Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2006 Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western Michelle C. Greenwald University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Greenwald, Michelle C., "Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2006. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1947 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Michelle C. Greenwald entitled "Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Charles J. Maland, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Mary Papke, Christine Holmlund, Lisi Schoenbach Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Michelle C. Greenwald entitled “Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Charles J. Maland Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Mary Papke Christine Holmlund Lisi Schoenbach Accepted for the Council: Anne Mayhew Vice Chancellor and Dean of Graduate Studies (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM IN THE AMERICAN WESTERN A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Michelle C. Greenwald December 2006 Copyright © 2006 by Michelle C. Greenwald All rights reserved ii DEDICATION The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Andrew. Though he did not survive his battle with cancer to see the completed project, he was my greatest source of inspiration for its inception, and indeed, for much of my life. He loved and encouraged me, challenged me to achieve my best, and set for me an example of unselfishness, honor, and courage in the face of suffering. Vous restez toujours dans mon coeur. iii Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have a number of wonderful people to thank for their contribution to the completion of this project, particularly my committee, whom I have dubbed the “Dream Team.” I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to my chair, Dr. Charles J. Maland, for initially sparking my interest in the tensions between democracy and capitalism in America in a course he offered on literature and film of the Great Depression and for being most generous with his knowledge, his time, and his encouragement. I would also like to thank him for giving me the opportunity to teach Introduction to Cinema Studies, an experience I have found invaluable. The example Dr. Maland has set as a scholar, a teacher, and a person is inspiring to me. I would also like to thank Dr. Mary E. Papke for her guidance and advice throughout my time in the program, for her willingness to join the committee despite her many obligations, for her expert insight and editing, and for her encouragement and enthusiasm about my project, all of which were invaluable to me. My father passed away when I had barely begun this project, and without the kindness and support Dr. Maland and Dr. Papke showed to me during that difficult time, completing it would not have been possible. Dr. Christine Holmlund was also an invaluable resource to me with her expertise in Cinema Studies, her insightful comments, her encouragement, and her enthusiasm for Westerns, and I am most grateful for her service on my committee. I would also like to thank Dr. Lisi Schoenbach whose insights helped me to focus my proposal into a more coherent argument. For her service on my committee and her encouragement, I am thankful. I also iv thank Dr. B. J. Leggett for serving on my committee until his retirement. His love of Westerns and his enthusiasm for my project encouraged my confidence in the project. Other members of the English Department have provided advice and guidance to me during my graduate career. I would especially like to thank Dr. Bill Larsen for serving as my mentor to teach Introduction to Cinema Studies. His vast teaching experience and his unflagging encouragement, in spite of my initial inability to lecture for a full fifty- minute class period, were invaluable to me, but I am especially grateful for his incredible kindness to me and for his shouldering of an unequal share of the workload during my father’s illness. I would also like to thank Dr. Misty Anderson, our Director of Graduate Studies in English, for helping me to obtain the financial resources that allowed me to finish the program. I also thank Dr. Stan Garner, Dr. Rob Stillman, and Dr. Mary Jo Reiff, for offering inspiring courses and valuable advice. Georgia Caver was kind enough to employ me in the Thornton Center writing lab, and I found her to be the most engaging and understanding of supervisors. It was a pleasure to work for her. I am also most grateful for my friends in the department and in Knoxville who made life fun and made the stress bearable. Thanks to Michael and Elizabeth Modarelli for so cheerfully and generously accepting me as their third wheel, for many delicious meals, for lazy summer afternoons by the pool, and, of course, for cat sitting. Thanks to Susan and David North, David Haynes, and Anne Snellen for giving me a place that feels like home every Sunday night at Supper Club. I especially appreciate Susan’s willingness to read and comment on my writing and to help me flesh out ideas, but most of all, for being my friend. Thanks to Mary Ruth Marotte, Brandon Costello, Amy White, and April v Kilinski, all of whom encouraged me and commiserated with me as we went through the PhD program, and I hope I did the same for them. I am most grateful to my family for everything they have done for me. I have depended on their patience, encouragement, and love as I completed the program. Whether I needed to ruminate, complain, cry, or borrow money, they were there for me. My mother’s love and her belief in me have kept me going. It means the world to me to hear her say how proud she is of me for achieving this long-desired goal. My brother is my best friend, for whom I am every day thankful. He refused to allow me to entertain the idea of not completing this project even in the worst of times, and his advice and encouragement were always mine when I needed them. His generosity to me and others is a continual source of inspiration to me. vi Abstract In “Democracy and Capitalism in the American Western,” I argue that the Western consistently dramatizes the tensions between democracy and capitalism while revealing the cultural structure of feeling at the time of its production. Since the first modern Western, Wister’s The Virginian (1902), the genre has expressed a concern that the balance between democracy and capitalism has been upset and that this imbalance has engendered or exacerbated other social problems. The genre generally worked to promote consensus about progress until the breakdown of the liberal consensus in the 1960s, when Americans’ belief in progress was shaken, resulting, in turn, in a shift in the Western to highlighting and critiquing the darker motivations and results of American progress. In Chapter One, “‘The Code of the West’: Democracy, Capitalism, and the American Hero,’” I argue that, though classic Westerns share a basic faith in America’s progress, they also reveal contemporary tensions between democracy and capitalism. As the Western evolved into a medium of cultural criticism, it openly recognized greed as a major motivating factor in the settlement of the West, which I argue in Chapter Two, “‘Riding off into the Sunrise’: The Revision of the Western.’” In Chapter Three, “‘No Longer a Poor Man’s Country’: The Anti-incorporation Western in Post-consensus America,’” I build on Alan Trachtenberg’s The Incorporation of America to argue that many Westerns produced since 1980 can be called Anti-incorporation Westerns because they reveal the settlement of the West as a Civil War of Incorporation rather than as the triumphal achievement of America’s manifest destiny. The West these works depict vii belies the morally self-aggrandizing American narrative of the settlement of the West. Rather, the spirit informing the Anti-incorporation Western’s west is an implacable mercenary spirit. Westerns so effectively interrogate both the tensions between democracy and capitalism and the structure of feeling because the time and space displacement of the Western setting provides a vehicle for writers and filmmakers to ask their audiences to consider the complexities of our traditional myths, intimately intertwined with Western history, and our current national and international situations, perhaps provoking intelligent debate and discussion.

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