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1995 Wonderland, History, and Myth: 'It Ain't All that Different than Real Life William G. Simon Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Louise Spence Sacred Heart University

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Recommended Citation Simon, William G. and Spence, Louise, "Cowboy Wonderland, History, and Myth: 'It Ain't All that Different than Real Life" (1995). School of Communication and Media Arts Faculty Publications. Paper 17. http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/media_fac/17

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Communication and Media Arts (SCMA) at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Communication and Media Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COWBOY WONDERLAND, HISTORY, AND MYTH: 'IT AIN'T ALL THAT DIFFERENT THAN REAL LIFE' WILLIAM G. SIMON andLOUISE SPENCE

"If I wasn't real," said Alice?half tries' myths, the film focuses on the dis laughing through her tears, it all junction between what it sees as historical seemed so ridiculous?"I shouldn't events and the representation of those be able to cry." events in the signs and symbols associated with our national culture, the language of "I hope you don't suppose those are national [belonging. real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt. the ?Through Looking Glass Employing theWild West Show as a late nineteenth-centuryprototype for the com and the Indians, or Sitting plex of popular entertainment forms that Bull's Lesson was Robert Alt History take their source fromwestern historical man's bicentennial film. Released for the materials, Buffalo Bill and the Indians Fourth of weekend in 1976, the film July dramatizes the creative acts of transmuta examines the both as a national tion and linkage as history is transfigured myth and as a commercial entertainment into the myths that bind our imagined form; indeed, one might see the film's community, the Nation (Anderson 15).1 project as an expos? of the ideological As such, the film carries out one of the functioning of thewestern, itswhite male central strategies thatRichard Slotkin has hero, and the Native American in nearly since suggested for undermining the ideo 100 years of American popular culture. logical power of western myth-making: it The film stars Paul Newman in the role of demystifies the myth-making process by the and de William F. Cody, famous Indian scout and rehistoricizing mythic subject an account the buffalo hunter, who, at the time of the tailing of myth-making Fatal Environment story, is co-owner and star of a part enterprise (The 20). , part-circus, part-melodrama travel ing spectacle known as Buffalo Bill's Wild Focusing on the processes throughwhich West. Seizing upon Buffalo Bill's Wild the myth of the western hero has been West as a crucial moment in the historical constructed, the film questions themoral process through which experience is authority of the hero and the conse transformed into the entertainment indus quences forNative Americans of western literature, art, drama, and film. Buffalo William G. Simon is chair of the Department of Bill and the Indians, a "historiographie Cinema Studies at theTisch School of theArts metafiction" (Hutcheon ix-x, 5-6), con at New York He teaches a University. regularly fronts us with the politics of history and course entitled 'The Myth of the Last West the politics of historical ern/' Louise Spence teaches media studies at representation and Sacred Heart University. She is co-authoring a suggests that the story of the Ameri book on Oscar Micheaux for Rutgers Univer can West is less a tale of civilization, Press. sity progress, heroic action, and triumph than Copyright? 1995 by W. G. Simon and L. one of oppression, displacement, exclu Spence sion, and defeat.

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Buffalo Bill flaunts the headdress of his Indian ancestry in theWild West Show arena, in Buffalo Bill and the Indians. Copyright 1976 United Artists Corporation.

The action of the film takes place between quickly (Frantz 122). Nor was he an ex 1885, when joined Buffalo ceptional scout or hunter (Buscombe 91, Bill's Wild West, and 1890,when Sitting 239). But his show set a pattern that has Bull was killed at Standing Rock, also the been an enormous influence on the por year the census reports said that there trayal of thewestern hero. were no longer any vast tracts of land remaining forAmerican settlement (Lim The 'Real' Versus the erick 21)2 and just a few years before Mythic Frederick Jackson Turner would proclaim In 1922,Eugene Manlove Rhodes, a New the close of "the frontier" (Cronon, Mexico cowboy and writer of western Miles, and Gitlin 14).3 The film is set in a tales, claimed Cody's show was responsi period of historical transitionduring which ble for the major misconceptions about new symbolic representations are emerg cowboys and the West (Taylor 67).4 In ing?and Buffalo Bill realizes thatboth the Buffalo Bill's Wild West, the cowboy (ac Indians and the buffalo on which his leg tually still a hired hand on horseback) was end was based are vanishing. part of a national morality play: sharp Inmany ways?since he followed Kit Car shooting, trickriding, leaping fromgallop son and outlived George Custer and Wild inghorses to save numerous virgins riding Bill Hickok?Bill Cody was the last per in "the authentic Deadwood stage" from sonification of western heroism (Stek attacks by painted savages. "The real" messer 253). Cody himself was not much seems to have been an important part of of a cowboy; he triedworking cattle for the appeal of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, as six weeks or so in 1877 but left pretty audiences across America and Europe got

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions to see real Indians, real cowboys, and the added. A male voice declaims a second real celebrity, Buffalo Bill. As an 1892 account of what we are going to see: article in the London Evening News and "Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to Post put it, "We hear a great deal about experience not a show for entertainment," realism on the stage, where a working but "a revue of down-to-earth events that model of a Westend drawing room is made theAmerican frontier." Further in hailed as a triumphof art, but the Buffalo creasing the level of dissonance, the Bill show is somethingmore than realism voice-over makes claims for a serious his ?it is reality" (Blackstone). torical project that seems at odds with the language of the previous title.The familiar Bill and the or Buffalo Indians, Sitting side-show barker form of address contra Bull's Lesson History is concerned pre dicts both the denial of the entertainment with such effects of cisely interrogating mode and the apparent seriousness of the "the real." Consider the film's . . opening narration's historical claim (". real sequence: before the first is even image events enacted by men and women of the seen, a is heard. as a cavalry bugle Then, "). second bugle call is played, the film's first image shows an American flag being As the voice-over continues, intoning the raised over a western fortress. As the motifs of civilization and savagery, camera tilts up with the to snow flag progress, and nationhood,6 the voice-over covered mountains, the names of the seems to generate the images. Immedi film's backers De Laurentiis and (Dino ately after the voice extols the virtues of David Susskind) are in let superimposed "anonymous settlers," the camera pulls tering that imitates the serifed heavily back to reveal a frontier familyworking and ornamental embellishments typescript outside a cabin. Right after it refers to the of theater programs. nineteenth-century settlers' need to survive the "savage in The wind howls in the The background. stincts of man," a band of marauding calls, fortress, mountains, and bugle flag, Indians ride in, attacking the family and wind invoke a familiar and conven highly abducting a young white woman. tionalized motif: the wilderness fort, at the of the frontier,main poised edge While apparently proposing an authorial tained the in the name ofAmer by cavalry statement of the film's intentand concep ican nationhood. tion, the voice itself lacks authority. It is an older man's voice with a hint of While a third bugle call is heard and the raspy and a touch of camera pans left across the mountain hyperbole rhymingoratory; it lacks the conviction necessary for its vista, a playful title appears announcing words to be taken as an authorial "'s Unique and Heroic En paratext. Its status also seems in with terprise of Inimitable Lustre." Thus, a competition the film's and ostensible dissonance of discourses is already sug public "author," Robert Altman, identified in comic gested. The humorously self-conscious just show-biz tones. Soon after, the voice will, show-business hype of the title is at odds in fact, be as that of the old with the traditional archetypal western specified soldier, a habitual a view in the image. The title names the crusty, mythologizer, role that undermines his status film's director and proclaims what we are definitely as a reliable authorial voice. about to see in hyperbolic and archaic language, resonant of the exaggeration of On the soundtrack, over the advertising promotion, indeed, wording shouting, neighing, and of the Indian at that recalls Buffalo Bill's own posters.5 whooping tack, a brass band begins to play a new, As the camera continues to traverse the upbeat theme redolent of circus music. western horizon, another discourse is The cast list rolls over the scene, once

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions again indulging in self-referentialhumor as ated" him, to have discovered and named itbills the cast not by character names but him Buffalo Bill. The introduction of two by functional identities in theWild West initiating legends provokes us to question Show (the Star, the Producer, the Publi the veracity of both, however. Because cist, theLegend Maker, and so forth).The both men claim to have been the origina clash of the two seemingly opposing im tors, they call attention to the arbitrariness pulses continues: the potential straightfor and instability of the legend-building pro wardness of the historical enactment is cess. (The first storyteller has confessed sharply attenuated by the interference of he had some plots that needed a hero.) the self-referentialhumor of themusic and the cast billing. A Star Portraying a Star This attenuation is furtherextended as the cast list ends and an unidentified voice Before we actually see themovie starwho shouts, "Cease the action!" followed al plays Buffalo Bill, we hear several people most a second unidentified immediately by speaking about the character and see mul voice "From the commanding, beginning, tiple representations of him. A cameo of one, two ..." At this the action of point, Bill adorns the sign that identifieshis show the settlers and Indians does sug stop, grounds. His nephew addresses a likeness that a rehearsal has been gesting taking of Bill painted on a canvas partition in the This is confirmed as the crew cred place. Wild West's headquarters. Margaret, its to roll and the camera begin slowly Bill's mezzo-contralto paramour, sings a back to show a wide view of an arena pulls salute to another portrait, a painting of Bill and behind-the-scenes activities. But is it heroically mounted on a rearing white a rehearsal for a show nineteenth-century horse that dominates his private quarters. or for Altman's bicentennial film? The The camera remains on his image as Mar film's titles end on a new one, a opening garet leaves the frame. When we finally one, a forBuffalo Bill's Wild diegetic sign see the "real" Buffalo Bill, 13 minutes West, and we hear that one of the actors into the film, it is only after he has been has been but, of course, we really injured; announced, "William F. Cody: Buffalo know thatwhat we see is not real blood Bill . . . "; it is another teaser, his portrait for, after we have seen the titles all, just on a drum head being beaten by a mallet, us a telling that this is movie. and then he's one of several characters in an extreme shot. This is the The next scene begins in a crowded inte long hardly way we to be introduced to a hero rior. A voice speaks about finding a expect or a star. scrawny kid sleeping under a wagon, but as the camera slowly zooms in closer, we are realize that this is not another voice-over Images of Buffalo Bill everywhere in theWild West, and Bill is often shown narrator but a man on screen telling how his in and he created a legend: "So I tell the kid, contemplating image portraits mirrors as if to evaluate whether he mea from now on your name is Buffalo Bill." sures up. At other times, he assumes the The film cuts immediately to another man, poses the idealized icons, a scraggly old soldier (whose voice is suggested by his arm across his retroactively recognizable as the narrator heroically clasping chest, with his hand on his shoulder, as he of the settlers and Indians act) telling a stares off into He seems to be taken story to a small group ofNative American space. in his own a consumer of his women and children: "I was so impressed by legend, that I nicknamed him Buffalo Bill." own image.

Before we even see the central character During many of the behind-the-scenes ac of the film, two men claim to have "ere tivities (grooming, romantic entangle

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ments, rehearsals, contract negotiations, rummages through his closet exclaiming, photo sessions, the planning of specific "Goddamn it!Where's my real jacket?" acts, and so on), Bill seems to be perform This dynamic of competing discourses, ing his heroic role. At other times, how irony, and the calling into question of the ever, these poses and performances are in very status of "the real" is the basic conflict with Bill's self-serving and less aesthetic method of Buffalo Bill and the than honorable (or brave or accomplished) Indians. behavior. For example, Bill objects to the Paul Newman's as Buffalo two Native Americans, Sitting Bull and performance Bill compounds the polyvalent complexity his interpreterWilliam Halsey, standing of the character. It also adds a critical next to in a cast photo dimension to his Robert ("The fans won't like it."). He suggests representation. Altman, at a press conference and that the Indians be given slower horses; he preview of the film held inNew York City inMay is afraid of his lady friend's pet canary; 1976, said that he had wanted a movie and when he leads a group ofmen to track star, not an actor, to play Buffalo Bill down Sitting Bull, he is unable to locate 11), and in an interview him. On stage and in many of his back (Mermey during the of the film, he that stage activities, he is introduced in splen editing explained this was to secure but diferous terms, dressed in full "western" partially backing also because "stardom is part of what regalia, sometimes elaborately embroi we're about in Bill... a dered with American flags. At other times, talking Buffalo very conscious deflating of not only Buf he is hung over, in his iong-johns,without falo Bill but Paul Newman, Movie Star" his flowing blond Custer-style wig, jug (55). gling opera-singing lovers (one of whom he beset accusa disappoints sexually), by Newman told the press that symbolically tions from his wife, estranged haggling "Cody was the first star, someone who over money and contracts, and dealing became a legend but couldn't live up to it" with in an ill demanding performers (Mermey 11) and described his character manner. tempered as "a combination of Custer, Gable, Red ford, and me. In that order" {Christian Bill is numerous, of represented through Science Monitor 17 June 1976). Newman ten modes: what contrary people say acknowledged the tension he personally about what write about him, him, people feltbetween himself and his screen image: what he thinks and says about himself, "There's no way thatwhat people see on artists' blurbs, Wild images, publicists' celluloid has anything to do with me" West mirror performances, images, (Rottenberg 84). dreams, and hallucinations. By the film's end, Bill has been presented in so many In many ways, Newman's performance is ways that he himself no longer has a firm built on this tension, this inscribed con grasp on his identity.And the film's spec junction and disjunction between actor tator is left to question the representa and role. Jean-Louis Comolli suggests that tional status and signification of many of there is an inevitable "interference, even the film's scenes.7 The dissonance and rivalry," in a historical filmwhen a well disjunction between images and actions known performer plays a well-known his raise central questions about the relation torical figure (44), that there is a "double ships between reality and spectacle, iden affirmation," an "improbable conjunction tity and performance. In a perfectly of two identities," and an "oscillating Pirandellian moment, when called upon to to-and-fro movement" in the spectator's perform an actual western piece of action, experience of character as familiar histor to go out into the wilderness and bring ical personage and character as familiar back the apparently escaped Indians, Bill movie actor (47-48).

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions In Buffalo Bill and the Indians, this ten experience. He seems to have calculated a sion includes the spectator's prescient viewing process thatwould necessarily be knowledge and prior interpretations of discursive. By choosing a twentieth Buffalo Bill gained from other textual century celebrity to play a nineteenth practices and representations. It also in century celebrity, any strategies that cludes what we know about the star who attempt to evoke historyweave a topogra plays the historical person. The Buffalo phy of potential schism. Bill of dime novels, stage melodramas, and theWild West Show, the Buffalo Bill The lack of synchrony between Paul New who impersonated himself in 15 films and man and Buffalo Bill, the appearance of was represented inmore than 30 others by players familiar from other Altman films assorted performers (MonthlyFilm Bulle (G?raldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Bert tin 43.10 [Oct. 1976],8 is now played by Remsen), and themany references to "the someone we know even better, Paul New real" all function to subvert the film's man, popular anti-hero (who not long ago sense of illusion, drawing us away from had been , Rocky Graziano, the story toward the way it is presented. , and Judge ), a There is a certain irony in the film's care noted political activist, supporter of liberal fully controlled colors, reminiscent of and environmental causes.9 nineteenth-century lithographs; the cast ingof a Native American, Frank Kaquitts, Newman, unlike a lesser-known actor, a tribal chief with a striking resemblance brings a constellation of intertextual cues to photographs of Chief Sitting Bull; the to his role. A key one is his persona as publicitymaterial mimicking the rhetorical someone who is outside the Hollywood style and flourishes of period handbills; system, a self-proclaimed easterner who the sepia-toned portraits of the cast, rem defines himself at a distance from the iniscent of nineteenth-century tintypes Hollywood apparatus. This allows him to (Henry), evoking authenticity while the play at being a star in this performance film's casting and performance style un with a certain ironic detachment, an dermine any fictional coherence and its awareness of playing the role of someone approach to history casts suspicion on the playing a role. very possibility of "accuracy." In Buffalo Bill and the Indians, a film .ctboutfictive The film foregrounds the double affirma illusion, we are never able to become tion and interference that Comolli at submerged in any illusion or any fiction. tributes to any historical film by self The film constantly questions what reality consciously frolicking with multiple is by declaring itsown artifice as well as its superimpositions of stardom: Paul New own confusion. When Sitting Bull arrives man, movie star, performing the role of at theWild West, Buffalo Bill assures him William F. Cody, performing the star role thathe will like show business, "It ain't all of Buffalo Bill. Newman is at a sufficient thatmuch different than real life" (Kopit distance from his character that he is able 4(M5).10 to inscribe an ironic dimension consistent with and central to the film's project. The hyperbolic self-consciousness of the per The Quiet Gravity of Buntline, formance helps to keep us aware of Buf theQuiet Dignity of Sitting Bull falo Bill as a constructed image. It diffuses the character, making him, simulta The inclusion within the film's cast of neously, character and representation of characters of the historical figure Ned character. In the casting of Buffalo Bill, Buntline, the pulp author who "discov Altman seems to have wanted this extra ered," developed, and promoted Buffalo load of reference inscribed in the film Bill, serves as another means of highlight

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ing the degree to which Buffalo Bill is a Buntline is played with quiet gravity by constructed myth. The gently aging Bunt , at the time the film's only line, identifiedas the Legend Maker in a well-known star other thanPaul Newman. separate line in the film's opening titles, Lancaster combines the pedigree of his plays the role of debunker, constantly long career in Hollywood as an action reminding characters in the film and spec star, including numerous roles in west tators in the audience of the fictional na erns, with the reflective intellectual per ture of Buffalo Bill: "No ordinary man sona Luchino Visconti created for him in would have had the foresight to take credit his middle and later years. In sharp con for acts of bravery and heroism that he trast to the performance style of Buffalo couldn'ta done. And no ordinary man Bill's show-business acolytes, who are could realize what tremendous profits always skittering about and speaking in could be made by telling a pack of lies." empty show-biz double talk ("In enlarging the show, we may have disimproved it"), Buntline also illuminates some of the con Lancaster is given almost sculpturesque tradictions in Bill's status as show authority; he is almost always static and business star and points out Bill's speaks with concern for the politics and imperfections: his drinking, his lack of poetics of his words. (For example, ex wilderness skills, and so on. Buntline's plaining why the army would be willing to commentaries, delivered in the bar room, transfer the captive Sitting Bull to the are frequently edited into the film so that Wild West, Buntline says, "They can't they function as voice-overs, ironically shoot him. Not till they get those framing Bill's performances both in the treaties signed. So they put him in a wild arena and with his admiring entourage. west show. A rock ain't a rock once it Buntline's dialogue plays against the he becomes gravel.") roic image of Bill that the Wild West strives to project, rehistoricizing the Buntline is specifically contrasted with mythic subject and undermining Bill's he rival dime novelist Prentiss Ingraham roic posturing by reminding us how his (played by the lesser-known Allan image has been constructed and how that Nicholls) in his vocabulary, his physical image, as Walter Benjamin said of history, stature, and his penetrating understanding is "filled by the presence of the now" of Buffalo Bill's enterprise. Toward the (261)11 and serves the values and aspira end of the film, just before the climactic tions of our national culture. This under scenes, Buntline and Bill meet in the bar standing is represented as a threat to the and reflect on their time together ("The Wild West's functioning, and several of thrillof my life to have invented you!"). the characters voice concern thatBuntline Bill assures him that he'd like to have him is on the premises. back with the show, "except that frankly, Nate can't stand the sight of you," and Significantly,Buntline is given special au Buntline rides off into the night as if to thorial weight in the film. He is contem signify the final passing of an era.12 plative, distant, physically removed from and resistant to the show-biz ethos woven Buntline and the battery of other legend by theWild West's illusion-making pro making characters in the film (the old cess. What he says tends to be confirmed soldier; Bill's partner, Nate Salsbury; by the ways in which Bill and the other Prentiss Ingraham; "the Publicist" Major characters behave. Consequently, the Burke; Bill's adoring nephew; andWilliam character can be understood as a spokes F. Cody himself) relate to a significant man for the film's authorial perspective, motif in many post-World War II west for its overall attitude toward the film's erns: the inscriptionwithin the film of the subjects. western myth-making process itself,either

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions by the inclusion of a journalist or novelist liberal humanist notion of "truth." Buf within the film's story (such as The Left falo Bill's Wild West representations, and Handed Gun [ArthurPenn, 1958] and The by extension our nation's popular memory Shootist [Don Siegel, 1976]) or by the of theWest, are reciprocally defined as self-conscious acknowledgment of popu distortions, as molding "truth" to the in lar culture's perpetuation of the falsifica terests of the myth-making business and tion of historical accuracy (the "print the the ideology of nationhood. After Bill fires legend" motif in, for example, John the Chief for suggesting an enactment in Ford's Fort [1948] and The Man which soldiers slaughter every man, Who Shot Liberty Valence [1962]). woman, child, and dog in the village on Killdear Mountain, Annie Oakley informs The presence of so many of these figures Bill that Sitting Bull "wanted to show the inBuffalo Bill and the Indians attests to truth to the people. Why can't you accept the importance of myth-making as a cen that, just once?" Bill replies angrily, "Be tral subject of the film.Moreover, there is cause I have a better sense of history than a significant oppositional dichotomy be that!" tween these characters and Buntline. Whereas it is the job of the employees of The comparison of Buffalo Bill and Sitting the Wild West to enhance and bolster Bull is elaborated on several levels. For Buffalo Bill's image, Buntline exposes the instance, Sitting Bull does not conform to circumstances and nature of their opera the popular notion of the physical pres tion. The inclusion within the film of both ence of a star persona. He is tiny and myth-making and its d?mystification sug retiring in nature (Sarris 108).14When he gests the degree to which disparate and firstarrives in theWild West, virtually the contradictory proposals of fact, story, im entire cast and crew (except Annie and age, and the contestation of narrative au Ned Buntline, who already know him) thority are at the center of Altman's mistake his huge spokesman, William Hal narrative method. sey (who has the physical stature and bearing expected of a star), for the Chief. Of all the strategies the film deploys to Not only does Sitting Bull not conform to interrogate and criticize the authority of the appearance of a star ("Golly, it's the Buffalo Bill as western hero, the strongest runt!"), he refuses to perform the star act. is his systematic comparison with Sitting While Bill wants him to reenact theWild Bull. This oppositional structure, the con West's conception of his dramatic role in tinuous "duel" between Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Buffalo Bill, is firstposed by the film's two Bull insists instead on performing a mod titles. est horse act, "making the big grey dance," which theWild West's audience Buffalo Bill and the Indians is the show initially jeers in disappointment but soon biz titledesigned for the theatermarquee. cheers for its grace and simplicity. This It grabs the ticket buyer's attention by act is strikingly different from Buffalo highlighting the film's famous hero and, Bill's heroic horse riding. not coincidentally, reduces his antagonist to a racial category.13 The alternative title, Crucial to the contrast is the comparison Sitting Bulls History Lesson, personal of their respective wilderness skills, a cen izes and individualizes the antagonist and tral criterion for the evaluation of a west associates him with the pedagogical, the ern hero (Cawelti 40; Slotkin, The Fatal teaching and learning of history, defined in Environment 374-75). For example, Sit the film as what really happened. Sitting ting Bull laughs as he fires Buffalo Bill's Bull is essentialized as the real's unprob pistol and discovers it is loaded with buck lematic presence, the representative of the shot instead of bullets. (Halsey says, "Sit

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tingBull thinksyou are a greatmarksman. portrayed as moving, fragile, and poi He can see how you killed so many of his gnant, a "mute victim condemned to the buffalo!") When Sitting Bull decides to loss of pastoral innocence," which, as establish his camp on the ridge across the Stephen Greenblatt suggests, is one of the river from the arena, a river thatmembers central prototypes of Native American of Bill's troop assure him is impassable representation.William Halsey, identified ("We've already lost three horses, six in the opening credits as "The Interpret Blackfeet Indians, and a barge load of er," speaks for the Chief. His language is show equipment valued at . . . "), the measured; he chooses his words carefully Chief and his companions easily cross to and absolutely to the point. Although the the other side. And, most important,when film's representation ofNative Americans Bill is called upon to perform the kind of is a variation of theNoble Savage theme, action upon which his legend was built? the "argument" between Buffalo Bill and gathering a posse of the best men in his Sitting Bull privileges the Native Ameri company to go after Sitting Bull and his can perspective. The effect of the ex companions after they have taken off to tended comparison is to critically parody themountains?Bill goes out into thewil Bill, to expose the gap between his image derness accompanied by a musical fanfare and his reality. and, even though the Indians were in sight On the story level, their duel is best un when they set out, returns empty-handed, derstood as Bill's attempt to colonize Sit his bedraggled posse betraying his men's ting Bull. Buffalo Bill's possessive, like utter inability to carry out the simple his portrait, is stamped on everything in tracking task. Sitting Bull and Halsey re the show (banners, drums, tents, props, turn to theWild West of their own voli press box). The first time we hear his tion, explaining that they had not tried to voice, he is saying that "anything"?later elude their pursuers but were simply vis corrected to "everything"?historical is iting the sun in themountains as they do his. Sitting Bull rejects having the posses each month during the day of the first sive applied to him. Bill continually tries moon. to conquer Bull by bending him to the Another significant area of comparison Wild West's image, and Bull consistently between Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull is refuses to be co-opted. During the dream their respective use of language. Bill and sequence near the end of the film,Bill tries the other members of the troop speak in to convince Bull of the na?vet? of his hyperbolic, empty show-business lan outlook with a logic that betrays his self guage that varies from producer Nate interest: "In one hundred years, I'm still Salsbury's malapropisms ("We just signed gonna be Buffalo Bill, star! And you're themost futurable act in our history" and gonna be the Indian." Buffalo Bill's legit "Gentlemen, I don't think that it's dispro imacy?and financial gain?are premised priate to play a personal chord here") to on the construction of natives as degraded press agent Colonel John Burke's flam and dangerous Other. Sitting Bull's refusal boyant alliteration ("Buffalo Bill, Mon to play that part?indeed, themetaphysi arch of theWest, itdelights me to present cal clarity of his existence?is a transgres this compellingly cornucopious canary, sion against the image of Buffalo Bill and this curvaceous cadenza in the compen the frontiermyth. dium of classical chanson"). The Wild West's language ismarked by its elaborate Illusion and in the introductions, celebratory extravagance, Reality Arena of Bad Dreams and double-dealing.

Sitting Bull, by contrast, gains immeasur Bill's dream sequence, along with the final able dignity simply by not speaking. He is Wild West performance, raises on the

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions diegetic level some of the questions pro tion, correspondences, and nostalgia, and, voked by the storytellingat the beginning. like Alice, he struggles for an identity. That is, the of illusion and real in a of the heroic as an ideal questions Caught tangle " ity raised by the way the story is told at and the hero as "good fellow" or e very the beginning of the film become part of man," he is perplexed about his own Bill's own confusion at the end, the arena image. He must be right, or why (he says, of bad dreams where the characters them with an accusatory glance toward the cam selves cannot distinguish between story era) would people have taken him for a and storytelling. king? "God meant me to be white," his voice wanders off, "God meant me to be Justbefore the dream sequence, the report white and it ain't easy. I've got people of Sitting Bull's death circulates around with no lives living throughme." He feels the arena. Everyone is afraid to tell Bill. he has to give his fans what they expect As ifto verify the story, the camera leaves and he tells Sitting Bull, "You can't live theWild West for the first time for a long up towhat you expect and thatmakes you and eerie zoom in on a burnt-out campfire; more make-believe than me because you Sitting Bull's wooden cross and string of don't even know ifyou're bluffing." beads are recognizable on the circle of stones (his remnants as relics, fit for a The dream posits difference as a prior museum) and "naturalistic" bird (hawks, condition of identitybut at the same time crows, ravens), animal (buffalo?), and challenges the assumed superiority of the wind sounds are on the soundtrack. The white man's power and cultural domi sounds of nature merge with a creaking nance. Buffalo Bill explains to Sitting Bull, noise as the film cuts to Bill asleep in his with a reasoning that reveals his insecu tent. He seems to wake up, but the long rity, that "the difference between the shot also has a supernatural quality. These white man and the Indian in all situations are two of the few sequences in the film is that the Injun is red, and the Injun is red that do not have music or overlapping for a real good reason, so we can tell us dialogue. Could itbe a dream? Or is it an apart!" ongoing nightmare? In the eight-minute sequence, unmarked by any specific tem In the dream, there is a preoccupation poral cues, Bill wanders about theMay with what thingsmean, yet the speech and flower, his headquarters and living space, the editing often provoke us to question drinking, rummaging throughmementos, the security of meaning: the relation be looking in the mirror, contemplating his tween word and referent and, in a larger life, speaking to and searching for a silent sense, the relation between image and and often invisible Sitting Bull, the phan referent are often unclear. Different and tom Other. dissonant logic systems play, diverge, and compete. Time and sequence are in abey Sitting Bull's appearance and disappear ance. Did he kill thatbuffalo when he was ance through themagic of editing create a 9 or when he was 11?He tells Sitting Bull, visual uncertainty thatparallels Bill's own "You want to stay the same; well, that's crisis of focalization. The dream itself is a going backwards." Recollection and nar soliloquy of confusion in which Buffalo rative requirements are confused. In Bill's Bill questions betrayal and self-deception dream, Custer did the Indians a favor by and the part both have played in the giving them a reason to be famous. Bill creation of his legend and stardom. In renegotiates history, disrupting sentiment trying to make sense of his life and his and nostalgia; past events and past desires tory, his legend begins to unravel. Like are recognized for their use-value, their Alice in Wonderland, Bill is in an un ability to be transferred into real rewards. known world full of ominous confronta Bill's virulent self-defense is both a ques

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tioning of and an attempt at protecting his warriors face off to a dramatic drum roll; fragile identity.He wonders whether his they dismount, then wrestle briefly. Bill "self can ever live up to his "perfor easily pushes Halsey over and, with the mance": "My Daddy died without ever enthusiastic approval of the crowd, trium seeing me as a star?tall, profitable, good phantly brandishes his knife and "The looking." Bill looks at his portrait: "My Chiefs" ornate headdress in the air.With God, ain't he riding that horse right?" The Halsey's performance of the act, the hon switching between first person and third orable, wise, proud, noble, moral "savag complicates any notion of unitarymeaning es" have irretrievablydisappeared. or centered subjectivity. At the same time, it inscribes and destabilizes both the sub The camera's authorial zoom in to an ject and the narrative.15 extreme close-up of Bill in the next to final shot of the film seems to reveal both joy This confusion about history, spectacle, and terror in his eyes; the emotions at illusion, and real life is part of the story, tached to triumph, already soured, are the storytelling,and the spectatorial activ charged with both longing and melan ity: a superimposition of belief and disbe choly. The last western hero and the first lief. Bill's problem with his identity is western star seems to understand his associated with his estrangement from his part in the construction of a genre, as he image, a bit likeAlice thinkingof sending finally gets to "scalp" "Sitting Bull," her feet a pair of shoes for Christmas. In once again enacting the idealized moral his muddle, Bill questions Sitting Bull's violence that had become so marketable. image: it's not right, so Bull can't be real. A cut to a long shot of theWild West from He declares thatHalsey doesn't mean a behind the arena breaks the spell of the word he says; "that's why he sounds so star's magical sway. The end credits begin real." In Bill's enterprise, fiction engen to roll as the camera pulls back until the ders truth; as Nate had declared earlier, arena and encampment are very small, a they are in the "authenticity business." lone outpost in a wilderness, and we see Buntline, however, admits theWild West the beautiful mountains once again in the is just "dreamin' out loud." background.

The reverie evaporates (or does it?) as the How are we to understand this scene? sound of the final scene of the film over What is its narrative and representational laps a tight, frontal close-up of Sitting status? Is it to be taken as a depiction of Bull, a shot so emphatic that it seems to be Buffalo Bill's subjectivity, his obsession an authorial assertion of his posthumous with Bull, a continuation of the dream power: "Ladies and Gentlemen ..." sequence? Or does it escape the charac Buffalo Bill is once again in performance, ter's perspective and function on a differ engaging in "the Challenge of the Fu ent level? ture," fighting the great Chief Sitting Bull (in lowered tones), "played by William To a certain degree, the scene can be Halsey . . . staged with spectacular real taken as a representation of Buffalo Bill's ism." Out rides Halsey dressed in battle interests and desires: Custer's Last Stand regalia (bare-chested, in war bonnet and is performed in theWild West as he had war paint); the curtain parts again and out wished, with Bill standing in for Custer rides Buffalo Bill with smiling bravado to and Halsey replacing Sitting Bull?and the tune of his by now familiarWild West with the outcome of the battle remedied. theme song. As the curtain parts, we see Buffalo Bill's identitywith Custer is sug the purple mountains in the distance and gested early in the film by his makeup, the anemic mountains crudely painted on costume, beard, and long blond wig the backdrop in the foreground. The two ("Someday it will be as long as

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Custer's"). He had tried before to con In addition, the myth gains special reso vince Sitting Bull to perform "his Custer nance from its two principal protagonists. act" and had even demonstrated the sce Custer is a contradictory figure, admired nario in a mocking travesty of Little Big as a tragic hero in conservative interpre horn in which the smallest actor in the tations and as a blatant villain by others. Wild West played Custer, his too-large Sitting Bull has been traditionally por coat, vest, and hat and his obviously fake trayed as a potent example of the "great wig and beard mocking the hero's image antagonist," the Indian who sees clearly (Kopit 4)16, and an African-American that "the advance of the whites means played "the heroic villain" ("Oh, Chief, doom for Indians' power and even their we got a colored stand in place for you existence" (Slotkin, The Fatal Environ 'cause he's the closest thingon our staffto ment 101). It is his bridging of the a real Indian."). Sitting Bull refuses to two cultures, especially his learning polit perform the act; Halsey, speaking forhim, ical conspiracy and corruption from notes simply, "Sitting Bull says the battle whites, thatmakes the "great antagonist" did not happen thatway." a danger.17 Understood in these terms, this scene The final scene of Buffalo Bill and the could be seen as a representation of Buf Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson falo Bill's fantasy, his desire to "possess" could, then, be understood as a represen Sitting Bull. Unlike the dream sequence, tation of an event that has played an however, there are no visual or aural cues extensive and role in to mark this scene as Buffalo Bill's con highly significant western symbolic conceptualization. It is sciousness. Understanding it as merely a one more version of the Last Stand myth. projection of Bill's desires is a limited What can we say about this particular reading. version? Most obviously, that it is ironic; It might be more fruitful to think of the it rewrites history, reversing what we final scene inmetaphoric symbolic terms, know to have been the outcome of the as representing a highly significant and battle.18 As an example of catachresis ironic statement on the nature of historical (literally, "misuse"), which Hayden and racial representation in the western. White describes as a "manifestly absurd Don Russell claims that the Battle of the Metaphor designed to inspire Ironic sec Little Bighorn is the most frequently de ond thoughts about the nature of the thing picted event inAmerican history (Custer's characterized," itaffirms tacitly "the neg Last 3). Slotkin argues thatCuster's Last ative ofwhat is on the literal level affirmed Stand is one of the central metaphors of positively" (Metahistory 37): Sitting the frontiermyth (The Fatal Environment Bull is easily and ignominiously defeated, 32). Its importance lies in the ways the and Custer/Buffalo Bill is heroically legend encapsulates a conception of triumphant. American history as a heroic-scale Indian battle with "progress achieved through The sequence's status as the film's closure regenerative wars of extermination against is highly ambivalent; it is even more tem a primitive racial enemy" (The Fatal En porally unstable than the dream sequence. vironment All). Because Custer was killed With no clues to place it clearly as the in the battle and his cavalry company representation of a unique or specific ac wiped out by the Sioux, the Last Stand tion within a causal chain of narrative myth has attained a special status from the events, it seems more iterative in nature. threat that, as Slotkin puts it, "the race Itmay be helpful to think of the scene as war might really end up in victory for representing not only Buffalo Bill's fan savage darkness" (The Fatal Environment tasy of theCuster act but also the continu 411). ingway that theLast Stand myth, and, on

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a more metaphoric level, the relations of A white man and Native American, have cknowledgments been represented in thewestern over the Parts of this essay were presented in Talla course of most of the twentieth century. hassee in January 1993 at the Florida State The of a collective national representation University Conference on Literature and Film. fantasy, a "social imaginary," it triumphs We are indebtedto Christopher Sharrett for his even though everything we have seen in response and to Jim Diverio for his identifica tion of the bird calls. the filmup to this point denies itsvalidity. As a synecdoche for the western as na tional myth, this "closure" points to the the future of a Ameri future, particularly Notes can mode of entertainment.19 1 The film interrogates the logical system of Benedict Anderson points out that "mem bers of even the smallest nation will never know narrative that permeates most causality most of their fellow-members ... in the film and the yet Hollywood challenges image midst of each lives the image of their commun of the hero in thewestern, where conflicts ion." It is "the style in which they are imag are usually resolved through the actions ined" that distinguishes communities. As an and effectiveness of the movie's star. If exploration of the relations between the enter tainment industries' heros and the social con the classic Hollywood western builds a struct "America," Buffalo Bill and the Indians coherent and authentic narrative world, might be seen as an extension of the ideological Altman's film deploys ambiguity, contra projectof Altman's 1975film, Nashville. 2 diction, and interference to destabilize Revisionist historians have problematized these conventions. It as a the criteria, cultural themes, and periodizations employs irony in "the West." Patricia self-criticaldiscursive to debunk and employed describing trope Nelson Limerick, for example, sees the demystify the central motifs and icons of "quaintness of the folk" and "the populariza the genre. The film's narrative structure tion of tourism" as an important indication of the of the frontier." William both problematizes and exploits the con "closing Cronon, George Miles, and JayGitlin suggest thatone vention of conclusive closure (Russell, telltale sign of the transition between "frontier" The Lives and Bill Legends of Buffalo and "region" was a feeling among the inhabit 253).20 And, if the classical Hollywood ants that they were "no longer inventing a western emphasized story so it could en world but inheritingone" (23). 3Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893address to tertain, the episodic structure of Buffalo a gathering of the American Historical Associ Bill and the Indians, or Bulls His Sitting ation at the World's Columbian Exposition tory Lesson draws our attention away would become the dominant model of western from story toward plotting and, in partic historiography for generations. Turner's expla was on ular, to how a nation and a hero have been nation of American history based the idea of "free the of built their endowed with illu land," ignoring legitimacy by histories, Native American claims to the continent. See coherence the their stories sory by way Turner and also Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin (14). have been told (White, The Content of the Interestingly, at the same time that Turner was Form ix). addressing scholars at the exhibition, Cody was performing his own interpretation of history in Self-consciously calling attention to its BuffaloBill's Wild West outside theChicago as well as the film fairgrounds. historicity fictionality, 4 Rhodes was speaking to a group of filmmak compromises the assumed correspon ers. The BFI Companion to the Western dence of to and narra history experience (Buscombe) states that William F. Cody's ex tion to event. Disrespect for the dead, as periences as an army scout were no different Sitting Bull had called history, has been from those of dozens of others (91). Richard in an extensive discussion of Buffalo transformed into a spectacle for the fu Slotkin, Bill, identifies Cody as "a minor actor on the ture,making ambiguous whether the "les stage of Western history until 1869," when he was son" of the film's second title taught was "discovered" by Ned Buntline (The Fatal by Sitting Bull or learned by him. Environment 69).

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 5 There is a slight variation: Altman declared Andrew Sams's complaint that Paul Newman his enterprise "unique," whereas Cody claimed is too short for the role of Buffalo Bill. 15 as his was "original." Linda Hutcheon describes this dynamic 6 These are the central themes scholars of one of the main projects of the poetics of western legend have long identified as its core postmodernism. 16 thematic material; see Turner and, more re In the play, Bill is less ambiguous about in the first scene "one o' cently, Henry Nash Smith, John G. Cawelti, Custer, calling him, the men in and Slotkin (The Fatal Environment). great dumbass history." 17 7 This is true of at least these white middle In the film, Sitting Bull offers tomove away from Annie in the session "for 25 aged academics. While we certainly would not Oakley photo American dollars." want to position ourselves as ideal spectators or 18As defeat as it is to suggest a monolithic response to the film, we reinterpreted victory, to this with the of the will be arguing that a simultaneous engagement interesting compare myth its historical and recent with and reflection on the spectacle is suggested Alamo, glorifications by thefilm's narrative methods and itspublicity contestations. 19 In the art house culture of the and exhibition strategies, that is, the film's text cynical 1976, and intertexts. irony and moral tone of the scene certainly 8 Included in this listare Douglas Fairbanks, suggestedthat the end of thattradition might be warranted. Roy Charlton Heston, Joel McCrea, Rogers, 20 and Michel Piccoli. Dialogue in the film discusses the narrative 9 structure of a Wild West act: "What's the More recently, spectators know him as the plot? the and devise us a nice philanthropic king of salad dressings, salsa, and String pearls together marinara sauce. littleBuffalo Bill fable, uniquely original." 10 once described one of his five-act frontier In Arthur Kopit's 1968 play Indians, which Cody melodramas as "without head or "inspired" the film, in the middle of a perfor tail," making it to start the with mance for the president of the United States possible performance any act. and the First Lady, before Buffalo Bill has a chance to rescue the virgin maiden from "tor ture, sacrifice and certain violations," he feels obliged to explain toWild Bill Hickok (who has to humiliated begun get highly impersonating Works Cited himself) that they are really doing something quite ennobling: "Ya see, Bill, what you fail to understand is that I'm not being false to what I Altman, Robert. Interview. With Bruce was. I'm simply drawing on what I Williamson. Playboy Aug. 1976: 55. was . . . and raisin' it to a level. higher (Stage Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communi direction: he takes a conscious Now. pause.) ties: on the and On with the show!" Both thefilm and theplay Reflections Origin problematize the relations between spectacle Spread ofNationalism. London: Verso, and reality by provoking a dystopian sense of 1983. distance toward both representation. Although Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philos the role western heroes have played in question ophy of History." Illuminations. New the values and aspirations of our national cul York: Schocken 1976. ture, the play comments ironically on the pos Books, sibility of progress and improvement, whereas Blackstone, Sarah J. , Bullets, the film is more an exploration of illusion and and Business: A History ofBuffalo Bill's disillusion. 11 Wild West. Westport, Conn.: Green Walter Benjamin's comments in "Theses wood, 1986. on thePhilosophy of History" that"history is ed. BFI the subject of a structure whose site is not Buscombe, Edward, Companion homogeneous, empty time,but timefilled by to theWestern. New York: Atheneum, the presence of the now." 1988. 12 the Bunt Interestingly, representation of John G. The Six-Gun linewithin the film is at odds with what we Cawelti, Mystique. : Green know about him from historical sources. By Bowling Green, Bowling idealizing him as a source of wisdom, Altman Popular P, 1975. is, in effect, mythologizing the demythologizer. Comolli, Jean-Louis. "Historical Fiction: See Smith for an account of Buntline. A Body Too Much." Screen 19.2 (Sum 13The film's title valorizes Buffalo Bill in a mer 1978): 41-53. way that Kopit's title, Indians, avoided. 14 and As an example of the pervasiveness of this Cronon, William, George Miles, Jay association of heroic stature with size, see Gitlin, eds. Under an Open Sky: Re

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This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:38:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions thinkingAmerica s Western Past. New Sarris, Andrew. "Bottom Line Buffaloes York: Norton, 1992. Altman." Village Voice 5 July 1976. Frantz, Joe B., and Julian E. Choate, Jr. Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The American Cowboy: The Myth and The Myth of theFrontier in theAge of theReality. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, Industrialization, 1800-1890. Middle 1955. town, Conn.: Wesleyan UP, 1985. Greenblatt, Stephen. "Columbus Runs -. Nation: The Myth of Aground: Christmas Eve, 1492." New the Frontier in Twentieth Century York University 29 Oct. 1992. America. New York: Atheneum, 1992. Henry, Michael. "Entretien avec Alan Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The Rudolph." Positif 192 (April 1977): 46 American West as Symbol and Myth. 53. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. Hutcheon, Linda. Poetics of Postmodern Stekmesser, Kent Ladd. The Western ism: History, Theory, Fiction. New Hero inHistory and Legend. Norman: York: Routledge, 1988. U of Oklahoma P, 1965. Kopit, Arthur. Indians. New York: Hill & Taylor, Lonn, and IngridMarr. The Amer Wang, 1969. ican Cowboy. Washington, D.C.: Li Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of brary of Congress, 1983. Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The Signifi American West. New York: Norton, cance of the Frontier inAmerican His 1987. tory." The Frontier in American Mermey, Joanna. SoHo Weekly News 6 History. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1986. May 1976. White, Hay den. The Content of theForm: Rottenberg, Dan. Magazine (July Narrative Discourse and Historical 1976). Imagination. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins Russell, Don. Custer's Last, or theBattle UP, 1989. of Little Big Horn. Fort Worth: Carter -. Metahistory: The Historical Museum, 1968. Imagination inNineteenth-Century Eu -. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo rope. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, Bill. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1960. 1973.

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