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Manifest Density: Decentering the Global Western Film City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Manifest Density: Decentering the Global Western Film Michael D. Phillips The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2932 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] MANIFEST DENSITY: DECENTERING THE GLOBAL WESTERN FILM by MICHAEL D. PHILLIPS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 Michael D. Phillips All Rights Reserved ii Manifest Density: Decentering the Global Western Film by Michael D. Phillips This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. __________________ ________________________________________________ Date Jerry W. Carlson Chair of Examining Committee __________________ ________________________________________________ Date Giancarlo Lombardi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Paula J. Massood Marc Dolan THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Manifest Density: Decentering the Global Western Film by Michael D. Phillips Advisor: Jerry W. Carlson The Western is often seen as a uniquely American narrative form, one so deeply ingrained as to constitute a national myth. This perception persists despite its inherent shortcomings, among them its inapplicability to the many instances of filmmakers outside the United States appropriating the genre and thus undercutting this view of generic exceptionalism. As the Western has migrated across geographical boundaries, it has accrued potential significations that bring into question its direct alignment with national ideology and history. Rather than attempting to define the Western in terms of nation or myth, we should attend to how each new text reconfigures the genre. Because of the repetitive and accumulative nature of genre storytelling, each new use of a genre inevitably engages with previous uses, creating a densely intertextual network. Following Bakhtin’s theory of the utterance being comprised of prior, historically situated utterances, I argue that each new use of a generic convention carries with it the echo of past uses, which it also retroactively reframes. This phenomenon produces a transtemporal exchange of potential meanings between existing uses of a convention and each new use, through which the latter is iv able to alter and expand the potential readings of all prior uses. In this sense, Western films are neither exclusively about the past nor simply a reflection of contemporary contexts and concerns. Generic texts necessarily engage with their semiotic genealogies, belying the notion of genre as a static, ahistorical structure or as a series of symptomatic historical reflections subject to a linear process of evolution. Because genres are not monolithic, it is essential to attend to the peculiarities of each text in order to see how a genre’s various users employ and interpret generic elements in sometimes quite idiosyncratic ways. Analyzing a diverse range of films from Japan, Brazil and the United States, I show the need for a more expansive model of genre analysis, one that attends to the transgeographical, transtemporal, and transmedial elements of genre. I argue that the drawing of boundaries around a genre that is itself about interstitial spaces can lead to misreadings of the Western as a hegemonic formal structure rather than a dialogic relationship among generic media artifacts. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 - Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 2 - The Yokohama Kid: Transmedial Nostalgia and the Western……………………...30 Chapter 3 - West by Northeast: The Western in Brazil………………………………………….89 Chapter 4 - A Captive Audience: Race & Spectatorship in Cinematic Captivity Narratives…..125 Chapter 5 - The Unfinalizable Frontier: Decentering Monument Valley……………………....196 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………215 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1 The Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer (2012; Austin, 2 Tex.: Drafthouse Films, 2014), DVD: Anwar Goes West 1.2 The Act of Killing: Anwar and Herman 4 2.1 High & Low, directed by Akira Kurosawa (1963; Irvington, N.Y.: 30 The Criterion Collection, 2011), Blu-ray Disc: Jun & Shinichi in Cowboy Costumes 2.2 High & Low: Barrier as Medium 34 2.3 The Hidden Fortress, directed by Akira Kurosawa (1958; Irvington, 38 N.Y.: The Criterion Collection, 2014), DVD: Blocking in Depth 2.4 Three Bad Men, directed by John Ford (1926; Beverly Hills, Calif.: 38 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2007), DVD: Blocking in Depth 2.5 My Darling Clementine, directed by John Ford (1946; Beverly Hills, 38 Calif.: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004): Deep Space 2.6 The Hidden Fortress: Deep Space 38 2.7 The Hidden Fortress: Enclosure 39 2.8 Three Bad Men: Enclosure 39 2.9 The Searchers, directed by John Ford (1956; Burbank, Calif.: 39 Warner Bros. Entertainment, 2015), DVD: Enclosure 2.10 My Darling Clementine: Thorndyke’s Soliloquy 50 2.11 My Darling Clementine: Doc’s Soliloquy 50 2.12 My Darling Clementine: The Orderly Oriental 52 2.13 My Darling Clementine: The Raucous Bird Cage 52 2.14 High & Low: Takeuchi Passing Electronics Store 73 2.15 High & Low: Takeuchi and 4:3 Frames 73 2.16 High & Low: Pink Smoke 75 2.16 High & Low: Gondo at Work 77 2.18 High & Low: Turning off the TV 79 3.1 O Cangaceiro, directed by Lima Barreto (1953; São Paulo: 90 Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz, 2010), DVD: Poster 3.2 Black God, White Devil, directed by Glauber Rocha (1964; Brighton, 90 U.K.: Mr. Bongo Films, 2010), DVD: Poster 3.3 Antonio das Mortes, directed by Glauber Rocha (1969; Brighton, 90 U.K.: Mr. Bongo Films, 2010), DVD: Poster 3.4 O Cangaceiro: Opening Shot 96 3.5 O Cangaceiro: Galdino and the Surveyor 96 3.6 O Cangaceiro: Galdino and Teodoro 97 3.7 Black God, White Devil: Dead Cow 105 3.8 Black God, White Devil: Dead Cow 105 3.9 Black God, White Devil: The Sertão 107 3.10 Black God, White Devil: The Sea 107 3.11 Antonio das Mortes: Enter Antonio 108 3.12 Antonio das Mortes: A Lone Rider 108 vii 3.13 Antonio das Mortes: Riding into Town 110 3.14 Antonio das Mortes: Riding into Town 110 3.15 Antonio das Mortes: Antão as São Jorge 112 3.16 Antonio das Mortes: Antonio Leaves Town 119 4.1 A Man Called Horse, directed by Elliot Silverstein (1970; 128 Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures, 2003), DVD: Poster 4.2 How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, directed by Nelson Pereira 137 dos Santos (1971; New York: New Yorker Films, 2007), DVD: Sebiopepe Chews into Camera 4.3 A Man Called Horse: “Looking, Joe. Just looking.” 159 4.4 Thomas Gainsborough, Mr & Mrs Andrews, c. 1750, oil on canvas, 159 27½ × 47” (69.8 × 119.4 cm), National Gallery, London, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/thomas-gainsborough- mr-and-mrs-andrews. 4.5 A Man Called Horse: Sioux Raiders Watching Morgan 162 4.6 A Man Called Horse: Stereoscopic Superimposition 172 4.7 A Man Called Horse: Taunting Sioux 171 4.8 A Man Called Horse: Tethered to the Apparatus 171 4.9 A Man Called Horse: Return to Perspective 171 4.10 A Man Called Horse: Medicine Lodge as Movie Theater 174 4.11 A Man Called Horse: Yellow Hand 179 4.12 George Catlin, BA-DA-AH-CHON-DU (He Who Outjumps All); A 179 Crow Chief on Horseback Showing His Rich Costume and the Trappings of His Horse, c. 1865-70, oil on canvas, 26¼ × 31¾” (66.68 × 80.65 cm), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, https://www.vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-8152968/. 4.13 Real West, October 1970: Magazine Cover 182 4.14 A Man Called Horse: Opening Captions 183 4.16 Catlin’s Certificate (Letters and Notes, 177) 183 4.17 Catlin, Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon’s Egg Head (The Light) Going To and 188 Returning From Washington, 1837-39, oil on canvas, 29 × 24” (73.6 × 60.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/wi-jun-jon-pigeons-egg-head- light-going-and-returning-washington-4317. 4.18 A Man Called Horse: The Restitution of Perspective? 195 4.19 A Man Called Horse: Presence and Absence in the Credit Sequence 195 5.1 Bruce McCall, “Chimp Riding Goat,” Encounters at the End of the 197 World, directed by Werner Herzog (2007; Chatsworth, Calif.: Image Entertainment, 2008), DVD. 5.2 Encounters at the End of the World: A Deranged Penguin 201 5.3 Futurestates, season 3, episode 6, “The 6th World,” directed by 209 Nanobah Becker, 2012, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/futurestates-the-6th-world-a-future- friday-premiere/: Monument Valley as Mars viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In his 2012 documentary The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer invites Anwar Congo, one of many small-time gangsters employed by the Indonesian Army in death squads that carried out a massive purge of alleged communists following a failed 1965 coup, to reenact his role in the massacre by directing himself in a film within the film. Eschewing the conventional realism of the fictionalized historical film, Anwar elects to stage his memories through the Hollywood genres—musical, gangster, horror, Western—that he had absorbed in his youth as a “movie theater gangster” selling black-market tickets for American films. Curiously, Anwar chooses in one sequence to display his “method for capturing and killing communists” in a rural location shoot far removed from the urban setting where the actual murders occurred.1 In one remarkable shot, Anwar and his captive, both arrayed in cowboy finery, play out a scene of torture and murder, with a horse looking on from each lateral edge of the frame.
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