Sixguns & Society. A Structural Study of the Western

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SIXGUNS &SOCIETY A Structural Study of the Western /

by Will Wright

Oo:nte:nts

Preface 1 Introduction: The Myth and the Method

2 The Structure of Myth 3 The Structure of the Western Film INTRODUCTION: The Films The Classical Plot The Vengeance Variation The Transition Theme The Professional Plot 4 Myth as a Narrative of Social Action 5 Individuals and Values: The Classical Plot 6 Individuals Against Values: The Vengeance Variation 7 Groups and Techniques: The Professional Plot 8 Myth and Meaning Methodological Epilogue Appendix Bibliography Index

1 4 16 29 29 32 59 74 85 124 130 154 164 185 195 203 213 215

Everyone's seen a Western. Most people like them, some do not, but no American and few in the world can escape their influence. The Marlboro Man made Marlboro the best-selling cigarettes in the world; pintos, mustangs, mavericks are popular automobiles as well as animals and images from the Western; dude ranches do a thriving business, turning up even in Germany; western clothing is fashionable; rodeos are the most popular spectator sport in America. Two men face off to determine the fastest draw in northern Thailand, and both are killed. John Wayne, once simply a symbol of masculinity, is now both the symbol of masculinity and male chauvinism. And then there is that fine commercial in which Slim Pickens, in a cowboy hat, is driving across the desert when his car gets a flat tire-so he shoots it. There are the movies-and the TV shows-and the novels. We are all familiar with the Western, which has had many commentators. In 1950, Henry Nash Smith dismissed it in The Virgin Land: Devoid alike of ethical and social meaning, the Western story could develop in no direction save that of a straining and exaggeration of its formulas. It abandoned all effort to be serious, and by 1889 ... it had sunk to the near-juvenile level it was to occupy with virtually no change down to our present day. (Smith. p. 135)

On the other hand, many film critics and armchair analysts have hailed its wild beauty, reveled in its masculine violence, condemned its incipient fascism, discovered the American trauma in its arid deserts, and found repressed significance in the fast draw. Yet there 1

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have been no serious, systematic studies of the Western as a cultural genre, a popular set of stories, an American myth. So I have undertaken one. I have entered this new, untamed territory armed with a theory, a methodology, and a set of data; with these weapons, together with Truth and Justice, I intend to drive out the evil ranchers, railroad men, and professors in order to show that there is redeeming social value in this seemingly barren intellectual wasteland. The theory and methodology I will develop as I go along, borrowing tricks from the earlier trailblazers in similar lands-anthropologists, literary critics, philosophers. The data, however, belongs to all of us-the Western movies of the last four decades, the glorious and ridiculous shoot-'em-ups of our childhood and, happily, of our adulthood as well. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart; gunfights, saloon brawls, schoolmarms, dance-hall girls, necktie parties, stampedes, wagon trains, Indian attacks. saddle tramps; mountains, deserts, forests, plains; horses, cattle, railroads; white hats and black hats-all arc familiar to us. While gangster films, romantic comedies, war dramas, spy movies, and police films have come and gone, the Western has remained popular. The purpose of this book is to explain its popularity. While the Western itself may seem simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot be; for the Western, like any myth, stands between individual human consciousness and society. If a myth is popular, it must somehow appeal to or reinforce the individuals who view it by communicating a symbolic meaning to them. This meaning must, in turn, reflect the particular social institutions and attitudes that have created and continue to nourish the myth. Thus. a myth must tell its viewers about themselves and their society. This study, which takes up the question of the Western as an American myth, will lead us into abstract structural theory as well as economic and political history. Mostly. however, it will take us into the movies. the spectacular and not-so-spectacular sagebrush of the cinema. Unlike most works of social science, the data on which my analysis is based is available to all of my readers, either at the local theater or, more likely, on the late, late show. I hope you will take the opportunity, whenever it is offered, to check my findings and test my interpretations; the effort is small and the rewards are many. And if your wife, husband, mother, or child asks you why you are wasting your time staring at Westerns on TV in the middle of the night, tell them firmly-as I often did-that you are doing research in social science. Much of this work falls into the category of "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Unlike John Wayne, though, I had help

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when the going got tough. At Berkeley, Leo Lowenthal, Neil Smelser, Reinhard Bendix, and Alan Dunde$ supplied me with the weapons. ammunition, and strategy for a success!ul campaign. David Frisby led the cavalry charge to the rescue at the last moment. Hugh Mehan and Benetta Jules-Rossette backed me up for the final shoot-out. Trudy O'Brien, Jan Wilber, Beverly Strong, Susan Miller, and Corinne Cacas-schoolmarms and dance-hall girls all-proved to be the fastest typists and collators in the West. Finally, there is the man from Montana, Brian O'Brien, who did nothing at all except remain a good friend and a fellow connoisseur of fine cowboy movies.

1 :tntroduetio:c.:

The ~ y t h and the l:v.tethod.

A lone rider, sitting easily in the saddle of his dusty horse, travels across the plains toward a small, new town with muddy streets and lively saloons. He wears a tattered, wide-brimmed hat, a loose-hanging vest, a bandanna around his neck, and one gun rests naturally at his side in a smooth, well-worn holster. Behind him, the empty plains roll gently until they end abruptly in the rocks and forests that punctuate the sudden rise of towering mountain peaks.

For most Americans, and for a large percentage of the world's population, this scene is familiar, though few people have ever actually experienced it. It does not simply present a familiar setting, it envelops the setting in social and moral meanings which are immediately understood. The scene literally tells a story, for it recreates the settling of the American West, a time and a history which, as someone said, if it did not really happen. it should have. Certainly the West was wild, but even at its wildest, the actual events could not possibly have included the many stories of glory and suffering, heroism and savagery, love and sacrifice, that the Western myth has produced. Yet somehow, the historical reality of the West provided fertile soil for the growth and development of myth. The result has been one of the richest narrative traditions of modern times. Western novels have been popular in America since the middle of the nineteenth century, and similar tales of the West-often written by men who never even visited America-have stirred the European imagination for generations. According to a recent commentator, novels of the West constituted 10.64 percent of all works 4

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of fictions published in America in 1958, and 7.08 percent in 1967, (Cawelti, pp. 2-3). In 1903, Edwin Porter made The Great Train Robbery, which was not only the first Western film but the first film to use cross-cutting (cutting between simultaneous events in different locations) to tell a story. Since that time, the Western has become a favorite of moviegoers and has greatly expanded the popularity and significance of the Western myth. American Westerns have become popular throughout Europe and in Africa, Asia, and South America; in recent years, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan have begun to make their own Western movies. Of course, since the early fifties, television has become a major source of Western adventure. Cawelti reports that, during on average television week in Chicago in 1967, eighteen hours of Westerns were shown on the four major channels between the hours of six and ten in the evening-16 percent of the total viewing time. The enormous popularity of the wild West could perhaps be attributed to cultural interest in a unique and colorful era of our history, but this explanation becomes unconvincing when the actual history is examined. The crucial period of settlement in which most Westerns take place lasted only about thirty years, from 1860 to 1890. In 1861 the Indian wars began as the Cheyenne found the Colorado gold miners invading their lands, and in 1862 the Homestead Act was passed. By 1890 all the American Indians had been either exterminated or placed on reservations; in 1889 the last unoccupied region in the West, the Oklahoma territory, was opened to homesteaders with a massive land rush. Between these events. the major Indian wars were fought, and cattle empires blossomed and withered. The great Texas cattle drives to the Kansas cow towns. the inspiration for much of the Western myth, lasted only from 1866 to 1885. Even if we include the period of the California gold rush and the first wagon trains to Oregon, the entire period of western settlement lasted less than fifty years. In contrast, the settling of the eastern frontier-from the Atlantic to the Great Plains-required at least 130 years; yet apart from Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Natty Bumpo, and Paul Bunyan, this era is not rich in mythical figures and events, and even these stalwart heroes have a minor status in the modern imagination compared with the cowboys. gunfighters, and gamblers of the golden West. A more likely explanation for the West's appeal as a setting for romance is the fact that there, for a brief time, many ways of life were available, each of which contained its own element of adventure. There were farmers, cowboys, cavalrymen, miners, Indian fighters, gamblers, gunfighters, and railroad builders, all contem-

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INTRODUCTION

porary with one another. Though these different types may have had little contact with each other, as a source of narrative inspiration the variety of livelihoods allows for clear-cut conflicts of interest and values. The fictional interaction of different kinds of men often makes details of motivation unnecessary and intensifies the force of their situational antagonisms. Set in a historical context where these differences are believable, stories that utilize this potential can readily portray fundamental conflicts by relying on the established meanings of the various types. There have been other frontiers, but probably none as rich in different and conflicting activities within a remarkably compressed period. Life on the eastern frontier of America was probably just as exciting-or dull-as in the West, but the East never offered at one time such a wide variety of occupations. In the early days, you were a trapper or a guide or an Indian fighter, and later you were a farmer or a merchant, but there was not much interaction or many alternatives. Hence, in spite of its actual and more prolonged adventure, the East could never match the social turmoil of the West as a context for fiction, and more precisely, as a ground for myth. The real but limited use of violence to settle differences in the West is simply the final rationale for the transformation of a historical period into a mythical realm in which significant social conflicts and abrupt, clear resolutions can be made both believable and meaningful in a readily understandable way. If this explains the choice of this historical setting, how can we understand the meaning of the myth itself? What is the appeal of stories about a way of life absolutely different from that of their modern audiences? There have been remarkably few serious efforts to analyze and interpret the Western myth. It is as though its mass appeal has made it unworthy of dignified scholarly research. From time to time essays have appeared that offer capsule explanations, which generally fall into two categories: the Western, as satisfaction of social needs or the Western as satisfaction of psychological needs. Preeminent in the first category is Andre Bazin, the French critic, who argues that "these Western myths ... may be reduced to an essential principle: . . . the relation between law and morality" (Bazin, p. 145). Others include David Brian Davis, who believes that the Western represents the conflict of the ethic of work with the ethic of leisure, and Peter Homans, who sees in the Western a legitimation of violence in a context of Puritan control over feelings. Similarly, Robert Warshaw finds the significance of the Western to lie in the fact that "it offers a serious orientation to the problem of violence" (Warshaw, p. 103). In a recent study, John Cawelti argues

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that "the Western affirms the necessity of society" by presenting and resolving "the conflict between key American values like progress and success and the lost virtues of individual honor, heroism, and natural freedom" (Cawelti, p. 80). Finally, Jim Kitses vividly contends that the Western opposes Wilderness to Civilization: "What we are dealing with here, of course, is no less than a national world-view: ... the isolation of a vast unexplored continent, the slow growth of social forms, the impact of an unremitting New England Puritanism obsessed with the cosmic struggle of good and evil .... We can speak of the genre's celebration of America. of the contrasting images of Garden and Desert, as national myth" (Kitses, pp. 12, 14). These explanations, which are interesting and suggestive, share a common, implicit theoretical orientation. All assume that an emotionally felt cultural conflict is expressed and thereby displaced or resolved in individuals. The suggested conflicts are manyprogress versus freedom, law versus morality, violence versus Puritan control-but, though these explanations contain valid insights into American culture, they cannot account for the popularity of the Western myth. It is doubtful that many of us who enjoy Westerns worry very much about progress versus freedom or Garden versus Desert, and the only source of evidence for the existence of these conflicts is the myth itself. An argument that attempts to explain a myth through a conflict that can only be found in the myth itself is necessarily suspect. The real difficulty with this kind of explanation, however, is that it attempts to interpret a rich and varied mythical form in terms of one specific social or cultural dynamic. The myth is thereby separated from the everyday concerns and actions of most people in the society, who cannot constantly be plagued by that particular psychological strain. Yet it is precisely these everyday concerns and actions that the myth is designed to make more bearable, through the reinforcing power of what we call entertainment. Other commentators on the Western have stressed its relation to psychological need. F. E. Emery claims that the myth is popular because audiences "experience some sense of 'fit' or harmony between it and certain of their own unconscious inner needs and tensions" (Emery, p. 11). Cawelti argues that the Western reflects an "archetypal pattern" such as "the adolescent's desire to be an adult and his fear and hesitation about adulthood" (Cawelti, p. 82). Kenneth Munden believes the myth symbolizes the central conflicts of the Oedipus Complex, conflicts which are not cultural but are rather based on "the decisive, universal, emotional relationships that exist between every child and its parents, no matter what variable

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INTRODUCTION

environmental factors be introduced" (Munden, p. 144). Analyses such as these attribute the Western's popularity to universal and unconscious needs. The setting and actions of the Western are interpreted as an elaborate cultural code that both expresses and obscures the real, biological meaning of the myth. In such a code, for example, the hero represents childhood or the hero's gun the penis. By claiming universal, unconscious necessity for its central conflict, this approach avoids the problem of how we can enjoy Westerns without constantly worrying about the trauma. But it raises another, and greater. problem: the code that interprets the myth-hero = childhood, gun = penis-is part of the theory that explains the meaning of the myth. Thus, there is no way that the Western itself can validate the psychological theory. Until there is a clear, external translation of cultural images into biological meanings, no verifying evidence for such explanations, other than elegance of fit, can be produced. But the central problem with the psychological approach is that it either ignores or denies the fact that the Western, like other myths, is a social phenomenon. If its meaning is universal and emotional, then the particular social structure and institutions only determine its code; they have nothing to do with its meaning. Once again, this is a claim that is made because the theory demands it, not because of any evidence in the Western itself. Indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary, particularly the fact that the plot structure of the Western has changed dramatically over the forty years considered by this study, a fact difficult to explain if the meaning of the myth is universal, biological, and therefore static. As commonly practiced, both the social and the psychological approaches to myth share a common assumption that limits their analytic power as well as their ability to grasp the Western as an experienced whole. Both assume that a myth reflects a shared concern with a specific conflict in attitudes or desires. Further, they assume that if this conflict is not somehow displaced or resolved, an emotional tension or disturbance will result. Circumstances create a specific and widespread incompatibility of needs, and the myth is popular and successful insofar as it contributes to the satisfaction of those needs and the circumvention of the associated emotional tensions. From this perspective, the myth can only be understood in terms of one overriding emotional dynamic. This approach to the study of myth is derived from the theories of the great anthropologists and their interpretations of tribal myths. Until recently, tribal myths were viewed as emotional, irrational ways of expressing social value and psychological conflict. Thus, for Radcliff-Brown the myths of the Andaman Islanders function

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to reoncile the social order with the natural order; "the myths satisfactorily fulfil their function not by any appeal to the reasoning powers of the intellect but by appealing, through the imagination, to the mind's affective dispositions" (Georges, p. 65). For Malinowski, the Trobriand myths reinforce "custom" and "magic" as distinct from "actual historical reality," and "thus we can define myth as a narrative of events which are to the native supernatural" (Georges, p. 78). Finally, for Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho myths resolve cultural or psychological anxieties through reaction formation, introjection, and projection: The all-pervasive configurations of word symbols (myths) and of act symbols (rituals) preserve the cohesion of the society and sustain the individual, protecting him from intolerable conflict. ... Mythology is the rationalization ... of the fundamental "needs" of the society, whether "economic," "biological," "social," or "sexual." (Georges, pp. 166-167).

This approach makes the basic psychological assumption that emotional disorder results from a conflict or confusion of social beliefs or biological needs. In one sense, this statement is unexceptionable; but it is usually interpreted to mean that emotional trauma or tension is caused by one (or perhaps more) specific complex of irreconcilable desires, and then the search is on to discover this complex and "explain" its manifestations. In this way a direct connection is established between unavoidable mental concerns and particular cultural expressions: the individual mind must grasp and endure certain inherent conflicts-love of mother versus fear of authority, progress versus freedom-or else emotional disturbances will occur. Cultural forms such as myths help the individual to live with these conflicts. While this view is accurate as a description, it is mistaken as an explanation. Certainly, specific conflicts of beliefs and desires generate emotional disturbance, but the psychological connection between the disturbance and the conflicts is not as direct as this argument assumes. Freud is probably responsible for the popularity of this approach; as Philip Rieff comments, he encouraged it "by making the Oedipus Complex the nucleus of all neurotic problems." After him, for example, Adler rejected the centrality of the Oedipal desires but replaced them with an equally single-minded emphasis on the inherent conflict between inferiority and power. This methodological approach to attitudes and behavior-one central conflict, many behavioral manifestations-can be used both by psychoanalysts (e.g., Munden) and by more socially oriented interpreters of the Western to "explain" the meaning of the myth. But the problem

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INTRODUCTION

is more complex than this. The trouble with this approach is that the basic conflict, whether psychological or social, is simply assumed to be the underlying motivation of the myth-or dream, or attitude-and then the myth or other manifestation is analyzed in such a way that, when the conflict is indeed found to be present, the interpretation is proven to be valid. Unfortunately, this method can be used to "validate" many such fundamental conflicts in the Western and in other aspects of cultural and psychic life. Many social scientists, including some psychoanalysts, have recently begun to interpret cultural forms and attitudes, as well as emotional disturbances, as problems in communication rather than as the consequences of specific and assumed tensions. The central concern of social man is seen to be the establishment of meanings and the communication of these meanings. This constitutes an assumption about basic human needs-the search for meaning-that is more formal and abstract than the Freudian or simple social assumptions that we have encountered-Oedipal conflicts. progress versus freedom, and so forth. It is also empirically demonstrable in a straightforward way, which these other assumptions are not: men do establish symbolic meanings and they do communicate. If we seek to understand myths from this perspective, we must first analyze the formal, or logical, requirements of symbolic communication and then try to relate the particular contents to those requirements. This is clearly different from attempting to connect the content with a specific complex of conflicting ideas or desires. While these specific conflicts are certainly present in human life, they are now interpreted as efforts to make symbolic sense of ordinary experience rather than as inherent human or social dilemmas. For example, if we successfully interpret a myth in terms of the Oedipus Complex, we have not "explained" the social meanings of the myth but have simply established that, in this society, there is a confusion in the social attitudes and actions surrounding parents and children, a confusion that must be expressed in the culture. In order lo know why this confusion exists and how its expression is understood, we must understand what social meanings concerning this problem are available and how they conflict with the psychological and logical necessities of meaning and coherence in human consciousness. In other words, the theoretical relationship between specific social tensions and unconscious cultural expressions is no longer seen as direct and emotional but as indirect and cognitive. A specific, unresolved conflict in unconscious ideas or desires causes emotional disturbance or expression; but if this is accepted as an explanation of the expression, then the conflict becomes given and irreducible,

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and human experience is seen as innately emotional. When, however, this causal statement is accepted as a description of the relationship between a conflict and its emotional expression, both can be interpreted as attempts to establish meaning in a psychological context bounded by cultural concepts, on the one hand, and by the formal requirements of symbolic understanding on the other. This distinction underlies the recent stress on cognitive as opposed to affective psychology, where the concern is with how humans understand, organize, and communicate their experience rather than how they inherit, express, and resolve their emotional disorders. The perspective that I will adopt in this study is that emotional behavior can only be fully understood when cognitive behavior is understood. The study of human expression and communication requires a more formal psychological analysis than is available in psychoanalytic theory. The concerns of a cognitive explanation begin with the analysis of the structure of language and, more generally, the structure of symbolic communication. When this formal theory has been established, it is then possible to return to a specific social context where the theory can be applied to real experiences and expressions. The emphasis on the structural requirements of human consciousness permits an analysis of human action that focuses on a complex and formal psychological mechanism of communication as well as on a socially established and responsive complex of motivating symbols. It becomes possible to view myth as consisting of two analytically separable components: an abstract structure through which the human mind imposes a necessary order and a symbolic content through which the formal structure is applied to contingent, socially defined experience. With respect to its structure, myth is like language in that its elements are ordered according to formal rules of combination by which these elements take on meaning. The elements of myth are the images and actions of the narrative, and the structure that orders them, like the structure of language, is determined by the general properties of symbolic consciousness-that is, by the psychological resources of the mind and the laws of symbolic meaning. Thus, the structure of myth is assumed to be universal; it can be derived from an analysis of any instance of myth and the requirements of symbolic communication. But the formal structure of a myth is embodied in a symbolic content that is socially specific. This content presents characters and events, telling a story that society's members understand and enjoy. Both consciously and unconsciously the myth relates to the individual's experience as a social and historical being. Like Ian-

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guage, myth exhibits an unconscious, formal structure through which its elements have meaning; whereas the elements of language-words-analyze human experience, the elements of myth synthesize experience. Words classify and separate, images and stories interrelate and unify. For this reason, myth-together with ritual, art, kinship, and politics-can be seen as a necessary symbolic strategy to reintegrate the experience that language makes detached and problematic. Through their stories and characters. and their unconscious, structural significance, myths organize and model experience. Familiar situations and conflicts are presented and resolved. Human experience is always social and cultural, and the models of experience offered by a myth therefore contain in their deepest meanings the classifications, interpretations, and inconsistencies that a particular society imposes on the individual's understanding of the world. The ordering concepts by which an individual acts will be reflected in the myths of his society, and it is through the formal structure of the myths that these concepts are symbolized and understood by the people who know and enjoy the myth. Thus. the study of myth can enable us to achieve a greater understanding both of the mind's resources for conceiving and acting in the world and of the organizing principles and conflicting assumptions with which a specific society attempts to order and cope with its experience. I have restricted myself to the study of films because I believe it is in this medium that the Western has taken on its uniquely mythical dimensions. Although Western novels reach a large and faithful audience, it is through the movies that the myth has become part of the cultural language by which America understands itself. First in theaters and now on television, Western films have found a far larger audience than Western novels, even those of Zane Grey. The central significance of the land is most truly expressed and felt in cinematic imagery: the vast deserts and empty skies of John Ford and the noble mountains and forests of Henry Hathaway and Anthony Mann establish absolutely the vital relation of the western setting to the stories and actions of the myth. Throughout history, myth and epic have been told with the aid of rhythm, ritual. song, and verse. Music adds depth and significance to a story, and in myth it makes the imaged meanings clearer and more immediately felt. The mythical significance of the Western is reinforced in film by music. Film is the only modern narrating medium in which everyday events and language are associated with music. (Try, for instance, to watch the crucial, non-dialogue scenes leading to the

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climatic fights in Shane or High Noon without sound, and see how much meanin~ is lost.) I have further restricted the study to include only certain films, choosing those that have been included in the industry list of the top money-makers of th~ year, based on distribution receipts. In this way, I maximize the validity of my interpretation of these films as representatives of a popular social myth. Many Westerns are made, but not all of them are popular, and many are clearly rejected by the public. I assume that the successful Westerns correspond most exactly to the expectations of the audience, to the meanings the viewers demand from the myth. Other commentators on the Western have defined it from content or setting rather than acceptance and have tried to fit all instances of Western stories, popular or unpopular, into their analysis. This approach results in a far too general and all-inclusive interpretation of what is, in fact, a quite strict and specific structuring of elements. Some directors and writers intentionally distort the mythical meanings of the Western for their own artistic or dramatic interests, and their films are often quite interesting; however, the general public usually fails to respond to them enthusiastically. If such films are included in an analysis of the Western myth, few clear patterns will emerge. If they are excluded on the basis of a lack of public interest, then the films that are left-the popular, accepted ones-will reflect the understood, communicative structure of the Western myth. One consequence of this approach is that I can legitimately sidestep the argument that Westerns are not myths but commercial products made by professionals for the sake of profit. This argument, which is obviously true to this point, goes on to contend that American tastes and preferences are not reflected but molded in successful films by the powerful studio heads, directors, and movie stars. Successful movies, unlike successful tribal myths, are not determined by social acceptance but rather by the influence of big stars and big publicity. Thus, to understand the entertainment tastes of Americans, one must study not the films but the studio structure, the star system, and the social backgrounds and attitudes of the key men who shaped th·e movie industry. Certainly, many films have been successful only because of name stars and massive publicity. But within this well-known genre there have been many instances of films with star-studded casts and millions of publicity dollars that have been box office disasters. One such film was The Big Country (1958), a financial flop whose cast included Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Carol Baker, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, and Chuck Conners. There was

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INTRODUCTION

a Crooked Man (1968) was intended, according to the gossip columms, to save Twentieth Century-Fox from bankruptcy; there was excessive advertising and two of Hollywood's biggest names, Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda, starred in it. Still, it was an overwhelming disaster. There are many other such Westerns, and most of them, like these two, are interesting because they change and distort the standard images that define the Western myth. In The Big Country, the hero is an eastern dude who hasn't shot a gun in ten years and doesn't in the film: ih addition, all the westerners in this film are mean or crude. There Was a Crooked Mon is essentially the story of a prison break, which happens to be set in the West, and the hero is a cold-blooded killer. These plots fail to reinforce the mythical structure of the Western, and thus their financial failure lends support to the notion that successful Westerns are determined not solely by stars and advertising but, to a large degree, by the presence of the expected social symbolism. On the other hand, there are many examples of low-budget films, with few if any big stars, that become quite successful. An obvious recent example is the enourmously successful Billy Jack, which has no stars and was at first virtually unadvertised. Significantly, both its plot structure and setting are similar to those of the standard Western. Johnny Guitar is a Western that became a top money-maker in 1953 despite its low budget, "B" male lead (Sterling Hayden), and all but forgotten movie queen 0oan Crawford). The Dollar films-Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly-were just fill-in Italian Westerns until they caught on, became big money-makers, and made a superstar out of the virtually unknown Clint Eastwood. Since it seems that big stars and publicity are neither necessary nor sufficient to create successful Westerns, it is essential to look at the genre itself for a complete understanding of what makes for popularity. When we look at the genre itself and restrict our view to financial winners, we find that the results validate the effort. A clear pattern of change and development in the structure of the Western is apparent in the list of successful films of the last forty years. This pattern of change, which is difficult to recognize without the restriction of success, indicates that within a certain historical period only films with a specific structure were popular, regardless of stars or publicity. My argument, then, is that within each period the structure of the myth corresponds to the conceptual needs of social and self understanding required by the dominant social institutions of that period; the historical changes in the structure of the myth correspond to the changes in the structure of those dominant institutions.

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The first step in this argument will be to develop a cognitive theory of myth structure: with this theory, the structure of the Western can be formally analyzed with respect to how its social meanings are communicated by its symbolism. To develop the theory, I will turn to the work of Kenneth Burke on the social structure of literature, Claude Levi-Strauss on the conceptual structure of tribal myths, and Vladimir Propp on the narrative structure of Russian folktales. Then, utilizing the theory, I will turn to the films and analyze the plots and meanings that predom'inate in each historical period. The first period-the classical plot-extends from 1930 to about 1955, when the Western revolves around a lone gunfighter hero who saves the town, or the farmers, from the gamblers, or the ranchers. The second period-the vengeance variation-overlaps the end of the classical period and continues until about 1960, with later recurrences. This plot concerns an ill-used hero who can find no justice in society and threfore becomes a gunfighter seeking vengeance. The third period-the transition theme-which is more logical than temporal, includes three films in the early fifties; the story centers on a hero and a heroine who, while defending justice, are rejected by society. Finally, the last period-the professional plot-extends from 1958 to 1970 and involves a group of heroes who are professional fighters taking jobs for money. I will use selected films to exhibit the narrative and symbolic structure of these four plots; then I will extend the theory of myth in Chapter 4 to include an analysis of how the narrative structure of a myth provides a social and conceptual explanation to ordinary events. I can then use the theory and the formal analyses of structure to relate the structural meanings of each Western plot to the concepts and attitudes implicit in the structure of American institutions. To understand institutions and their impact on American values, I will draw upon the work of various economic and political theorists, including Karl Polayni, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Jurgen Habermas. In Chapter 5, I will show how the classical Western plot corresponds to the individualistic conception of society underlying a market economy. In Chapter 6, I will show how the vengeance plot is a variation that begins to reflect changes in the market economy; and in Chapter 7, I will argue that the professional plot reveals a new conception of society corresponding to the values and attitudes inherent in a planned, corporate economy. I will conclude my study with a brief overview and a final consideration of the significance of myth for an understanding of man and his society.

The Stri.ioture of Myth

A myth is a communication from a society to its members: the social concepts and attitudes determined by the history and institutions of a society are communicated to its members through its myths. One of the tasks of this study is to examine this assertion. To do so, it is necessary to discover the meaning of a myth and to find out how a myth communicates its meaning. Like any communication. a myth must be heard (or viewed) and interpreted correctly; this means that myth must have a structure, like the grammar of language, that is used and understood automatically and through which meaning is communicated. In this chapter, I shall present a theory of the structure of myth and discuss how abstract social ideas are established in and communicated by this structure. My discussion will rely to a considerable extent on the structural studies of Claude Levi-Strauss. In fact, the idea and inspiration for my study of the Western comes almost entirely from his work. His analysis of tribal myths is primarily responsible for current anthropological interest in cognitive and structural approaches to myth and ritual. Since I cannot agree completely with his ideas on myth, however, I will develop a somewhat different theoretical perspective. Essentially, I will be less concerned with structure and more concerned with order and communication. Levi-Strauss demonstrates exhaustively the existence of a formal, conceptual structure in tribal myths for the purpose of proving that this structure is inherent in the human mind. A psychological argument is basic to all of his work-"ethnology is first of all psychology" (Levi-Strauss, 1966, p. 131)-and myth is only one of three cultural forms (the other 16

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17

two are kinship and totemism) in which he has attempted to demonstrate this mental structure. He regards myth as the best subject for study: The mind is an autonomous object, independent of any subject. I believe that mythology, more than anything else, makes it possible to illustrate such objectified thought and to provide empirical proof of its reality. (Uvi-Strauss, 1969, pp. 10-11)

My interest, however, is not to reveal a mental structure but to show how the myths of a society, through their structure, communicate a conceptual order to the members of that society; that is, I want to establish that a myth orders the everyday experiences of its hearers (or viewers) and communicates this order through a formal structure that is understood like language. Thus, there is an important difference of emphasis between the concerns of my study and those of Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss wants to discover the meaning of a myth in order to exhibit its mental structure, while I want to exhibit the structure of a myth in order to discover its social meaning. Because Levi-Strauss is immersed in the relation between myth and the autonomous mind, he never approaches myth as a conceptual response to the requirements of human action in a social situation. To do this, to relate myth to the ordinary responsibilities of people who act and must understand their actions, we need a theory that attempts to explain the interaction between symbolic structures and the possibility of human action. For such a theory, we can turn briefly to the literary analysis of Kenneth Burke, who suggests that certain basic aspects of human communication are determined by the use of symbols. Since man recognizes and experiences his world through the symbol system of language, the things that make up his world-jaguars, men, trees, and so forth-take on symbolic properties. For man, these things are not just things but kinds of things; they have names, and thus the world is separated into things that are the same (have the same name) and things that are different (have different names). Language classifies the world; it generalizes in consciousness the things of experience. Man, as a symbol-using animal, experiences a difference between this being and that being as a difference between this kind of being and that kind of being.... Here, implicit in our attitudes toward things, is a principle of classification. (Burke, p. 282)

This symbolic separation must be accompanied by a symbolic ordering. The things of the world, especially other people, are experienced as naturally connected but symbolically separated. For

18

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

the purposes of social action and organization, this separation must be explained and bridged. According to Burke, communication between people about themselves and their world establishes the necessary reintegration of symbolic experience. In fact, the effort for communication can best be analyzed as a rhetorical appeal for symbolic identity and unification. But communication can fail, as is often apparent, and it is therefore necessary for every society to establish and continually reestablish a basis for communication. This basis, which underlies every successful communication, is the principle of order that organizes the symbolically separated beings and things of that society. The people and things in a social group must be conceptually arranged in a hierarchy of power, prestige, importance, and value, and this conceptual hierarchy, which may. as in America, be different from the actual hierarchy, makes communication and social action possible. By appealing to this principle of order-whether addressing a superior as "sir," writing American history, or simply laughing at a joke-an individual reinforces that order and locates himself in it; if the appeal is successful, and communication takes place, he has shown himself to be a recognizable and acceptable component of a symbolically classified and ordered world. As an example of this kind of analysis, here is an abbreviated version of Burke's discussion of Venus and Adonis, a poem ostensibly about goddesses and sexual conquest. And would not the Venus of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis be better explainable in social terms than theologically? ... Venus is not a "goddess" in any devout sense. She is a distinguished person compelled to demean herself by begging favors of an inferior. Viewing the poem from this standpoint, judging by its courtly style, and getting stray hints through its imagery, we would take the underlying proposition to be: goddess is to mortal as noblewoman is to commoner. The "divine" attributes here are but those of social preferment .... Venus would stand for the upper class, Adonis for the midde class, the boar for the lower classes .... The horses might represent the potent aspect of the middle class, though ambiguously noble .... The figure of the boar could, roundabout, identify the lower classes with the dregs, with moral evil. ... But we would settle for much less. We would merely contend that one should view this poem in terms of the hierarchic motive, or more specifically. in terms of the social order, as befits any inquiry into the rhetoric of courtship. Whereupon we should lay much stress upon the notable inversion whereby a superior is depicted begging favors of an inferior.... Here is signalized a New Order, in which not Venus but Adonis is celestial. The passive superiority he had possessed, in his indifference to her, here blazes into an act. His cult of acquisition (as huntsman) is raised to the very heavens. (Burke. pp. 215-217)

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

19

Here Burke interprets Venus, Adonis, the Boar, and the horses as symbols of social types. He interprets their interaction in the poem as a communicative appeal to the idea of a new social order, in which the new middle class replaces the aristocracy in the social hierarchy. Burke interprets the characters of a narrative as representing social types acting out a drama of social order. In this way, interaction-such as conflict or sexual attraction-is never simply interaction between individuals but always involves the social principles that the characters represent. Thus, a fight in a narrative would not simply be a conflict of men but a conflict of principles-good versus evil, rich versus poor, black versus white. This interpretation of narrative seems particularly appropriate to myths, and I will adopt it as a working hypothesis for my analysis of the Western. However, Burke's analysis is essentially literary, since he presents no systematic method for discovering the ideas of social classification and order inherent in narrative works. Adonis may represent the middle class; but how can we be sure, or even reasonably sure? Levi-Strauss, on the other hand, utilizes a wellthought-out method of analysis and offers a remarkable amount of data to support the validity of his method. Therefore. an adroit merger of the theoretical insights of Burke with the methodological suggestions of Levi-Strauss might provide an appropriate framework for an analysis of myth and social action. But this is not a simple undertaking, since the methodology of Levi-Strauss is intertwined with his theory of the structure of the mind. I must therefore separate his method from his theory and justify its usefulness on other theoretical grounds, essentially claiming that Levi-Strauss has the right approach but the wrong idea. His theory. as I have mentioned, is that the structure of myth reveals the structure of the mind. He attempts to establish this by assuming (borrowing from linguistics) what this structure is, then demonstrating that the conceptual meaning of tribal myths is expressed through this structure-the structure of binary oppositions. He claims that if myth exhibits the same binary structure as phonetics, this structure must be derived from the human mind. His effort to demonstrate the meaning of primitive myths naturally leads him to consider the social context of those myths, and in fact he argues meticulously that the myths of totemistic societies serve to resolve conceptual contradictions inherent in those societies. But his central psychological interest prevents him from considering with care how the myths of a particular society relate to its social actions or institutions. This relationship is my central interest. The difference in orientation means, specifically, that I am not as concerned as Levi-Strauss with the origin of the structure of myth, but perhaps even more concerned with its meaning. In his Mytholo-

20

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

giques, Levi-Strauss demonstrates the existence of binary structure

in tribal myths. However, the only explanation he gives for the presence of this structure in myths is that the mind imposes it, an explanation I cannot accept since it implies that myths are not communications between society and individuals but instances of the mind communicating with itself. As Levi-Strauss says, "Myths signify the mind that evolves them." In the following discussion, I will suggest an alternative explanation for why such a structure exists in myths. But first, I would like to give a brief account of Levi-Strauss's idea of mythical thought. He begins, like Burke, with the notion of classification, finding in both primitive and scientific thought an intense effort to create conceptual order. In a society imbued with science, things are classified according to abstract, or primary, qualities-whales are warm blooded and breathe air, therefore they are like man. In primitive thought, however, things are classified according to sensible. or secondary, qualities-whales live in water, therefore they are like fish. Now, because primitive man classiqes his world through sensible properties-color, sounds, smells, shape, species, and so forth-the things of the world are also used to explain his world; they become concepts in intellectual theories. In a dry climate, for example, water comes to stand for life in a theory about the meaning of life and death. This is different from the practice in scientific societies, where things are things and concepts are concepts: water is water, and the concept "life" represents life in any theoretical discussion. Uvi-Strauss argues that images of things become concepts by being structured into myths and that this synthetic, or secondary, process of conceptualization is only possible for primitive man, since scientific man creates scientific theories to order his analytic, or primary, concepts. The narrative theory suggested by Burke assumes that exactly the same process of conceptualization takes place in modern myth and literature. Images of things, especially people but also horses and boars, represent social types that are structured in such a way that they represent a theoretical idea of social order. There seems to be no reason why this should not be true. Modern society does have science, but it also has myths, and the things of sensible experience are far more important to most people even in our society than scientific abstractions. Levi-Strauss's method is to look for the structure of myth in terms of binary oppositions. An image of something (a man, say) is structurally opposed in a myth to an image of something else (a jaguar, say). In this way the sensible differences between things (like man/not like man) become symbols of conceptual differences

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

21

(culture/nature). An image of a character (man) in a myth does not come to represent a concept (culture) because of any inherent properties of the image, but only because of the differences between it and the image or character (jaguar) it is opposed to. Moreover, every primitive society has a system of such oppositions, which give meaning to the images of important things in that society's existence. It is through this system of interrelated oppositions that the myths of a society are (unconsciously) understood by the members of the society. For example, a snake when opposed to an eagle might represent land; but when opposed to two sisters, as in a myth of the Murngin of Australia, it represents the rainy season. In the Murngin myth, a python comes out of a lake, flooding the land, and swallows two sisters and their children who have polluted the lake with menstrual blood. The snake represents the rainy season and the male, fertilizing element, while the sisters represent the dry season and the female, fertilized element. The two "must collaborate if there is to be life. As the myth explains: had the sisters not committed incest and polluted the waterhole, there would have been neither life nor death, neither copulation nor reproduction on the earth, and there would have been no cycle of seasons" (Levi-Strauss, 1966, p. 93). This binary analysis assumes that the meaning of a character in a myth is determined by an opposition motivated by the particular experiences of the society that produced the myth. The Murngin, for example, have two seasons-one of seven months, extremely dry, and one of five months with heavy rains and flooding. In his Mythologiques, Levi-Strauss offers a staggering amount of evidence to validate a binary analysis of primitive myth. Not all anthropologists are fully convinced by his final interpretation of the myths, but most have incorporated his analytical insights into their own work. In my study of the Western, I have found that the idea of oppositional structure is useful for analysis and, as Levi-Strauss argues, is seemingly inherent in the myth itself, not simply imposed as a convenient framework for interpretation. If this is true, and the meaning of a myth does derive from a formal structure of oppositions, where does this structure come from? It may not be necessary to answer this question, since the analysis must be able to stand on its own; but if it could be answered, the analysis would be more convincing, especially since Levi-Strauss's answer is unconvincing. His answer, given with a transcendental flair, is that the structure is imposed by the mind; myth is the mind "imitating itself as object." Since this simply avoids the issue, it is interesting to note how Levi-Strauss himself arrived at the idea of a binary structure. He borrowed the oppositional analysis from

22

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

an impressive linguistic breakthrough by Roman Jakobson, who argues that "the dichotomous scale ... is inherent in the structure of language." But while Jakobson shows that the binary structure of distinctive features in phonetics helps make possible the use and acquisition of language, Levi-Strauss is content to argue that the binary structure of myth permits myths to "signify the mind." There is a less metaphysical way to justify a binary analysis of myth, which depends only on the logic of symbolic meaning and follows the idea of Saussure that symbols are diacritical-"concepts are ... defined ... negatively by their relations with other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what others are not" (Saussure, p. 17). The word "jaguar," for example, has meaning because it separates those things that are jaguars from those things that are not. Thus, every symbol divides the world into two sets, those things it does refer to and those things it does not. Distinguishing jaguars from everything else does not tell us much about jaguars, however. If we distinguished them from all other animals, or even from all wild animals, we would know a great deal more about jaguars; that is, the domain that a symbol divides influences the meaning of the symbol. Now suppose we are given two mutually exclusive sets, the even numbers and the odd numbers, for example. In mathematics, if we know or assume that these two sets comprise the entire domain of reference, we know a great deal about the two sets. We know that they are complements of each other, and we can prove many theorems about their relationship. On the other hand, if they are simply parts of a larger domain, we know very little about them, since we do not know from what context they were taken. This shows that if we are given a set, we know more about it if we know, or assume we know, its complement. The unique properties of the even numbers are different in the context of the whole numbers than in the context of the rational numbers (whole numbers and fractions); also, the unique properties of the even numbers are much more obvious if this set is contrasted with the set of odd numbers, or with the set of fractions, than if they are contrasted with both the odd numbers and the fractions. Similarly, when an image of a thing becomes a symbol, we know more about what it does mean if we know exactly what it does not mean. This is because the symbolic meaning created by an assumed dichotomy of images is determined only by the differences in the images; their similarities are irrelevant. When a man is contrasted to a jaguar in a myth. this can represent humanity as opposed to animality, culture as opposed to nature. The symbolism is derived from their differences. As things. they have many similari-

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

23

ties-alive, carnivorous, earth-bound-but these are unimportant in a binary structure of meaning. Clearly, if the jaguar were opposed to an eagle instead of a man, it would no longer represent nature but probably earth as opposed to sky, or perhaps even humanity as opposed to gods. The important point is that if a man, a jaguar, and an eagle were contrasted in a tertiary structure, the meaning of each image would be far less obvious and general. In this case, an understanding of the symbolism would require much more knowledge of the particular qualities of each character involved. Specifically, it would require the interpreter to recognize the similarities as well as the differences between the characters, since for an image to be a symbol its meaning must be unique. This means, of course, that when three or more characters are structurally opposed, their symbolic reference becomes more restricted and obscure because of the fine distinctions required; thus, their interpretation becomes more difficult. On the other hand, when two characters are opposed in a binary structure, their symbolic meaning is virtually forced to be both general and easily accessible because of the simplicity of the differences between them. This explains the prominence of binary structure in myths. In literary works by individual artists-such as novels or dramas-the desire is usually for complex, realistic characters in situations that challenge social attitudes. For this purpose, a binary structure is not appropriate. But myth depends on simple and recognizable meanings which reinforce rather than challenge social understanding. For this purpose, a structure of oppositions is necessary. The Western is structured this way, and, as we shall see, it presents a symbolically simple but remarkably deep conceptualization of American social beliefs. In contrast, for example, the Prince in Hamlet is opposed to Laertes and Fortinbras, men with similar problems but different solutions; this structure, which stresses the individuality of each character, complicates their interpretation as symbols. Of course, more than two characters can appear in a myth. But when three or more characters do appear, they appear as contrasting pairs, not as coequal representatives of alternative positions. In the classical Western, a typical cast would include a wandering gunfighter, a group of homesteaders, and a rancher. Instead of representing equally valid, conflicting life-styles, these characters would be presented as pairs of oppositions with each pair having a different meaning. The gunfighter is opposed to the homesteaders, a contrast representing individual independence versus social domesticity. The rancher, who is settled and domestic like the farmers, is opposed to them, but on another level or axis: the farmers represent progress

24

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

and communal values in opposition to the rancher's selfish, monetary values-a contrast between good and bad. In this way, the generality of the binary structure is maintained, while the possibility for rather complicated symbolic action is created. Each two characters are identified on one axis and contrasted on another: this structure permits interaction between social types and resolutions of conflicts between social principles but prohibits the more realistic and tragic situation of all three characters being equally good, equally domestic, and equally opposed. In this study, then, I will examine the basic oppositions of characters in the Western in order to make explicit the conceptual reference inherent in this structure. This analysis, however, will only tell us what the characters mean: it will not tell us what they do. The opposition of characters creates the conceptual image of social types; but to understand how myth presents a model of appropriate social action between these types, we must know what they do, how they act. This is the narrative dimension of the myth. or the story. According to Levi-Strauss, the narrative (syntagmatic) aspect of the myth is to the binary (paradigmatic) aspect as melody is to harmony in music: the former provides the interest, the latter provides the depth. Levi-Strauss also argues that the narrative contains only superficial, or apparent, content: the real, conceptual meaning of myth is established and communicated solely by the structure of oppositions. Accordingly, he devotes considerable analytic work to proving that hundreds of myths from many South American societies have essentially the same conceptual meaning, even though they have very different stories. His denial of significance to the story itself is simply untenable. It follows from a concern with mental structure rather than social action. If, however, myth is seen as a communication with people rather than a communication with itself, each particular myth must be interpreted as in some sense an allegory of social action. Now social action requires interaction, and interaction takes place in the story of a myth, not in the structure of oppositions. Thus, in order to fully understand the social meaning of a myth, it is necessary to analyze not only its binary structure but its narrative structurethe progression of events and the resolution of conflicts. The narrative structure tells us what the characters do, and unless we know what they do, we can never know what they mean to people who not only think but act. The analysis of narrative structure is somewhat more complicated than the analysis of oppositional structure, since narrative analysis involves such problems as temporal order, cause and effect, and explanation. My strategy will be to develop briefly a method for

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

25

the discovery and description of narrative structure in a set of myths. Then, after employing this method to analyze the four basic plots of the Western, I shall return in Chapter 4 to develop a theory of narrative and its structural relationship to social action. Finally, in Chapters 5, 6, and 7, I will apply this theory to the narrative structures derived from the films, and in this way demonstrate how this particular myth-the Western-communicates to American society an idea of social types and actions inherent in the structure of its institutions. My method of narrative analysis will be to reduce the stories in a set of similar films to a single list of shared functions. These functions will be one-sentence statements that describe either a single action or a single attribute of a character. Thus, for example. the statement "The hero fights the villains" would be a function, while the statement "The hero fights and defeats the villains" would not be. Similarly, "The hero is unknown to the society" would be a function, but "The hero is unknown and a gunfighter" would not. The characters whose actions and attributes are described by these functions are generic, not specific-that is, the functions do not refer to particular heroes, such as Shane or the Ringo Kid, but to the role of the hero as a character in all the stories. Also, the character referred to by the functions need not be only one individual. The generalized character in a function can be, and often is, a group of characters in a film, all of whom share a single meaning in an opposition. Thus, a function will refer to "the villains" or "the society" as a single character with respect to structural action. This method of narrative analysis is a liberalized version of a method originated by Vladimir Propp for the analysis of Russian folktales. His tales were much simpler than the Western, and he restricted his functions to descriptions of actions, whereas I have included attributes; moreover, his tales were folk, popularized and standardized by many retellings, whereas my tales are films-stories based on a social myth, but created by specific individuals for popular acceptance and never changed or standardized by public retelling. From a study of folk tales, Propp showed that the functions that characterize a set of stories occur in a rigid, unchangeable order; in each tale every function-that is, every action-must appear in exactly the same sequence. But this approach is unnecessarily restricting, for it is easy to recognize a set of essentially similar stories with slightly differing orders of events. The order of the functions that characterize a Western plot will not always correspond exactly to the order of events in a particular film; in fact, some functions, such as "The hero fights the villains," may occur more than once in some films. In a sense, Propp is right: the temporal

26

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

order of actions in a narrative is of central importance for an understanding of the meaning of the narrative. But his solution to the problem of narrative order was too extreme. and in Chapter 4 I will show how a list of functions can be interpreted as ordered even if they do not always appear in exactly the same sequence in every story. If the stories in a set of films are reduced to a single list of common functions, will not the unique characteristics of each film-the particular actors, scripts, settings-be lost? Not necessarily, since these characteristics provide realism and flavor to the stories. They embody the myth and are necessary for the communication of meaning; but they are extraneous to the analysis of that meaning. The list of functions that describes a narrative structure must not be so general that it applies indiscriminately to a wide range of different stories; it must be sufficiently detailed to clearly include a certain set of similar stories and to clearly exclude all others. The test. of course, is to read (or watch) some stories from a group that have been analyzed as having the same structure to see if the details that are lost significantly change the meaning of the stories from that suggested by structural analysis. In the case of this study of the Western, at least, I believe that such a test will not only verify the analysis presented but provide enjoyment. It only remains to consider more exactly how these functions and oppositions interrelate. The oppositions reveal what the characters mean; the functions reveal what they do. As an example, suppose two characters, A and B. interact in Story 1 according to the following functions and coding (images representing concepts). Story 1. A loves B. B ignores A. A seduces B. B leaves A. A dies.

upper class

fe::::

middle class

B_ _ _ _ _A _ _~

1 - 1_ _

Now if A and B simply represented different sexes, this story would be a melodrama of love. But when A and B represent different classes, the story also becomes a drama of class differences and implies, perhaps, that it is proper to love and respect, but wrong to aspire to, the upper class. This is essentially the story, for example, of Lancelot and Elaine in Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur (1469). Now suppose Story 1 is replaced by Story 2.

27

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

Story 2. A loves B. 8 ignores A.

Aseduces B.

upper class

re::!:I

middle class

A_______ e__-i

1-_ _ _

B leaves A. B dies.

Story 2 differs from Story 1 in only the last function, and it is concerned with exactly the same conceptual difference: upper class/middle class. But because of the narrative change and the change in coding, Story 2 tells of the attractiveness and independence of the middle class, the desire and impotence of the upper class, and the punishment of the middle class for its presumption. This story may indicate a changing social order as in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593). Finally, consider Story 3 with the same coding as Story 2. A hates B. B rapes A. B leaves A. A dies.

upper class

fe::~:I

middle class

-+----A-----11

1-_ _ _B __

This story tells of the nobility and purity of the middle class, and of its suffering at the hands of the evil upper class, a story that resembles, for example, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). In all three stories the conceptualization of social types is the same; but in each case the narrative structure changes to portray a different model of interaction between these types, and these changes can be seen to correspond to changes in social institutions and attitudes. These examples, though overly simplified, illustrate the temporal as well as logical relationships between the functions and the oppositions to be found in the Western. The narrative structure varies in accordance with changing social actions and institutions. The oppositions, on the other hand, create images of social types that are fundamental in the consciousness of a society. These social types may change their mode of interaction, but as classifications of people the types themselves are much less likely to change. The concepts that define and differentiate people in a society are rooted in the beliefs and attitudes, and finally in the institutions, of that society; for them to change, the society itself must change to such a degree that it would essentially be a new society, which would consequently need a new myth. Thus, the concepts represented by

28

STRUCTURE OF MYTH

the oppositions in the Western should remain the same throughout our forty-year study. while the characters that symbolize these concepts may change their interaction as American society changes its institutions. And this is what we will observe: a history of four narrative stages. in which each stage presents its model of social action in terms of the same types of people.

Th.a Structure of the ~estern F11%:C.

INTRODUCTION: THE FILMS

The Westerns with which this study is concerned are those that were among the top grossing films of the year they were released. The status of top grossing is awarded each year by Motion Picture Herald to films whose rental receipts in the United States and Canada surpass $4,000,000. In the accompanying list, I have given all the Westerns that appear in this category since 1930. After most of them, I have indicated how they are classified in this study with respect to the four types of Westerns that will be discussed: the classical plot, the vengeance variation, the transition theme, and the professional plot. All together, there are 64 films, 24 of which I have labeled classical, 9 vengeance, 3 transition, 18 professional, and 1, Chisum, both classical and professional. In the following chapters, I shall analyze in some detail a few films from each of these categories. Some films, however, are exceptions to the classifications, and I would like to discuss these briefly. The Cowboys is in parentheses because the list of top grossers for 1972 has not yet appeared, though I am quite sure that this film will be on that list when it does. Also, Chisum has been labeled both classical and professional because strong elements of both plots are present in it, making it an interesting special case, a film clearly built around the mythical image of John Wayne. Finally, the films preceded by a star (•) are films that I have not been able to see recently and therefore cannot classify, though if memory serves, Colt 45, Hondo, and Cheyenne 29

30

STRUCTURE OF THE WESTERN FILM

Autumn are probably classical while Gunfight at the OK Corral would be an early professional Western. I have labeled five films c• and p•. These designations are intended to mean that these films are self-conscious parodies of their respective plots. Of the c•, Along Come Jones is quite early and its plot reproduces the classical story exactly, except that the usual strong hero is an inept gunfighter. The other three classical parodies appear in the late 1960s and successfully satirize the classical plot at a time when the professional plot has almost entirely replaced it as the theme of serious Westerns. The one professional parody is probably mislabeled, but it seems to have the same relationship to the professional plot as Along Come Jones does to the classical plot; the Cheyenne Social Club presents two self-seeking but inept heroes bumbling their way through a situation typical of the professional story, so that the drama and the action remain serious, not put on, and the comedy derives from the unlikeliness and yet success of the heroes. Finally, there are four films that have no distinguishing labels and are mostly just embarrassing to my categories. The Charge at Feather River is an awful Western, which I refuse to consider since its commercial success was solely due to its big release as a three-dimensional film al a time when this gimmick was new and exciting. Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1950) are solidly in the classical period yet seem to be an early blending of both the classical and the professional plots. The fourth film, Little Big Mon, is another parody, satirizing at times both the classical and the professional plots; more accurately, it is an anomaly, an elaborate mixture of standard mythical ingredients combined into a lengthy comic epic of Western legends. These then are the films that will comprise the data for this study. They are generally the best Westerns that Hollywood has produced, and many of Hollywood's finest directors are represented by them. Together, they exhibit both the substance and the history of a rich and vital social myth whose impact on American society cannot be doubted. TOP-GROSSING WBSTBRNS OF EACH YEAR SINCE 1930

($4,000,000 or more rental in the U.S. and Canada)

C - Classical Plot T - Transition Theme V - Vengeance Variation P - Professional Plot

STRUCTURE OF THE WESTERN FILM

1931 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1945 1946 1947 1946 1949 1950

1952 1953

1954

1955 1956 1957 1959 1961

1962 1964 1965 1966

Cimarron - C The Plainsmen - C Wells Fargo - C Dodge City - C Stagecoach - V Union Pacific - C Destry Rides Again - C Northwest Mounted Police - C Along Came Jones - c• Canyon Passage - C San Antonio • C Duel in the Sun - C California - C Fort Apache Red River - V Whispering Smith - C Yellow Sky· C Broken Arrow • T *Colt 45 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Winchester '73 - V Bend of the River - C High Noon - T The Charge at Feather River The Naked Spur - V Shane - C Apache - V *Hondo Johnny Guitar - T Saskatchewan - C The Far Country - C The Man From Laramie - V Vera Cruz - C The Searchers - V •Gunfight at the OK Corral Rio Bravo - P The Alamo - P North to Alaska - P One-Eyed Jacks - V The Commancheros - P Four for Texas - P How the West Was Won - C Cat Ballou - C* "Cheyenne Autumn Sons of Katie Elder - P Nevada Smith - V The Professionals - P

31

32

STRUCTURE OF THE WESTERN FILM

1967 The War Wagon - P Texas Across the River - c• Hombre - C El Dorado - P 1968 Hang 'Em High • V The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - P 1969 The Wild Bunch - P True Grit - P Support Your Local Sheriff - c• 1970 Two Mules for Sister Sara • P Chisum - P & C Cheyenne Social Club - P* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - P 1971 Big Jake - P Little Big Man Rio Lobo• P 1972 {The Cowboys) - P

THE CLASSICAL PLOT

The classical Western is the prototype of all Westerns, the one people think of when they say, "All Westerns are alike." It is the story of the lone stranger who rides into a troubled town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the schoolmarm. There are many variations on this theme, which saturate Western films from 1930 to 1955, from Cimarron and the saving of Oklahoma to Vera Cruz and the saving of Mexico. The classical plot defines the genre, and, as we shall see, the other plots-vengeance, transition, professional-are all built upon its symbolic foundation and depend upon this foundation for their meaning. For all its importance, however, the classical plot is not altogether easy to recognize. Neither, for that matter, are the other plots. Many films, from Stagecoach to Chisum, contain aspects of more than one plot, and the variations within any one plot are often so broad that they seem to deny any possible similarity. As far as I can tell, no analyst of films or of Westerns has until now noticed the structural changes in the genre that have occurred since World War II. In fact, even after undertaking this study as an avid fan of Westerns since childhood, I was unsure of exactly where to look for structural similarities and differences. I restricted myself to top grossing films, but even this smaller group was large and varied enough to remain puzzling for the purpose of structural interpretation. Many dif-

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ferences in content were apparent-railroad building, Indian wars, wagon trains, rancher barons-but the important differentiating factor proved to be the more abstract relationship between the hero and society. I found that, in the forty-year period from 1930 to 1970, there were four significantly different forms of this relationship, which seemed to change with time, particularly after the war. Concentrating on this relationship, it was not difficult to discover that each of the four forms appeared in a series of films that-for all their differences in content-had essentially the same plot structure. Furthermore, I found that the characterization of the heroes, society, and villains was essentially the same within any one plot structure, but was often quite different across the structures. After this, all that remained was to reveal, through investigation. the details of each plot structure and the conceptual meanings of the characterization within each. The evidence and the results of this investigation are what we shall now turn to, beginning in this chapter with an analysis of the classical plot. My strategy will be, first, to give plot summaries of some representative films and, then, to use these summaries to derive a set of functions that will characterize all of the films of that type. After determining the functions, I will return to the films to see how the conceptual, or oppositional, meanings of each of the relevant characters are established. In the case of the classical plot, one film stands out as a kind of archetype, exhibiting with remarkable purity all the basic components of the classical Western. This film is Shane, which was made in 1953 by George Stevens and remains to this day one of the most successful and popular Westerns ever made. Because of its unusual representativeness and because it is generally well remembered, I shall begin this chapter with a summary of its plot; afterwards, I shall summarize the selected films in the order of their date of production. But before I begin, I should say something about my method of selection. As the list indicates, there were at least eighteen classical Westerns released between 1931 and 1955. I have seen and studied most of these films, but to analyze them all here would be repetitive and boring to both the reader and myself. I cannot, however, simply claim that they are all essentially alike without some effort to examine supporting evidence. As a compromise, I have decided to select four or five films from each group-classical, vengeance, professional-for analysis and to concentrate on perhaps one or two. In this way, I hope to avoid repetition and at the same time, as it were, to demonstrate it. I have selected the films according to distribution over the period of time involved, differences in plot, and popularity; in this way, I hope to choose films that are repre-

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sentative, remembered well by the public, and as varied as possible within any single type. This method, I believe, will satisfy the demands of evidence and of readability. Furthermore, it will enable the reader, if he is still doubtful, to watch his television guide for a replay of one of the other films so that he can make his own investigation as a test of my analysis. Shane Shane is the classic of the classic Westerns. It was directed by George Stevens from a screenplay by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., based on the novel by Jack Schaefer. It was filmed in the Jackson Hole Valley, which is framed by the magnificent Grand Teton Mountains. In this film, Alan Ladd stars as Shane, Van Heflin as Starrett, Jean Arthur as Marion, Brandon de Wilde as Joey, and Jack Palance as Jack Wilson. The story begins with Shane riding out of the mountains into a beautiful valley. He asks for water at the farm of Joe and Marion Starret, who are friendly at first but then hostile, telling Shane to leave at gunpoint, as the Rikers ride up. Shane leaves and the Rikers arrive to tell Starret to get off the land or be driven off. They have a ranch, and they need all the land for cattle. Starret is indignant but unnerved, when Shane suddenly reappears and announces to the Rikers that he is a friend of Joe Starret's. He is wearing a gun, and now the Riker brothers and their men are confused. After a final warning, they leave. Shane is invited for dinner, and after becoming friendly with the family, he is given a job on the farm. The next day, Shane rides into the small town for supplies, is insulted in the saloon by one of Riker's cowboys. and backs down. avoiding a fight. That night, the seven or eight farmers in the valley gather at Starret's to plan strategy against Riker. Shane is introduced, but one of the farmers accuses him of cowardice and Shane leaves the meeting. Sunday, all the farmers go to town together for strength, and Shane intentionally enters the saloon. He is insulted again, but this time he fights and defeats a cowboy named Chris. Riker offers him a job, he refuses, and all the cowboys in the saloon attack him. Starret comes to his aid, and together they defeat the cowboys. Riker, in anger, sends for a gunfighter. The gunfighter Wilson arrives in town, and Shane recognizes him as a fast draw. Riker once more tries to buy out Starret, but the farmer refuses. The next day, Wilson forces one of the farmers into a gunfight and kills him. The following day, Riker burns one of the farms. At this point, the farmers are ready to leave the valley in defeat, but Starret convinces them to stay one more day. He

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decides to go to town and kill Riker, and Riker sends for him to talk. Marion, Starret's wife, pleads with him not to go and asks Shane to persuade him not to, but Shane refuses to interfere and goes to the barn. In the barn Chris, who has had a change of sympathy, tells Shane that Starret is heading into a trap. Shane puts on his gun, tells Starret he is going to town, and advises the farmer to stay home. When Starret refuses, they fight and Shane knocks him out. After saying goodbye to Marion, for whom he has a romantic attraction, which she shares, Shane rides to town. There, in the saloon, he beats Wilson to the draw and kills him. Then he kills the two Riker brothers. Wounded, he rides out of the valley forever, into the dark mountains, while little Joey Starret shouts after him to "come back." Dodge City Dodge City, the earliest of the films I shall discuss, was released in 1939, directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Errol Flynn as Wade Hatton and Olivia de Havilland as Abbey Irving. It was the first. and perhaps the most popular, of the series of Westerns that Errol Flynn made for Warner Bros. The opening scenes tell of the founding of Dodge City with the coming of the new railroad. Colonel Dodge and other eastern businessmen celebrate Wade Hatton, who more than any other man is responsiblp for the successful railroad and thus for the town. Hatton, former rail foreman, decides to go to Texas with his friends Rusty and Tex for a herd of cattle to bring to Dodge City. While he is gone, the town grows and Jeff Surrett moves in. He owns the saloon and tries to drive out all the other cattle-buyers. He murders Matt Cole, a farmer, and his men run the sheriff out of town. The good people of Dodge City despair. Leading a cattle drive, Hatton also brings some new settlers to Dodge City, including Abbey Irving and her brother. The brother is wild, drunk, and Hatton has to kill him in self-defense. Afterward, Abbey hates Hatton. In town, the new townspeople do not know Hatton; but when he stands up to Surrett at the cattle auction. he stirs their curiosity and admiration. He agrees to sell his cattle to Jack Ort, but Surrett has Ort murdered so that Hatton will have to sell to him. Meanwhile, Hatton's cowboys and Surrett's men have a grand fight in the saloon. (This is the granddaddy of all saloon brawls, with dozens of men literally tearing the place apart.) The cowboys win and ride out of town, but Rusty, still in the saloon, is taken into the street by Surrett and his men to be hanged. By

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capturing Surrett, Hatton saves Rusty single-handedly, and then, finding there is no sheriff, he lets Surrett go. The good citizens have a meeting and ask Hatton to be sheriff, but he declines, saying it is not his concern. At this point, Abbey, whom Hatton likes, castigates him. Dejected, Hatton prepares to leave town, but in the street a gunfight takes place in which Abbey is threatened and a child who is a friend of Hatton's is killed. In anger, Hatton finally decides to stop the killing and takes the job of sheriff. He bans guns and gambling and closes down the saloons. He also finds time to court Abbey and win her love. These two and the newspaper editor find proof that Surrett killed Matt Cole. The editor is killed, but Hatton gets Yancey. Surrett's chief henchman, to confess. To prevent a lynching, Hatton takes Yancey away on the train. Surrett tries to rescue Yancey, but both he and Yancey are killed and his gang is captured. In the end, Hatton and Abbey are married, yet they leave Dodge City, which now has a church and a choir, when Colonel Dodge offers Hatton the job or cleaning up Virginia City, a wild town "worse than Dodge ever was." Canyon Passage Canyon Passage was released in 1946, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starred Dana Andrews as Logan Stewart and Susan Hayward as Lucy Obermeyer. It is an unusual Western in that it does not concern the plains, cattle, or gunfighers. but is the story of a farming settlement in Oregon. Logan Stewart, the owner of Stewart Freight Lines, arrives in Portland to deposit some gold. He meets Lucy Obermeyer, his friend's fiance, and agrees to ride back to Jacksonville with her the next morning. That night, a man who resembles Honey Bragg, a vicious bully from Jacksonville, breaks into Logan's hotel room to steal the money. Logan fights him off but is not certain it was Bragg. On the way to Jacksonville, Logan and Lucy stop at the farm of the Danses so that Logan can see his fiancee Caroline, who lives there. When they get to town, Logan takes Lucy to her home where her fiance George is waiting. A week later, the entire town is at a cabin-raising for a newly wedded couple. It is an idyllic scene, full of community spirit. We learn that George is lazy and dreams of getting rich quick. Also. we learn that Caroline wants to settle down but Logan likes to wander around. The Indians show up. creating tension, but there is no trouble. The next day Bragg returns to town and challenges Logan to a fight. Logan refuses, but egged on by the townspeople, he fights

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and defeats Bragg, who is a much bigger and stronger man. Later, he pays George's gambling debts and tells him to stop gambling. George does not, incurs more debts, and kills a man for his gold. Logan, meanwhile, prepares to go to San Francisco for a loan. Lucy decides to ride with him to get a wedding dress. As he leaves, Logan tells the town gambler to return George's money or else. The gambler tells Bragg of Logan's trip, and Bragg attacks him and Lucy in the woods, killing their horses. Bragg runs off. and Logan and Lucy return to town, all the time resisting a romantic attraction. In town the murder has been discovered, and George is tried and convicted in a kangaroo court. Before the hanging, word comes that Bragg has raped and killed an Indian maiden and, in retaliation, the Indians have risen against the settlements. In the confusion, Logan helps George to escape "for Lucy's sake." Then he organizes and leads the town against the Indians. In the uprising George and Bragg are killed and Caroline is rescued, not by Logan, but by Vaine, a young aspiring farmer who loves her. Afterward, Caroline decides to marry Vaine and settle down. Logan returns to Jacksonville to find his business destroyed, himself broke, and a town that had planned to hang him for helping George. He decides to go to San Francisco for some credit, and the next morning he rides off south with Lucy. Duel in the Sun Duel in the Sun was released in 1947, directed by King Vidor, and starred Gregory Peck as Lewt McCanlis, Jennifer Jones as Pearl Chavez, and Joseph Cotten as Jesse McCanlis. It is remarkable for at least two reasons: first, because of its preoccupation with sex-it was billed as the movie that brought sex to the Western-and second, because of its success. As of 1971, it was the fourth most financially successful Western ever made in terms of dollars earned; and the only three to surpass it, Butch Cassidy, How the West was Won, and True Grit, were made in the sixties. when there was inflation, higher prices, more theaters and foreign distribution. Moreover, of the forty Westerns listed in Variety's 1971 list of the most successful films, only nine were from the fifties, three from the forties, and none were made prior to 1946. As of 1971, Duel in the Sun grossed $11,000,000, compared to $9,000,000 for Shane and $26,000,000 for Butch Cassidy. Pearl Chavez is the daughter of an American father and an Indian mother. Just before he is hung for killing his wife and her lover, the father sends Pearl to stay with his sister in Texas. In Texas.

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Pearl is met by Jesse McCanlis and taken to the large and powerful McCanlis ranch, home of the crippled Senator McCanlis, his wife Laura Bell, and their s.ons Jesse and Lewt. At the ranch, Laura Bell welcomes Pearl sincerely, but the senator insults her race; Jesse is gentlemanly and interested, and Lewt is leering and suggestive. In the family, Jesse opposes the senator's hostility and rough treatment of the settlers; he wants the ranch to help develop Texas. Laura Bell likes and supports Jesse, but she is meek and will not stand up to her husband, who is strong, loud, and arrogant with his land and power. Lewt is wild, reckless, without principles, and he is encouraged by the senator; he makes insolent advances to Pearl, who wants to be a good girl but does not feel she belongs. One day, while Lewt is away, word comes to the ranch that the railroad, which will bring settlers and civilization, is about to cut the McCanlis fence and start building track on the ranch under a court order. The senator, Jesse, and hundreds of cowboys ride to the fence to stop them. The senator tells the railroad man he will slaughter the coolies if they cut the fence. Jesse, recognizing the law, changes sides and starts to cut the fence himself telling the senator to shoot him, if he must. Just then, the cavalry rides up and the senator backs down, refusing to fire on the flag; but he denounces Jesse and bans him from the ranch. Lewt, meanwhile, returns to the ranch and seduces Pearl by firing up her passion with his caresses. Jesse, while packing, discovers them together. Ashamed, Pearl asks him to forgive her, and he tells her in a kind way that he loves her but cannot forget. After he leaves. Pearl, feeling rejected, accepts her fate and returns to Lewt and lust. After a while Lewt agrees to marry Pearl but then refuses. so she becomes engaged to Sam Pierce, the foreman. In a gunfight, Lewt kills Pierce and becomes an outlaw who blows up trains to help the senator. He returns to the ranch at night to force his attentions upon Pearl, and she accepts them passionately. Laura Bell dies, after which Jesse returns briefly to the ranch. He is now an eminent lawyer in Austin and engaged to the daughter of the railroad owner. He asks Pearl to come to the city to live with them, and she accepts; but Lewt returns and coldly shoots the unarmed Jesse in the street. Though badly wounded, Jesse will live, yet Pearl learns that Lewt intends to finish him later. Lewt asks her to meet him, and she goes; but when she arrives, she shoots him in order to protect Jesse. Lewt in turn shoots her, and they die in the rocks in each other's arms.

The For Country The For Country, released in 1954, is the fourth in a series of

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five Westerns directed in the early fifties by Anthony Mann. All are unusually good Westerns, which are on our list of successful films; Bend of the River is in the classical group and Winchester '73, The Naked Spur, and The Mon from Laramie in the vengeance variation. The Far Country stars James Stewart as Jeff Webster, Walter Brennan as Ben Tatum, and Corinne Calvet as Renee. Jeff Webster arrives in Seattle with a herd of cattle, which he and his older partner, Ben Tatum, intend to ship to Alaska and sell to the miners. At the boat, he returns their guns to his two disgruntled cowhands and challenges them to draw on him. They hesitate and refuse, but accuse him of killing two other cowhands, men whom he says tried to steal the cattle. As the boat is pulling out. the two men return with the sheriff and tell the captain to hold Jeff prisoner. Jeff runs and is hidden by Rhonda Castile, a lady gambler who is going to Alaska. In Skagway, Jeff and Ben get the cattle off the boat but run afoul of Mr. Gannon, the self-appointed judge and law in the town. He impounds (steals} the cattle, and Jeff, now broke, decides to accept Rhonda's offer to be trail boss when she takes her gambling equipment over the mountains to Dawson. Meanwhile, Jeff meets Renee, a young French girl attracted to him who is a friend of Rube, a man from Dawson who has attached himself to Jeff and Ben. With Rhonda, Ben, Rube, the crew, and the equipment, Jeff leaves for Dawson, but he camps early and returns at night with Ben and Rube to take his cattle from Gannon. In the process Renee follows him, as does Gannon and his men a few minutes later. Jeff, Renee, and the cattle make it to safety across the Canadian border; but Gannon promises to hang Jeff when he comes back to Skagway, which, he points out, is the only way out of Dawson. On the trail Jeff decides to take the longer way through the valley rather than over the mountain, thus provoking the wrath of Rhonda and her men. With his gun he prevails, and they separate, with Jeff, Ben, Rube, Renee, and the cattle going through the valley. Later, an avalanche sweeps down on the people on the mountain trail, and Renee, Ben, and Rube want to go back and help. Jeff refuses, saying he only takes care of himself; but he gives in when they tell him he's wrong and go back without him. Afterward, they all take the trail-Rhonda included-and just before Dawson they see some miners attacked and killed by robbers. With deadly long-distance shooting, Jeff kills one of the robbers, not because he killed the miners but "because he shot at me." In Dawson, Rhonda and her men-joined later by Gannon and his men-bring gambling, violence, and murder to what was a peaceful community of people planning to build homes, churches, and schools. Jeff and Ben buy a claim and do some mining, and

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while Ben and Renee join with Rube and the good people, Jeff stays aloof. As the only man good with a gun, he is asked to be sheriff, but he refuses, so Rube becomes sheriff. After Gannon comes to Dawson, Jeff secretly plans to leave with Ben and their gold by the river; but he is ambushed and shot, Ben is killed, and the gold is stolen. Rhonda and Renee nurse him back to health while Gannon continues to kill, rob. and humiliate the miners. Jeff still refuses to help, but just as the miners are ready to give up and abandon the town, he changes his mind and goes gunning for Gannon. After Jeff kills three of his gunmen, Gannon sneaks up on him; Rhonda runs out to save him and is killed by Gannon. Then Jeff kills Gannon, and the townspeople run the rest of his men out of town. Finally, Renee takes the wounded Jeff home to patch him up again. I will now attempt to extract from these stories a list of functions that describe common actions and situations. This list will characterize these five films as well as the other classical Westerns on the list. Not all the functions will apply to all the films; most of them will, but a few, as we will see, may be optional. More importantly, the functions need not occur in the stories in exactly the order in which I will list them. Some occur more than once in certain films and in different places in the narrative; however, these are problems that will be easier lo discuss as we proceed. First, it should be easy to state simply what the basic similarities are while introducing the main characters. Each film is the story of a hero who is somehow estranged from his society but on whose ability rests the fate of that society. The villains threaten the society until the hero acts to protect and save it. Thus, for analysis, we can reduce each story to three sets of characters: the hero, the society, and the villains. This is possible because each of the latter groups is undifferentiated-that is, the members of society always share common interests and have no internal conflicts, and the villains always share common interests and have no internal conflicts, except over money. Each group of characters, then, acts essentially as one with respect to the other group or the hero, and therefore we need only consider these three basic characters for a general description of the action. In each film the story opens with the hero coming into a social group, a fledgling society consisting of families and elderly people with a settled, domestic life. In Shane, the hero rides into the valley and meets the farmers-specifically Starret, his wife and son; in Dodge City, Hatton returns to the town as it is attracting settlers and becoming a community; Logan returns to Jacksonville from Portland in Canyon Passage; and Jeff takes his cattle to the new

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mining settlement of Dawson in The Far Country. Duel in the Sun also fits this pattern, but in a rather unique way. There is no town or settlement such as Dodge City or Dawson, but we have instead the McCanlis ranch and family-particularly Laura Bell and Jessewhich represents on a small scale the same community values. More interesting is the fact that, instead of a gunfighting hero coming to the ranch, we have Pearl, a scared, confused, half-Indian girl. In fact, Pearl is the hero; for, if we substitute her for the standard male hero and make one more transformation, we will find that Duel in the Sun corresponds exactly to the basic meanings of the typical plot. The other transformation will be discussed in a moment, but for now, taking Pearl as the hero, we can see that this film also begins with the hero entering a social group. Thus, our first function can be: 1. The hero enters a social group. In each film but Canyon Passage, the hero is a stranger to this society. Shane is so much a stranger that he has no last name and no past. Although Hatton helped to found Dodge City, he is not known by the new citizens. Pearl, though a relative, is much older than Laura Bell expects and is not recognized by Jesse when she arrives in town; Jeff, like Shane, is a total stranger in his new town, Dawson. Only Logan, who is a businessman in Jacksonville. is known to his community when the film begins, though there is some indication that he is not known very well by some of the townspeople; even his fiancee seems surprised to learn that he does not want to be a farmer. But it is more appropriate. I believe, to admit that function 2 does not apply to Canyon Passage: 2. The hero is unknown to the society. In three of the five films, the town discovers that the new arrival is a skilled gunfighter. Shane gives himself away when he twice reaches suddenly for his gun in reaction to unexpected noises after he arrives at the peaceful Starrett farm. Later, in a scene that is not mentioned in my summary, he demonstrates his fast draw and accuracy while giving Joey, Starrett's son, a shooting lesson. Finally, he proves his ability in the climactic gunfight. We first learn of Hatton's shooting and fighting skill from Colonel Dodge, who tells his friends that Wade is the man most responsible for the train getting to Dodge, meaning that he successfully fought the Indians and thieves and supplied the buffalo meat. Later, one of his friends tells us that Hatton was a soldier in India, a cowboy in Texas, a Cuban revolutionary, and a Southern soldier in the Civil War. Along with the townspeople, we witness his ability when he kills a crazy

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gunman on the cattle drive and particularly when he success(ully stands up to Surrett and dozens of men in order to rescue Rusty. Jeff Webster shows his shooting skill when he challenges two men to draw and they back down; he takes back his cattle and holds off Gannon and his men in a gunfight until the cattle are safe; as Rube says, "He knocked a man plumb out of the saddle at better'n 200 yards." Finally, alone he outshoots Gannon and three gunfighters in the streets of Dawson. Logan, in Canyon Passage, is a businessman, not a gunfighter, though he shows he can shoot when he scares off Bragg after he and Lucy are ambushed and when he fights the Indians: and he demonstrates his own special strength when he beats up Bragg in the town. Bragg (Ward Bond) is much bigger than Logan (Dana Andrews) and, according to the townspeople, he can break a two-by-four with his hands. "It's going to be a slaughter," they say, "nobody can beat Bragg." But Logan does, handily, thus proving his own exceptional ability. But what about Pearl? She doesn't beat up anybody, though she does prove to be a very good rifle shot. Her remarkable ability is not demonstrated in fighting but in sex. Where the other heroes have physical or shooting strength, she has sexual strength. This is the other transformation that clarifies the structure of Duel in the Sun, the transformation of the fast draw into the fast lay, of power into passion. The film is about sex, as other Westerns are about violence: every technique used in the film, the sensuous acting, the rich makeup, the vivid, artificial colors-dark reds, yellows, oranges, and blacks-along with the pounding music, symbolic lightning storms, writhing close-ups, and Pearl's caressing of Lewt's gun, all emphasize the significance of sex and Pearl's uncontrollable desire for it. It is her special skill: for though Lewi is an experienced Lothario, try as he may, he cannot resist Pearl and will risk his life to see her. If one had a Freudian orientation, one might speculate on the appropriateness of a symbolic transformation that turns a man's hot, fast-shooting, never-empty gun into a woman's lustful body. It would probably be more revealing to speculate on the sexism and racism inherent in the imagery of Pearl, for she is half Indian, dark-skinned, and her last name is Chavez: however, for my purposes it is sufficient that she, too, satisfies function 3: 3. The hero is revealed to have an exceptional ability. As a consequence of this ability, the society recognizes the hero as a special and different kind of person. Shane, after revealing himself as a gunfighter, is first suspected by Starrett: then, after he confronts Riker, he is respected by Starrett, admired by Marion, and worshipped by Joey. He is thought to be different by the other

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farmers-some suspect him of being a gunfighter-because he is the only man in the entire valley without an understandable reason for being there. He is not a farmer, but he is farming. He does not want land, and he refuses an offer from Riker for much better money. Thus, he is an enigma, who is given a special standing in the community. Similarly, Hatton in Dodge City and Jeff in The For Country are recognized as different kinds of men. Both impress the people by their ability; both are offered the job of sheriff and, tacitly, the role of leader. Logan, too, is different from his neighbors in the settlement; this difference is stressed in the dialogue of Canyon Passage more than in most Westerns, probably because this hero is not a stranger in the town. He is repeatedly referred to as footloose, careless and decidedly undomestic. Mrs. Danse calls him a "moving-about man," Lucy describes him as "restless and discontented," George as a "roughneck" with "no polish at all." When Caroline accuses him of always risking money, he replies that he has little interest in money. He seems to be the leader in town, not because he wants to be or even shows any interest in it, but simply because of his strength of character. When Bragg comes to town, everyone from the miners to his accountant to Lucy assumes that Logan will and should fight him. When Logan hesitates, not wanting to fight, Hy (Hogy Carmichael)-the local troubador and something of a chorus to the drama-tells him, "You might as well go. The town won't have it any other way." Finally, Pearl is recognized as different from other people because of her Latin heritage, her dark skin, and her beauty. As soon as she arrives at the ranch, she is treated by Lewt and the senator as a slut, and she has to reassure Laura Bell and Jesse that she is a "good girl." Every time she is away from the house, she is suspected by Laura Bell of misdeeds, and she is taken to a preacher to drive away the devil, Temptation. Jesse, the ranch hands, and everybody else perceive her as a sexually possessed woman, and consequently she is given special treatment on the ranch: 4. The society recognizes a difference between themselves and the hero; the hero is given a special status. Another consequence of the hero's ability-or, to be exact, of the recognition of that ability by society-is that society does not fully accept the hero. Shane is immediately distrusted by Starrett, and then later, when he tries to avoid a fight, he is accused of being a coward by the farmers. When he tries to rehabilitate himself by picking a fight, the farmers are upset by the fight and try to ignore it, mumbling "This is bad, this is bad." Even Marion, after Joey's

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shooting lesson and Shane's attempt to explain to her that a gun is just like any other tool. tells him, "This valley would be better off if there were no more guns left in it, including yours." This means Shane himself, so, as his expression tells us, he is chastened and ashamed. Joey, who is Shane's strongest defender, turns on him and exclaims, "I hate you," when Shane uses his gun to knock out the boy's father. Perhaps the strongest indication in any classical Western of the society's nonacceptance of the hero comes when Shane and Starrett fight. a scene that emerges as more than simply a struggle between men. The fight takes place in the farmyard, and it seems as though the world is ending. Marion screams, dogs cower and hide, horses scream and buck, and cows run and jump at a wooden fence. crashing through it in fear. These sounds along with the sounds of the blows in the fight are magnified so that the fight seems to become an earth-shaking, heaven-rending duel of the gods. Interestingly. in what was surely a conscious decision that must affect the viewer, no blood is seen in this fight. Neither man is bloody or seriously cut, though in other respects Shane is an unusually realistic Western; in the prior saloon fight, which seems like a minor battle in comparison, there was quite a bit of blood and both men required extensive treatment afterward. In Dodge City Hatton is publicly denounced by the woman he loves for being a gunfighter, and in The Far Country the people of Dawson decide that Jeff does not like them and so they will not like him. Pearl is insulted by the senator, suspected by Laura Bell, and driven back to Lewt by Jesse when he cannot overlook her seduction (read gunfighting). Logan is accepted as a businessman, but even so, he goes his own way and is therefore rejected by his fiancee and the town. Caroline cannot accept him because he is restless and reckless, and the town wants to hang him because he helped his friend, a murderer, to escape: 5. The society does not completely accept the hero. In each film there is a conflict between society and the villains, the good guys and the bad guys. In Shane, Riker wants the land for cattle and the farmers want it for farms. In Dodge City, Surrett plots to monopolize the cattle business and rob all the citizens, who want to have a peaceful, respectable town. The people of Dawson want to work their claims and build a town, while Mr. Gannon would rather drive them away and take over their gold and their claims. Je~se, Laura Bell, and Sam Pierce want to help Pearl, and Jesse and the railroad men want to open up the West to settlers and towns; but Lewl wants to exploit Pearl and kill anyone who helps her, while the senator wants to close off the west, drive

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out the settlers, and slaughter the railroad workers. In Canyon Passage, the peaceful settlers desire only to farm and mine the land, while Bragg seeks to dominate the town, kill Logan, steal gold, and rape Indians who simply want to be left alone: 6. There is a conflict of interests between the villains and the society. In this conflict the villains always prove themselves to be far more capable of winning. Riker is an old Indian-fighter, his men are cowboys, and Wilson, his hired gun, is a professional killer. Their opponents, the farmers, are middle-aged men and women who are unfamiliar with guns and afraid of violence; and the same general description applies to both Dodge City and The For Country. In both cases, there is a strong villain aided by a special gunfighter and many gunmen against a town full of old, fat, fearful men and some women. Sam Pierce of Duel in the Sun is unarmed when Lewt shoots him, and Jesse, not only unarmed, is a lawyer and a gentleman who has never carried a gun. Bragg is a vicious bully and no one in town, except maybe Logan, can possibly stand up to him: 7. The villains ore stronger than the society; the society is weak. Function 8 is another one that appears in only some Westerns and in two of our five. It states that the hero and the villain have a strong friendship or mutual respect. Gannon and Jeff drink together, exchange wise cracks, and Gannon at least tells Jeff that he likes him. But this is a weak instance of the function compared to many other films in which the hero and the villain are very good friends, such as Cimorron, Union Pacific, Whispering Smith, Bend of the River, and Vero Cruz. In Canyon Passage, Logan and George are good friends; but this does not really qualify as an instance of function 8 since George is not a villain in the classical sense. In fact, his character-part of society, not really dangerous, but a murderer-is probably the most atypical structural feature of all five Westerns I have selected. Of course, the ultimate expression of a friendship between a hero and a villain, and perhaps the most satisfying one, is the passionate friendship between Lewt and Pearl. This "friendship" suggests some of the structural rewards of transforming male violence into female lust in the Western myth, and perhaps reveals some unconscious symbolism in the more standard Western: 6. There is a strong friendship or respect between the hero and a villain. Because the villains are stronger, they endanger the existence of

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society. Riker kills one farmer, drives another off, and almost succeeds in forcing all of them out of the valley; Surrett runs the sheriff out of town, murders the citizens, and scares off the new settlers; similarly, Mr. Gannon openly robs and kills the miners of Dawson, until they are forced to pack up and leave their homes. Lewt seduces Pearl, kills Sam Pierce, blows up trains, and coldly shoots down Jesse, the lawyer who is a friend of the settlers. Bragg wants to dominate and control Jacksonville: 9. The villains threaten the society. Functions 10 and 11 are, again, like 2 and 8, optional. They state that the hero tries to stay out of the fight between the villains and society and only decides to join in when a friend of his is endangered. This occurs in each of our five Westerns except Canyon Passage, where Logan fights for the town without special inducement. Shane does not fight for Starrett, or even put on his guns, until Chris warns him of a trap; Hatton refuses to be sheriff until a child whom he likes is killed; Pearl protects Lewt until he shoots and then threatens to kill Jesse; and Jeff, even more than Hatton, refuses to care about the miners' plight until his friend Ben has been killed, his friend Rube has been humiliated and pistol-whipped, and his friend Renee has had her claim stolen: 10. The hero avoids involvement in the conflict. 11. The villains endanger a friend of the hero. The next two functions are obviously required: the hero fights and defeats the villains. What is interesting, however, and needs a little documentation is the fact that the hero always fights alone, without help from the society. Shane rides to town alone to face three men, leaving the farmers at home; Hatton stands up to Surrett alone and later defeats him and his gang with only the comic help of his two old sidekicks; Logan fights Bragg alone, though the town is at stake; Pearl fights and kills Lewt without help; and Jeff shoots it out with four gunfighters all by himself in order to save the town of Dawson: 12. The hero fights the villains. 13. The hero defeats the villains. After the fight. the society is safe. Shane wins the valley for the farmers. As he tells Joey after he kills Wilson and the Rikers, "Ride on home to your mother and tell her ... tell her everything's all right, that there are no more guns in the valley." Dodge City is so safe after the battle that Tex and Rusty. Hatton's sidekicks, have this exchange against a background of church music: "Now listen

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to that, singing hymns and it ain't even Sunday. Nobody in sight, even a friendly drunk." "Doggone if this place ain't gettin' so pure and noble it ain't fit to live in." Logan fights Bragg, against his will, because the town insists; as he says later, "I could have backed down, turned the whole town over to Bragg." Pearl kills Lewt to save Jesse and what he stands for-the railroad, the settlers, and so forth. Jeff saves the town of Dawson for the miners and their homes, families, and churches: 14. The society is safe. After the fight, or after the hero decides to make the fight, society finally accepts him. Staggering away from the fight, Jeff is surrounded by the smiling people of Dawson, who only minutes before were insulting or ignoring him, and he is embraced by Renee, who was previously the most unpleasant of all. Abbey falls in love with Hatton only after he has become sheriff and challenged Surrett; Logan wins a new girlfriend, and the people of Jacksonville decide not to hang him, after he leads them against the Indians. Pearl is killed in her fight; but just before it, she is offered a new home in the city and a proper education, first by Jesse and then, as final proof of her acceptance, by Jesse's ladylike fiancee. Shane leaves the valley after the fight, thus avoiding the probable gratitude and acceptance of the farmers. He tells Joey, who begs him to stay, that he is leaving because "there is no living with a killing," but we know, from Starrett's comments about his wife and Shane as well as from their tender and restrained parting, that Shane is really leaving because of the love that has grown between him and his friend's wife, a love that is only indicated after he has put on his guns and decided to fight Riker. This function, by the way, occurs much more strongly in other classical Westerns, such as Cimorron, Bend of the River, Yellow Sky, Union Pacific, and Vero Cruz, where the hero is accepted by the arbiters of respectable society after he has saved the group from destruction: 15. The society accepts the hero. Our last function describes the hero losing in some way the special status he has had in the society. What this means is that he is no longer either willing or able to take the role of special person that was conferred because of his unique ability. Shane leaves, relinquishing his newly acquired position as the deadliest man in the valley. There is no law for a hundred miles, and he could, of course, stay in the valley and maximize the rewards of his power and the farmers' gratitude; but he gives up his status as gunfighter and savior and chooses instead the dark night and the cold mountains. Hatton

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marries Abbey after cleaning up Dodge and moves on to brighter horizons, since, as we are told, Dodge is no longer exciting enough for him to have a job there. Logan also leaves the town he has protected, possibly to return; but now he is broke and no longer a leading force in the settlement. Pearl, of course, dies, thereby surrendering her special sexual status. We are not told exactly what happens to Jeff after the fight, but there are enough hints for us to make a good guess. Ben, his older, murdered friend, was always trying to get him to settle down on a ranch or in Dawson. As Renee and his horse hold him up after the shoot-out, Jeff softly rings a little bell on his saddle horn that was earlier established as a momento and symbol of Ben; also, with the death of Rhonda, Jeff is left in the care of Renee, who promises to fix him up and who represents the good people of Dawson. So we are left with the feeling that he has turned the corner; now he cares for people, appreciates friends. and will marry and settle down in Dawson. If he does-or even if he doesn't-Dawson is now like Dodge City. It no longer needs his special ability, and thus whether he stays or goes, he will inevitably lose his special status. This ending-the hero marrying and settling in the now peaceful community. becoming just like everybody else-is the most common ending throughout the classical Western, though not among the five we have discussed. This resolution is either explicit or implied in Wells Fargo, Union Pacific, San Antonio, California, Whispering Smith, and Yellow Sky, among others: 16. The hero loses or gives up his special status. This completes the functions for the classical plot, which I will list here for convenience. 1. The hero enters a social group.

2. The hero is unknown to the society. 3. The hero is revealed to have an exceptional ability. 4. The society recognizes a difference between themselves and the hero; the hero is given a special status. 5. The society does not completely accept the hero. 6. There is a conflict of interests between the villains and the society. 7. The villains are stronger than the society; the society is weak. 8. There is a strong friendship or respect between the hero and a villain. 9. The villains threaten the society. 10. The hero avoids involvement in the conflict. 11. The villains endanger a friend of the hero.

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12. The hero fights the villains. 13. The hero defeats the villains. 14. The society is safe. 15. The society accepts the hero. 16. The hero loses or gives up his special status. These sixteen functions describe the narrative structure of the classical Western, which presents a dramatic model of communication and action between characters who represent different types of people inherent in our conceptualization of society. The characters who symbolize these social types are the heroes, the villains, and the society. We can make explicit the conceptual or classificatory meanings of these characters by revealing the oppositional structure of the Western myth; we must understand how the different characters are different, what their recurring or defining points of conflict and opposition are. The code, in which these basic social concepts are represented by the characters, will vary from plot to plot; in the classical plot, probably because it is the prototype, the characters are vivid and their meanings clear. Just as there are three distinct sets of characters, there are also three basic oppositions, each differentiating between at least two of the characters, plus a fourth opposition that is less important structurally and will be treated separately. Perhaps the most important opposition is that separating the hero from the society, the opposition between those who are outside society and those who are inside society. This inside/outside contrast is fairly rigorous in its typing of the hero and the society, but it is rather relaxed in its treatment of the villains, who are, as we shall see, sometimes inside and sometimes outside. A second opposition is that between good and bad, a dichotomy that separates the society and the hero from the villains. Third, there is the clear distinction between the strong and the weak. which distinguishes the hero and the villains from the society. The fourth opposition primarily contrasts the hero with everybody else and is perhaps the typically American aspect of the Western-the opposition between wilderness and civilization; this opposition is similar to the inside/outside contrast but not identical. The villains may be outside of society but are always seen as part of civilization. In order to demonstrate these oppositions and reveal the codes through which they are structured into the characters. I will comment on each of the five films already discussed, but I will concentrate on Shone and, to a lesser extent, on The Far Country. This restriction should allow for some analytic depth without undue repetition. Unfortunately, since so much of the coding is done through visuals-clothing, background, movements, expressions-the

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only sure way to make these points clear and convincing would be provide the films themselves along with the analysis, which the research into scholarly publishing technology has not as yet made possible. The inside/outside opposition is coded at one level, in Shone as in most classical Westerns, through the contrast of wandering, unsettled life with domestic, established life. The film begins as Shane rides out of the mountains and across the valley in scenes that are crosscut with views of the Starrett farm, its garden, fences, cows: smoke is rising from the chimney as Joey plays, Marion cooks, and Starrett cuts down a tree. Shane rides up to the farm and immediately tells Starrett, "I didn't expect to see any fences around here." Then, a minute or two later, "It's been a long time since I've seen a Jersey cow." Shane is alone-he has no family, no friends, and no ties. When he is having dinner with the Starretts, using "the good plates, an extra fork," Starrett says, "I wouldn't ask you where you're bound," and Shane replies, "One place or another, someplace I've never been." Then, as though to make the point absolutely clear, Starrett comments, "Well, I know one thing. The only way they'll get me out of here is in a pine box.... We've got our roots down here .... It's the first real home we've ever had." This kind of coding can be observed throughout the film. The other farmers also have families, children, possessions; and they seem to distrust Shane for this reason-he's got nothing to lose: he doesn't fit in their world. At the end of the film, Shane rides back into the mountains alone. The same opposition is coded at other levels-Shane has no last name: he grows nervous and jumpy at ordinary domestic sounds, a playing child or a wandering calf: he wears buckskins, clothing that identifies him with the wilds and is worn by no one else in the film. When he first appears in buckskins, Starrett distrusts him, and afterward Shane changes into farming clothes, symbolically attempting to join society; but when he again dons his buckskins, Starrett immediately starts a fight with him, indicating again their basic difference. The Riker brothers and Wilson are somewhat indeterminate on this opposition, yet clearly more inside than outside. They obviously do not share the values of the farmers; but if we agree to leave values for the good/bad opposition, then these villains are mostly inside society. The Rikers are ranchers-settled, with large amounts of land and cattle, and with important social responsibilities (an army contract, many hired hands, and so on). Rufus Riker, the owner and leader, is old and grizzled; he was fighting Indians when Starrett was a child. There is in Shone a sort of mini-opposition between the old society and the new society; but for our purposes the Rikers,

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old or new, are more identified with society than not. Wilson, like Shane, is a wandering gunfighter and thus could also be identified as completely outside the society. That he is not serves to reinforce the split between Shane and the society. Wilson is from Cheyenne, which, together with his last name, gives him more of a background and a home than the hero has: he comes to town wearing a black hat, a black, buttoned-down vest, a striped shirt, and black armbands, looking exactly like a gambler from the city who is out of place in the wilds of the isolated valley. Both Hatton in Dodge City and Jeff in The Far Country appear as unsettled wanderers in the midst of a domestic community. Hatton has been a soldier in three wars, a cowboy, and a buffalo hunter; he does not want to be sheriff because he does not want to be tied down by responsibilities. By contrast, the townspeople want to settle down, start businesses, and raise families. Similarly, Jeff is an adventurer who is in Alaska to make money and get out, as opposed to the miners who want to settle and build a town. Unlike Shane, who tries to join society and is forced out, both Hatton and Jeff resist joining and are sucked in. Jeff, in particular insists upon absolute social noninvolvement. When Renee hints that she wants to marry him and live in San Francisco, he tells her he doesn't like people and she tells him he should, "because if you don't like people, they won't like you, and then you'll be lonely like ... (a coyote howls in the distance)" Jeff replies, "You know, maybe he likes to be lonely ... He never asks any favors for himself, never trusts anybody so he doesn't get hurt, that's not a bad way to live. Maybe you'll learn that when you grow up." The villans in both films are even more inside society than in Shane: Surrett wears a suit, owns the saloon, and buys cattle; Mr. Gannon wears a suit, or at least a jacket, and is a judge. Pearl is recognizably outside of society because of her wild saloon upbringing in Mexico, as portrayed in the opening scenes, because of her lack of proper manners and education, her Indian blood, and her uncontrollable passion. She is contrasted with the prim graciousness of Laura Bell (Lillian Gish}, the gentlemanly attitudes and expressions of Jesse, the grace and charm of Jesse's fiancee, and the beautiful and cultured furniture, carpets, paintings, and figurines of the magnificent McCanlis Ranch. This contrast is reinforced when Lewt and the senator discuss the complete absurdity of Lewt's marrying Pearl on account of her background and Indian blood. Finally, in Canyon Passage, the opposition is somewhat different, since Logan is not an outsider but a businessman in the town. Nevertheless, Logan's difference from the other settlers and miners

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is continually underscored. As we have seen, he is described by a steady stream of characters as reckless, restless, and uncouth; without hesitation, he gives George $2,000, to the obvious disgust of his accountant, because "that's what friends are for." His businessman-adventurer image is strongly emphasized in an early conversation between Logan and Cornelius, the bank teller: LOGAN: CORNELIUS: LOGAN: CORNELIUS:

Gold is only yellow gravel, Cornelius. Yes, but the yellow