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The Mythical Frontier, the Mexican Revolution, and the Press: an Imperial Subplot

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The Mythical Frontier, the Mexican Revolution, and the Press: an Imperial Subplot The Mythical Frontier, the Mexican Revolution, and the Press: An Imperial Subplot Mark Cronlund Anderson Abstract: The frontier myth has served as America's secular creation story. As a result, it surfaces widely in popular culture and political discourse. It also resonates in news coverage. This paper explores how the American press framed the Mexican Revolution as a mythical frontier narrative by examining depictions of revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The news story that emerges bears close resemblance to the frontier thesis, as articulated by historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Keywords: frontier thesis, frontier myth and popular culture, frontier myth and history, Mexican Revolution and media, frontier myth and Pancho Villa Resume : Le mythe de la frontiere a toujours servi de fond a l'histoire de la fondation de l'Amerique ; c'est pourquoi on le retrouve souvent dans la culture populaire et dans le discours politique. On en trouve egalement de nombreux echos dans la presse. Cet article se penche sur les fafons dont la presse americaine a presente la Revolution mexicaine comme un recit a caractere mythique, grace a une analyse des portraits qu'on y faisait du revoludonnaire Francisco «Pancho» Villa. L'analyse qui en ressort a de nombreux points communs avec la these de la frontiere telle que la presente l'historien Frederick Jackson Turner. Mots cles : these de la frontiere, mythe de la frontiere et la culture populaire, mythe de la frontiere et l'histoire. Revolution mexicaine et medias, mythe de la frontiere et Pancho Villa The frontier Western, a cultural narrative that, to varying degrees, recapitulates the mythical frontier, has been central to the American imagination since the time of the Puritans.^ So strongly has its cultural v/eight been felt that scholars, not without controversy, © Canadian Review of American Studies I Revue canadienne d'etudes americaines 37, no. I, 2007 have ascribed to the myth powers that have influenced everything from cigarette advertising to US foreign policy; they have even identified imperial behaviour.^ It has been described as America's secular creation story (see Kenworthy). Popular film, in particular, has been singled out as the most common site for g^ artistic presentation of the frontier myth over the past century.'' ^ That said, one might then expect that the frontier Western would j^s express itself in other forms of popular culture—news stories, IS for example. ^ Press reports emanating from Mexico during the fiercest hours of .8 that country's revolution, 1913-5, illustrate precisely this point. The I revolution unfolded in the US press in ways closely paralleling 2^ those of a frontier Western. This is not to suggest that the revolu- I tionaries themselves fought in ways commensurate with myth or •^ that the outcome of the civil war was in any way influenced by <K myth; rather, my contention in this essay is that the US press J collectively cast and interpreted the revolution during this period I in ways that, for American newspaper audiences, resonated mythi- v3 cally with frontier tropes, especially with respect to the media treatment of Francisco "Pancho" Villa. 2 Home on the Range The frontier Western's conventions are as common as those of nursery rhymes and may include combinations of the following elements: cowboys; Indians; sage brush; gun play; saloons; horses; corrupted lawmen; Mexicans; dark-skinned whores; white female virgins; various sorts of lascivious, savage behaviour on the parts on non-white males (especially Indians and Mexicans); and so on (Cameron and Pye; Grant; also see Bazin). Additionally, the frontier Western champions archetypal masculine Americana (honesty, bravery, cleverness, whiteness. Protestantism, self control, and the like), while decrying the binary opposites of these characteristics (dishonesty, cowardliness, non-whiteness, paganism, lack of self control, and so on). "Others," in this mythopoeic yarn, so reek of treachery and darkness as to invite conquest."* What distinguishes the frontier Western from a traditional Western is that the former qua genre necessarily plays out in a mythical dreamscape and, as noted, recapitulates some aspect(s) of the frontier myth. Conventionally, this occurs in the spatio-temporal setting of the post-bellum, western United States but may also be located in jungles, outer space, Vietnam—anywhere, in short, and in keeping with the mythical narrative, that a frontier may be imagined to exist (see, e.g.. Opt). The term "frontier" here is imbued with and delimited by special meanings, central among them, according to historian Frederick Jackson Turner, author of "The Frontier Thesis"—an essay of staggering historiographical import and historical influence, which presciently distilled and poetically articulated the myth—a line dividing savagery (them) from civilization (us—in this case, mythical America).^ The experi- ence of life in that frontier zone effectively stripped white immigrants down, wrote Turner, to the point of near death and nearer savagery. The result, for those who survived the encounter, was rebirth, from which a neoteric white man emerged, a man effectively purged of European corruption and refashioned as quintessentially and mythically American, with the noted mythical virtues in attendance (think John Wayne). Wave upon wave of this process, a sort of deterministic metaphorical tsunami, according to the Turner thesis (an essay that ranks easily as the most important historical essay in the study of American history),^ effectively settled the United States with hordes of reborn males, fashioning mythical America in its wake. gj Turner referred to the process as a "perennial rebirth" (38). "From " east to west," he averred, "we find the record of social evolu- g tion"(43). Further, he wrote, %•• n The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Q; Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds c him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, n and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in | the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and re- arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin... In short, § at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the S man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, LO or perish... The fact is, that here is a new product that -J;~J is American. (39) § The personal characteristics required for American-style success— even, survival, on the frontier—honesty, a hard-work ethic, rugged individualism, cleverness, Protestant virtue, mental and physical toughness, and so on—emerged spontaneously as the frontier worked its inexplicable deterministic magic. According to Turner, [T]o the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness of strength combined with f^ acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of o mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material j:^ things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; '^ that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism :§ working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and 5 exuberance which comes from freedom—these are traits of the c frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the frontier, •g (61; also 46, 57) (U 'S- A Triple Threat •5 The Turner thesis may thus be summed up in three acts. In Act One, cK civilization and savagery collide in a frontier dreamscape, set most J typically (yet not necessarily) in the American West. In Act Two, I a special man emerges from the conflict, a frontiersman, draped in v3 mythical Americana. In Act Three, the frontiersman conquers barbarism violently and keeps excessive civilization at bay, thereby championing aggressive land seizure and distinguishing America's unique mythical (that is, superior) status vis-a-vis Europe and the attendant dangers of over-civilization. The process of frontier (and the place—qua verb and noun) revivifies America. In practice, in popular culture, this foundational narrative may take many shapes. For example, in Hollywood, this includes movies about science fiction and outer space (e.g., Apollo 13, Alien, Star Wars), the Vietnam War (e.g.. Green Berets, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket), the old West (e.g.. Stagecoach, Shane, The Virginian), comedy (e.g.. Blazing Saddles, Big Lebowksi), and action and drama (e.g.. Raiders of the Lost Ark, River Queen, Dances with Wolves). The common ingredients here include tensions that pit savagery against civilization, where frontiersmen (e.g., the epon- ymous Shane, Alien's Ripley, Indiana Jones, the Virginian himself) defeat the "savages" (as in Green Berets or nearly any Western movie), who assume the guise of "Other" (e.g., Indians, monsters, Vietcong, even Muslims—as in Raiders of the Lost Ark) (see Cawelti; Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation). The US press replicated this Utopian Turnerian vision closely in the way that it framed Mexico's civil war and, in particular, its greatest revolutionary leader, Francisco "Pancho" Villa.^ First, press reports initially cast the revolution and Villa as explosively savage, a sobering counterpoint to America's civilization, thereby establish- ing behaviourally a mythical frontier zone separating civilized America from its antithesis. Villa served as an example. This tack resonated geographically, too, insofar as Mexico borders the United States to the southwest, an area clearly identified mythically as frontier country by Turner and by Westerns (Mitchell). In this press story's second act, a hero also emerged—Villa. Yet, in the early days of the conflagration, it remained unclear whether he was on this (American) side or on that of the "Other." Initially, the press tended to cast Villa as stereotypically Mexican, a well- established, pejorative construction, dating back more than a hun- dred years in American culture.^ Yet Villa proved to be different. By 1914, via richly effective propaganda, he began to earn a framing consonant with the contours of the mythical frontiersman—or as close to them as the myth would allow a violent half-breed Mexican to be.
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