Revising the Western: Connecting Genre Rituals and American
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CSCXXX10.1177/1532708614527561Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol">↔</span> Critical MethodologiesCastleberry 527561research-article2014 Article Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 2014, Vol. 14(3) 269 –278 Revising the Western: Connecting © 2014 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Genre Rituals and American Western DOI: 10.1177/1532708614527561 Revisionism in TV’s Sons of Anarchy csc.sagepub.com Garret L. Castleberry1 Abstract In this article, I analyze the TV show Sons of Anarchy (SOA) and how the cable drama revisits and revises the American Western film genre. I survey ideological contexts and tropes that span Western mythologies like landscape and mise-en- scene to struggles for family, community, and the continuation of Native American plight. I trace connections between the show’s fictitious town setting and how the narrative inverts traditional community archetypes to reinsert a new outlaw status quo. I inspect the role of border reversal, from open expansion in Westerns to the closed-door post-globalist world of SAMCRO. I quickdraw from a number of film theory scholars as I trick shoot their critiques of Western cinema against the updated target of SOA’s fictitious Charming, CA. I reckon that this revised update of outlaw culture, gunslinger violence, and the drama’s subsequent popularity communicates a post-9/11 trauma playing out on television. Through the sage wisdom of autoethnography, I recall personal memories as an ideological travelogue for navigating the rhetoric power this drama ignites. As with postwar movements of biker history that follow World War II and Vietnam, SOA races against Western form while staying distinctly faithful. Ultimately, I argue the show’s Western evocation updates audience concerns amidst the ideological war on terror. Keywords ideological criticism, Westerns, Sons of Anarchy, genre, family, cable TV, autoethnography One of my grandfathers served as both a trucker and blue- rhetorical power) such repetitious imagery conveys. Thus, I collar oil fieldsman while another worked simultaneously find it both reaffirming and timely to witness these postwar in military service, mechanical engineering, and carpentry. thematics resurface in post-network era1 of cable drama In addition, the latter always exuded his motorist enthusi- supremacy, particularly on Sons of Anarchy (SOA). asm. I came to experience the eras of their passions second- In this article, I examine the FX cable drama SOA and hand, which gave me a kind of liminal insight into what I read the show as a revision of the American Western film might call secular salt of the earth White lower-middle genre. I examine common tropes and ideological context class and Mid-American values. These values emphasize(d) that ranges from mythic conceptions of landscape to the family, community, and loyalty, and varying contortions of mise-en-scene of the Native American plight. I tease out this form. I recall the endless array of Westerns always connections between the show’s fictitious town setting and playing on my grandfather’s brown-paneled television set, how the show inverts traditional archetypes of place and the modest reward to a hard day’s work, the visual aesthetic reinserts the outlaw narrative as the new status quo. I exam- complementing simpler pleasures like coffee and cigarettes ine the role of borders in how they reverse, from opening and uncalculated naps in the recliner. and expanding in Westerns to closing amidst the post-glo- In hindsight, I can easily identify ritualistic patterns and balist narrative world of SAMCRO.2 I draw on a number of ideological behaviors exerted between my two grandfa- film theory scholars as I reposition their critiques of Western thers, one closely aligned with characteristics of simple life cinema against the updated backdrop of SOA’s fictitious found in Westerns while the other emanating a Red-Blooded Charming, CA. I argue this revision and update of outlaw drive toward mechanics, the open road, and the trouble that comes with it. Although I paid little attention to the narra- 1University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA tives of these Westerns growing up, as researcher I now Corresponding Author: appreciate the sentiments they communicated to working Garret L. Castleberry, Department of Communication, University of class generations of Americans. As cultural ideology, I rec- Oklahoma, Burton Hall, 610 Elm Avenue, Norman, OK 73019, USA. ognize the persuasive appeal (or what scholars consider Email: [email protected] Downloaded from csc.sagepub.com at UNIV OF OKLAHOMA on January 20, 2016 270 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 14(3) culture, gunslinger violence, and the show’s subsequent Close attention to character development becomes a cen- popularity communicates a post-9/11 trauma playing out on tral motif. As well, shortened seasons allow for tighter television. Specifically, like the history of biker movements script management that results in stronger arches of char- following World War II and the advent of the biker film acter and situational development. While network shows genre in and around Vietnam, SOA plays with Western form wrap up weekly lessons or storylines, cable dramas tend to in a way that posits distinctness amidst familiarity. Thus overlap stories utilizing cliffhanger endings and unresolved through evoking the Western genre, the show updates these tensions.3 Similarly, this narrative approach recalls Richard ideological criticisms in ways that synchronize such histori- Comb’s assessment of Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon cal (and historicized) themes for modern audiences. (1952) in The Western Reader, where the latter’s “starkly compressed and stylized storyline goes with a psychologi- Splitting Time: Discursive Tensions cal realism that simultaneously diffuses and complicates Between Network and Cable TV the plot” (Combs, 1986, pp. 169-170). Instead of the net- work trend of 22 to 24 episodes per given season or year, In 2008, cable channel FX premiered its newest “edgy” cable networks often produce 10 to 13 episodes. This drama, Sons of Anarchy. SOA focuses around a modern shorter structure allows writers to guard their creative biker gang that work as mechanics by day and illegal gun- property closely and procure the highest quality out of their runners by night. At the show’s core, attention to the ten- storytelling opportunity. In this case, SOA creator and show sions and relationships between characters and the runner Kurt Sutter guards his passion project while he protection of the their club/town/ideological border situates simultaneously maintains brand management over numer- SOA as a drama that updates and revises key themes reso- ous facets of SOA’s operational avenues both directly and nant of the American Western. SOA embraces many aspects indirectly related to the show. of the Western film genre. As TV drama, it often avoids The SOA’s televisual landscape splits between the ter- trappings of choosing between cinematic genre modes due rain of featured set pieces and the terrain composing an to its prolonged state as a serialized program. In fact, SOA’s enormous cast of characters. While the cast of characters episodic and shorter season structure allows the show to expands and contracts from season to season, the show explore numerous genre terrains associated but never exclu- ultimately focuses on family. The staple group includes sive to genres of Crime, Biker history, and in the case of this Jax, the “heir apparent” Vice President to the motorcycle analysis Western cinema. While the drama evokes numer- club (MC) throne; his Old Lady Tara; Jax’s stepfather and ous incarnations and genres (indeed a growing trend indica- club President, Clay; and Jax’s mother, Clay’s wife, and tive of postmodernity), SOA becomes a coup de tat that “club Matriarch” Gemma.4 The core members of SAMCRO synthesizes televisual form with Western archetype. (SC) include Treasurer Bobbi, Jax’s best friend Opie, Amidst a postmodern split between network and pay Opie’s father Piney, Clay’s right hand man Tig, Juice, cable broadcasting, episodic programming often splinters Chibs, Happy, and club Prospect Half Sack. Outside the between differing styles of execution and presentation. club, feature players include corrupt police Chief Unser, Networks still cast the largest net of reach and thus must incorruptible Deputy David Hale, and Alcohol, Tobacco, appease the largest possible audience base. For this rea- and Firearms (ATF) agent Stahl. As well, numerous addi- son, the majority of non-reality, scripted television devotes tional friends, family, club members, rivals, and rotating continued focus toward serialized programming. This cast members construct a dense universe of interactive par- style of program consists mostly of weekly, standalone ties. While this large cast creates a rich scope for entertain- formats, in which new plots are both introduced and ment purposes, I concentrate attention on characters and resolved within the constraints of the half hour or hour elements that specifically attend to American Western pat- allotment. CBS’s consistent regularity of procedural dra- terns. With so many characters shifting in action and moti- mas comes to mind, as does CBS’s reliant, if not predict- vation, SOA might best be understood through Christopher able, stable of raunchy sitcoms. Compare this against Frayling’s description of Sergio Leone’s approach to Once cable channel American Movie Classics (or AMC, where Upon A Time in the West (1968), where “each of the main “story matters”) for their stream of character-driven genre- characters in the story ‘moves’ like a chess piece, the chess- bending critical darlings like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and board being . ‘the mythological system, that is, the cycle The Walking Dead. FX’s new breed of TV dramas more of conditioned action.’” (Frayling, 2006, p. 194). At the closely resembles the latter, and the gratuitous aesthetic helm, creator/show runner Sutter controls the pieces, and among FX programming no longer appears to appease each season shifts these pieces around the board, extending only the young male demographic.