether offering thumbs up or thumbs down, nearly every first season reviewer addresses the language as a source of praise, befuddlement, caution, or scorn, and many continue to address this concern in subsequent seasons. A few commentators even echo the haughty journalistic dismissals of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for its ungrammatical and thereby vulgar diction.19 Other critics weren’t put off so much as confused. On historical grounds, they were able to accept the abstract, mid-Victorian elevations but couldn’t factor the use of words that surely issued forth from the blind alleys and dark corners



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of film noir and gangster films.20 Interestingly, these critics often reference The Sopranos, a gangster series, and not a western to illustrate their points.21 New Jersey mobsters strategizing in the Ba Da Bing strip club speak this way, not a brothel owner and his bartenders/assassins in The Gem Saloon in 1876 Deadwood. Of course, the Hays Code governed the language of westerns until its demise in 1968. Yet while the advent of the rating system unlatched the door on the genre’s depictions of violence, antiheroes, Native Americans, and the filth of frontier life, the language of the West did not undergo significant revision. Indeed, the western held the reins on language long after other tropes had been let loose from the corral because the laconic cowboy hero who rides and shoots straight but says little had become a conservative archetype of not only the “actual” Wild West but also the cinematic genre that hoped to preserve its hero. In addition, the larger expanding and ruthlessly acquisitive American culture hoped to trademark the figure into a legacy of a white, individualistic, gun-wielding citizen soldier. In Milch’s view, survival in landscapes where the rule of law was not established and violence was as prevalent as prairie winds would have required for an euqally violent diction. Yet the cinematic cowboy of Hollywood’s golden age couldn’t use a language befitting the historical environment and thus had no choice but to let actions speak louder than the words he couldn’t use.22 No doubt, this heritage of reticence contributed to the shock value recorded when the first episode of Deadwood aired on HBO in 2004, but so too did the Cowboy Code of Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, who categorized the western hero’s values in a ten-point list that bears no slight resemblance to the commandments delivered by Moses. While the first item concerns rules of gunplay, further sanctioning the cowboy as first and foremost a citizen soldier, or if you prefer, a member of an unrecognized, second amendment militia, number eight directs the cowboy to be clean in thought, action, personal habits, and speech.23 The code’s influence is not easily documented except by example. Dodge City was a frontier town, and we didn’t hear Marshall Dillon or Miss Kitty or the hard-scrabble, mule-riding Festus Hagen resort to such derelict word choice. Even Clint Eastwood, who didn’t welcome every aspect of clean living, wandered a forsaken landscape with verbal decorum strapped tight to his saddle bags, letting fly when the situation required with a snarl or spit but rarely a curse word. But Gene Autry never rode Champion the Wonder Horse through Deadwood. If he had, he most certainly would have joined the choir of complaint that greeted the show’s vivid parade of characters. And he would have completely missed the point. The transgressive placement of such language in a world whose every mudhole, tent-flap, well-worn hat, dust-threaded garment, and draped canvas

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sign atop a storefront bespeaks an understanding of place, people, and historical authenticity unmatched in the western genre, revisionist or otherwise, and which has since wielded enormous influence on other period pieces such as Downton Abbey, achieved two notable effects. It alienated the audience by disabusing viewers of sentimental notions about the western and its heroes that had been handed down to them whether they were old enough to recall the Hays Code or Gene Autry. And as a result, the language allowed the world of Deadwood to escape the province of the museum glass and its understood past and become a vital, complex, and uncertain living history. Meeting the series on its own terms, prior to any verification supplied by the historical record, it is not hard to believe in the authenticity of Deadwood’s language as easily as one accepts the diversity of hats worn by the characters. Clearly, the Deadwood mining camp is populated almost entirely by men: bullwhackers, horse thieves, deadbeats, murderers, mule skinners, and, yes, even some cowboys. They had all been recruited by the lure of money, whether in the form of gold that had been discovered in the Black Hills or in the form of currency created by the gold to procure supplies of work and entertainment. They were all committing an illegal act. A treaty signed by the Sioux Nation and the US government forbade any white man from entering the hills, which were sacred to the Sioux. However, the discovery of gold, achieved in no small part by the economic downturn of 1873, the overzealous ambition of General George Custer, and the subsequent rout of Custer and his calvary by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, transferred the US Army’s interests in preventing white traffic into the stolen territory to waging revenge campaigns against the Indians.24 The military’s shift in priorities gave the miners room to govern themselves. Deadwood in 1876 is not a town. Residents uniformly refer to it as a camp, as in a mining camp. No state borders it and the camp is not even under the jurisdiction of the nearby Dakota Territory as we watch Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) chide the wagon masters during their difficult passage to the camp in the pilot episode. And as the first season quickly demonstrates, Deadwood’s most prominent individuals, mostly saloon owners, are wary of establishing any form of law or rule upon which a communal order can be based from fear of inviting the occupation of a recognized territory, which might thereby require the residents of this unofficial place to relinquish all titles and claims that might be held as evidence of that law or rule. In other words, this is not the terrified Hadleyville of High Noon or the corrupt Lago of High Plains Drifter. This is a destination where cowboy heroes as individuals are given complete freedom, and in no western before or since have they seemed so vulnerable. Disagreements cannot be adjudicated, mediated, or appealed. A violent act might end the talk and therefore the dispute. The body might end up in a grave to be buried or in a hog pen to be consumed. Given this, it’s



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not hard to deduce that a person might load their minds with words as calling cards that are short, nasty, and mean. In this world even the most highly stylized, considerately graceful, impeccably postured, and consciously mannered of characters, Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine), pulled from the pages of history with considerable accuracy, must stand down a man, who is not cowered by Hickok’s gunfighting reputation, with a four-letter word he brandishes as a weapon, smacking Jack McCall (Garret Dillahunt) with it repeatedly over the poker table in the Number 10 Saloon, where he will later meet his inglorious end with a bullet in the back of the head fired by McCall. Milch has stated that numerous sources verify his interpretation of the Black Hills dialect. Brad Benz’s excellent article “Deadwood and the Use of Language” cites a firsthand account by Thomas J. Dimsdale who observed that, particularly after strong drink was consumed, the “all-pervading custom of using strong language” prevailed.25 Likewise, Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi notes the power of language used by many men on the river.26 Milch argues that such rough talk was even more pronounced in Deadwood: The obscenity of the West was striking but the obscenity of mining camps was unbelievable. And there was a reason for that which had to do with the very fundamental quality of their behavior. They were raping the land. They weren’t growing anything. They weren’t respecting the cycles of nature. They were taking. And in order to muscle up for that enterprise in an environment where there were no laws . . . the relentless obscenity of the miners was a way of announcing the compatibility of his spirit with the world in which he found himself.27

Milch’s defense of the language not only speaks to concerns of historical accuracy but more importantly to his obsessive desire for authenticity. Language itself does not exist on a transcendental plane above the camp, as many writers of purple prose in the late nineteenth century believed, but is, like the characters, storyline, setting, and costumes, a single thread in the wider fabric of this vibrant, harsh, and terrifying world. In Milch’s view words were the only form of social contract in a community without government. As he argued to HBO executives who hoped to pare back the cussing, a denial of a word based on a generic notion of decency or even on a particular social environment that excludes the word from common discourse is a denial of the personality of the character who speaks it, of every natural, social, and familial influence that produced the character, a denial, in fact, of the very world in which the audience is asked to enter.28 Ultimately, even this integrated vision is governed by a larger world view which rewards the series with an authentic blend of imagination and history that makes it a rare achievement not only in a televised series but in the larger genres of drama or literature. In spite of its scenic unity, its audacious

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language, its multifaceted, perverse, greedy, horrifying, courageous, obsequious, lamentable, and daunting cast of characters, Deadwood’s primary concern is with community. Over the course of three seasons and the concluding two-hour film we watch as individuals bluff, jockey, and battle to serve their individual desires, which, in turn, expand as the camp expands to include concerns of other individuals and then of the camp itself. The first civic meeting of minds called by Swearengen (Ian McShane) in The Gem Saloon occurs in the sixth episode of the first season and concerns the smallpox plague spreading through the camp. Both the private and communal interests of everyone in attendance crowd the table for priority. In this gathering and in those that follow as the series progresses, formality of manner that might one day censor their language is thrust upon them by the widening of their interests, particularly the encroachment of the Dakota Territory. What might it mean to be annexed? How will title and claim by justified? Where are the papers in a camp populated by people whose interest in residence was primarily motivated by a desire to flee the legal and social entrapments of the established towns where they once lived? Yet even in this initial civic session where a contagious illness threatens the life and death existence of the camp, the men speak about moves and countermoves as if they are team members in a group chess match, not blood and guts survivors in an environment that sees disputes concluded by death on a daily basis. And in one of the most poignant moments in any English-language drama, to recognize this laying down of arms in respect for the greater good, Swearengen opens cans of peaches that are passed round to recognize the participants’ civic interest and the personal vulnerability they might entail. In a place of no communal habits, the peaches become an indicator of peaceful negotiation and a symbol of a newly formed ritual. At every subsequent meeting in the series, peaches are served. As Emily St. James describes it, Deadwood shows us why society is necessary, why we keep coming together and building communities and how these impulses “give birth to civilization, the idea that living in a society necessarily requires the slow negotiation of the self with other selves.”29 Karl Quinn calls the series “the finest example of world building ever committed to screen.”30 This vision is not only an artistic triumph, constructed meticulously episode by episode, but it squares with what we know to be the historical truth of the Wild West if we can accept the patience required to look past the outrageous, violent storybook legends. “It’s very easy to overlook in a town like Deadwood that in fact the people there were building community,” according to noted historian Anne M. Butler. “It seems that Deadwood was just wide open, no law and order, nobody cares what’s going on, it’s just the rule of the most powerful and who can make the most money. But everything in the West is about building institutions and trying to establish community. What are our rules going to be, who is going to enforce those rules?”31



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The role of the individual as a member of a family, profession, community, and society have preoccupied Milch since his first script for Hill Street Blues, which revealed the precinct’s divergent concerns for the murders of a nun and an unknown Hispanic man. Yet prior to Deadwood the larger communities, though malleable, were already established for Milch. This was not the case with Deadwood. In this landmark series we witness the development of the community in step with the development of the individuals who occupy it. And for Milch it might all tie back to Rome and the story he pitched before turning to Deadwood. St. Paul from the Rome series’ pitch is mentioned in the fifth episode of Deadwood’s first season. Reverend H.W. Smith (Ray McKinnon), who provides so much relief during the camp’s smallpox epidemic yet is gone before the end of the first season, a victim of a brain tumor, turns to Corinthians I during his funeral oration for Hickok. According to Paul, says Smith, we are all baptized into one body and are all of one spirit. As the parts of one body are dependent and inseparable from the other parts that form the body, so too are human beings interconnected: The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of thee. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble . . . and those members of the body which we think of as less honorable—all are necessary. He says that there should be no schism in the body but that the members should have the same care one to another. And whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it.

Deadwood offers cowboy characters in forms as varied and complex as any found in the western genre. They possess an authenticity that resonates by virtue of their capabilities as individuals and their dependent roles as members of a new community, which becomes their legacy much more than their unique take on a cinematic trope or cultural icon. By the end of the two-hour film, Charlie Utter’s murder has been avenged, Bullock is home with the wife and family fate selected for him, Trixie and Sol have been married, and Swearengen has finalized his will so that Trixie will inherit The Gem, which he suggests should become a dance hall. The community of which they are a part will outlive them all but be shaped by their contributions and wounded by their transgressions, an authentic vision that allows us to see by way of them an abiding truth of our existence: that we are individuals, but we are never alone.

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NOTES 1. Nicholas Barber, “Heaven’s Gate: From Hollywood Disaster to Masterpiece,” BBC, December 4, 2015, www​.bbc​.com​/culture​/article​/20151120​-heavens​-gate​-from​ -hollywood​-disaster​-to​-masterpiece. 2. Rick Kogan, “Return with Us Now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Via the Majesty of the Western Miniseries Lonesome Dove,” Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2022, www​.chicagotribune​.com​/entertainment​/ct​-ent​-lonesome​-dove​-revisited​-kogan​ -0807​-20220803​-qrzuvq5ss5f35cmc25lm4u75qy​-story​.html. 3. Phillip K. Thornton, “Livestock Production: Recent Trends, Future Prospects,” National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, 365 (1554): 2853–67, September 27, 2010, www​.ncbi​.nlm​.nih​.gov​/pmc​/articles​/ PMC2935116​/ 4. Mark Singer, “The Misfit: How David Milch Got from NYPD Blue to Deadwood by Way of an Epistle of St. Paul,” The New Yorker, February 6, 2005, www​.newyorker​ .com​/magazine​/2005​/02​/14​/the​-misfit​-2. 5. “NYPD Blue,” Television Academy: Emmys, www​.emmys​.com​/shows​/nypd​ -blue. 6. “David Milch,” Television Academy: Emmys, www​.emmys​.com​/bios​/david​ -milch. 7. Singer, “The Misfit.” 8. Singer, “The Misfit.” 9. Singer, “The Misfit.” 10. Singer, “The Misfit.” 11. “An Imaginative Reality,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season, (HBO Video, 2004). 12. “Making Deadwood: The Show Behind the Show,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season, (HBO Video, 2004). 13. “Making Deadwood: The Show Behind the Show,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. 14. Andrew Wallenstein, “TV Review: Deadwood,” NPR, March 26, 2004, www​ .npr​.org​/2004​/03​/26​/1793543​/tv​-review​-hbos​-deadwood. 15. Matthew Gilbert, “Down and Dirty Strikes Gold,” Boston. com March 19, 2004, archive.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2004/03/19/ down_and_dirty_deadwood_strikes_gold/. 16. “Deadwood,” Television Academy: Emmys, www​.emmys​.com​/site​-search​ ?search​_api​_views​_fulltext​=Deadwood. 17. “An Imaginative Reality,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. 18. Rachel Syme, “The Outlaw World of Deadwood,” The New Republic, June 6, 2019, newrepublic.com/article/154060/ deadwood-movie-hbo-review-why-outlaw-show-timeless. 19. Linda Stasi, “Ten Gallon Sopranos,” The New York Post, March 18, 2004, nypost.com/2004/03/18/ten-gallon-sopranos/.



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20. Hal Boedeker, “The Dreary Old West vs. Jolly Old England,” Orlando Sentinel, March 20, 2004, www​.orlandosentinel​.com​/news​/os​-xpm​-2004​-03​-21​-0403170598​ -story​.html. 21. Robert Bianco, “Deadwood Shows Few Signs of Life,” USA Today, March 18, 2004, usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2004-03-18-deadwood_x. htm. 22. “The New Language of the Old West,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season, (HBO Video, 2004). 23. “Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code,” Geneautry.com, Updated September 29, 2017, www​.geneautry​.com​/geneautry​/geneautry​_cowboycode​ -code​.html​ #:​​ ~:​text​=The​ %20Cowboy​%20must​%20never​%20shoot​,a​%20trust​%20confided​%20in​%20him. 24. Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie (Austin: State House Press, 1993). 25. Brad Benz, “Deadwood and the English Language,” Great Plains Quarterly, 27.4 (Fall 2007), 239–51, www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/23534238​?searchText​=Brad+Benz​ &searchUri​=​%2Faction​%2FdoBasicSearch​%3FQuery​ % 3DBrad​ % 2BBenz​ &ab​ _ segments​=0​%2Fbasic​_search​_gsv2​%2Fcontrol​&refreqid​=fastly​-default​%3Ad3cb19 dedf33c59453052a160dee85e4​#metadata​_info​_tab​_contents. 26. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York, Bantam, 1981), 26. 27. “The New Language of the Old West,” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. 28. Singer, “The Misfit.” 29. Emily St. James, “Deadwood, HBO’s Western, Is Maybe the Best Drama Ever Made: Actually, Scratch the ‘Maybe,’” Vox May 31, 2019, www​.vox​.com​/culture​ /2016​/10​/4​/12824202​/deadwood​-hbo​-best​-drama. 30. Karl Quinn, “Mud, Blood, and a F---load of Swearing: Is Deadwood the Best Western Ever?” The Age, August 25, 2021, www​.theage​.com​.au​/culture​/tv​-and​-radio​ /mud​-blood​-and​-a​-f​-load​-of​-swearing​-is​-deadwood​-the​-best​-western​-ever​-20210813​ -p58ihf​.html. 31. “The Real Deadwood: 1877,” Deadwood: The Complete Second Season, DVD (HBO Video, 2006).

BIBLIOGRAPHY “An Imaginative Reality.” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. (HBO Video, 2004). Barber, Nicholas. “Heaven’s Gate: From Hollywood Disaster to Masterpiece.” BBC December 4, 2015. https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/culture​/article​/20151120​-heavens​-gate​ -from​-hollywood​-disaster​-to​-masterpiece. Benz, Brad. “Deadwood and the English Language.” Great Plains Quarterly 27.4 (Fall 2007): 239–51. https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/23534238​?searchText​=Brad+Benz &searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DBrad%2BBenz&ab_se gments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastlydefault%3Ad3cb19d edf33c59453052a160dee85e4#metadata_info_tab_contents.

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Bianco, Robert. “Deadwood Shows Few Signs of Life.” USA Today March 18, 2004. http:​//​usatoday30​.usatoday​.com​/life​/television​/reviews​/2004​-03​-18​-deadwood​_x​ .htm. Boedeker, Hal. “The Dreary Old West vs. Jolly Old England.” Orlando Sentinel March 20, 2004. https:​ / /​ w ww​. orlandosentinel ​ . com ​ / news ​ / os-xpm-2004-03-21-0403170598-story.html. “David Milch.” Television Academy: Emmys. https:​//​www​.emmys​.com​/bios​/ david-milch. “Deadwood.” Television Academy: Emmys. https:​//​www​.emmys​.com​/site​-search? sea rch_api_views_fulltext=Deadwood. Editors. “U.S. Army Retaliates for the Little Bighorn Massacre.” History November 16, 2009. https:​//​www​.history​.com​/this​-day​-in​-history​/u​-s​-army​-retaliates​-for​-the​ -little​-bighorn​-massacre. “Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code.” Geneautry.com Updated September 29, 2017. https:​ //​www​.geneautry​.com​/geneautry​/geneautry​_cowboycode​-code​.html#:~: text=The %20Cowboy%20must%20never%20shoot,a%20trust%20confided%20in%20him. Gilbert, Matthew. “Down and Dirty Strikes Gold.” Boston.com March 19, 2004. http:​//​archive​.boston​.com​/ae​/tv​/articles​/2004​/03​/19​/down​_and​_dirty​_deadwood​ _strikes​_gold​/. Kogan, Rick. “Return with Us Now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Via the Majesty of the Western Miniseries Lonesome Dove.” Chicago Tribune August 3, 2022. https:​//​www​.chicagotribune​.com​/entertainment​/ct​-ent​-lonesome​-dove​ -revisited​-kogan​-0807​-20220803​-qrzuvq5ss5f35cmc25lm4u75qy​-story​.html. “Making Deadwood: The Show Behind the Show.” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. (HBO Video, 2004). “The New Language of the Old West.” Deadwood: The Complete First Season. (HBO Video, 2004). “NYPD Blue.” Television Academy: Emmys. https:​//​www​.emmys​.com​/shows​/ nypd-blue. “Picks and Pans Review: Deadwood.” People March 29, 2004. https:​//​people​.com​/ archive/ picks-and-pans -review -deadwood- vol-61-no-12/. Pierce, Michael D. The Most Promising Young Officer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Quinn, Karl. “Mud, Blood and a F---load of Swearing: Is Deadwood the Best Western Ever?” The Age August 25, 2021. https:​//​www​.theage​.com​.au​/culture​/ tv​-and​-radio​/mud​-blood​-and​-a​-f​-load​-of​-swearing​-is​-deadwood​-the​-best​-western​ -ever​-20210813​-p58ihf​.html. “The Real Deadwood: 1877.” Deadwood: The Complete Second Season. (HBO Video, 2006). Robinson, Charles M. III. Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie. Austin: State House Press, 1993. Singer, Mark. “The Misfit: How David Milch Got from NYPD Blue to Deadwood by Way of an Epistle of St. Paul.” The New Yorker February 6, 2005. https:​//​www. newyorker. com /magazine/2005/02/14/the-misfit-2.



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St. James, Emily. “Deadwood, HBO’s Western, Is Maybe the Best Drama Ever Made: Actually, Scratch the ‘Maybe.’” Vox May 31, 2019. https:​//​www​.vox​.com​/ culture/ 2016/10/4/12824202/deadwood-hbo-best-drama. Stasi, Linda. “Ten Gallon Sopranos.” The New York Post March 18, 2004. https:​//​ nypost​.com​/2004​/03​/18​/ten​-gallon​-sopranos​/. Syme, Rachel. “The Outlaw World of Deadwood.” The New Republic June 6, 2019. https:​//​newrepublic​.com​/article​/154060​/deadwood​-movie​-hbo​-review​-why​-outlaw​ -show​-timeless. Thornton, Phillip K. “Livestock Production: Recent Trends, Future Prospects.” National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information 365 (1554): 2853–67, September 27, 2010. https:​//​www​.ncbi​.nlm​.nih​.gov​/pmc​/articles​ /PMC2935116​/. Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. New York: Bantam, 1981. Wallenstein, Andrew. “TV Review: Deadwood.” NPR March 26, 2004. https:​//​www​ .npr​.org​/2004​/03​/26​/1793543​/tv​-review​-hbos​-deadwood.

Chapter Twelve

Semiotic Landscapes and Fallen Heroes Repurposing the Myth of the West in Westworld Caroline Collins

After its opening credits the pilot episode of HBO’s dramatic sci-fi Westworld (2016–2022) begins with a dark screen. Against this blackness an off-screen male voice gives an instruction. “Bring her back online” he commands. With the flickering of minimal lighting, we see the silhouette of an unclothed woman seated within an empty room. More bars of fluorescent light spark to life in what appears to be a dim laboratory as a faint yet ominous humming thrums in the background. The camera inches closer to the fair-haired and unmoving woman as the unseen voice asks her, “Can you hear me?” Lips unmoving, we hear her drawled response off-screen, her voice slightly trembling as she quietly answers, “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling quite myself.” What follows next is a dispassionate interrogation of sorts that culminates with a key inquiry when the male voice asks the seated woman he calls Dolores, “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” A fly inches across the open pupil of the unmoving Dolores, its silvery wings twitching as the camera pulls even closer to center her still and expressionless face. The fly buzzes away and the frame cuts to an overhead shot of Dolores. Rosy-cheeked and wearing a pink ribboned cotton and lace white gown, she sleeps peacefully upon her back in a bed made with crisp white linens. Soft rays of morning sun alight the room while chirping birdsong slowly begins to overpower the monotone hum of the previous fluorescent lit space. “No,”

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Dolores’s voiceover answers, she has not questioned the nature of her reality. Then, the sleeping Dolores’s eyelashes flutter. And she awakes. In these opening minutes of the series pilot the filmmakers of Westworld establish key elements of this cinematic universe. There exist at least two distinct settings for the characters: the sterile, sleek, and artificially lit lab and the seemingly natural and vibrant world of the Wild West. Initially contrasted in light, tone, emotion, and dynamism, the audience comes to know these two backdrops as the Delos laboratory and its sophisticated amusement park Westworld, locales which provide rich storyscapes on which to delve into themes regarding the complexities of technology, artificial intelligence, sentience, ethics, and humanity among other topics as a growing body of extant literature discusses (Netolicky 2017; Tremble 2017; Arvan 2018; Vint 2019; Rayhert 2017). While certainly significant, this chapter focuses not upon mechanization or the making of material things, but the socially constructed nature of story and myth—including the politics of such cultural work. Specifically, by offering a close reading of the early minutes of the series’ pilot episode and paying specific attention to Westworld’s (re)making and revealing of classical western motifs, this essay charts a particular employment of western mythology and its cowboy archetype—one that exposes and upends lore, eschewing organic readings of the myth of the West and cowboy symbolism to instead make plain their sociocultural construction and utility. Before unpacking the ways in which Westworld utilizes, and in many ways repurposes western tropes, it makes sense to underscore the significance of such a move by first attending to the politics of western remembrance, specifically examining: (1) the making of the myth of the West and its iconographic “pioneer identity” (which is a core informant of the cowboy archetype); and (2) the maintenance and repair of western mythology and cowboy iconography. THE MYTH OF THE WEST AND THE MAKING OF THE COWBOY ARCHETYPE At the core of the American cowboy archetype are deep roots in a national creation myth. This origin story is not a monolith. Distinctions and nuances comprise its various incarnations. Yet, together, these strands generally make up a cohesive narrative tapestry commonly referred to as the myth of the West. Offering a tale punctuated by adventure, fortitude, and the taming of the wild in order to forge a nation steeped in freedom and opportunity, American western mythology is a core informant of our national identity, shaping not only how Americans and non-Americans alike perceive the United States but also how we come to apprehend complex notions within our national

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consciousness such as race (Gómez 2018; Brown 2007; Allmendinger 2005; Deloria Jr. 1988), place (Fraser 2017; Lint Sagarena 2014; DeLyser 2003; Smith 1970), gender (Woodworthy-Ney 2008; Gonzalez 2004; Brown 1981; Castañeda 1990; Katz 2010; Armitage and Jameson 1987), and power (Gibb 2018; White 2015; Igler 2001; Limerick 1987; Slotkin 1998b, 2000). As such, to understand the role of the iconic cowboy in popular culture we must first acknowledge the cultural legacy of the myth of the West, including the role of both the frontier and pioneer in our national imaginary. THE IMAGINED FRONTIER Scaffolding western mythology is an ensemble of cultural facts often taken for granted as common sense. Though not always steeped in veracity, these assumptions nonetheless serve as powerful vehicles of meaning-making. Among these cultural facts is the imagined nature of the frontier. First conceived by American scholars in linear and historical terms, nineteenth-century historians described the western frontier as marked by a specific opening (with the commencement of white settlement) and a distinct closing (in 1890 when a US Census noted a significant lack of available tract land for the individual settler) (Limerick 1987; Wrobel 1993). Such a conception depends upon, among other elements, two critical assumptions: imagining the nineteenth-century frontier as consisting of open and available western land, and the perception that particularly rugged white individuals were necessary to populate and settle such abundant yet primitive space. In terms of its spatial conception, the nineteenth-century western frontier was conceived as a particular terra nullius. And though western lands were and continue to be inhabited by Indigenous individuals and nations, the European-based colonial concept that before conquest Indigenous territories technically “belonged to no one” as Native peoples “had not yet mixed their labour with the earth in any permanent way” has had lasting impact (Frost 1981, 515). Such a framing of an “unsettled” frontier not only aids and abets the ongoing project of settler colonialism and in many ways ignores Hispanic colonization of the Southwest, but it was also emblematic of America’s perceived promise. In fact, in 1893 when historian Frederick Jackson Turner read his now famous “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association announcing the official “close” of the western frontier, this proclamation signaled to many not just the end of a historical era, but a critical loss of opportunity (Wrobel 1993; Limerick 1987). Thus, with the seeming loss of the western frontier, in conjunction with a suite of economic panics, came a collective crisis of confidence in the nation’s promise.1 And though between 1890 and 1920 more public land would be

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“brought into production” than ever settled during the decades immediately following the passage of the 1862 Homestead Act (Slotkin 1998a, 30), corporate anxiety regarding a sense of opportunity lost was significant. Given these circumstances, by the close of the nineteenth century the nation was primed for popular culture offerings that harnessed the public memory of the opportunity of the western frontier and the freedom of its once “wide open space.” MASS MEDIA AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “PIONEER IDENTITY” Accompanying the notion of a wide and open frontier within the myth of the West is the trope of the hearty settler who is willing and capable to take on and tame such wild environs for the divine expansion of a grateful nation. Integral to the initial construction of this national ideal was American mass media which, in concert with academic and political discourse, helped to produce what I call America’s distinct “pioneer identity” (Collins 2019). For example, the now (in)famous term Manifest Destiny, an imperialist cultural belief steeped in notions of white supremacy that informs the pioneer identity, was coined by magazine media (O’Sullivan 1845; Pratt 1933).2 And around 1865, newspaper editor Horace Greeley popularized the heavily gendered idiom, “Go west young man, and grow up with the country” (Bushnell and Choy 2001; Fuller 2004). Additionally, widely circulated western travel guides often featured artwork like John Gast’s American Progress (1872) which depicts the divine nature of westward expansion. Considering the weight of such an anointed task it is not surprising that this pioneering settler came to occupy a mythic status equal to, or often beyond that of, the patriarchs iconicized within narratives of the nation’s founding. In other words, unlike the original heroes of the nation—the Founding Fathers which embodied ideal seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liberal subjects who not only devised a state but its founding social contract—the settlers of the western frontier came to represent another set of American values. Specifically, the classical liberal subject, as articulated by John Locke (1689/1988) who is often viewed as a general proxy for liberalism, is competitive, self-interested, industrious, and autonomous, though also consenting and rational—characteristics amenable to agreeing to give up particular individual freedoms in order to join in a body politic and escape the brutal state of nature. The nation’s pioneer identity, however, embodies the rugged, choleric, impetuous, tenacious, vehement, forward-looking, and individualistic disposition necessary to leave the securities of the social compact and instead plunge into nature to tackle and tame it (Turner 1893/2008, 1903; Slotkin 1973/2000). This rugged individual emerges then as a particular foil

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to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century staid liberal subject and as an alibi of westward expansion (Collins 2019).3 Given the cultural and political significance of this pioneer identity within our national consciousness, it is unsurprising that it is often around the tenacity of the individual settler that the heroic nature of the myth of the West coalesces. This rhetorical tendency, which downplays both complex systems of state-building infrastructure and the prevalence of pioneer failure, instead reinforces a mythology in which singular homesteaders carved out the West through their own individual grit or in tight-knit and often insular communities. Thus, like a seeming “closing” frontier informed nostalgic renderings of a once “open” West, so did late nineteenth-century economic conditions, including increased industrialization (Schivelbusch 2014) and the rise of concentrated and monopolized wealth (Frieden 1997), help to influence the growing popularity of stories of a “bygone”‘ era (Slotkin 1998a; Fraser 2017; Wrobel 1993) featuring western-themed heroes who—often against all odds—manifested their own destinies on their own straightforward terms. THE COWBOY ARCHETYPE IN POPULAR CULTURE Among fabled pioneer adventurers including dugout dwellers, gold panners, buffalo hunters, mountain men, and railroad layers, perhaps the most prominent and recognizable folk hero of western mythology is the cowboy. Though highly popularized, the cowboy archetype is rooted in its own historical context—however, one that has granted it iconic status as both “pathfinder and empire builder” for the nation (Frantz and Ernest Jr. 2016, 13). Embodying a particular physical manifestation of conquest, the classic nineteenth-century range cowboy is publicly remembered for taming, herding, corralling, and driving massive beasts across vast western expanses. Tasked with such daunting and often dangerous endeavors it is not surprising that the cowboy archetype in popular culture often represents a microcosm of the overall “subduing” of the West, including both the taming of its “wild” environs and the conquering of its “savage” indigenous inhabitants. However, like most tropes, the cowboy archetype also represents a particular flattening, embellishing, and erasure of certain historical narratives. For example, nineteenth-century cowboys were not a monolithic lot. Given the cattle industry’s roots in Hispanic America, Mexican vaqueros played a vital role in the West, often training cowboys new to the trade (Goldstein-Shirley 1997; Barraclough 2019).4 Cattle-raising Native Americans also instructed new laborers in addition to managing their own responsibilities (ibid.; Gandy 2008).5 And Black cowboys could be found across the nineteenth-century West—in fact, in southeastern Texas one in four cowboys were Black

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(Nodjimbadem 2017; Goldstein-Shirley 1997; Schlissel 2000; Gandy 2008; Carico 2017). Taken together, Mexican, African American, and Indian cattle workers made up about one-third of all trail cowboys (Hine and Faragher 2007). Yet as a growing popular culture industry which centered around western-themed diversions sedimented toward the end of the nineteenth century, the dime novels, serials, and Wild West shows that heavily featured cowboys as their prime draw overwhelmingly presented an archetypal ideal that was both white and male. There were of course notable exceptions. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, for instance, featured the sharpshooting and storytelling acts of Annie Oakley (who joined the show in 1885) (Sayers 2012) and Lillian Smith (who arrived the next year) (Joyce 2006). Likewise, nonwhite cowboys were not completely absent from western-themed entertainment. African American cowboy Nat Love, for example, published a 1907 autobiography regaling his life on the range. Through it he offers a tale full of the drama conventional to the genre, including drinks with Billy the Kid, shootouts with Indians, and romanticized tributes to particular American days-gone-by when he proclaims, “a braver, truer set of men never lived than these wild sons of the plains” (ibid., 44). Despite this diversity of experience, however, what would come to embody the cowboy archetype in the national imagination would be a distinct version of the rugged white male through countless western cultural products that advanced a “cult of masculinity” which “reinforced . . . white centrality” (Coyne 1998, 4). As the cowboy archetype gained cultural sedimentation over time it also began representing a particular collapsing of all things western—and not just the cattle trade—appearing under “a variety of guises . . . inextricably entangled in the whole western complex” (Franz and Ernest 2016, 7). Central to this “western complex” was the emergence of the western film genre, a popular art form that would have a lasting impact on the (re)making and consumption of the cowboy archetype in popular culture remembrance. For the first sixty years of filmmaking the western was the medium’s most popular genre (Indick 2008). From silent pictures to low-budget B-movies to Hollywood blockbuster sagas that dominated the western’s “Golden Age” in the mid twentieth century, these films galvanized well-known themes and tropes popularized in western fiction, artwork, and traveling Wild West shows through a new art form that had become “the primary medium of the national mythology” (ibid., 2). Supporting the expansion of the genre was a distinctly domestic asset—namely, the western landscape itself. Or as film scholar Scott Simmon (2003) describes this advantage, “the birth of the American film western was due not merely to some vague inner need in American culture for frontier stories but also to the way that the American landscape lent itself commercially to the creation of an inimitable international product” (9).

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Thus, the industry would leverage and monetize this specific and instantly recognizable topography to tell stories set upon a landscape once hailed “the most American part of America” (Lord Bryce in Katz 2005, xii). Featuring character actors to the leading stars of the genre like the well iconicized John Wayne, the Hollywood western would influence both the box office and psyche of the nation. And though a national need to revisit the frontier was certainly not the sole influence or impetus of the genre, (re)produce a mythology these films would, leaving an indelible mark on the myth of the West and the significant imagery and belief systems that inform it, including its most prevalent hero: the American cowboy. Thus, when I talk about the cowboy archetype in this essay, I am gesturing to a complex ideal that informs and intertwines notions of race, masculinity, virility, individualism, and “Americanness” in our national consciousness in manners which often make it difficult to discern where one leaves off and the other picks up. MYTHIC MAINTENANCE, REPAIR, AND REUSE It is important to note that despite the entrenched and persistent cultural significance of western iconography, like most mythologies, the myth of the West is not immune to change. What is remarkable, however, is its capacity for maintenance and repair. Specifically, the durability of western mythology and its cowboy iconography relies not only on faithful reiterations and readily legible versions of western archetypes and themes. Seemingly “updated” reconstructions also ensure the mythology’s survival. Such offerings include culturally palatable pioneer narratives that employ timely rhetoric, affording the mythology’s persistence within changing social and cultural traditions (Collins, 2019). These retellings’ palatable luster often simultaneously supports modern democratic narratives of multiculturalism and ethnic pluralism that continue to inform our national imaginary (ibid.). As such, many updated renditions of frontier narratives continue to function as varying tactical executions of an overall narrative strategy, one that scaffolds notions of “Americanness” and American exceptionalism within a cohesive national project. Westworld, however, while certainly culturally relevant to contemporary audiences, cannot simply be categorized as a repair pioneer narrative despite its stylized aesthetics and (post)modern themes. Instead, it is more accurate to position Westworld’s exposing, upending, and eventually queering of the myth of the West and its cowboy archetype as a particular mythic repurposing which marshals western tropes not to remake a cohesive nation, but to interrogate the construction and stakes of the cultural narratives that bind us and shape our worlds.

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Based on the 1973 film of the same name (Crichton 1973), Westworld the series follows the storylines of park guests, the android hosts that populate the park, and the production teams that design, build, and maintain this complex immersive experience. Considering this story focus, the notion of spatial construction in Westworld is significant. Thus, in the Westworld pilot, director and series cocreator Jonathan Nolan (2016) utilizes cinematic techniques like mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound to construct a particularized world while engaging in discourse around notions of normativity, race, gender, knowledge production, power, and autonomy.6 These worldbuilding elements of filmmaking work narratively and thematically. They also perform particular types of psychological work, helping viewers to visit a “cinematic place” or what Jeff Hopkins (1994) describes as a: landscape [with] its own geography, one that situates the spectator in a cinematic space where space and time are compressed and expanded and where societal ideals, mores, values, and roles may be sustained or subverted. . . . [This] cinematic landscape is not . . . a neutral place or an objective documentation or mirror of the “real,” but an ideologically charged cultural creation whereby meanings of place and society are made, legitimized, contested, and obscured. (46)

This semiotic landscape, in conjunction with deep readings of the visual text, also allows audiences to draw symptomatic meanings, or wider contextual meanings not deliberately—or even consciously—conveyed through a filmmaker’s explicit and implicit intentions (Bateman and Schmidt 2013; Thompson et al. 2016). In other words, even if Westworld cocreators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy did not set out to explicitly portray notions of story construction, and particularly how these notions relate to the myth of the West, “the semiotic processes that create the film image and encourage viewers to an ideologically charged cinematic place” create epistemological opportunities to unpack the production and taken-for-granted naturalization of the myth of the West through the lens of the series (Hopkins 1994, 48). (RE)MAKING AND UNVEILING A MYTHIC WORLD IN THE WESTWORLD SERIES PILOT From its opening credits Westworld highlights the phenomena of production. Played out in slow-motion action and set to a haunting violin and piano score by Ramin Djawadi, the credits feature a futuristic, sterile, and automated 3D production of “life.” Robotic machinery operates without a human in sight, going about the divine task of creation, producing both the seemingly

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“‘natural’ (e.g., connecting ligaments to bone, creating what becomes a galloping horse, or a couple engaged in sex) to human innovations (e.g., assembling the strings of a piano or the inner workings of a gun). Given its futurized take on 3D printing, the created beings in this state are a stark plasticized white, hairless, and unfinished, revealing bits of alabaster rib cages, partially exposed skulls, and skeletal frames. Toward the credits’ end, these scenes are interspersed with gauzy, slightly distorted, color images of a vast Wild West landscape superimposed onto a screen-filling cornea and pupil as if glimpsed through a magic orb. These images conclude with an ivory semifinished Vitruvian man tethered to a mechanized metal wheel which slowly lowers, wheel and all, into a vat of milky white liquid where it disappears and is replaced by the series title card: the Delos Westworld logo.7 The logo eventually fades onto a near-black screen, the faint image of the cornea and pupil now remaining as the final credits announce the showrunners and teleplay writers: husband and wife team Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and the series’ source material: the 1973 film written by Michael Crichton, credit lines that logistically and symbolically culminate an opening sequence consumed with the act of creation. Coming on the heels of these credits is this essay’s aforementioned scene with the seeming lifeless Dolores in the darkened Delos lab. Thus, by the time Dolores’s eyelashes flutter and she awakes in the sunlit Westworld the audience is aware, at least to some degree, of the highly produced nature of the park. Entitled, “The Original,” the pilot episode’s initial unfolding of the park creates a narrative interplay that both mobilizes iconic western images and symbols and simultaneously tempers these emblems with continual reminders of their very production. One of the most significant tropes and seemingly familiar narrative beats within the episode is the introduction of a new-to-town lone cowboy. An archetypal staple in various classic (and contemporary) Hollywood westerns, countless tales have coalesced around this hero cowboy and his (re)arrival into a dusty town to seek justice, revenge, adventure, isolation, or to elude capture, to save the girl, or a number of other heroic pursuits. Before introducing this cowboy, however, the pilot first follows Dolores (whom the audience assumes is an android given her earlier lifeless sequence and the off-screen command that she be brought back “online”) as she acts as a narrative guide of sorts to the imaginative landscape that is Westworld. In a continuation of her off-screen interrogation with the male-voiced Delos representative we hear her narrate her surroundings in voiceover. When asked what she thinks of her world she answers, “Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray.” Against this narration, we see a now fully clothed Dolores gracefully descend the wooden stairs of her tidy home. Dressed in a periwinkle denim gown and carrying an artist’s easel she walks

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toward the light of a windowed front door and as she opens it, we hear her declare her personal ethos: “I choose to see the beauty.” As she exits the house to a veranda, she gently greets her father, who takes her and her easel in and asks, “You headin’ out to set down some of this natural splendor?” The camera pans closer to Dolores, wind softly blowing her blond curls as she gazes out to the world before her—a sense of wonder and serenity playing across her glowing face. In these few minutes the golden-haired Dolores both upholds and challenges western archetypes. In her domestic bliss, gentle mannerisms, and artistic pursuits, her character in many ways adheres to a trope of western white femininity informed by the “Victorian Cult of True Womanhood” in which white women characters within western tales were passive, dependent, reluctant, out of place, and were expected to “shape national morality from the privacy of their family hearthsides, leaving public action to men”(Jameson 1984; Armitage and Jameson 1987, 146).8 Yet, this sequence also hints to a seeming “updated” version of this take on western femininity. Dolores does not seem “out of place” in the West. Instead, she very much seems to appreciate—and even marvel at—her environs. She also seems to attain at least a limited amount of autonomy as illustrated by her father’s inquiry about her plans, which importantly include leaving the house for the day. It is a subtle recalibration. And one that only strengthens a narrative which takes place in a seemingly near future that has harnessed the industrial science necessary to create and execute an amusement park as technologically advanced as Westworld. In other words, it is not hard to imagine that in such a world an android like Dolores would certainly be coded to embody the “ideal” western young lady, albeit with contemporary sociocultural upgrades for visiting customers greatly familiar with the myth of the West and its culturally repaired forms. Yet despite these updates, Dolores, as the audience’s guide to Westworld at this point in the episode, is still firmly entrenched in the narrative’s mythological structure. A position that she confirms as the pilot cuts from her standing upon her porch to a sweeping and majestic shot of the rugged red outcrop that is the vastness of Westworld—a topographic spectacle that is in many ways iconic and akin to previous Hollywood westerns or dime novel descriptions. Her voiceover narration continues against this panoramic landscape as she proclaims she chooses “to believe there’s an order to our days. A purpose.” These narrative breadcrumbs regarding “order” and “purpose,” as juxtaposed against the “natural splendor” of her environment, once again tease the curated production of Westworld while also reminding us of the complex, constructed, and strategic fabrication of the often-naturalized mythology which informs the park.

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It is on this thematic note that the pilot launches into its next narrative beat by cutting to an extreme close-up of the moving gears and levers of a nineteenth-century self-playing piano and its hole punched sheet music—an early version of computer coded mechanics and what can additionally be viewed as a gesture to western mythology’s ability to seemingly perpetuate itself. The score also transitions at this point from slow melodic piano chords to a plucky and almost tinny tune from the self-playing instrument, announcing a change of narrative pace and the introduction of excitement. It is upon these sights and sounds that we once again hear the male voice of the Delos representative who asks Dolores, “What do you think of the guests?” Using her programmed understanding of park visitors, Dolores clarifies, “You mean the newcomers?” as the screen cuts to the profile of a handsome, square jawed, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man staring out the window of a moving train, a vast western expanse beyond him. Pulling slightly away, the camera provides a broader view of the man and his fellow passengers. One guest, clad in full cowboy getup recounts his past park experiences to another male visitor. Smirking with satisfaction he shares that his first time “playing” within the park he came with his family, went fishing, and hunted for gold in the mountains. However, on his last visit, he divulges, he came alone and “went straight evil.” Cutting to an over the shoulder shot of our handsome lone rider, we see his lips turn up just so as the chatting park visitor proclaims his previous solo trip was the best two weeks of his life. Pulling closer to the lone rider, the shot now captures him from outside the train where he is perfectly framed by the passenger car window as he gazes out, softly smiling as Dolores’s voiceover continues. “I like to remember what my father taught me,” she states as the frame cuts to a wide and sweeping shot of the steaming locomotive as it slices its way with a shrill whistle through an iconic western landscape full of blue and white sky, red outcrop, green pasture, and silver rivers. Against this view Dolores shares her father’s wisdom “that at one point or another we were all new to this world.” The engine slowly pulls into the depot, thick plumes of steam escaping its chimney, and from an exterior shot we catch a glimpse of our lone rider making his way through the car. “The newcomers are just looking for the same thing we are,” Dolores continues, “a place to be free.” Now wearing a black felt wide-brimmed cowboy hat, the lone rider grasps the passenger car’s handrail and with the faintest of smiles takes in the bustling spectacle of the western town before him. As he descends onto the wooden planked depot Dolores’s narration concludes with the observation that we all just want a place “to stake out our dreams. A place with unlimited possibilities.” It is a visual and narrative sequence filled with an instantly recognizable tapestry of western mythology, especially in its use of the train, the settler experience, and the arrival of the new-to-town cowboy. First, it is not unimportant

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that the “newcomers” arrive by train. After all, central to the project of western expansion was America’s railroads. In fact, even when available tract land may have seemed to be fast “disappearing” to the individual hardy pioneer, partnerships between government and railroads became a critical thruway by which vast segments of the West were seized, carved up, developed, and sold, making the railroads a critical technology of America’s colonial project—despite a mythology built around the notion of “rugged individuals” conquering the West through their own devices (Orsi 2005, xiv; Jackson and Kinney 1883; Vernizzi 2011; Limerick 1987).9 Beyond their logistical import, railroads also played a vital role in shaping public imagination—at times mobilizing and/or countering the narrative of a “closing” frontier. During the 1880s, for example, with the frontier’s closure seemingly on the horizon, railroad-led marketing schemes marshalled pioneer rhetoric in a manner that helped to conceptually reorganize the West as a place that, like Dolores states, still offered “unlimited possibilities” (Dumke 1994; Orsi 2005; Collins 2019). Accompanying the symbolism of the train is this sequence’s iconic depiction of the settler experience, including spatial constructions of the unsettled frontier. Dolores’s narration regarding desires to find a “place to be free” and a place of possibility in conjunction with the use of sweeping visuals of vast topography gestures to notions discussed in this essay’s first half—specifically, that in order for the West to be “won,” it first had to be “made” in a way that cast the western frontier as open, free, and available and thus ripe for the taking. Furthermore, Dolores’s assessment that “at one point or another we were all new to this world” not only plays upon the episode’s broader themes of creation, but it also illustrates an archetypal settler ethos: the notion that all westerners were “newcomers” to the American West at some point—a stance which conflates distinct histories of settler and Indigenous inhabitance through the fabrication of a seeming shared human experience. Such a perspective can be described as what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) call a “settler move to innocence” which obfuscates Indigenous sovereignty and deflects the realities of a settler identity by “problematically attempt[ing] to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity” (1, 10). Thus, at this point in the pilot the filmmakers have imbued the episode with iconic western symbolism including an arriving cowboy, a train full of “newcomers,” updated western femininity, sweeping images of wide-open space, and a romanticized settler experience. However, just as it evokes these symbols, the episode also continually gestures to the produced nature of this iconography. For example, joining the new-to-town cowboy on the train’s platform are other arriving park guests including a fashionably dressed and handsome couple: a young woman of color and her companion, a white man at least fifteen years her senior. Disembarking from the train the young woman takes in the town and marvels, “Oh God. It’s incredible.” Her partner nods and with a smirk replies, “It better be for what

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we’re paying.” Reminders such as these of the park’s state-of-the-art capacities also gesture to vital connective tissue between the series’ core western and sci-fi genres which at times venture into Weird West motifs. Popularized in American postwar comic book fiction during a moment in which readers were anxious, fatigued, and corporately negotiating a “paranoiac environment,” the Weird West subgenre is often defined by seeming impending threats of doom (e.g., atomic annihilation, etc.) (Green 2013, 26). And while this narrative beat within the pilot does not explicitly signal looming calamity per se, the series’ early injection of Weird West imagery certainly raises the narrative stakes from the very onset of the episode. For instance, in depicting Dolores as an unreliable narrator of sorts, viewers are made privy to the park’s worldbuilding in ways that positions them as more knowing than their narrative “guide” (a seemingly nonsentient android). Furthermore, as entries within the Weird West subgenre often work to “critique and comment on the western tradition and the norms and values it promotes and maintains,” scenes such as these recognize western motifs and tropes as not simply organic components of a shared history, but as manufactured, commodified, desirable, and productive vehicles of meaning (Green 2009, as cited in Penry 2020, 39). Taken together, these moves engender forms of “critical remembering” (Johnson and Dawson 1982) that offer the viewing audience the opportunity to consciously recognize what has previously been taken for granted as “common-sense beliefs”—in this case prevalent forms of western mythology (Robins 1995, 193). Thus, it is within the complexities of this narrative work that the pilot launches into its next major sequence: the wooing of the western lady by the new-to-town cowboy. Marked by familiar story beats, our lone rider strides through the town’s dusty thoroughfare where various android hosts unsuccessfully attempt to recruit him into their storylines, representing archetypal ‘initial refusals’ to ‘calls to adventure’ in the classic hero journey monomyth (Campbell 1949, 2008).10 These refused overtures also remind the audience of the varying opportunities to “play” within this version of the Wild West. For example, when a tough roughneck bumps into our cowboy presenting the opportunity for a high noon showdown our hero amicably distances himself—straying a bit from his cowboy performance yet moving on in search of his preferred storyline. And when a sheriff brandishing an outlaw poster calls out to him, “You there! You look like the kind of man that’ll put his mettle to it!” in the hopes that the newcomer will join his posse, our cowboy responds, “Not today, sheriff” with a tip of his black hat, seeming to embody his cowboy persona a bit more. It is a performance he continues to hone as he enters a saloon, saunters to the bar and orders a whiskey as a young brunette saloon girl approaches him. “You’re new,” she softly observes as she caresses his cheek, “not much of a rind on you. I’ll give you a discount” she proposes somewhat demurely. “No

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offense,” our cowboy answers, “But I’d rather earn a woman’s affections than pay for it.” The camera pans to broaden the frame and the profile of a striking Black prostitute comes into focus. Older than the young brunette, the amber-skinned madam elegantly leans against the bar, “Oh, you’re always paying for it darling,” she reminds him in an English accent. “The difference is our costs are fixed and posted right there on the door,” she expounds with a faint and knowing smile. It is a significant interaction on multiple levels. Not only does it provide narrative insight into the type of romantic experience this new-to-town cowboy desires, but the madam’s comments regarding the (in)visible costs of sexual exchange highlight the complexities of truth and production that inform perceptions of reality—in many ways paralleling a major series theme. Furthermore, the prostitute’s existence not only as a Black woman, but as one with an English accent presents yet another updated take on the myth of the West for savvy park visitors. Specifically, her presence offers further texture regarding the realities of westward expansion and the diversity of those engaged in the project of settler colonialism (Tuck and Yang 2012), including Black women whose bodies played a significant (if often underexamined) role in the American settler project (King 2013).11 Finally, her coding as an overtly sexualized android host in this near-future science-fiction narrative is just as compelling. That her likeness would be cast and programmed within the park as the embodiment of a particular unapologetic and confident female sexuality gestures to the intersections of cyborg thematics and feminist thought (Haraway 2006).12 It also, however, evokes to the notion of the Black “robo-diva” which Afrofuturism scholar Robin James (2008) claims “evinces a tendency in white patriarchy to express its anxieties about technology in terms of black female sexuality, and vice versa” (402).13 Building off of work in Black critical theory in which the construction of “blackness emerges at the edge of humanity . . . defined against the category ‘human’” (Leroy 2016, Frameworks of Exceptionalism section, para. 2), this trope is also often interwoven with the prevalent and racialized virgin/ whore dichotomy (Crenshaw 1990; James 2008). It is a duality the pilot captures as the camera pans from the beautiful Black sex worker, blurring her from focus to highlight the window of the saloon bringing into view the blond-haired Dolores where she emerges from a shop carrying a grocery sack—an action which can be read as emblematic of her wholesomeness and domestic capacity. Signaling yet another narrative shift, the music transitions into a romantic score full of longing as our cowboy catches sight of Dolores through the saloon’s window. Seemingly pulled by his instant recognition of her in a classic fashion of the genre, he leaves the saloon to pursue her. Yet once again just as the pilot mobilizes these iconic story beats, so does it offer recurring disruptions to these mythic tropes. In this case the interruption presents itself through the reemergence of the off-screen Delos representative’s voice as we

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hear him ask Dolores, “Do you ever feel inconsistencies in your world? Or repetitions?” As Dolores makes her way to her hitched horse, we hear her voiceover response that, “All lives have routine. Mine’s no different. Still, I never cease to wonder at the thought that any day the course of my whole life could change, just with one chance encounter.” Thus, when our cowboy strides toward Dolores and gallantly picks up a rolling can that has escaped her grocery sack, handing it to her with a charming, “Don’t mind me, just trying to look chivalrous,” the audience understands that this is no “chance encounter.” It is an assumption that is confirmed when Dolores, seemingly pleased by his presence, sighs, “You came back.” Storyline seemingly chosen, he asks her, “Can I see you home?” Dolores offers him a faint smile and with her upgraded western female “pluckiness” responds, “Well, that depends.” And as she mounts her horse, she presents to him yet another hero journey “call to adventure,” “Can you keep up?” she asks. “I gotta fetch my horse,” he eagerly replies. “Well, you better fetch ‘em fast,” she retorts before cantering away. And with that, our cowboy answers the call, and his preferred “game” begins. Once again delving into iconic western imagery the pilot launches into a sweeping sequence of the cowboy and his lady as they gallop across wide open space offering panoramic views of our two riders surrounded by a majestic landscape. The montage sequence closes as the cowboy strides from his now resting horse toward a standing Dolores as the shot cuts to grazing cattle in a valley below, a few lone cowboys driving the herd. Dolores and her cowboy peer at the view—two seemingly iconic “rugged individuals” taking in the western splendor before them (See figure 12.1). “That’s a beautiful sight,” he muses, before pondering, “I never understood how you keep them all headed in the right direction.” Chuckling, Dolores’s character offers yet another reminder to the audience of the produced nature of the park and their experience, referring to his “newcomer” status by stating, “I forget, you dress like a cowboy, but that’s about the extent of it.” She explains the mechanics of herding before they, true to expectations, grow sentimental. Upon Dolores’s declaration of their destined connection, our cowboy frames her face and leans in for a romantic kiss—before Dolores demurs, playfully invoking her awaiting father. And so, they depart for her home, faithfully executing another established trope. QUEERING THE COWBOY Given the episode’s mobilization of western mythology, it is unsurprising when, upon nightfall, Dolores and the cowboy arrive at her family property and find trouble. Cattle straying free from pens and ominous music hint to the danger a cracking gunshot soon confirms. So, when our hero cocks his rifle and commands, “Stay put, Dolores,” we are conscious of the archetypal

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Figure 12.1.  Dolores and her cowboy share a moment within the Westworld amusement park in the pilot episode. Framed by iconic western imagery of vast “open” space and jutting and “wild” outcroppings, their bodies are shot breaking the horizon, hands at waist and hips in stances of power—visually exemplifying the American “pioneer” spirit. HBO. Source: Screenshot from Westworld, HBO, 2016.

beats of this “game.” True to form, he spurs his horse to a gallop, rushing to the ranch house against a dramatic score. Too late to save Dolores’s parents from a pair of marauding bandits, he nevertheless fearlessly dispatches the “bad guys” in heroic fashion as he gallantly marches toward danger. Thus, it is at this climactic moment that the pilot makes its crucial pivot. Against an overhead shot of our hero checking on the “corpse” of Dolores’s “dead” mother, we once again hear the voiceover interrogation as the male Delos representative asks, “Dolores, what if I told you that you were wrong? That there are no chance encounters? That you and everyone you know were built to gratify the desires of the people who pay to visit your world?” The frame cuts to Dolores who rushes to the body of her “murdered” father as the Delos representative clarifies, “The people you call the newcomers.” On this revelation, a pair of black boots enters the frame as the camera slowly pans up to capture a low angle shot of a middle-aged man dressed in black as he hovers powerfully above a grieving Dolores and utters, “Hello again.” Shocked by the man’s presence and his quip that her father “gave it up quick” this time, Dolores swiftly recovers grabbing the bandit’s fallen revolver and declares, “you’ll be following right behind him, you son of a bitch.” Slapping the gun away the man in black smugly observes, “They gave you a little more pluck, Dolores. Absolutely charming.” It is at this point that our hero arrives to save the day once again but when he fires, the man in black stands tall, unharmed. “What if I told you that you can’t hurt the newcomers,”

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the Delos voice proclaims, “And that they can do anything they want to you?” The man in black wonders aloud, “I never understood why they pair some of you off, seems cruel . . . and then I realized winning doesn’t mean anything unless someone else loses.” He gives our cowboy a look and declares, “Which means you’re here to be the loser.” Our cowboy, in disbelief, once again raises his weapon, but this time cannot bring himself to fire. “Seems you’re not the man you thought you were,” the man in black retorts. Grabbing Dolores by the scruff, he drags her screaming and flailing, and when our cowboy musters the presence to once again fire, the man in black stops, turns, and shoots. Our cowboy drops to his knees, rests his right hand over his heart where a trail of blood seeps through his fingers, and then collapses to the ground. The frame cuts to his glazed and still open eye, which offers a reflection of the man in black, dragging Dolores to the barn toward an imminent sexual assault which within this futuristic amusement park represents a simple form of play. This sequence certainly serves as a narrative plot twist—revealing the android nature of our hero cowboy. However, it is also very much a mythic upheaval which can be broadly read as a particular queering of the cowboy archetype.14 Sara Ahmed (2006a) claims that “to make things queer is to . . . disrupt the order of things” (565). And such a disruption is critical within a narrative so often consumed with notions of “order.” In its broadest terms, this disorder is represented in the revelation that our cowboy is not a true “man”—an epiphany that is doubly significant. First, on an explicit level, our cowboy is not human. He is a creation, an android production, an amusement. It is an aberration on an almost primal level as “queering has the job of undoing ‘normal’ categories, and none is more critical than the human/nonhuman sorting operation” (Giffney and Hird 2008, xxiv). Thus, this heightened injection of already prevalent Weird West, android, and cyborg themes at this crucial moment within the pilot sets off a narrative chain of events on which the rest of the episode—and subsequent seasons depend. Secondly, it also becomes clear that our cowboy is not only not human, but he is also not in fact truly representative of the archetypal characteristics of masculinity, virility, and strength associated with the American cowboy as the man in black so succinctly reveals when he tells our cowboy, “Seems you’re not the man you thought you were.” This emasculation does not necessarily refer to the fact that our cowboy was not a “real” cowboy familiar with or engaged in the cattle industry—that narrative fact had already been established. It is the revoking of his hero status that is significant. In other words, as this essay discussed at its onset, by the time of its cultural sedimentation, the cowboy archetype served as a particular national hero entangled with an entire “western complex” which scaffolds notions of “Americanness” and American exceptionalism. Thus, the revelation that our cowboy is not the hero we think he is not only serves as a narrative ploy, but it can also be read as a particular

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queering of “the normative heroics of white masculinity” at the core of western mythology (Franks 2019, 313). As such, it is not insignificant that as he descends to his “death,” our cowboy places his right hand over his heart—in many ways embodying the seeming demise of a particularized national ideal. In that instant, the heroic facade of the most American icon of the most American place is stripped away, instead revealing its cultural use as a plaything, a mimesis, an alibi of national desires, and a figment of popular culture. The screen soon cuts to black after our cowboy’s “death,” before pulling once again into an extreme close-up of the self-playing piano’s inner workings and sheet music—resuming its earlier upbeat, tinny, and adventurous score. Through faster-paced cuts, the episode revisits the previously established narrative beats of the park, this time around foregrounding their curated order as opposed to languidly building a world as the frame quickly captures: Dolores’s eyelashes fluttering open in her sunlit bedroom, the shrill of the train whistle, and our cowboy as he “awakens” on the passenger train. This brief sequence highlights the park’s repetitious nature and the unconscious participation of the android hosts in sustaining such a fabricated world. However, more importantly, this sequence can also be read as underscoring the narrative persistence of the myth of the West, including its ability to endure various manners of critique, revelation, and rebuttal—like this very episode which in many ways repurposes the myth through forms of mythic unveiling, upheaval, and queering. Reaffirming this reading is an observation by a trainriding park guest. Smartly outfitted in western attire, she watches our cowboy stare out of the locomotive’s window and muses to another female guest, “Oh my God, they’re so lifelike.” Her companion glances over her shoulder to take a look at our cowboy as the young woman concludes, “Look at that one. He’s perfect.” Thus, we are once again reminded not just of the guests’ awareness of the park’s production, but of our own complicity in maintaining western mythology. In fact, this very reminder is a crucial element of the episode’s broader symptomatic meaning. In other words, it makes plain that on various (un)conscious levels, we understand that the myth of the West and its cowboy archetype—in all of their cultural fabrication—are in many ways “perfect” in their scaffolding and perpetuation of “Americanness” and American exceptionalism. And so, as such, we work to ensure that they continue to march on like the curated storylines and manufactured hosts of this park—ready to be employed for our amusement, enjoyment, and self-gratification. CONCLUSION Westworld is a contemporary dramatic sci-fi hailed for its creative content and discussions around ethics and artificial intelligence. While certainly

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significant, as opposed to examining the making of material things, this essay instead focused on the socially constructed nature of myth. By (re)making and revealing classical western motifs, I contend this pilot represents a particular repurposing and eventual queering of the myth of the West and its central cowboy figure—making visible their curated natures and highlighting the significance of their sociocultural construction. It is particular work that does not end on screen as HBO has invested in various forms of interactive narrative marketing methods for the series which also bring to bear additional sets of questions regarding the cultural usefulness of western mythology and as such is an area of inquiry that merits further study (see figure 12.2).15 Taken together, I argue that the pilot’s various moves engender forms of “critical remembering,” helping make plain the meaning-making power of cultural representations of the past and revealing the complex ways in which we

Figure 12.2. Author engages in an interactive “Westworld Experience” at the Flagship AT&T Store in San Francisco, California, which simulated the Delos Laboratory and its immersive amusement park through reproduced set designs, curated displays of show artifacts, and virtual reality play. Source: Photo from author, July 2, 2018.

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(re)produce, maintain, repair, evolve, and utilize various forms of dominant public memory when sustaining and/or critiquing our national project. NOTES 1. In addition to a wave of foreclosures across the Plains (Fraser 2017), the Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression caused by the over extension of railroad construction and its speculative financing practices as compounded by a run on the nation’s gold supply (Lauck 1907; Carlson 2005). This depression caused a series of bank failures and railroad closures, mergers, and restructuring and was considered the worst US depression until the Great Depression (Carlson 2005). 2. In 1845, at the height of the public debate regarding the possible annexation of Texas, journalist John O’Sullivan argued in the popular Jacksonian magazine the Democratic Review that the incorporation of Texas into the union would fulfil the nation’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (O’Sullivan 1845, n.p.). 3. This complex relationship begets ideological tensions and entanglements that persist to this day, reflecting what I call our unique system of “pioneer democracy”: an ideology and practice represented by the ways in which the pioneer identity and liberal subject balance and co-constitute one another within the national character, imagination, and political judgement (Collins 2019). Borrowing a portion of Turner’s (1920) term regarding a “Middle Western Pioneer Democracy” which in his view constitutes a set of characteristics including individualism, self-sufficiency, and a general forward-looking that he claims was drawn from the experiences and mores of pioneers settling what came to be the “Middle Western” region of the country, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota (397–98), I contend our nation’s ongoing engagement in contemporary forms of “pioneer democracy” represents the balance at the heart of many of the nation’s seeming perplexing paradoxes as a supposed “liberal democracy” (e.g., slavery, conquest, and various forms of disenfranchisement) (Collins 2019). 4. With a lineage tracing to North Africa and Spain, by 1600 Mexican vaqueros emerged as a “distinct class of men who herded and worked cattle in North America. By the early 1700s, long-horn cattle and these herders were common in [what is now] northern Mexico, southern Texas, and southern California” (Clayton et al. 2001, xv–xvi). 5. In addition to Spanish colonial practices in which missionaries trained Native Americans as cattle herders, other historical examples further reflect Native Americans’ continued relationship with the trade including those that adopted ranching into their economic structures and the significance of horses to many Indigenous nations (Gandy 2008). 6. With roots in theater and meaning “putting into the scene” in its original French, mise-en-scène refers to an ensemble of directorial decisions that impact what actually appears in front of the camera within the film frame, including setting, costume and makeup, lighting, and staging (Thompson et al. 2016). Cinematography refers to both

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the various manipulations of the film strip by the camera itself in capturing what is in the frame and manipulations in the laboratory during the developing phase (ibid.). “(1) In filmmaking, [editing refers to] the task of selecting and joining camera takes; (2) In the finished film, [editing refers to] the set of techniques that governs the relations among shots” (ibid., G-2). And sound in film refers to both diegetic sound, or “any voice, musical passage, or sound effect presented as originating from a source within the film’s world”; and nondiegetic sound, or “sound, such as mood music or a narrator’s commentary, represented as coming from a source outside the space of the narrative” (ibid., G-2, G-4). 7. Created circa 1487 by renowned Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, the now iconic illustration of an encircled man, arms outstretched and superimposed over a hyperextended version of himself, is “considered to be the perfect anatomical representation of a man” (Ashrafian 2011, 593). Borrowing from such an image is highly fitting given the nature of the opening credits and their focus upon the act of creation, especially of humanlike android hosts. 8. This ideal was informed by Victorian prescriptive literature in which “True Womanhood” “reflected the cardinal virtues of . . . piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness to male authority” (Jameson 1984, 1). 9. Railroads not only moved people and goods; they eventually performed the critical task of subdividing and selling lands received through what came to be known as federal railroad land grants (Orsi 2005; Henry 1945; Osborn et al. 1995; Mercer 2002). In the absence of other private organizations and governmental agencies, railroads also often provided essential regional infrastructure within expanding areas including “farm mortgaging, agricultural marketing, forest management and firefighting, urban water systems . . . irrigation engineering and management,” and other processes necessary for non-Native settlement and Indigenous displacement (Orsi 2005, xiv). 10. Also known as the monomyth, the classic hero journey is a term coined by American professor of literature, theology, and comparative mythology Joseph Campbell in his seminal 1949 text, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Taking note of narrative patterns across cultures, civilizations, and time, Campbell describes a common plot structure present across various global myths which details a hero who answers a “call to adventure” and leaves their status quo to travel into an “unknown world” where, with the help of mentors and allies, they face extreme challenges— often including literal or figurative death—in order to overcome an ultimate test, be “reborn,” and return to their “known world” with an elixir or societal balm and as a forever changed hero. 11. Tiffany Jeannette King (2013) claims “Black women’s bodies are materially and symbolically essential to the space making practices of settler colonialism in the U.S.” as they “function as sites where we can observe the power of slavery and settler colonialism simultaneously. Both the Slave Master’s need for bodies and the Settler’s need for space required the production of the Black female slave body as a unit of unending property” (King 2013, 1). 12. Donna Haraway (1991, 2006), in her influential text, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century,” defines a

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cyborg as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction”—a creation that Haraway examines in order to interrogate the construction of fiction/fact within what had come to be known as “women’s experience” (117). Later portions of the pilot episode gesture to conditions that suggests the android hosts may also be categorized as cyborgs or “cybernetic organisms” (e.g., the hazmat suits that Delos production teams don when maintaining and repairing hosts and infrastructure within Westworld suggests the presence of particular biological specimens and/or substances that could be vulnerable to forms of cross-contamination). 13. Coined by music critic Tom Breihan to classify a subgenre of R&B performers dating back to Grace Jones and Donna Summer, the “robo-diva” originally described Black female music artists who (un)intentionally “present themselves as ‘non-’human” (James 2008, 403). 14. With etymological roots in the Greek for “cross, oblique, [and] adverse” (Ahmed 2006a, 565), and a theoretical lineage in late twentieth century sexuality scholarship, various scholars ranging from feminist philosophers (Butler 1997) to social theorists (Warner 1993) have contributed to a fluid and classification resistant field of “queer theory” (Ahmed 2006b; Jagose 1996). This work takes up the language of “queer” and its verb ‘“queering” to describe that which gets socially coded as “abnormal” and/or the intentional disrupting of “norms” in order to interrogate constructions of order, power, normalcy, race, gender, sexuality, identity, and other ways of knowing and being (ibid.). 15. HBO’s creative marketing methods for the series include offering immersive fan experiences across the country ranging from large-scale productions at preeminent popular culture conventions and festivals like Austin’s South by Southwest (Miller 2018), San Diego’s ComicCon (Barnes 2017), and New York’s ComicCon (DeSantis 2017) to smaller curated pop-up experiences at AT&T Flagship Stores in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston (Costello 2018). Featuring ploys from building a “completely immersive replica of Sweetwater,” the town featured in the Westworld amusement park (HBO 2020), to interactive physical and virtual reality activities, HBO created innovative “social” and “psychological” “experiment[s]” (Miller 2018) that some cultural critics described as “genius” (ibid.) and “almost too real” (Abrams 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, Natalie. “We Entered Westworld at Comic-Con—Here’s What Happened.” EW.Com. July 20, 2017. ew.com/comic-con/2017/07/20/comic-con-westworldexperience/. Ahmed, Sara. “ORIENTATIONS: Toward a Queer Phenomenology.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 4 (2006a): 543–74. doi. org/10.1215/10642684-2006-002 ———. “Queer Phenomenology.” In Queer Phenomenology. Duke University Press, 2006b.

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Chapter Thirteen

Graphic Evolutions Imagining the Cowboy-as-Archetype in Contemporary Comics Clint Wesley Jones‌‌‌

There is no shortage of potential cowboy myths in the western world.1 But none of them has generated a myth with serious international popularity, let alone one that can compare, even faintly, with the fortunes of the North American cowboy.2 Stories of cowboys, natives, and outlaws as well as those characters they cross paths with from frontiersmen to prospectors to settlers populate the American mythological landscape. Whether they are surviving in the rugged environment of the Wild West through wit, skill, and determination, or meeting their end by bullet, swinging from a noose, or exposure to the elements, the presence of western and Cowboy motifs speaks directly to what it meant to be an American in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Cowboy-as-archetype plays an essential part in how we define ourselves as a nation both then and now.3 The Cowboy entered the American imagination first through tall tales, then hyperbolic newspaper stories, followed closely by exaggerated dime novels and pulps, all paving the way for the cowboy to ride onto the silver screen and into the small screen and, thus, squarely into the central mythology of American identity. It may be a bit unfair to think of the cowboy in such static terms, but the idea of the cowboy has been remarkably static until very recently. For decades, the Cowboy in comics, to say nothing of other media formats, was one of a roguish loner, largely one-dimensional, and meant to be the stand-in for a whole host of western character types as mentioned earlier. Of course, this is changing now and as the twenty-first century continues to unfold, the Cowboy will be at its frontiers. The question facing us is how the Cowboy 241

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will appear on those frontiers and how, in the American mind, the cowboy’s indomitable spirit will conquer those frontiers just as it did in the latter half of the nineteenth century—even though that too is quite the myth. It is important to realize that the Cowboy represents, along with the West as frontier, an incomplete identity, an unkept promise, and that through the cowboy mythos Americans can wrestle with that legacy. Once the character of the cowboy had an audience in literature it was hard to let go as stories about cowboys poured out of publishing houses. One of the mediums that immediately resonated with the cowboy legends and readers, especially younger audiences, was comics. What characterized western-themed comics? What comes to mind when you think of cowboys and comics? Late-nineteenth-century period dramas, white hats versus black hats, stereotypical and highly racialized Native Americans, the “six gun” and shootouts at high noon—essentially the cowboy in comics, especially during the heyday of the genre, was akin to spaghetti westerns and the low budget B-movies that populated the silver screen. This essay explores how the cowboy has been developed for twenty-first-century audiences, examining how the modern cowboy values the world and those in it as well as how the cowboy understands his or her relationship to the cowboy of the past as both a real person and a mythological figure. By drawing on representations of cowboys in comics and graphic novels, this chapter will advance a narrative about the shifting image of the cowboy in the American imagination to argue that the cowboy remains an integral aspect of how Americans perceive and understand themselves. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COWBOY IN COMICS Westerns have been a staple genre of comic books—with some notable fluctuations—since the beginning of the medium as popular entertainment. In 1937, more than a year before Superman4 would usher in the superhero era, two regular cowboy themed titles appeared in February: one, Chesler/Centaur Publications’ Star Ranger, and, two, Comics Magazines Company’s Western Picture Stories, featuring artwork by the legendary Will Eisner.5 It would only take a few years before westerns would dominate a market share and become pop culture staples enjoying their golden years between the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. Many of the early comic cowboy heroes were radio and television stars brought into the genre by Fawcett6 and Dell7 when westerns were big business in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. They were soon followed by Marvel who began creating B-movie personas to match the silver screen stars of their competitors. The Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid are probably the most

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well-known. The years 1946–1949 saw an explosion of titles “starring” western film actors and cowboy singers. Almost every star, major or minor, who had a stint on TV, radio, or the silver screen had their own comic title at some point; more importantly, every publisher was looking to cash in and snatched up as many characters as they could: Fawcett, Dell, DC, and smaller presses published Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne among a longer list of A- and B-list stars. The popularity of the western in the mid- and late ‘40s was the direct result of a war-weary audience wanting something depicting America in opposition to the far-flung locations of wartime period pieces and something showcasing action that was safely consumable as the past not the war torn present. Many of the comics at the time not featuring an already known star portrayed some version of “the Kid” which easily harkens back to the youthful and ever popular Billy the Kid but also has the added benefit of appealing to a younger readership being re-steeped in the history and tradition of the American Cowboy. Titles starring the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt Outlaw, Two-Gun Kid, Apache Kid, Outlaw Kid, Wyoming Kid, Cheyenne Kid, Texas Kid, Ringo Kid, and, unsurprisingly, Billy the Kid, among others, dominated store shelves. Additionally, comics at the time also told “true adventures” which were biographical depictions of famous frontiersmen and “cowboys” such as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and others. The retelling of these stories comprised vital entertainment consumption for post-war Americans and ensured the Cowboy and the values of the West would emerge as the predominant values of postwar America. Comic books of the golden age of westerns were responsible for conveying a number of socially desirable narratives to children as consumers. First, the values of the heroes, which ranged from honesty and hard work to proper manners and self-restraint shored up the social values emergent in post–World War II America. This, of course, parallels the fact that good always triumphs reinforcing the inherent goodness of wartime sacrifices. More importantly, American ideals like historical notions of successful peace treaties with Native Americans, commonly read out of westerns like the Lone Ranger, reinforced underlying beliefs permeating American culture like Manifest Destiny. Narratives such as these obviously serve white fantasies about fairness and the inevitable, God-ordained spread, of European democracy and capitalism as progress. It is easy to read transformations of frontier fantasies of dominant white Americans along with changing ideals of hegemonic US nationalism within the narrative pairing of the Lone Ranger and Tonto.8 More than this, however, young readers were treated to a narrative structure where the good guys represented the best of America, particularly in their treatment of “others,” including especially women and African Americans, as a

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way to revitalize desirable social notions of progress and the moral character of America. During the heyday of American western comics, the appeal of the cowboy went international with a lot of European and Australian publishing houses reprinting (in translation, if necessary) many of the titles popular in America. However, some European publishers found success with cowboy titles that originated in their countries. For instance, Gian Luigi Bonelli’s Tex9 and Jean-Michel Charlier’s Blueberry,10 were among the most popular in Italy and France, respectively, but other stories popped up in England, Spain, and Japan. At home, however, unlike their European counterparts, America’s comic book cowboys were being pushed to the margins as social upheavals, especially in the period of unrest associated with the Vietnam War, began to reposition the western as out of touch or belonging to a bygone era. This increasing disinterest in cowboys and the west was paralleled by challenges from superhero comics trending more toward science fiction and by fading interest in silver screen and TV cowboy personalities that made up the market share of comic western heroes. Superheroes, horror, and science fiction started pushing westerns to the margins in the late 1960s, and by the late ‘70s even the longest-running stalwarts had been canceled.11 THE DECLINE IN INTEREST As superhero comics began to fade from favor in the late ‘40s, new comic genres took hold—crime, romance, teenage interest, horror . . . and westerns. Red Ryder, the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Hopalong Cassidy were established in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, but it was not until 1948 that comic publishers plunged into the western form full force. Fawcett and Dell licensed practically every B-western star, leaving their competition, particularly Marvel, out in the cold. So, Marvel invented their own, often trying to pass them off as real screen cowboys: Tex Morgan, Tex Taylor, Rex Hart, Blaze Carson.12 Marvel even went so far as to hire male models, dress them in typical B-western garb and create photo covers of these faux film stars in order to fool unsuspecting readers.13 The western remained a popular seller across media formats including movies, novels, pulps, and comics from the late ‘40s throughout the early ‘60s until interest and enthusiasm for the genre began to significantly wane. As previously mentioned, the cowboy as a comic hero began to gain quickly in popularity shortly after World War II as superheroes were slipping in popularity as American audiences were looking for something new that would differ from the wartime fare they had been consuming.

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Throughout the 1950s the western and the Cowboy enjoyed a high level of popularity connecting the rugged individualism of the nineteenth century with the wholesomeness of the postwar suburbanite up-and-comer of the ‘50s, but their time was running out as new genres were getting ready to overtake them in Cold War America.14 The cowboys of the western comic golden age romanticized the west, the cowboy, and American history related to the frontier. This view of America was increasingly criticized as out of touch with a citizenry struggling with Vietnam and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s where flower power was preferable to a quick draw. Another factor driving the cowboy comic out to pasture was the increasing disparity in technology between the pistol and lasso packing cowboy astride a horse and their futuristic superhero counterparts in an age increasingly defined by the American automobile, home appliances, and the space race. Only DC’s Jonah Hex15 survived into the ‘80s, but in 1985 the character was transplanted to a Road-Warrior-esque apocalyptic setting as the western genre began shifting into weird western storylines. Prospects were dim for traditional western comics in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with only a few noteworthy miniseries representing the genre—Hex foremost among them. Though there are notable exceptions to this claim what happened to the cowboy in the ‘80s and ‘90s was not a return to the glory of the golden age of westerns in comics, but rather a reintroduction of the Cowboy to American audiences under the guise of weird westerns, supernatural westerns, and neo-westerns each doing their part to establish the ground that the cowboy would walk into the new millennium. Allowing for this, in the new millennium, western comics have made something of a comeback. They do not dominate the market by a longshot, but it is no longer shocking to hear that a new western series has started up.16 THE MAINSTREAM MAKEOVER As interest waned in the 1960s and 1970s the cowboy never quite rode into the sunset but lingered on mostly in the western world of Jonah Hex which remained popular well into the 1990s. In 1983, however, Hex would be joined by another comic character that would become quite popular, William Hardy, a country and western singer from Texas. Marvel’s G.I. Joe introduced Wild Bill in 1983 as a helicopter pilot. In the series, Bill’s G.I. Joe teammates often wonder if ‘he wasn’t born in the wrong era. With his slow talk, slow walk, easygoing attitude and amiable personality,’ he represented the stereotypical cowboy of the golden age.17 Piloting a helicopter while wearing a traditional nineteenth-century-style cavalry officers” hat and spending his down time telling tall tales and singing western music, Wild Bill is a cowboy

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reinterpreted for the Cold War era. Wild Bill’s introduction follows closely on the heels of Ronald Reagan’s rise to political prominence enshrouded by his make-believe cowboy persona. Fiercely patriotic Wild Bill carries the cowboy’s love of country into a modern context, while fighting the ever-present nemesis of Cobra.18 Gone is the context of the western proper, but the character of the cowboy persists as an elite member of the G.I. Joe team keeping the cowboy on the mainstream radar if still somewhat on the fringes as a secondary character. In the mid-1990s Jonah Hex got a boost from Joe Lansdale’s rebooting of the character in Two-Gun Mojo19 and Riders of the Worm and Such,20 each running five issues followed by Shadows West in 1999. Bookended by Lansdale’s Jonah Hex, Garth Ennis’s Preacher debuted in 1995.21 Preacher is a supernatural and slightly twisted tale that has often been described by creator Garth Ennis as a modern-day western, even though it may at first glance be anything but a western. One apt description of the story is that it “is Stagecoach but with angels, vampires, and inbreeding.”22 Replete with a number of story components that today stand out as oscillating between the sometimes forward-thinking and the sometimes cringe-worthy aspects of homophobia, sexism, ableism, fat shaming, and racism among others, as well as numerous bouts of feminist-driven discourse, all make appearances as the story follows Preacher Jesse Custer’s hunt for God.23 Also, in 1995, The Lone Ranger and Tonto would reappear in graphic novel form in order to combat a space alien with a hunger for the flesh of American settlers signaling that the western had indeed evolved.24 Starting in 1996 Wynonna Earp, another updated take on the traditional western, would hit shelves featuring the namesake relative of Wyatt Earp.25 The Wynonna Earp series is classified as a “weird western” and features Wynonna as a member of an elite US Marshals squad known as the Monster Squad—or the Black Badge Division. Creator Beau Smith wrote the character to be a strong female lead alongside other strong women characters, but one caveat for Smith is that he writes “Wynonna to be between 35 and 45 years old because comics tend to ignore women in that age group.”26 In this way the Cowboy comes through not only as a cowgirl, but as an older person, which is a clean break with the earlier fascination with “the Kid” motif. Wynonna Earp, using a supernatural six gun, fights monsters ranging from the classics to the otherworldly and supernatural. Following the success of Preacher and Wynonna Earp, the supernatural became the primary theme of the late ‘90s as creators attempted to reclaim the western and reinterpret the Cowboy for an American imagination primed for the new millennium. One such attempt would hit stores in the late ‘90s and continue the supernatural theme. Desperadoes was published as a limited story arc mini-series that would run from the late ‘90s to the early 2000s.27 The first story arc

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featured traditional western characters as the desperadoes in question: a soiled dove, a gunslinger, an ex-Pinkerton detective, and a former Buffalo Soldier. However, where the story differs slightly from other westerns of the time is the use of magical elements by the various enemies of the desperadoes. This particular use of magic does not differ significantly from golden and silver age uses of supernatural elements often attributed to Native Americans to produce magic-like effects in the world. So, while the story flirts with the supernatural it does not move in the same direction as Lansdale’s or Ennis’s reconceived westerns. However, in the second installment, the gang of four finds themselves pitted against a priest bent on opening the gates of hell. As the desperadoes scheme to avoid being brought to justice at the hands of a heartbroken sheriff they encounter all manner of horrifying and supernatural occurrences more compatible with the efforts of their counterparts in other comics. The success of supernatural- or horror-themed westerns in this genre helped stabilize the western as something weirdly able to transgress traditional boundaries blending in with other genres and revitalizing both the Cowboy and the mythology of the West. THE REINVENTION OF THE COWBOY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The cowboy continues to shape the understanding of the modern American myth by inhabiting new frontiers that allow the character of the cowboy to “fit in” to a modern American landscape without necessarily adopting modern American values. By combatting zombies, aliens, demons, and other recognizable modern villains than the merely black-hatted outlaw the cowboy has become revitalized while revitalizing the core values at the heart of the American West. How the cowboy is interpreted in a comic format speaks directly to how the mythos of the American West is both preserved and perpetuated in modern culture. What waned in the late ‘60s and ‘70s was not necessarily interest in the cowboy proper, but rather the storytelling about the Cowboy or through the Cowboy which no longer assimilated how Americans were feeling about themselves and the country into a cohesive representation of what it meant to be an American in mythology and practice. Comic creators and graphic novelists have recently produced, and reproduced, the cowboy as a character and the American West as a setting for numerous genres. These efforts are most recognizable in incredibly successful runs like Jason Aaron’s western crime drama Scalped, set squarely in contemporary reservation life, and Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, which follows cowboy vampire Skinner Sweet as he navigates life in America from the late nineteenth century to the modern day.28 In 2006, Cowboys and Aliens

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would debut and would, eventually, spawn a movie adaptation.29 The popularity and success of these comics paved the way for The Sixth Gun and one of the most popular comics of the twenty-first century, East of West.30 Amid all of the success enjoyed by weird westerns, supernatural westerns, and spaced out sci-fi westerns, Bantam would release the first graphic novel adaptation of a Louis L’Amour story, Law of the Desert Born, to critical acclaim.31 This is a classic western tale told in beautiful grayscale capturing the classic storytelling of Louis L’Amour and that, more than anything, demarcates it from its peers as a pure throwback to the golden age of comics. Of course, the success of these titles demonstrated to creators, artists, and publishers, that there was more opportunity in the Cowboy and West. These are just a few of the comics and graphic novels that have repurposed the cowboy as a character. In American Vampire the main character, Skinner Sweet, is a notorious outlaw (i.e., cowboy) turned into a vampire who subsequently stalks his way through decades of Americana seeking his revenge—a classic western tale meets modern horror story. Following closely on the pretense of the weird west meets the supernatural The Sixth Gun is a story about six pistols that pack an unholy punch and when brought together the weapons can erase everything from existence and allow the person that wields the guns to recreate the world however they would like. The adventure story takes the main characters through voodoo dealings, Native American ghost walks, black magic, and otherworldly beings in pursuit of the guns in an effort to stave off the destruction of the world. Certainly not your typical western and yet the action takes place largely in the west, focuses on characters that are western in trope if not in actuality, and employs numerous scenes and settings that take place in expected western locations—brothels, saloons, trains, and Native American encampments. The trick for the graphic novel is that the guns themselves are supernatural and have taken different shapes throughout history—clubs, swords, bows and arrows—so that the western-themed six gun is only the most recent iteration given the timeline of the story. Taking place throughout the story are discussions about the pistols, whether to destroy them, fears of who might remake the world, fears that the world has been remade before, and what the heroes might remake the world into, all take place from the point of view of western individuals holding various “Cowboy” and “western” positions in the story. This reading reintroduces values and concepts from older western stories that are often jettisoned in other weird western tales. In The Sixth Gun we have a narrative about “remaking” the world and the heroes are espousing the values of the Old West as desirable within the characterizations and contexts of traditional comic western and Cowboy styles. Cowboys and Aliens is another comic that tackles the various viewpoints typical of the golden-age western but with a significant contemporary spin. In

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Cowboys and Aliens—the comic and the film—one of the key elements that undergoes significant retelling is the relationship between the cowboys and the “Indians” as they must join together to combat the invading alien menace. Unlike The Lone Ranger and Tonto whose relationship was meant to harken the amicable and peaceful relationships brokered between the two peoples in Cowboys and Aliens the two groups—settler and native—are at war. When the aliens arrive with superior firepower and begin to take over the area it is the cowboys that are crying foul and the indignant Natives that are left explaining how their current plight—with the aliens—is a perfect example of what the “cowboys” have been doing to the Natives. This ultimately leads the two groups to a different and better understanding of each other, highlighting near the end of the story their willingness to reconcile and work together for a greater common good. It is a subtle change to the narrative traditionally told between the two groups through comics characters, but it is an important change nonetheless, as the willingness to work together stems from the “cowboys” realization that they have not treated the Natives fairly, equally, properly, or morally in a broad sense, thus, undermining a classic narrative element of early western themed comics. A western that upends traditional narratives in modern times, though more realistically located in time and place than Preacher, is Jason Aaron’s Scalped. Scalped tackles life on the reservation from the perspective of Dashiell Bad Horse, a Native American working for the FBI. Though the storylines of Scalped often tackle well-known, and sometimes less well-known, issues surrounding life on and around reservations Aaron does an admirable job avoiding caricatures of the various personalities that Bad Horse encounters. Of course, this claim comes into question when considering the character of the local sheriff, Wooster T. Karnow. Sheriff Karnow is as phony as they come; however, he is clearly meant to represent the Cowboy if not “the West” entirely. An overweight bully, Sheriff Karnow stands out in comparison to his law-enforcement counterparts in the FBI both because he is ineffectual at his job and because he misrepresents his past as a Vietnam veteran to bolster his credentials—and is thereby marked as a coward. Portraying the most western figure in the story as the one we need to least take seriously Aaron is able to foreground the Native American experience from early reservation life to the modern-day giving Native American voices a chance to breakdown stereotypes and help readers confront the realities faced by Indigenous people whose lives and cultures are, in many ways, still confined to reservations. Challenging conceived notions of the West, especially the Cowboy as hero, as a problematic part of western history and the Cowboy as a component of American mythology, Aaron’s Scalped updates the western for a contemporary audience in a more traditional vein than his weird, sci-fi, and

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supernatural counterparts. Particularly noteworthy in Aaron’s rendering of the western is that it avoids revisionist narratives and instead opts for revealing contemporary issues as the result of actual historical choices and events. In a similar fashion, another well-known character to get a makeover in the early twenty-first century, was Marvel’s famous Rawhide Kid. Beginning with Slap Leather the Kid’s transformation would come full circle in Ron Zimmerman and Howard Chaykin’s The Sensational Seven, a four-comic run, where the Rawhide Kid is presented as flamboyantly homosexual even if it is not expressly stated.32 There is enough innuendo to carry the thought to conclusion especially in his interactions with the non-Marvel licensed characters—Annie Oakly, Billy the Kid, and Doc Holliday. A staple in the western genre, Jonah Hex, also got a reboot in DC’s New 52 series with the All-Star Western beginning in 1880’s Gotham.33 Riding into Gotham in pursuit of a bounty, Jonah Hex is drawn, first, into a Jack the Ripper–esque tale, and second, a story about kidnapping and corporate greed that sees him leave Gotham in pursuit of another bounty. Blending Hex’s world with that of Batman, the reintroduction of the Cowboy through this series not only links Hex’s values and worldview to Batman’s, but it also demonstrates the differences in the two heroes “codes” establishing Hex as a western figure for a contemporary audience.34 This is achieved by tackling themes relevant to contemporary audiences like corporate greed in ways that move traditional renderings of greed away from “big ranches” which hints at post-western shifts in comic storytelling. In 2003 the Cowboy received its most successful creative makeover at Image Comics when Robert Kirkman fashioned his main antagonist for The Walking Dead out of the motif of a sheriff’s deputy.35 Though the action takes place in a post-apocalyptic zombie horror story it is undeniable that the story is, in many ways, and many relevant ways, a western. This framing of the story is in part due to the nature of Rick Grimes, the story’s main protagonist, who, heading into the new frontier of zombies and apocalypse, dons his sheriff uniform, puts on his badge, and straps a pistol to his leg all symbolizing that despite the apocalyptic state of things there is still a sheriff in town. The manifest destiny embodied in Rick Grimes is made complete when he rides a horse into a disease-stricken Atlanta looking for his wife, but instead finds a group of survivors in desperate need of both an authority figure and a leader—both roles Grimes easily inhabits given his badge and the legacy of the Cowboy he embodies. While many of the comics discussed thus far have maintained a fairly masculine interpretation of the Cowboy and the West, Loveless is a classic western with a twist.36 Trading on the stereotypical tropes one would expect from a western set in the 1870s, Brian Azzarello weaves a masterful tale of revenge that pits a strong female character, Ruth Cutter, against the corrupt

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town her husband had been tasked with taming in the reconstruction era. Though the town ultimately gets the better of Wes Cutter, his wife’s approach trades on subterfuge and showcases the female and the feminine in the spotlight not juxtaposed to the traditional masculine, but as complementary rather than supplemental to such themes. Loveless, like many other contemporary western-themed stories, especially in other media formats, moves the female from margin to center highlighting what women are capable of, or at the very least, teasing out threads of capability and respectability that eludes many early western comics. For instance, in Desperadoes, the female character prefers the term “whore” to “soiled dove” and embraces her new profession and persona as favorable to her previous life as a school marm in line with modern feminist initiatives to reclaim derogatory words.37 In Loveless, Ruth Cutter is a survivor of a brutal gang rape that shapes and defines how she understands the world, her place in it, and what she must do not only to seek her own vengeance, but vengeance for her murdered husband too. Interpreting her own experiences separate from concerns about her husband, Ruth demonstrates a multidimensionality that presents a dynamic female character capable of reckoning with the moral requirements of the West (i.e., revenge as righting wrongs) as well as any man. By focusing on issues that are not only relevant to women’s experiences in the Old West that were often ignored in early comics, but remain relevant to women’s experiences in contemporary culture, feminist-forward westerns are challenging the paradigm of the Cowboy and how it has shaped and is shaping the figure in American mythology, culture, and identity. Ruth Cutter is just one of the many females taking lead roles in western comics. Having already discussed Wynonna Earp, whose comic universe was revisited in 2003 after a six-year hiatus, other female characters have also held their ground at centerstage. Inez Temple is a mercenary that works under the name Outlaw and got her start in comics in the Deadpool universe in 2002.38 She is a mutant with superstrength and an uncanny ability to handle firearms. Hailing from Texas she is the daughter of Lance Temple, also known as Wild West gunman, the Outlaw Kid. Comparably, Black Bonnie is a femme fatale featured in Ed Brubaker’s Fatale where she features as a precursor to the main character, Josephine, and, like the main character, struggles to figure out who she is in the hardboiled landscape of a spaghetti western.39 While the noir graphic novel does not have the feel of a western per se, it does delve into those characteristics that define the western while pulling together Lovecraftian elements throughout its decade hopping story arcs paralleling the approach to storytelling in American Vampire. Another female kicking up dust on the western front is Dusty Star, a bad-ass gunslinger living in a futuristic world melding Star Wars and spaghetti westerns to produce a strange steampunk blend of technology and classic western elements.40 Though she

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has not come into her own just yet she is poised to be one of the bigger female western stars of the twenty-first century. Similarly, Copperhead features a strong female lead in another neo-frontier western story set in outer space.41 The story follows Clara Bronson as she assumes the role of “new sheriff in town” in the mining outpost of Copperhead. Set in the twenty-fourth century, the space western follows all the old tropes of a classic western but ties those old tropes to the science fiction of twenty-fourth-century life in space. Clara is a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense sheriff that is also juggling single motherhood on a planet far from home. The twist in Clara’s standing as a single mother is in line with other female character types being moved from margin to center without sacrificing the modern takes on what women are capable of both in times of peace and friction. What makes Copperhead noteworthy is that the writing avoids falling into postmodern traps critiquing the genre while distancing itself from it. Rather, the story embraces its western heritage while inverting the traditional narrative elements a reader would expect. That is, Clara Bronson is not just a masculinized female character with a gun and a badge, but rather, a fully feminized character whose femininity does not present as a drawback in a Wild West setting. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Perdy which follows the exploits of Perdy as she makes her way from prison in search of her daughter and hidden treasure.42 Perdy is a punk-rock western filled with explicatives, sex, and violence highlighting many of the negative traits associated with “bad guys” in the Old West but doing so in the context of Perdy as heroine thus inverting the genre. The action of the story centers on the tension between mother and daughter as the former struggles to regain her position in the world and the latter seeks to establish a new life for herself. Perdy is tough, quick on the draw, and habitually violent but not afraid to use sex to get what she wants— which sometimes is just sex. Her inability to make amends with her daughter highlights a struggle of mother-daughter tensions that rarely features in westerns. One of the key points of tension between the two is Perdy’s continual embrace of the cowboy aesthetic and lifestyle while her daughter has moved on and tried to become more modern (i.e., civilized). Part of the reconciliation process between the two is the exploration of the tension between competing sets of values harkening directly to the transitional nature of the West and the Cowboy in contemporary comics. CONCLUSION Many twenty-first-century westerns have at their heart the antagonism between the frontier and civilization. This is often portrayed in the

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relationship between the frontier and the cowboy, especially where technologies are concerned. This narrative aspect is likely the premier element of making a western and may be why the western has fared so well in stories that utilize neo-frontiers as their setting. Reemerging from the margins of popularity, the western and the Cowboy have reclaimed a fair portion of the limelight in the comic book genre perhaps for just this reason. The struggles that we face as members of an evolving society are fraught with challenges. While it is the case that for westerns addressing this has often paralleled or mirrored similar trends in television and movies, the important aspect is that the comic genre itself has evolved not just to sell comics. Rather, in comics attempts to address contemporary struggles in society has led to a reinvention and revitalization of the cowboy and the western in the consumption of modern audiences around a conflict that is all too familiar in the guise of a mythological figure that is central to who we are especially as Americans. As JoAnn Conrad has rightly argued, “the west and the events and people in it have, through the process of mythologization, been emptied of their specific historicity and refilled with meaning.”43 The twenty-first-century Cowboy in comics is more likely to show a favorability toward homosexuality, is likelier to abandon traditional gender roles and hierarchies, and express a multidimensional personality when dealing with intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts. This is regardless of whether the character is male or female and also irrespective of how the western is interpreted: traditional, weird, sci-fi, fantasy, post-western, or neo-frontiers. By stripping away the banal values of pre–WWII Americans, the modern Cowboy can better contextualize the problems faced by the characters in the categories of race, class, and gender but it achieves this by being, in a real sense, not a cowboy. By building the western on different worlds these, and other, issues can be dealt with more straightforwardly because the expected reaction we would normally have toward cowboys and the west as belonging to a bygone era does not apply. This opens readers up to a new value set within the context and confines of a character that is at home on any range creators can dream up. In this way, the Cowboy continues to articulate American values and ranges across the complexities of contemporary identity politics while traversing the ever-changing landscape of the American imagination. NOTES 1. A special thanks goes to Justin Spinks without whose assistance this chapter may not have made it to completion. As friendships go, his is one of the finest.

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2. Eric Hobsbawm, “The Myth of the Cowboy,” The Guardian March 20, 2013. www​.theguardian​.com​/books​/2013​/mar​/20​/myth​-of​-the​-cowboy. North America here, broadly construed, encompasses Canada, the United States, and Mexico, but the focus of my essay is squarely on the cowboy of the American West in the United States. Hobsbawm’s longer analysis of the cowboy, upon which this article is based, can be found in, Fractured Times (London: Abacus, 2014). 3. Throughout this essay I will use “Cowboy” to indicate when I am signaling the “Cowboy-as-archetype” as separate from when I am talking about the cowboy as an individual, group, or specific traits associated therewith. The difference being “Cowboy” is meant to capture that cultural mythological figure while “cowboy” is meant to capture the real lived experiences and persons that the archetype is built upon. 4. Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster under the Action Comics title for DC Comics in June 1938. 5. Star Ranger was created by Harry Chesler, an advertising specialist, as part of his move into the new comics format for marketing products. Star Ranger would run for twelve issues before Chesler sold it to Ultem Publications. Western Picture Stories was created under the Centaur Group, an amalgamation of two companies and several artistic contributors. The Centaur Group was headed by Joseph Hardie and Raymond Kelly; Western Picture Stories was a short-lived enterprise as it only ran four issues before the Centaur Group began to shift their focus to more risqué themes aimed at adults and especially men in the armed services. 6. Fawcett introduced Hopalong Cassidy, one of the most famous comic book cowboys, in a 1943 one-shot and would give the character his own series in 1946. Boyd Magers, “Hopalong Cassidy,” Western Clippings. www​.westernclippings​.com​/comics​ /hopalongcassidy​_comicbookcowboys​.shtml accessed September 2021. 7. Dell began publishing a stand-alone Lone Ranger comic in 1948. By then the Lone Ranger was an established radio personality, literary icon, and cultural staple. The Lone Ranger is readily recognized as an integral component of American cultural identity and was so popular that not only did tropes from the character enter the American lexicon, but Tonto and Silver, the Lone Ranger’s companion and horse, respectively, also had their own successful spin-off comic series. The importance of this cannot be understated because the Lone Ranger was built around a clearly defined moral code and just has famous sayings, like “Kemo Sabe” or “Hi-Yo Silver,” this moral code left an indelible mark on the American imagination with respect to the Cowboy. For an accessible analysis of the Lone Ranger’s moral code, see Robert Siegel, “The Lone Ranger: Justice from Outside the Law,” NPR: All Things Considered (January 14, 2008), last accessed May 2021. 8. Chadwick Allen, “Hero with Two Faces: The Lone Ranger as Treaty Discourse,” American Literature 68 no. 3 (September, 1996): 610. 9. Tex Willer, the main character, debuted in 1948 and ran as a successful international comic, grounded firmly in the American West (Arizona), until 2001. 10. Blueberry, the main character, debuted in 1963 and remained in publication until 2007, spawning several spin-offs and reissues. Blueberry, wildly popular in France, is considered to be on par with the success of American comic book heroes like The Avengers.

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11. Troy Smith, “Top Ten Western Comics,” Western Fictioneers. westernfictioneers.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-ten-western-comics-and-whole-slew.html accessed September 2021. 12. Tex Morgan, Tex Taylor, and Blaze Carson all made their first appearances in 1948; Rex Hart followed in 1949. 13. Boyd Magers, “Early Marvel Westerns,” Western Clippings. www​ .westernclippings​ . com​ / comics​ / earlymarvelwesterns ​ _ comicbookcowboys ​ . shtml accessed September 2021. 14. Christopher Irving, “Foreword,” Golden Age Western Comics ed. Steven Brower (Brooklyn: Powerhouse Books, 2012): 6. 15. Jonah Hex was created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga and introduced into the DC lineup in 1972 but the character would not receive his own stand-alone story line until 1977. The character would go on to become a mainstay of DC and would spawn movies and spin-offs well into the late 1990s and continuing in popularity through the twenty-first century. 16. Troy Smith, “Top Ten Western Comics,” Western Fictioneers. westernfictioneers.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-ten-western-comics-and-whole-slew.html accessed September 2021. 17. Joepedia, “Wild Bill,” gijoe.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Bill_(RAH) accessed October 2021. 18. COBRA as an evil organization bent on global domination represents a nameless, faceless “other” and not only replaces the various “bad guys,” including Native Americans, from golden age comics, but operates as a stand-in for America’s Cold War enemies allowing G.I. Joe to carry the same messages of earlier cowboy characters into the ‘80 s and ‘90s. 19. Joe Lansdale, Two Gun Mojo, Vertigo Comics, 1993. This reboot ran as a five-issue series placing Hex in a post-apocalyptic setting. 20. Joe Lansdale, Riders of the Worm and Such, Vertigo Comics, 1995. This five-issue series ran as a sequel to Two Gun Mojo and follows Hex as he battles a Cthulhu-esque monster. 21. Garth Ennis, Preacher, Vertigo Comics, 1995. This series ran sixty-six issues through 2000. 22. Alex Brown, “‘Amen-to-That’: The Death-Defying Literary Feats of Preacher” (May 20, 2016). www​.tor​.com​/2016​/05​/20​/amen​-to​-that​-the​-death​-defying​-literary​ -feats​-of​-preacher​/ accessed October 2021. 23. Ibid. 24. Joe Lansdale, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Topps Comics, 1995. 25. Beau Smith, Wynonna Earp, Image Comics, 1996. The series would switch publishers in 2003 with IDW picking up the title. 26. SMCKI10, “Exclusive Interview with Beau Smith: Creator of ‘Wynonna Earp’ Comic Series!” (June 22, 2016). varietybeat.com/2016/06/22/exclusive-interviewwith-beau-smith-creator-of-wynonna-earp-comic-series/ accessed October 2020. 27. Jeff Mariotte, Desperados, Homage Comics, 1997. This is another title that would be picked up in the early 2000s by IDW Publishing.

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28. Jason Aaron, Scalped, Vertigo Comics, 2007. Aaron’s series ran for sixty issues and was one of the most popular comics at the end of the twenty-first-century’s first decade. Scott Snyder, American Vampire, Vertigo Comics, 2010. 29. Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Cowboys and Aliens, Platinum Studios, 2006. Platinum Studios worked hard to inflate sells numbers and artificially create bestseller status for the graphic novel. Their efforts paid off when, in 2011, the graphic novel was adapted for the big screen with director Jon Favreau at the helm and starring Daniel Craig. 30. Cullen Bunn, The Sixth Gun, Oni Press, 2010. Bunn’s series would run for six years and produce fifty issues. Jonathan Hickman, East of West, Image Comics, 2013. Hickman’s series would run six years and produce forty-five issues being consistently rated highly on review and reading lists for the duration of its run. 31. Louis L’Amour, Law of the Desert Born, ed. Beau L’Amour (Bantam Publishing, 2013). 32. Ron Zimmerman, Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather (Marvel, 2010). Ron Zimmerman and Howard Chaykin, The Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven (Marvel, 2010). The homosexual themes explored through Rawhide Kid parallel similar themes that exploded the genre in 2005 with the release of Brokeback Mountain, dir. Ang Lee. 33. Jimmy Palmiotti, All-Star Western (DC Comics, 2011). This series would run for four years and thirty-five issues. 34. Batman is no stranger to western thematics as explored in comics such as Mike Mignola’s Gotham by Gaslight (DC Comics, 1989). 35. Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, The Walking Dead (Image Comics, 2003). This series would run until 2019 and produce 193 issues. The comic remains a significant staple of the American pop culture landscape along with two successful television shows and numerous video game spin-offs. 36. Brian Azzarello, Loveless (Vertigo Comics, 2005). The series ran twenty-four issues through 2008. 37. Perhaps most well-known in popular culture is Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues sketch, “Reclaiming Cunt.” 38. Inez Temple was created by Gail Simone for Marvel Comics in 2002. 39. Ed Brubaker, Fatale, Image Comics, 2012. The series would run twenty-four issues. Brubaker is renowned for his classic pulp-style writing and many of his stories trade on themes and tropes of the Old West, the contemporary West, and classic western archetypes. 40. Andrew Robinson and Joe Pruett, Dusty Star (Image Comics, 2006). The character debuted in 1997 but got a full reboot under the Image banner in 2006 and was poised to become a star in the western genre but creative differences stalled the character. 41. Jay Faerber, Copperhead (Image Comics, 2014). Currently on hiatus, the series is still ongoing, having produced nineteen issues. 42. Kickliy, Perdy (Image Comics, 2018). The first volume was welcomed with critical acclaim and was followed by a second, equally acclaimed, volume in 2020. 43. JoAnn Conrad, “Consuming Subjects: Making Sense of Post-World War II Westerns,” Narrative Culture 2 no. 1 (Spring 2015): 72.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Chadwick. “Hero with Two Faces: The Lone Ranger as Treaty Discourse.” American Literature 68 no. 3 (September 1996): 609–38. Brower, Steven, ed. Golden Age Western Comics, Brooklyn: Powerhouse Books, 2012. Brown, Alex “‘Amen-to-That’: The Death-Defying Literary Feats of Preacher.” (May 20, 2016) www​.tor​.com​/2016​/05​/20​/amen​-to​-that​-the​-death​-defying​-literary​ -feats​-of​-preacher​/ accessed October 2021. Conrad, JoAnn “Consuming Subjects: Making Sense of Post-World War II Westerns,” Narrative Culture 2 no. 1 (Spring 2015): 71–116. Hobsbawm, Eric. “The Myth of the Cowboy.” The Guardian (20 March 2013). www​ .theguardian​.com​/books​/2013​/mar​/20​/myth​-of​-the​-cowboy accessed October2020. Irving, Christopher, “Foreword,” Golden Age Western Comics ed. Steven Brower. Brooklyn: Powerhouse Books, 2012, 6. Joepedia. “Wild Bill,” gijoe.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Bill_(RAH) accessed October 2021. Magers, Boyd. “Early Marvel Westerns.” Western Clippings. www​.westernclippings​ .com​/comics​/earlymarvelwesterns​_comicbookcowboys. shtml accessed September 2021. ———. “Hopalong Cassidy.” Western Clippings. www​.westernclippings​.com​/comics​ /hopalongcassidy​_comicbookcowboys​.shtml accessed September 2021. Siegel, Robert. “The Lone Ranger: Justice from Outside the Law.” NPR: All Things Considered (January 14, 2008), accessed May 2021. SMCKI10. “Exclusive Interview with Beau Smith: Creator of ‘Wynonna Earp’ Comic Series!” (June 22, 2016 varietybeat.com/2016/06/22/exclusive-interview-withbeau-smith-creator-of-wynonna-earp-comic-series/ accessed October 202 Smith, Troy. “Top Ten Western Comics.” Western Fictioneers. westernfictioneer s.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-ten-western-comics-and-whole slew.html accessed September 2021.

Index

Aaron, Jason, 247, 249 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 202 African-Americans: as cowboys, 218, 243; as “others,” 98 Afrofuturism, 226 Alabama (band), 78–79, 82n17 Aldean, Jason, 68, 72, 82n15 aliens, 195, 247, 249 American exceptionalism, 219, 229–30 American Progress (painting), 216 An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (film), 70 American Vampire (comic), 247–48, 251 Anaximander, 11, 22, 23, 27n56 Anderson, Bill, 79 Andrews, Jessica, 75 android, 220–22, 225, 226, 229, 230, 233n7, 234n12 antihero, 81n5, 95, 203 Apache Kid, 243 Arapaho, 204 Argentina, 2–3, 5 Argentina: The Guitar of the Pampas, 4 Aristotle, 12, 19, 86, 87 Atkins, Chet, 74 authenticity, 72, 76, 80, 115, 201, 204, 205, 207

autonomy, 6, 17, 19, 48, 49, 105, 108, 113, 116, 119, 121, 216, 220, 222 Autry, Gene, 71, 75, 81n7, 128, 203– 4, 243, 244 Azzarello, Brian, 251 Babbitt, Bruce, 174 bad faith, 53 Baker, Robert A., 187 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 127–39, 140n1, 140n7; “All Gold Canyon,” 131, 133–35; “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (vignette), 127–30, 138; “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” 136, 138; “Meal Ticket,” 131–34, 136; “The Mortal Remains,” 127, 138, 141n35; “Near Algodones,” 130, 138 The Ballad of Little Jo, 105, 108, 119, 121n5 Bantam, 248 Batman, 250, 256n34 Big and Rich (band), 75 The Big Sleep, 185, 186, 187, 190–92 Billy the Kid: as comic character, 243, 250; as film character, 70, 81n4; as historical figure, 95, 218 Black Bonnie, 251 Black, Clint, 76 Blaze Carson, 244, 255n12 259

260

Blood Meridian, 11, 15, 21, 24, 25n6 Bloom, Harold, 11 Blueberry, 244, 255n10 Bochco, Stephen, 200, 201 bodily transformation, 115 Bogart, Humphrey, 185, 187 Boone, Daniel, 95, 243 Bradford, William, 168 Brokeback Mountain, 199, 256n32 Brooks, Garth, 74–75, 82n11 Brown, Charles Brockden, 168 Brubaker, Ed, 251 Bryan, Luke, 68, 72, 76–78, 82n15 Buck, 31–34, 37, 38, 43, 44, 46, 47, 51–54, 54n6 Buell, Lawrence, 167 Buffalo Bill, 95, 218 Bullock, Seth, 207 Burn Out, 166 Butler, Anne M. [Walling], 206 Cain and Abel, 132–34 Calamity Jane, 201, 204 Camus, Albert, 1 capitalism, 234 capitalist, 132 Carradine, Keith, 205 Carso, Kerry Dean, 180n20 Carson, Christopher “Kit,” 243 Cash, Johnny, 69, 74 Certain Women, 144, 151, 152, 154, 157–59 Chandler, Raymond, 185, 186– 88, 190, 193 Chaykin, Howard, 250 Cheyenne Kid, 243 Chief Tendoy, 174 Christie, Agatha, 188 Coen, Joel and Ethan (the Coen Brothers), 127–29, 138, 140n1 Cold War, 195, 245, 246, 255n18 Cole, Thomas, 167–69 The Color of Fear, 167, 168– 69, 176, 179 Comanche, 130, 147

Index

Connelly, Michael, 189, 194 Cooper, James Fennimore, 165, 167, 172 Copperhead, 252 I Corinthians, 207 The Course of Empire, 169 Cowboys and Aliens, 248, 249, 256n29 Cratylus, 19 Crichton, Michael, 221 Crockett, Davy, 243 Custer, General George, 204 cyborgs, 226, 229, 233n12 Dances with Wolves, 199 Deadpool, 251 Deadwood, xi, 135, 201, 202; as historical mining camp, 200, 203, 204; as television series, 201, 204, 206, 207 Deerchild, Rosanna, 5 The Deerslayer, 168, 174 Dell Comics, 243–44 demons, 247 Desperadoes, 246–47, 251 Destry Rides Again, 70 Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition, 180n3 dialectic, 36, 37, 5, 56n41 Dickens, Little Jimmy, 79 Dietland, 106, 114–19, 121 Dillahunt, Garret, 205 Dillon, Sam, 134 Dimsdale, Thomas J., 205 Diogenes, 1 Dixie Chicks, 74 docile bodies, 41 dominance hierarchy, 35, 36–38, 40, 51, 52 Double Indemnity, 190–91, 192 Downton Abbey, 204 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 188 Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, 200 Dusty Star, 251 Earp, Wyatt, 243, 246

Index

East of West, 248 Eastwood, Clint, 85, 203 The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, 171 Edgar Huntly, 168 Edwin of the Iron Shoes, 180n3 El Gaucho Martin Fierro, 3 Ennis, Garth, 246 “Essay on American Scenery,” 168 Fatale, 251 Fawcett Comics, 242–43, 244 femininity, 69, 106, 222, 224, 252; and “robo-diva,” 226; and Victorian cult of true womanhood, 222; as virgin/ whore, 109 feminism(-ist), xiii, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112–19, 121, 121n5, 138, 143, 180n3, 195; and comics, 246, 251 Festus Hagen, 203 Fine, David, 187 First Cow, 144–45, 148, 151, 159 flight zone, 45 Flower Power, 245 Ford, John, 70, 109, 138, 190 Foucault, Michel, 33 Franco, James, 130 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 49 Gast, John, 216 gaucho, 2–7 Gaucho, 3 gender, xi, 69, 72, 77, 108, 118, 138, 180n3, 215, 220, 253 G.I. Joe, 245, 246, 255n18 ghost towns, 170 the Glanton gang, 12, 24 Good Girls, 106, 114–15, 117–21 Gordon, Jeff, 79 gothic, 167–69, 178 The Great K & A Train Robbery, 70 Grey, Zane, 70, 165, 168, 175 gunfighter, 85, 86, 91, 95, 96, 99, 100 Gunsmoke, 71, 81n8, 190, 195, 200

261

Haggard, Merle, 74 Hammett, Dashiell, 187 hard-boiled detective: formula, 165, 180n3, 190; hero, 176; moral ambiguity, 176, 191; setting, 165, 176, 193, 251 Hastings, Serranus, 151 Hawks, Howard, 185 Hays Code, 203, 204 Heaven’s Gate, 199 Hee Haw, 78 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 33–38, 43, 45, 47–49, 52–53, 55n16, 56n41, 59n91 Heidegger, Martin, 38, 53, 56–57n50 Heraclitus, 11–16, 18–22, 25, 25–26n6 hero’s journey, 93, 97, 227, 233n10 Hickok, Will Bill, 201, 205, 207 High Noon, 192, 204 High Plains Drifter, 204 Hill Street Blues, 200, 207 Holliday, John Henry “Doc,” 243, 250 Hollywood, 33, 70, 93, 128, 130, 143, 186, 187, 192, 200, 218, 219, 221; and “Golden Age” of Westerns, 144, 200, 203, 218 Holmes, Sherlock, 188 Homer, 12, 22 Hopalong Cassidy, 244 The Horse Whisperer, 32, 199 Hudson River School, 167 independence, 36, 42, 48, 49, 73, 107, 108, 110, 113, 116, 119, 185, 186 Indians (generic), 11, 14, 23, 94, 98, 108, 136, 172–74, 185, 204, 218, 249 Indian Captivity narratives, 168 industrialization, 217 Inez Temple (“Outlaw” comic), 251 innocent, 94 Innocent Nation (American myth), 94 intimacy and interdependence, 111 Jackson, Alan, 76 James, Jesse, 71, 85

262

Index

Jarmusch, Jim, 199 Jaspers, Karl, 1 Jenner, Mareike, 188 Jesse James (1939 film), 70 Jonah Hex, 245, 246, 250, 255n15 Jones, George, 79, 83 Joy, Lisa, 220, 221 Judge Holden, 11, 26n7 Justified, xi, 186, 189, 190 Keith, Toby, 68, 71, 75, 81n6 “the Kid” as motif, 243, 246 Kid Colt Outlaw, 243 Kirkman, Robert, 250 Koresky, Michael, 128, 135 Krech, Shepard, 171 L.A. Confidential, 190–91 Laing, R. D., 34 Lakota Sioux, 136, 138, 204 L’Amour, Louis, 248 landscape, ix, x, xiii, 85, 89, 106, 107, 110, 129–35, 155, 158, 159, 165, 166–70, 193, 194, 203, 218–23, 227, 241, 247, 251, 253 Law of the Desert Born, 248 Lawrence, D. H., 96, 165, 173, 174, 179 Leatherstocking Novels (Tales). See Cooper, James Fennimore Leonard, Elmore, 153 Leone, Sergio, 129 Lewis and Clark expedition, 174 liberalism, 216 Life on the Mississippi, 205 Limerick, Patricia, 107 The Lincoln Lawyer, 186, 191, 194 Listen to the Silence, 166–67, 168–74 logos, 12, 16, 18, 19, 21, 27n56, 77, 86, 87 London, Jack, 135 the Lone Ranger, 186, 243, 244, 246, 249, 254n7 The Lone Ranger and Tonto, 246, 249 Lonesome Dove, 195, 199 The Long Goodbye, 186

Loveless, 250–51 Love, Nat, 218 Lusted, David, 127 Lynch, Dustin, 76 Malambo, 4 The Man from Laramie, 144, 147, 149, 154 manifest destiny, xiii, 105, 128, 129, 135, 139, 216, 232n2, 243, 250 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 128 Margolies, Edward, 185 Marlowe, Philip, 185–88 Marshall Dillon, 203 Marvel Comics, 242, 244, 245, 250 Marx, Karl, 36 Marx, Leo, 167 masculinity, xiii, 46, 69, 72, 74, 76, 77, 106, 108, 118, 144–51, 180n3, 192, 195, 218, 219, 229, 230; as White, 68 Mather, Cotton, 168 Maverick, 189, 199 McCall, Jack, 205 McCarthy, Cormac, 11, 25–26n6, 202 McGraw, Tim, 75 McKinnon, Ray, 207 McMurtry, Larry, 199 Medoc War, 169 Melling, Harry, 131 Mexicans, 148, 218; as vaqueros, 217, 232n4 Milch, David, 200 mining, 112, 170, 171, 200, 201, 204, 205, 252 mirror neuron system, 41 Miss Kitty, 71, 203 Mix, Tom, 70, 202, 243 Modleski, Tania, 109 Monument Valley, 127, 128 Moore, Justin, 76 Morrison, Marion “The Duke.” See Wayne, John Muller, Marcia, 165, 179, 179–80n3; on conservation, 166, 171; on race/

Index

racism, 172–74; on violence, 175, 176; use of landscape, 166, 167, 170 Musgraves, Kacey, 75 Nash, Roderick, 167 nationalism, xiii, 194, 243 Native Americans, 40, 203, 217; and history of exploitation, 108, 131, 174, 243; and magic, 247; as “others,” 130, 255n18; and racism, xiii, 242; and stereotypes, xiii, 108, 130, 131, 138, 167 nature, x, 3, 4, 12, 17–19, 22, 34, 36, 107, 108, 110–12, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 205, 215–17, 221 Neeson, Liam, 131 Nelson, Tim Blake, 128 neo-westerns, xii; and comics, 245 Nietzel, Michael T., 187 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 32, 33, 51 noble savage, 171 Nolan, Jonathan, 220, 221 Northern Cheyenne, 204 NYPD Blue, 200, 201 Oakly, Annie, 250 Oregon Trail, 135 Outlaw Kid, 243, 251 Owens, Buck, 73–74 Paisley, Brad, 68, 73, 78–80 Parton, Dolly, 69 Perdy, 252 The Pioneers, 174 Plato, 22, 86; Platonic Ideal, 148 Poirot, Hercule, 188, 193 Preacher, 246, 249 progress, 94, 169, 243, 244 Pure Country, 70 queering, 227, 229–31, 234n14 railroads, 98, 217, 224 the Rawhide Kid, 242–43, 250 Red River, 144, 147–49

263

Red Ryder, 244 reflexive westerns, 127, 128 Regeneration through Violence, 95, 97, 168 Reichardt, Kelly, 143–47, 150–55, 157–59 Remington, Frederic, 69, 71, 144 revisionist western, 127, 153, 199 Rex Hart, 244 Rick Grimes, 250 The Rider, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 43, 44, 46–48, 50, 52–54 Riders of the Worm and Such, 246 Ride with the Devil, 199 Ringo Kid, 243 The Rockford Files, 186, 189, 194 Rockford, Jim, 186, 189 Rogers, Roy, 71, 128, 243, 244 Rodriguez, Robert, 199 Ronald Reagan, 246 Roughing It, 166 Rowlandson, Mary, 168 Ruehlmann, William, 165, 175 rugged individualism, 67, 85, 106, 245 Russell, Charles Marion, 69 Sacajawea, 174 Saint with a Gun, 165, 179 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1, 32, 33, 42, 53, 55n13, 59n91 Sayles, John, 199 Scalped, 247, 249, 250 self-reflexive narrative, 128, 129, 139 Seneca, 1 The Sensational Seven, 250 Schaeffer, Francis, 1 Scott, Randolph, 202 Shadows West, 246 Sharon McCone: as hard-boiled hero, 178; Native American identity, 172–74, 177; and violence, 175, 176, 177, 179 Shea, Louisa, 1 The Shootist, 70 Shoshone, 171, 172

264

“The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 169, 215 Singer, Mark, 200 Sioux, 136, 138, 204 The Sixth Gun, 248 Slap Leather, 250 Slatta, Richard W., 2 slow cinema, 152–55, 158 Slotkin, Richard, 86, 95, 97, 167, 168, 172, 173 Smith, Beau, 246 Smith, Lillian, 218 social Darwinism, 169 social media, 7 Socrates, 1 The Sopranos, 203 space: and interiority, 115; and landscape, 105, 155, 166, 224, 227 space westerns, 252 spaghetti westerns, 91, 129, 242, 252 Springsteen, Bruce, 85, 87, 93, 94, 99, 100 Stagecoach, 70, 127–32, 135, 136, 138, 140n1, 246 Star Ranger, 242 Star, Sol, 201 Star Wars, 93, 252 Steger, Manfred, 5 Stewart, James, 70 stoics, 4, 86, 174 St. Paul, 200, 207 Studies in Classic American Literature, 165 supernatural westerns, 245, 248 Strait, George, 68, 70–71 Swearengen, Al, 201, 206, 207 Tarantino, Quentin, 199 Terra Nullius, 215 terror management theory, 39, 60n113 Texas Kid, 243 Tex Morgan, 244 Tex Taylor, 244 Thelma and Louise, 105, 106, 108–13, 115–19, 120–21

Index

3:10 to Yuma, 144, 153 Tombstone, 199 Tompkins, Jane, 41, 106–8, 110, 113 Tonto, 243, 254n7 Trophies and Dead Things, 175 True Detective, 186, 188–93 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 105 Twain, Mark, 205 Two-Gun Kid, 242, 243 Two-Gun Mojo, 246 Underwood, Carrie, 75 Unforgiven, 199 Utter, Charlie, 201 vaqueros, 217, 232n4 Vietnam (War), 195, 244, 245, 249 violence: acts of, xi, xiii, 18, 91, 95, 97, 117, 118, 134, 147, 148, 203, 252; effects of, 5, 44, 98, 100, 113, 151, 176; significance of, 12, 15, 47, 86, 96–99, 106, 112–14, 117, 129, 138, 150, 155, 175 The Virginian, 146, 156 Waits, Tom, 133 The Walking Dead, xii, 250 Wanderer of the Wasteland, 175 war, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 148, 169, 195, 201, 243, 246, 249 Warren, Robert Penn, 200 Wayne, John, 70, 74, 85, 129, 147, 149, 190, 202, 219, 243 Weigert, Robin, 204 weird westerns, 245, 248 western hero, 108, 144, 147, 148, 189; moral ambiguity, 107, 129, 176, 185; romantic vs. dystopian, 129 western myth, 75; and ideas of progress, 170; landscape associated with pastoral and edenic, 132–34, 139, 158, 166, 167–69, 179; landscape linked to wilderness and savagery, 110, 133, 155, 167–69, 175, 179; vigilante justice, 118, 175

Index

Western Picture Stories, 242 Westworld, 145, 213, 214, 219, 220, 230 “What the Desert Means to Me,” 168, 169 Where Echoes Live, 165–66, 168– 71, 175, 177 white fantasies, 243 whiteness, 98, 128–31, 138, 139 White supremacy, 98, 216 Wild Bill, 245–46 Wilderness and the American Mind, 167

Wills, Mark, 74 Wolf in the Shadows, 167, 175 World War II (also WWII), 68, 80, 243, 244, 253 Wynonna Earp, 246, 251 Wyoming Kid, 243 Young, Chris, 76 Zimmerman, Ron, 250 zombies, 247, 250

265

About the Editor and Contributors

ABOUT THE EDITOR Clint Wesley Jones is a full-time instructor of philosophy at Capital University. He earned his PhD in social and political philosophy at the University of Kentucky and has published on popular culture archetypes such as the cowboy, pirate, and comic book superheroes as well as critical theory issues of race, class, gender, and the environment. He has written on Justified and Longmire as part of an ongoing critique of the cowboy in American mythology. His most recent project was a twelve-part lecture series on post-capitalist ecosocialism and ethical theory. This culminated in his most recent publications Ecological Reflections on Post-Capitalist Society (2018) and Stranger, Creature, Thing, Other: Moral Monstrosity and Ecostentialism (2019), both from Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. His interest in comics and graphic novels has also led to the publication of Apocalyptic Ecology in the Graphic Novel: Life and the Environment after Societal Collapse (McFarland Press, 2020). ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Jerold J. Abrams is professor of philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He teaches and researches in American philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of film. Recent publications include (with Katherine Reed), “We Are Groot: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Guardians of the Galaxy,” in The Marvel Universe, ed. Doug Brode (McFarland, 2022), “Ancient Chinese Cave Paintings as Cinema: The Volcanos and Dragons of Mogao Cave 249,” in International Communication of Chinese Culture” (2021), and (as editor) Shusterman’s Somaesthetics: From Hip Hop Philosophy to Politics and Performance Art (Brill, 2022). 267

268

About the Editor and Contributors

Karen Adkins is a professor of philosophy at Regis University in Denver. She teaches and publishes in feminist theory and philosophy of emotions; publications include Gossip, Epistemology, Power (Palgrave, 2017), as well as articles in Hypatia, Social Epistemology, Teaching Philosophy, Social Philosophy Today, and other journals. Adam Barkman (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) is professor of Philosophy at Redeemer University. In addition to authoring or editing a dozen books, including Making Sense of Islamic Art and Architecture (Thames and Hudson) and C. S. Lewis and Philosophy as a Way of Life (Zossima), he is the co-series editor for Lexington Book’s “Critical Companion to Contemporary Directors.” He lives in Brantford, Canada, with his wife and seven children. Caroline Collins is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at UC Irvine and an affiliated researcher with the Democracy Lab and the Indigenous Futures Institute at UC San Diego. She holds a PhD in communication from UC San Diego, an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside, and a BA in American literature and culture from UCLA. Her work examines public remembrances of the American West through archival methods, ethnographic study, media production, and public history exhibition. Her public scholarship includes exhibits and media produced in collaboration with the California Institute for Rural Studies, the California Historical Society, the California African American Museum, Exhibit Envoy, and the First Nations Development Institute. Dr. Collins’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bylo Chacon Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/US Latino Digital Humanities Center, California Humanities, UCSD Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program, the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California Project, the Herbert I. Schiller Communication Dissertation Fellowship, and the UC Office of the President. Enzo Guerra has received an MA in philosophy and is currently completing a second MA in globalization. His philosophical research interests are primarily in applied ethics. He also enjoys topics in the philosophy of religion, as well as in social and political philosophy. Cynthia S. Hamilton is professor emerita in American literature and cultural history at Liverpool Hope University, UK. She has received a number of fellowships and awards including a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society (2002) and a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford (2005–2006). Her publications on detective fiction include Western and Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction in America (1987) and Sara Paretsky: Detective Fiction as Trauma

About the Editor and Contributors

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Literature  (2015). She has published work on other popular genre as well, including the slave narrative, captivity narrative, temperance tale, tracts, and antislavery literature for children. Lilian Haney is an independent scholar studying psychology and leadership studies at Christopher Newport University. Aside from having a general passion for cowboys, she enjoys connecting musical and lyrical analysis to the exploration of the collective human experience. Misty L. Jameson received both her BA and MA degrees in English from Mississippi State University and received her PhD in English, with an emphasis in film studies, from the University of Georgia. She has presented conference papers on filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam and Abbas Kiarostami, on the Western in the new millennium, on film noir, and on the use of film in the classroom. She also coauthored a chapter with Pat Brace (“Landscape and Gender in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility and Brokeback Mountain”) in the book The Philosophy of Ang Lee (Ed. Robert Arp, Adam Barkman, and James McRae. U Press of Kentucky, 2013), and she has published articles on authors Octavia Butler, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Gaddis as well. Her teaching and research interests include genre studies, art cinema, gender representations in the media, adaptation studies, the novel and narrative form, and postmodern American literature and popular culture. She is currently a professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, and is serving as the interim chair of the Department of Media and Communication. She received the Lander University Distinguished Professor Award in spring 2021. She would like to thank Andy, Sophie, and the cats for their love and support. Gillian Kelly’s most recent monograph is Tyrone Power: Gender, Genre and Image in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2021) and her first book, Robert Taylor: Male Beauty, Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood (2019), was shortlisted for best monograph by the prestigious British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). She has chapters in the edited collections Lasting Screen Stars (2018) and Exploring the Spiritual in Popular Music (2021) and has contributed to several journals including Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Celebrity Studies, Alphaville, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Her current research is on Ray Milland and Ida Lupino. Jennifer L. McMahon is a professor of philosophy and English at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. She has expertise in existentialism, aesthetics, comparative philosophy, visual rhetoric, mortality studies, and

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About the Editor and Contributors

animal studies. She has published numerous essays on philosophy and popular culture, including The Philosophy of Documentary Film (Lexington, 2016), Buddhism and American Cinema (SUNY, 2014), and Death in Classic and Contemporary Cinema (Palgrave, 2013). She has edited collections including The Philosophy of Tim Burton (UPKY, 2014) and The Philosophy of the Western (UPKY, 2010). Wendy Chapman Peek has worked at Stonehill College for over thirty years, teaching courses in literature, film, and gender studies and directing the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program. Her research interests take her from Latin epic through the Middle Ages to contemporary film and television. She is completing a monograph on masculinity in postwar Westerns. Dahlia Schweitzer is an associate professor in the Film and Media department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her latest book, Haunted Homes (Rutgers University Press, 2021), explores the ways haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse. Her previous books include L.A. Private Eyes (Rutgers University Press, 2019), Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers University Press, 2018), and Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster (Intellect, 2014). In addition to her books, Dahlia has essays in publications including Cinema Journal, Journal of Popular Film and Television,  Jump  Cut,  Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and The Journal of Popular Culture. Originally hailing from the badlands of North Carolina, John Thompson has authored several books and various scholarly articles. John has roamed far and wide across the West and even claims that he rode with Billy the Kid, but says they never got along (Billy allegedly “wore his guns all wrong”). Eventually John was apprehended by Bounty Hunter Dan and ever since has been serving time with his wife, daughter, and son in the swamps of southeastern Virginia. Mark Walling teaches creative writing and film at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. He has published essays on Tim Burton and David Lynch. He has stories in recent issues of Concho River Review and Sewanee Review.