Copyright

By

Sylvia Wilson

2019

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor Dr. Suzanne Seriff and second reader Dr. Craig Campbell, as well as honors advisor Dr. James Slotta, for their support and guidance throughout the research and writing process. Special thanks to the Office of

Undergraduate Research for funding my travels to the 2019 Rattlesnake Roundup.

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The American West through

Representations of the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup

by

Sylvia Wilson, BA

The University of Texas at Austin, 2019

SUPERVISOR: Suzanne Seriff

Abstract

The Sweetwater Jaycees’ World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup includes a pageant; a carnival; community dances; guided hunts; bus tours of rattlesnake dens; a gun, coin and knife show; cook-offs; and a flea market, all in addition to the main event—the rattlesnake pits. As the rattlesnakes cycle through the coliseum, they are weighed, milked of their venom, draped over participants’ shoulders for photographs, and finally slaughtered. The Roundup is known globally for its provocative handling of rattlesnakes and resulting imagery which has positioned the event as a captivating subject for photography, film, and television. This project seeks to analyze the ways in which three media representations of the Roundup uphold, construct, and challenge myths of the

American West. First, I examine Richard Avedon’s In the American West photography series which tells a story of American isolation, hopelessness, and frightening beauty as depicted in the faces of individuals he encountered at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup.

Next, I investigate the Simpsons’ “Whacking Day” episode, which was inspired by the

Roundup in Sweetwater and uses parody to comment on issues of virility, groupthink,

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education, religion, and environmental justice in the West, and more broadly, rural, working-class America. Finally, I analyze the Miss Snake Charmer documentary, directed by Rachael Waxler and EmaLee Arroyo, as it depicts coming of age as a woman in the

American West. In primarily focusing the film on the preparatory process for the pageant, rather than competition night itself, the documentary emphasizes the ways in which girls are molded into the “ideal” Western woman. Through this work, I investigate how a single event comes to serve as a tool for artists wishing to uphold, build upon, or challenge myths of the American West. Furthermore, as myths of the American West have come to define parts of American national identity, representations of the Rattlesnake Roundup not only sustain or dispute heritage narratives of the West, but of the United States more broadly.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..v

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter One: A Western Tragedy

Richard Avedon’s In the American West.……………………………………….....7

Chapter Two: A Parody of the West

The Simpsons “Whacking Day”……………………………………………..…...20

Chapter Three: Western Womanhood

The Miss Snake Charmer Documentary………………………………………….29

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………….....44

References……………………………………………………………………………..…48

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Richard Avedon; “Boyd Fortin, Thirteen Year Old Rattlesnake Skinner,

Sweetwater, Texas, 3/10/79”; 1979; Gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of

American Art………………...……………………………………………………..…….10

Figure 2. Richard Avedon; “Rita Carl, Law Enforcement Student, Sweetwater, Texas,

3/10/79”; 1979; Gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art….….....…16

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Introduction

The land is not friendly; it breeds mesquite thorns, prickly pear cactus, and horned toads. Rugged, desert—hot, and dusty, it has to be fought, killed, conquered. Only the tough survive. Enmeshed in folklore and the cowboy mythos, rattlesnake roundups have become a contemporary rite of passage. Rattlesnakes are the enemy; they are part of the uncivilized wilderness to be overcome and conquered. Destroying the killer rattler has become a way of prolonging the conquest of the frontier, continuing the excitement and adventure of the cowboy saga, proving one's manhood, and identifying with the local ethos. Seldom today does one get such an opportunity to display courage and to join the ranks of our heroic forefathers.

—Jack Weir, 1992, "The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Round-Up: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics"

I was too young to remember my first experience at the Sweetwater Jaycees’

World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, but as the story goes, this was the event during which my father was introduced to his future father-in-law. My step-mother came from a line of West Texas roughnecks. Her father, an old cowboy who raised race horses in his retirement from the oil field, decided that the Rattlesnake Roundup would serve as an appropriate initiation into West Texas masculine culture. Not that my father was unfamiliar, being born in Midland, Texas and growing up across Texas and Oklahoma, as his father, an oil field engineer, relocated with the booms and busts.

When I was fourteen years old, I returned to the Roundup. I remember Nolan

County Coliseum so packed full of vendor booths that it was easy to accidentally back right into a rattlesnake pit. I sat in the bleachers at a distance as I watched an older gentleman, a

Sweetwater Jaycee, conduct demonstrations in the education pit. Reluctantly, I had my photograph taken with a live rattlesnake carefully suspended over my shoulders by a

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Jaycee. I shuddered and forced a smile. My father seemed proud of my bravery. During this trip, I recorded short videos on my cell phone, panning from the various rattlesnake pits to a close-up shot of my face, shocked, in reaction. I knew my friends back in Dallas would be appalled and curious. These powerful images stuck with me and over the years I have continued to think about the Roundup’s ability to produce passionate and polarized reactions.

The first official Sweetwater Jaycees’ Rattlesnake Roundup was held in 1958. The year prior, ranchers requested the aid of the Sweetwater Board of City Development in managing the rattlesnake population which was posing a substantial threat to their livestock. It was arranged that local men would be encouraged to capture rattlesnakes on area ranches and bring them to a designated area for slaughter. Participation was much higher than expected, so the local branch of the United States Junior Chamber—an organization of young people seeking to make an impact on their community through projects, fundraising, and leadership training—the Sweetwater Jaycees, saw an opportunity to make an annual roundup a town tradition, bringing in much needed tourist dollars to the economically depressed area (McCormick 1996, 45). The Roundup in Sweetwater is by far the largest, but roundups are still held in several other states primarily in the Southern

United States, the oldest of which in Okeene, Oklahoma, dating back to 1939 (Weir 1992,

117). While the Sweetwater Roundup initially arose as an effort to control the Western

Diamondback rattlesnake population, it and other Roundups across the South developed into well-organized events “as an adaptive response by communities to changing economic conditions to rural areas” (Thomas and Adams 1993, 446). The goal of the Roundup shifted

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from rattlesnake eradication—the Jaycees actually limit the number of snakes brought in— to a Sweetwater tradition and touristic event on which the town relies to fund community services. Today the event includes a pageant; a carnival; community dances; guided hunts; bus tours of rattlesnake dens; a gun, coin, and knife show; cook-offs; and a flea market, all in addition to the main event—the rattlesnake pits. As the snakes cycle through the coliseum, they are weighed, milked of their venom, draped over participants’ shoulders for photographs, and finally slaughtered by teenage members of the Jaycees or brave tourists for ten dollars a head.

The Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater is known across the state, nation, and world for its provocative handling of rattlesnakes and resulting imagery which has positioned the event as a captivating subject for photography, film, and television. Some come to know the tradition through growing up in West Texas, protesting the event with an animal rights group, or learning about the Roundup through its various far-reaching media portrayals. Each year, the Roundup attracts over 25,000 visitors coming from across the state and country, as well as “foreign tourists who stop by to see the Wild West in action” (Bruillard 2016, 1). My project seeks to analyze the ways in which representations of the Roundup in photography, television, and film perpetuate, construct, and challenge dominant myths of the American West in the popular imagination. As these myths, in all of their complex evolutions, have come to define parts of American national identity, representations of the Roundup not only sustain or dispute heritage narratives of the

American West, but of the United States more broadly.

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The myths of the American West are varied and sometimes contradictory, such as the two conflicting portrayals of the cowboy identified by folklorist Beverly Stoeltje as the man who finds personal success through hard work, and the cowboy laborer for a corporate ranch who “earns low wages and few benefits and no future” (Stoeltje 1996, 143). After all, Theodore Roosevelt and Owen Wister were responsible for the mythic transformation of the cowboy from “a poorly paid, poorly educated, and often blacklisted member of the working class,” to “hard-working faithful fellows,” as they applied ideas of Social

Darwinism to the figure, emphasizing “competition, individualism, and the survival of the fittest” (Stoeltje 1993, 147). This portrayal of the heroes of the West originated after the

Civil War as a means to reunite white Americans through a common hero hailing not necessarily from the North or South. People began to look to the West in their “search for the American ideal” (Stoeltje 1993, 148), as they were “eager to acquire a national hero, one that would represent the unique experience and spirit of the country” (Stoeltje 1989,

248). Thereafter, the values and qualities celebrated in stories of the Wild West came to shape American identity and heritage. Social critic Roland Barthes writes that “myth is primarily a tool of subjugation, a manner of maintaining the status quo” (Burton 2013,

486). Myths of the American West, generally disconnected from their histories in popular consciousness, function today to uphold the hegemonic ideals set by those who propagated the myths originally. I am interested in exploring the ways in which representations of the

Rattlesnake Roundup uphold, subvert, and comment on myths of the American West. The tradition of mass snake slaughter is significant as “images of violence [make] the West more American than anywhere else” (Jones and Wills 2009, 62). Markedly graphic and

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provocative in its performative treatment of rattlesnakes, the Roundup in representational works, similar to the cowboy in popular myth, “[walks] the line between savagery and civilization” (Jones and Wills 2009, 62), as the cowboy figure and the Roundup have been used to explore the themes of barbarism and sophistication.

In the first chapter of this thesis, I analyze photographs of the men, women, and children at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup featured in famed fashion photographer

Richard Avedon’s In the American West series. I suggest that these images of the Roundup challenge the myth of the glamorous and heroic cowboy to tell what Avedon came to see as a more honest story of American loneliness, hopelessness, and frightening beauty depicted in the faces of individuals he encountered on his Western journey. Avedon used this heritage site as a vital character in the construction of his own counter-narrative of the late 20th century American psyche. In chapter two, I examine the Simpsons’ “Whacking

Day” episode which was inspired by the Roundup in Sweetwater. I propose that this episode exposes and critiques dominant values of virility, groupthink, education, religion, and environmental justice in the West, and more broadly, rural, working-class America, as it parodies the Roundup with a community tradition that is ultimately condemned. In the final chapter, I explore the ways in which the Miss Snake Charmer documentary, directed by Rachael Waxler and EmaLee Arroyo, depicts coming of age as a woman in the

American West through its representation of the Miss Snake Charmer pageant as a rite of passage facilitated by the Roundup. In primarily focusing the film on the preparatory process for the pageant, rather than the competition night itself, the documentary emphasizes the ways in which girls are molded into the ideal Western woman. Altogether,

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placing the Rattlesnake Roundup at the subject of one’s work allows for, and in fact insists upon, engagement with myths of the American West, at which point, the piece may perpetuate or challenge them. These three modes of representation utilize the Roundup as a narrative tool, as they seek to tell their own stories about the West, and more broadly,

American heritage and identity.

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Chapter One

A Western Tragedy: Richard Avedon’s In the American West

I am looking for people who are surprising—heartbreaking—or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as a part of yourself.

—Richard Avedon quoted in Laura Wilson’s Avedon at Work in the American West, 2003

In 1979, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth commissioned

Richard Avedon, renowned fashion and art photographer, to produce a photography exhibition centered around the American West. Avedon’s team spent five summers traveling across the West creating large-format black and white portraits. Rather than perpetuating the hegemonic Hollywood myth of the romanticized cowboy, he sought to tell what he came to see as a more honest story of American loneliness, hopelessness, and frightening beauty as depicted in the faces of individuals he encountered on his Western journey. As Laura Wilson shared in her book Avedon at Work in the American West, “he responded to the men and women who did the physical labor upon which most of the country depended, to the teenagers who committed too young to responsibilities too great.

And he saw the results of helter-skelter lives played out against the isolation of an unforgiving landscape” (Wilson 2003). Avedon was meticulous in the printing process, insisting on printing monumental black-and-white gelatin silver prints (Penichon 2008,

177). In total, 123 photographs were chosen for the exhibition out of the 752 taken throughout the course of the project (Wilson 2003, 110.) The photographs from Avedon’s

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In the American West series have become iconic of the subversive West. In stark contrast to the glamorously rugged cowboy of Hollywood Westerns and 19th century Western landscape photography, Avedon’s West is populated by figures that might be thought of as outcasts, or tired versions of the dominant American narrative. He photographed his fears:

“aging, death, and the despair of living” (Wilson 2003, 121), which he felt more honestly depicted the emotions of the nation—or at least the American West. Some of the most iconic subjects Avedon featured in his Western project were the men, women and children of the famous Sweetwater Jaycees’ World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup. In this chapter,

I want to explore some of the ways in which Richard Avedon used this hyperbolic heritage site as a vital character in the construction of his own counter-narrative of the late 20th century American psyche.

Avedon was born in 1923 in New York City, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants.

He became involved in photography as a child and established himself within the global fashion scene during the mid to late 20th century—first as a photographer for Harper’s

Bazaar, then followed by stints of employment at Vogue and The New Yorker. (Swerdlin

2004, 2). Avedon quickly became one of the most influential fashion photographers in the

United States, and innovated the field as he blurred the lines between fashion and art photography. His trailblazing work in this hybrid genre paved the way for an entire generation of photographers who have come after him in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Most iconic and often emulated is Avedon’s portraiture style, in which his subjects are photographed against a blank backdrop. For Avedon, this neutral background serves to

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help bring out the humanity of his subjects and the work as a whole, a mission which is ultimately reflected and highlighted in his In the American West project.

Avedon’s first stop on this project was the 1979 Sweetwater Jaycees World’s

Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, notorious for its communal performance of masculinity, violence, and the power of man over nature against the backdrop of the wide-open expanse of the West Texas landscape. The potential for capturing striking images for his American

West series was immediately apparent to Avedon and his team. Several photographs from the Rattlesnake Roundup were included in the final exhibition, including one of a thirteen- year-old boy named Boyd Fortin displaying a rattlesnake he had just skinned with guts hanging free from the snake’s body and blood splattered over his white apron. Fortin’s eyebrows are slightly furrowed and lips pursed. Yet most striking are his eyes burning straight through the camera lens in confrontation with the viewer.

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Figure 1. Richard Avedon; “Boyd Fortin, Thirteen Year Old Rattlesnake Skinner, Sweetwater, Texas,

3/10/79”; 1979; Gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art

This image of Boyd Fortin was the first of the series and set the tone for the photographs to come. Intense eye contact is a hallmark of this work, achieved through

Avedon’s instructions to his subjects to remain expressionless in the face of the camera’s eye. Avedon’s subjects would be made to stand outside against a white backdrop to pose, in efforts to neutralize the space by removing the scrubby, tumbleweed natural landscape of this swath of the American West. In further efforts to remove all which could distract from the human connection he sought to convey, Avedon’s photographs were taken in the

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summer so that the bodies of his subjects were more revealed (Wilson 2003, 16).

Additionally, Avedon decided to make black and white photographs, as “color, for him, overwhelmed a subject, diminishing any emotion, and artificial lights gave a hard, contrived look to the portraits” (Wilson 2003, 64).

This manner of photography deviates from “the long-dominant lyrical pastoral tradition of Western photography … concentrated on spectacular, but mostly unpeopled landscape” (Wilson 2003, 10). Perhaps most iconic of this genre is 20th century landscape photographer Ansel Adams, who is known for his photographs of the vast and natural

American West. Adams felt that the West was “a symbol of what the United States was fighting for in World War II – a demonstration of America's ‘scope, wealth, and power’”

(Giblett 2009, 44), demonstrating the significance of this monumental and reverent representation in terms of supporting and constructing national values and image. In removing landscape from his In the American West project, Avedon boldly breaks from this tradition. Instead of celebrating the natural landscape of the West, Avedon invites his viewers to question American society through his work depicting those disenfranchised by the capitalist system. To further emphasize this point, photographs were deliberately taken in the late afternoon, to ensure that subjects were worn out and often dirty from the day’s labor (Haber 2005). It is unsurprising that Avedon was able to capture such unsettling faces, as his subjects were often exhausted and overheated. Avedon instructed his subjects to maintain a neutral expression, decontextualized the space with the use of the white backdrop, as well as actively worked with more subtle external factors in order to portray

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the American West as vulnerable and unglorified, in direct contrast to Ansel Adams’ photographic representations of the region as exemplary of American prowess.

Of course, Avedon does not break with all tradition. His photographs are also in dialogue with the tradition of frontier portraiture of 19th and early 20th century. Edward

S. Curtis is perhaps the most well-known of these modernist photographers, who is now known to have altered his subjects’ stances, expressions, clothing, and accessories, as he sought to “document” the lives of Native Americans (Gidley 2019). Where Curtis’ portraits have been accused of a kind of exploitation of their subjects in the process of using them to encourage Western expansion, Avedon’s portraits challenge this hegemonic portrayal of

American manifest destiny in order to call attention to what he recognizes as the cracks in

American society through which Westerners have fallen.

However, Avedon, as the photographer, is not the only party granted agency in this process of photographic meaning making. In Reading National Geographic, Catherine

Lutz and Jane Lou Collins describe photographs as being “caught between lines of sight, where gazes intersect” (Lutz and Collins 1993). Therefore, the gazes of the audience, subject, artist, and more are essential components within the photographic exchange. It is at this convergence of perspectives where meaning is made, each actor in the process playing a part in this construction. Through elements of stature, composition, and framing,

Avedon’s photographs grant his subjects a level of agency, as the photographed Other seems to return the gaze of the spectator. The prints are not glazed with a protective layer of glass. Without this barrier, viewer and subject are allowed to interact on a more intimate level (Penichon 2008, 178). Not only are spectators granted access to the individuals

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photographed, but the subjects also have a level of power to connect through the work, albeit through Avedon’s mediation. The eye contact prominently featured in Avedon’s work could be interpreted as acknowledgement of the camera and audience, as if to say “I see you looking at me, so you cannot steal that look (Lutz and Collins 1993).” The larger- than-life prints seduce audiences into staring. However, when confronted with such raw faces, spectators feel the urge to look away for fear of agitating the subject or recognizing themselves in their worst fears. Critical theorist Homi Bhabha argues that to view the Other in a photograph is to risk recognizing yourself, and that refusing this recognition can be an uncomfortable position for spectators and result in a feeling of loss (Lutz and Collins 1993).

Considering this, not only does Avedon tell a story of loss with the photographs, but through the very act of viewing, spectators are made to experience personal feelings of loss, as they see themselves in the images and then deny this recognition. It is in this way that Avedon uses the Rattlesnake Roundup to hold a mirror up to his audience in order to explore the darker side of the human condition and the constructed nature of our national myths, both of which he believed we would recognize in ourselves with anxious reluctance.

In the American West was quite divisive at its debut and continues to be a point of contention for those debating ethics in photography. Supporters touted that Avedon had given a more realistic portrayal of the West, debunking stereotypes set by Hollywood

Westerns (Haber 2005) and drawing attention to the dismal socioeconomic situations of modern Westerners. Critics of Avedon’s exhibition “attacked him for exploiting people who were unaware of his intentions” (Wilson 2003, 122). The idea that the work gives a more “realistic” view of the American West reflects what media scholars Catherine Lutz

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and Jane Collins suggest is a scientific positivist notion that photographs depict truth (Lutz and Collins 1993). Avedon, however, insisted that he was not a documentary photographer, but rather used this project to create his own fiction of the American West (Holborn 1985,

29).

Whether or not Avedon himself claims to be a documentary photographer, I would argue that much of his work consciously draws on—and plays with—the tropes of a documentary approach for their effectiveness and power. Avedon’s portraits are not obviously posed, and captions include only basic details, such as the subject’s name, occupation, age, and relationship to each other, if applicable, as well as the location and date of the photograph. Taken all together, it is as though Avedon composed a sort of catalogue of the characters which populate his mythic West. However, Avedon asserts that a level of collaboration is embedded in all portrait photography. Elaborating on this point of the collaborative nature between the photographer and his subject, whose goals may or may not be aligned, Avedon remarks…

“… a portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about. My concerns are not his. We have separate ambitions for the image. His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control is with me” (Wilson 2003, 122).

To view Avedon’s photographs as representations of some comprehensive reality, rather than decidedly specific and mediated, is dangerous, in that this assumes that

Avedon’s portrayal is somehow objective, thereby missing his insistence on his carefully constructed nature of his photographs as kinds of visual stories—in this case, his narrative of the tragedy of the American West. Without understanding that Avedon created this

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photographic narrative of the West, spectators may not consider the degree to which he composed the images—and the emotions they elicit—out of his own artistic vision. For instance, Avedon worked to bring out each and every scar, pigmentation, and physical imperfection he found in his subjects during the shooting and printing stages of the project.

The result amplified Avedon’s goal of capturing these individuals in a rough and blemished state. Interviews with his subjects after witnessing their portraits for the first time record their dismay at seeing the uncharacteristically “naked” exposure in their portraits. Billy

Mudd, the subject of one of Avedon’s most iconic portraits from this series, shared that he was unaware of the number of scars he had until he saw his portrait (Haber 2005). In an interview with the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Rita Carl, another participant photographed at the Rattlesnake Roundup, reported her surprise at seeing the portrait when she said, “I was worried because it had been a long day and my makeup had almost melted off. But I thought that he’s such a famous photographer he’ll probably fix my blemishes, and I’ll be beautiful” (Marton 2017).

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Figure 2. Richard Avedon; “Rita Carl, Law Enforcement Student, Sweetwater, Texas, 3/10/79”; 1979;

Gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art

After seeing the photograph, Carl shared that she was surprised to find that she looked angry when she was in fact a happy university student looking forward to her future.

She also shared that she “would love to have taken the blemishes off,” but was overall happy with the photograph, and found herself seduced by Avedon who made her feel beautiful while shooting (Marton 2017). This case demonstrates the disconnect between the representational desires of the collaborating parties on both sides of the camera lens, and the assumptions of the subject about the nature of portrait photography. Carl believed

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Avedon’s prominence as a fashion photographer meant that he would create a beautiful photograph of her, not one that further emphasized her blemishes and captured her with what she perceived as an angry posture and facial expression. Upon further examination, one can also gain insight into the power dynamic of these exchanges, as Carl consented to the photograph because Avedon was a famous photographer, and she found him attractive and “exotic” being from New York City (Marton 2017). However, Avedon’s photographs reflected and reproduced his own artistic vision, rather than a flattering homage to the subject him or herself. After all, the story he chose to tell was not one of beautifully made- up beauty queens and virile cowboys, but rather the hard, cold portrait of factory workers, roughnecks, truck drivers, gravediggers, incarcerated individuals, and those living within psychiatric hospitals—all citizens of his mythic American West. Looking through his catalogue for In the American West exhibit feels eerily like an extended encounter with the people an outsider may be discontented to cross paths with in the West. However, as a

Texan with ties to the rural, working-class West, I feel as though I know the people on the pages. Flipping through the book, I half-expect to recognize a distant relative. Considering this, my experience with Avedon’s photographs is less one of shock and horror, than one of a kind of anxious sadness.

It is essential to understand that Avedon’s work was not about showing the “true”

American West, rather, it was about exposing the romantic fiction behind our spectator’s seductive desire for an American West we have come to expect from over a century of popular visual representation in film, photography, and portraiture. In the forward to his exhibition, Avedon stated that “this is a fictional West … I don't think the West of these

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portraits is any more conclusive than the West of John Wayne” (Avedon 1985). The title of this project itself reflects Avedon’s approach, as “In the American West” does not suggest comprehensive representation of the region as a whole, but rather sets the location for Avedon’s own tale (Wilson 2003, 121). This framing allowed him to create the West which best fit his artistic vision. Avedon felt passionate that his audience understand the difference between accuracy and truth in photographs, and the impossibility of a perfect representation of any one thing, let alone an entire region.

The galleries and museum venues in which this project was first displayed are also significant in understanding the public’s mixed reactions to the work. The Amon Carter

Museum of American Art, where Avedon’s show premiered in 1985, sits in the midst of a stereotypical landscape of stockyards, rodeo shows, and Texas cowboy paraphernalia. The famous Fort Worth Stockyards promotes the romanticized image of the cowboy West as a way to attract tourists, while down the street at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art,

Avedon’s work told an alternative story about the region as “the new frontier of the social periphery” (Holborn, 29). From Texas, the In the American West exhibition moved to a number of galleries in the urban Northeast United States, where spectators were particularly prone to view the Western United States as an exotic, alternative universe.

Photographs selected to show in the Pace Gallery in New York City were among the most visually disturbing, selected to shock this urban elite audience (Frailey 1986, 52). Although

Avedon’s work is considered to be more realistic by some, as he photographed the working-class (Jones and Wills 2009), it is clear that he carefully manipulated his subjects and images to create the story he wished to tell, and has openly discussed his project as a

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highly subjective construction of his own fictional West. Avedon’s tragic West and the romanticized Wild West of early photography are both myths of the larger American West, and while they do conflict, their coexistence is essential to its construction of the larger narrative of Western and American heritage.

It is no coincidence that Avedon selected the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater as the starting point for his Western project. The tradition marked by a disturbing beauty served as an apt conduit for Avedon’s story about the American West as a place of dejection, isolation, and desperation. Ultimately, the West and all subjects selected for the exhibition serve as characters for Avedon in his photography which sought to capture the more somber areas of the human experience. This work contributes to myths of the

American West through subverting the heroic masculinity of the cowboy West, as it presents a harsher, less glamorous, alternative fiction of Avedon’s artistic imagination.

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Chapter Two

A Parody of the West: The Simpsons “Whacking Day”

The Simpsons, an animated satirical television show centered around a working- class American family, based a 1993 episode on the Sweetwater Jaycees’ World’s Largest

Rattlesnake Roundup entitled “Whacking Day” (Long 2016). In this episode, written by

John Swartzwelder and directed by Jeffrey Lynch, the town of Springfield celebrates the holiday of Whacking Day by corralling wild snakes in the town center so that participants, primarily men, can whack the reptiles to death with heavy rods. The holiday dates back to colonial Springfield and remains a cherished tradition for most of the townspeople. The show creators ultimately used the Rattlesnake Roundup as a provocative storytelling device to comment on hypermasculinity, groupthink, and tradition in Western, rural, and working- class America. Due to the pervasiveness of the Simpsons in American culture, having been a celebrated on-air staple for about 30 years, the show reflects and influences American cultural identities, and in so doing, challenges and reflects on the multifaceted myth of the

American West, and more broadly rural, working-class America.

The Simpsons is one of the quintessential postmodern parodic works in American media. On the surface level, the show is presented as a family sitcom. However, it is notably an animated parody of this genre. In Watching with the Simpsons, media scholar Johnathan

Gray writes that parody functions “to talk back to more authoritative texts and genres, to recontextualize and pollute their meaning-construction processes, and to offer other,

‘improper,’ and yet more media literate and savvy interpretations” (Gray 2006, 4).

Therefore, in this chapter, I will examine the ways in which the Simpsons’ parody of the

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Rattlesnake Roundup confronts hegemonic social ideologies in rural West Texas, and more broadly, the working-class United States.

Parody relies on intertextuality as it functions to poke holes in dominant tropes within the genre and society in which it parodies. In the book, Practices of Looking, cultural theorists Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright discuss the Simpsons as a typical postmodern text, as it deals heavily in intertextuality and relies on “media and image savvy” viewers

(Sturken and Cartwright 2009, 316). Within the “Whacking Day” episode, the Simpsons represents the real world, in this case the Roundup in Sweetwater, within the fictional town of Springfield. This intertextuality is indicative of a postmodern work, as well as the fact the television show relies on viewers in tune with “the codes and conventions of representation and simulation” (Sturken and Cartwright 2009, 316), as the humor of the

Simpsons depends on its audience to understand the references made. In all, “postmodern texts participate in an exchange of signification that helps to shape how viewers engage with cultural texts, negotiate their meaning, and construct their identities in relationship to them” (Sturken and Cartwright 2009, 316). In referencing several external sources within episodes of the Simpsons, such as by mimicking real events, having celebrity guest stars, and playing into stereotypes, the “Whacking Day” episode is a sample of a postmodern work on the topic of rural, working-class, and Western America, and more precisely the

Rattlesnake Roundup. This postmodern approach through the genre of parody and the technique of intertextuality is critical in that it encourages viewers to critically engage with dominant norms and traditional narratives which may otherwise remain unchallenged.

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Within the “Whacking Day” episode, Lisa Simpson, the progressive daughter of

Marge and Homer Simpson, finds the tradition of killing snakes to be “barbaric” and “evil,” and spends the episode searching to understand why people participate, later devising a plan to save the snakes from massacre. On her quest to comprehend the appeal of the holiday, Lisa consults a pastor, who proceeds to recite a false bible verse which reads, “the

Lord said, whack ye of all the serpents which crawl in their bellies and thy town shall be a beacon unto others.” In the 1976 Texas Monthly article, “Nobody Loves a Rattlesnake …

Unless It’s Dead,” Steve Harrigan discusses the ways in which Texans especially are indoctrinated with hatred for snakes starting in childhood through learning the snake’s status as a biblical symbol of evil (Harrigan 1976, 4), arguing that the mistreatment of snakes is justified due to biblical aversion. The Simpsons further demonstrates this idea during the commencement ceremony of the holiday in featuring a children’s choir performing a disturbing and graphic carol about bashing snakes to death. This focus within the episode demonstrates the writers’ desire to call attention to the religious justification of inflicting harm upon other living things and how this can become normalized in the name of tradition.

Subsequently, Lisa consults her father, Homer, about his enthusiastic participation in Whacking Day. She confides in him that she feels there must be something wrong with her since she cannot enjoy the holiday as others seem to do. Homer admits that while the holiday may be evil, “it’s a part of our human nature.” This perspective suggests that those who participate in a roundup tap into a primal area of their being, or are perhaps unsophisticated, as they engage in primitive activities, like slaughtering animals. Homer

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next advises Lisa to “squeeze [her] rage into a bitter little ball and release it all at an appropriate time.” This indicates an additional perception the show creators have of participants in the Rattlesnake Roundup as those who lack appropriate emotional coping mechanisms and feel driven to release their rage on animals. Furthermore, the show depicts most participants as men, and an inability to express one's emotions appropriately, or the need to express anger physically rather than verbally, is a stereotypically masculine trait

(Cooper 2016, 3).

Before heading into town to commence Whacking Day, Homer Simpson announces that he needs to find his giant foam cowboy hat. This is a clear nod to the cowboy masculinity which Homer tries to embody within the episode, but also signals the facade and performance of the act, as the cowboy hat is not authentic, and the event is essentially a simulation of a mythic past rooted in heritage stories in which settlers to colonial

Springfield were confronted with rattlesnakes. This is similar to the Roundup in

Sweetwater in that many participants, especially those traveling from out of town, attend the event so that they may play the role of cowboy for a weekend. Cultural theorist Daniel

Worden classifies cowboy masculinity, which Homer and many participants in the

Rattlesnake Roundup attempt to take on, as essentially “charisma and power” (Cooper

2016, 5). Within the episode, Homer and other Whacking Day participants are able to demonstrate their physical power quite directly, through the act of killing snakes.

Additionally, the snake, the whacking rod, and the name “Whacking Day” are all markedly phallic symbols. While Homer is most frequently presented as dopey, he is portrayed as charming as he practices whacking invisible snakes in the front yard and

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shows off his whacking rod to Marge in their living room. Marge observes lustfully as

Homer asks her if he should whack slow or fast, to which she replies, “slow, then fast.”

Furthermore, the Simpsons episode also involves a pageant queen, similar to the

Rattlesnake Roundup which hosts its own pageant to crown Miss Snake Charmer. Miss

Springfield begins the festivities by shouting, “Gentlemen, start your whacking.” While there are some women in the mob of townspeople, it is clear that the holiday is meant mainly for male participation. This is not unlike the Rattlesnake Roundup, as women are permitted to participate, but men largely lead hunts and bring in the most rattlesnakes.

These scenes directly signal Whacking Day as an opportunity for men to display their virility. Similar to the Roundup in Sweetwater where primarily men compete to catch the longest rattlesnake, the men of Springfield compete to kill the most snakes. In presenting

Whacking Day and the Rattlesnake Roundup as opportunities to display masculine ability, the show creators invite viewers to laugh at these uncomfortable sexual displays and desperate attempts to attract women.

Also within the episode, Bart Simpson, the son of Marge and Homer and brother to

Lisa, takes a field trip to colonial Springfield, where the tour guide discusses the history of

Whacking Day. However, during this presentation, Bart discovers that the history being taught is largely fictitious. Once Bart’s realization has become clear, government agents swiftly remove him from the premises. This segment depicts how heritage is deliberately and carefully constructed to uphold hegemonic values with the removal of unsavory historical details. The scene also shows the level at which the stories we tell about ourselves hold weight, as the government felt adamant about silencing Bart, believing it would

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destroy the entire holiday, and in turn, chip away at the structures which create and uphold regional and American identity.

As the show frequently flashes back to colonial Springfield and colonists’ first experiences with snakes, and as we know that the episode was inspired by the Rattlesnake

Roundup in Sweetwater (Long 2016), it becomes clear that the stories of the West construct the heritage stories of the nation. The American West has an “iconic significance in

American culture and national identity,” as well as in its “construction of an idealized

‘masculine’ national character” (Cooper 2016, 9). Therefore, “if hegemonic masculinity is interrogated, then the cultural assumptions and the definition of national identity represented by that masculine performance are also called into question” (Cooper 2016,

12). Due to this, it is unsurprising that Bart and Lisa are met with such staunch opposition when they challenge the traditions of Whacking Day, as the holiday, like the Rattlesnake

Roundup, serves to reinforce hegemonic norms, heritage stories, and cultural lessons. For this instruction to come under threat poses the potential for cultural change which can be frightening for more conservative communities, which is frequently the stereotype of

Western and rural towns such as Sweetwater and Springfield, respectively.

The show creators made a point to represent those who participate in events like

Whacking Day as members of a mob, in which groupthink blinds them to free and logical thinking. At the start of the event, the snakes flee from the maniacal crowd. By this point,

Lisa and Bart have devised a plan to save the snakes by having Barry White perform in their front yard to lure the snakes inside of their home with the low vibrations of his voice.

As hundreds of snakes make it inside, they surround Maggie, Lisa and Bart’s baby sister,

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but it is clear that they pose no threat, in stark contrast to the mob of angry Whacking Day participants now gathering outside of the home. Environmental journalist Karen Bruillard shares that the original purpose for the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater was to control the rattlesnake population in the area in order to protect livestock and people from bites

(Bruillard 2016, 1). This is no longer the goal, as participants and organizers claim that the

Roundup does not significantly reduce the population of rattlesnakes (Wideman 2006, 19).

Instead, the modern rattlesnake roundup is much more about Wild West tourism. However, the Rattlesnake Roundup is still often discussed in the media as a way to reduce the population of rattlers, which makes participants and organizers appear uneducated about the real impact of the event. This perspective does not acknowledge the new touristic mission of the Roundup, instead making it seem as though participants are so uninformed that they believe they need to reduce, and are successfully reducing, the rattlesnake population, when this simply is not the case. In presenting the townspeople of Springfield as less civilized than snakes and uneducated on their ecological benefits, the show creators communicate that an event like Whacking Day, or the Rattlesnake Roundup, is only possible due to a broad lack of critical, individual thought, drawing on common narratives as rural, working-class towns as blind followers of conservative tradition.

Another essential mission of the cowboy within popular mythos is to tame wilderness (Cooper 2016, 53), a goal shared with participants in Whacking Day and the

Rattlesnake Roundup. Historically, this extends beyond just wildlife, including

“uncivilized” indigenous populations. The Simpsons makes fun of participants in

Whacking Day, and in conjunction the Rattlesnake Roundup, by depicting them as less

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civilized in their violence than the snakes who innocently fled the mob, politely wiping their bodies on the doormat before taking shelter in the Simpsons’ home.

Next, Bart confronts the crowd, revealing that the real reason Whacking Day began was to beat Irish immigrants. This idea of prejudice and intolerance is stereotypical of the

West, which has long been conceptualized as nationalistic and racist (Cooper 2016, 10).

Lisa asks the townspeople how they can hate snakes when they do so much for the environment. An old man in the crowd responds that he hates everything, communicating that people participate in similar events out of hatred. Lisa asks an older woman, “who killed all those rats in your basement?” To which the woman replied, “a snake did,” after a moment of deliberation. Consequently, the crowd collectively shifts its opinion on snakes, erupting in cheers of appreciation, demonstrating that people only engage in roundups or similar events due to a lack of information and education or because of hatred and intolerance.

In the 2016 Washington Post article, “How to Kill Thousands of Rattlesnakes in

Just Four Days,” Karen Bruillard shares the perspectives of both environmentalists and journalists against the roundup, as well as participants who support the event. Ultimately, in the “Whacking Day” episode, Lisa represents the position of many environmentalists, who argue that roundups “promote cruelty and a dysfunctional relationship with wildlife”

(Bruillard 2016, 2). Bruillard also includes a quote from a reporter from Midland, Texas, who is an opponent of the roundup. I argue that the “Whacking Day” episode, while it presents participants as a monolithic group, in including the resistance storyline of Bart and Lisa as opponents of the holiday, demonstrates that not all Springfield residents share

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the same ideas. This demonstrates the function of parody as it utilizes stereotype, such as the angry rural mob, in a way so ridiculous and humorous that viewers begin to question its validity and implications.

In conclusion, the Simpsons’ “Whacking Day” episode, inspired by the Rattlesnake

Roundup in Sweetwater, parodies traditional portrayals of rural, working-class and

Western communities. The episode comes to comment on American narratives of tradition, masculinity, education, religion, groupthink, and environmental justice. Essentially, this episode uniquely comments and reflects on myths of the West through presenting the

Rattlesnake Roundup within the genre of parody which notably functions to challenge tradition and familiar social tropes.

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Chapter Three

Western Womanhood: The Miss Snake Charmer Documentary

The Miss Snake Charmer pageant originated at the second Sweetwater Jaycees sponsored Rattlesnake Roundup in 1959. While it began as a beauty contest, promoters today are quick to point out that Miss Snake Charmer is now a scholarship pageant in which contestants are judged based on formal interviews and talent, rather than their appearance alone. In 2017, two young documentary filmmakers, Rachael Waxler and EmaLee Arroyo, co-directed a feature-length documentary film titled Miss Snake Charmer, which follows nine girls who have registered to compete in the scholarship pageant at the Roundup in

March 2017. The documentary chronicles the contestant’s activities throughout the roughly two-week preparation period for the competition. Viewers watch as the girls attend orientation; participate in the highly symbolic Media Day rattlesnake skinning; and rehearse for formal interviews, beauty walks, and talent performances, all culminating in pageant night itself. In focusing on the process of preparation for the pageant, the filmmakers present a story about the ritual transformation of West Texas teens into polished young women on the American frontier.

The filmmakers draw from a long representational tradition of iconicity of the gendered American West to depict this transitional rite which exposes both the beauty and vulnerability of coming of age as a modern woman in this small West Texas town, as well as the subtle yet powerful societal pressures for conformity to a long-established code of how to carry oneself as a lady. The filmmakers make conscious use of a number of documentary techniques to paint this poignant portrait, beginning with the longstanding

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Hollywood Western tradition of visually establishing the wide open and mythic West

Texas setting for the intricate coming of age dance to follow, and then focusing in on the narrative rites of passage through an intimate technique of hand-held camera shots, as well as an exaggerated use of close up frames on the girl’s bodies, non-diegetic sound, and slowed down clips of their highly sexualized talent performances. Each of these techniques builds a sense of intimacy and realism with the viewer, as if they were present with the camera following the girls throughout their ritualized training. In this chapter, I will explore the specific ways in which documentarians Rachael Waxler and EmaLee Arroyo apply these filmic techniques to illustrate how the complex rituals and intangible cultural codes encouraged through this rite of passage pageant are embodied and encoded on each of these nine young women in the space of a couple short weeks. I will further draw on cultural theorists Beverly Stoeltje and Victor Turner, feminist film theorists Laura Mulvey and

Alexandra Juhasz, and critical film theorist Michael Albright to theoretically frame my argument that, throughout the documentary, the filmmakers demonstrate the tension between the old guard and the new, in other words, the struggle between traditional and emerging Western femininity, as these perspectives and experiences compete on the screen through the presentation of the coming of age ritual of the Miss Snake Charmer pageant.

In her article, “The Snake Charmer Queen: Ritual, Competition, and Signification in American Festival,” folklorist and cultural theorist Beverly Stoeltje examines the ways in which the Miss Snake Charmer pageant functions as a coming of age ritual for girls in

West Texas, through a highly symbolic process involving distinct ritual stages of separation, education and re-incorporation, as they are molded into the ideal Western

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woman and representatives of their community (Stoeltje 1996, 15). Stoeltje writes that,

“ritual often serves a conservative purpose, enacting and reinforcing social relations closer to the status quo than socially innovative” (Stoeltje 1996, 14). While she emphasizes the conservative nature of most rituals—including rites of passage—she also suggests that there is a built-in mechanism for testing the status quo, especially during the liminal phase of the rite of passage when societal roles and positions are explicitly exposed, examined and evaluated. In some cases, this testing of limits and established norms may ultimately result in the evolution of the ritual, and, more importantly, the slow shift in established stereotypic norms within the society itself. I argue that the Miss Snake Charmer documentary presents this precise tension, depicting pageant participants and organizers as they enter into uncharted territory, balancing tradition with more progressive ideas about women’s roles, femininity, gender relations, race, and power, especially within the hegemonic frame of the white male dominated American West. The film shows a constant push and pull between upholding the beauty-centric pageant of the past and its more nuanced, multidimensional orientation toward what it means to be a woman in the 21st century United States. As Stoeltje argues, “the beauty pageant is a ritual response to changing gender relations” (Stoeltje 1996, 14). In the Miss Snake Charmer documentary’s focus on the preparation period for the pageant, the filmmakers present a story about how the contestants, organizers, and communities navigate and negotiate evolving gender roles and find their balance without too much explicit conflict. Contestants are encouraged to pursue higher education and participate in capitalist society through engagement with professional pursuits, all while keeping their eye on the more conventional prize of

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acceptance and value as an object of the male Western gaze. The violent, aggressive, and agentive act of slaughtering rattlesnakes is facilitated, but only if the girls have their hair and makeup done, wear modified trash bags to protect their clothing, and have assistance from male Jaycees.

Through centering the documentary around this liminal education period for the

Miss Snake Charmer pageant, the filmmakers emphasize the pageant process as a rite of passage ritual for girls in the rural American West. Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner writes that within a rite of passage ritual transformation, there is a liminal stage of ambiguity between the period when the participant first separates from his or her previous status, in this case, as a young girl or teen, and the time when they re-enter society with all of the skills and knowledge required to succeed in their new status, as a fully initiated

Christian West Texas woman. (Deflem 1991, 14). In focusing on the liminal phase of the pageant’s preparation period, the documentary allows viewers to watch the girls navigate their indeterminate identities as they are instructed on how to make the final transformation into the ideal Western woman.

The film opens to a scene of the contestants and organizers in prayer backstage, presumably before pageant night. Immediately situating the event within a predominantly

Christian community, the documentarians signal the community’s emphasis on the importance of the conservative Christian morals with which they hope to govern the women during their upcoming rite of passage in preparation for the pageant night. In the next frame, wide open sky overtakes the screen. A line of trees and wind turbines dot the horizon, as the film enters into an expositional montage filled with shots of the town of

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Sweetwater. This style of shooting fits with the tradition of Hollywood Westerns, where extreme long shots are used to indicate a unique connection to the land and “isolation from civilization” (Sikov 2010, 10). Following this wide shot, trains, a historic downtown square, wind turbines, and a police car patrolling an empty street occupy the screen. In their book, The American West: Competing Visions, Karen R. Jones and John Willis explain how the Hollywood Western film reel “reassembled the classic frontier town into a collection of Western cultural signifiers: the dirt track on main street as an indicator of newness and rawness; the hitching posts as signs of mobility; the saloon as a reference of the rowdiness of cowboys; the jail the prominence (and problem) of justice” (Jones and

Wills 2009, 234). The documentarians position Sweetwater squarely within the trope of the Hollywood Wild West by mimicking these same representational artifacts—the train, the wind, the downtown square, and the roving agent of law and justice on the Western frontier. To further reinforce Sweetwater frontier-status, a text overlay notes that the town’s

2017 population is 10,755 people, a classic demographic marker of both size and status as a rural, small town destination. Through these images of a vast, natural landscape, and mechanisms of taming the natural resources of wind and range of the Wild West, people across the world have come to know the mythic entity of the American West. The filmmakers of Miss Snake Charmer have employed the same techniques to align their documentary with popular representations of the West, signifying that audience members bring their associations and understanding of the West to their viewing of Miss Snake

Charmer, where the directors are permitted to then challenge or reinforce the audience preconceptions.

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In direct contrast with images of the Wild West, the pageant’s theme for this year is the “Tower Bridge in London.” The filmmakers take the audience directly to the backstage instruction session where pageant organizers instruct the contestants to dress like

“Princess Kate,” referring to the Duchess of Cambridge, during their formal walk. The documentary deliberately shows the process of implementing this theme, featuring an interview in which it is explained that one of the set builders is British and excited to build the moving bridge as the main set piece. This theming is of particular interest, as the superficial function of a beauty pageant is to crown a queen who is meant to rule over a specified event or area for a predetermined period of time. However, as Stoeltje points out, the pageant queen is “a role that has no political power, no earning power, and no authority to exercise over people” (Stoeltje 1996, 16). She spends most of her reign making appearances, primarily exercising symbolic power and acquiring symbolic capital through the glamor of the experience (Stoeltje 1996, 16). In focusing on “Princess Kate” for fashion inspiration, the pageant organizers further assert the general importance of appearance as an exercise of symbolic power through limited agency, despite possessing a royal title and having the privileged opportunity to speak directly to their community.

The filmmakers of Miss Snake Charmer limit obvious signs of authorship within the work, consciously eschewing the more authoritative mode of voiceover narration.

Instead, the filmmakers’ point of view is conveyed through more inconspicuous filmic techniques. This is especially evident in the careful editing and framing of specific shots and sequences within the film which appear to be spontaneous, unedited and unscripted, inviting the viewer into the tensions and complications inherent in the rite of passage itself.

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One example of this is the filmmakers’ choice to use a handheld camera to follow the contestants around backstage. This conscious, technical decision allows for the physicality of the filmmakers, and the intimacy of their presence, to be felt with each bounce of the image. According to critical film theorist Michael Albright, the handheld camera is “a distinct mode of film practice that is simultaneously ‘out there’ and ‘in here.’ In the case of hand-held cinematography, the implication of this designation is always both” (Albright

2011, 35). In other words, and within the context of the Miss Snake Charmer documentary in particular, this technique serves a dual, and perhaps contradictory purpose, as it both renders the presence of the filmmakers detectable, reminding the audience of the deliberate construction of the film by the documentarians, but also presents the pageant with an element of realism, as the camera moves through the space in a way that positions the viewer as the camera itself, providing the illusion of an unmediated encounter with the subject.

Additionally, there are subtle moments backstage in which the filmmakers’ voices can be heard from behind the camera. Noticing the filmmakers’ physical presence in private spaces such as backstage areas, or that the filmmakers travel closely with the girls as they make their way around the Rattlesnake Roundup, demonstrates the relationship of trust between the subjects and filmmakers as they are granted exclusive access to areas otherwise closed-off, as well as are allowed to accompany the girls rather than observe from some distance. Other journalists attending the event might snag a brief television interview, but are not granted the privilege of experiencing the Roundup alongside the contestants in a natural and casual way. The seemingly unscripted interactions obscure the

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hundreds of hours in the editing room, and careful curation of a final story on the part of the filmmakers. However, while techniques such as the handheld camera and inclusion of the filmmakers’ voices in the background of scenes convey a level of intimacy, spontaneity, and realism, these methods simultaneously draw attention to the presence of the directors.

The intimacy facilitated by the handheld camera technique becomes particularly significant as the documentary presents the contestants and pageant organizers as engaged with the debates surrounding controversial issues on the local and global level. It is at these moments that the filmmakers reveal the cultural lessons taught through this rite of passage about what it means to be a woman in rural, Western American society, not only in terms of how to present oneself physically, but how to hold oneself socially, especially under the watchful gaze of the desired male figures in the audience—judges, fathers, sponsors, boyfriends, and the Western male culture writ large. As the girls wait backstage in rehearsals and before the competition, the camera captures their heated conversations about

Donald Trump, undocumented immigrants, the Southern U.S. border wall, and religion, all designed to establish an image of the girls as firmly engaged and informed about the current events and the wider political world, while at the same time showing their commitment to the rituals that establish them as appealing women under the masculine gaze of macho cowboy culture. This tension between conforming to the strictly patriarchal sexual gaze while expressing emerging social and political engagement is captured in these spontaneous backstage conversations and reinforced during the polished pageant performances on the community stage. The directors’ usage of intimate filming techniques grants viewers access to these otherwise taboo and controversial topics of conversation.

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Cultural theorist Beverly Stoeltje argues that beauty pageants “reflect the social norms and values through the signification system it produces,” but also “reflect the uncertainty, change, and contradictions inherent in contemporary systems of gender signification,” as they “identify both the fundamental principles by which modern society sustains a system in which women are subordinated, and points toward the channels of power potentially available to women for the transformation of systems of gender signification into those which liberate rather than subordinate” (Stoeltje 1996, 28). This is a central message from the documentarians, as they focus on the tension and efforts of reconciliation of the conflict between patriarchal order and the contestants’ own budding enactments of social change through female empowerment. By providing a window into informal backstage conversations through intimate and spontaneous filming made possible by the handheld camera technique, the filmmakers complicate the conventionally recognized trope of beauty pageant indoctrination, and instead demonstrate a more complicated narrative of gendered identity in the 21st century rural American West.

Even so, the Miss Snake Charmer documentary does not shy away from highlighting stereotyped performances of gender roles and female sexuality within the pageant. Accepting the snake as a clear phallic symbol, the title “Miss Snake Charmer” itself implies some skill at handling the phallus. In “Nobody Loves a Rattlesnake… Unless

It’s Dead,” journalist Steve Harrigan describes a disturbing Freudian scene from 1976 in which Miss Snake Charmer holds back tears as male Sweetwater Jaycees drape rattlesnakes over her body (Harrigan 1976). This image depicts a symbolic violation of a young girl by a group of men, as they force phallic symbols upon her body against her desire. The

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Rattlesnake Roundup is frequently discussed as brutal in its butchering of snakes.

However, to force snakes upon the bodies of young women is another act of violence shown through this story, as contestants are systemically sexualized through participation in the pageant. As Beverly Stoeltje remarks in her article on the pageant, “male and female symbolism come together when the winner of the Miss Snake Charmer contest enters the pit to handle a rattlesnake” (Stoeltje 1996, 21). While the documentary itself depicts a decidedly diluted version of this scene, as the newly crowned Miss Snake Charmer takes her ritual place for the photographing hoards in the snake pit, the film still records a number of sexualized and highly symbolic stories of snake-conquering.

For example, the documentary includes an interview segment in which the mothers of the contestants are featured as they respond to an off-camera prompt to describe a memorable encounter with a rattlesnake. One mother shared a story about how she found a rattlesnake near her pool while her husband was inside the house recovering from a vasectomy. Despite the fact that he was meant to rest after an emasculating operation, no less, she called for him to come outside to kill it. They discovered that their gun was out of bullets, just as their friend, a highway patrolman, pulled up into their driveway. As it turned out, he did not have a gun himself, so the men attempted to kill the snake with a rake and hoe, all while she yelled, “be careful, you can’t feel anything!” to her husband who was still drugged from his surgery. Alternatively, a different mother recounted a time in which she discovered a rattlesnake while waiting to pick up her daughter at the bus stop. At the climax of the story, she exclaims that “it was like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It’s either them or it’s me. And, well, I’m still here.” The two anecdotes, positioned directly

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after each other within the film, express the virtually tangible tension felt within the

American West surrounding gender roles. One woman faced a rattlesnake independently, while the other felt that the situation required the aid of men. Even though the initial storyteller’s husband was in a state of recovery, healing his most masculine of organs, he was still considered more naturally equipped to handle this dangerous situation. This demonstrates the utility of the realist technique like talking-head interviews within feminist and female-directed films, as they are “typically used to do the political work of entering new opinions, new subjectivities, or newly understood identities into public discourse”

(Juhasz 1999, 203). Through including stories of how the women handle their personal rattlesnake encounters differently, the filmmakers draw further attention to the conflict between the women in terms of their versions of femininity, but also show that the Western ideal encouraged by the Roundup is a unique combination of these seemingly dissonant versions of femininity.

Considering gender roles, the act of rattlesnake skinning on Media Day presents another symbolic expression of hegemonic norms as a critical point within the rite of passage where the contestants are challenged to prove their worth to enter the contest and thus separate themselves from those who are not worthy of the transitional coming of age ceremony. In this event, contestants slaughter, skin and gut a rattlesnake for publicity ahead of the pageant and roundup. Male Jaycees guide the young women at every stage, assuring that they are not only safe, but also that they remain unsullied—as they are required to don modified trash bags to cover their bodies from the blood and guts of the skinned snakes. In fact, any time a woman is handling a rattlesnake in the documentary, at least one male

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instructor stands within frame. These images present the contestants as dependent on the male Jaycees for both protection from the physical dangers of snake handling and instruction on the correct slaughtering methods. The documentarians record the entire ceremony, even including individual interviews with contestants on how it felt to skin the snakes, emphasizing its importance as the initial ceremony in the rite of passage itself.

After the snake skinning trial, contestants continue toward the final contest and the bulk of the film switches to a detailed visual record of the meticulous rehearsals for the pageant events themselves, especially focusing on the symbolic ways in which the contestants rehearse their moves toward womanhood on the American frontier. The documentary further demonstrates the event’s sexualization of girls through the use of non- diegetic sound, close-up framing of the body, and slowed-down clips during the dance performances of the talent section of the competition. The audience is not seen or heard due to the insertion of non-diegetic sound and framing which do not capture the auditorium beyond the edge of the stage. The clips are also slowed down so that viewers can see each hip twist and dress twirl in detail. These factors contribute to the removal of the performances from their original context, producing a more sexualized portrayal, as the resulting material is singularly focused on the movements of the body. As these filming and editing choices are only applied to dances, they emphasize the sexualization of the female body in movement, while showing an outward distinction between those whose content is markedly nonsexual, be it classified as geeky, humorous, or musical. However, no girl and no act remain totally unsexualized, as the point of the pageant is to present the girls as young women, not totally innocent girls, as they make their transformation. The

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contestants have been carefully schooled to strike the proper balance between sexy and smart, and to align themselves with good, clean Christian morals while remaining sexually attractive at the same time. For example, the pageant winner did a “nerd walk,” wearing glasses, hair pulled up into a ponytail, and sloppy jeans and tennis shoes, and proudly announced that she would be attending a university in the following year on a scholarship to study engineering. As the pageant has shifted into placing more public emphasis on the scholarship aspects of the event, this contestant’s academic success was lauded. However, her beauty and sexuality remained relevant as she was praised for showing leg through a slit in her evening gown worn during the beauty walk. This once again demonstrates the careful navigation required of girls within the pageant, and is a point effectively drawn out by the documentarians as they juxtapose these qualities in editing and filming. At one point, the perspective that girls can be simultaneously sexually appealing and intelligent is progressive. However, the filmmakers question if it would be accepted for a contestant to have brains without conventional beauty, as having beauty without demonstrated academic drive was the accepted norm for Miss Snake Charmer throughout most of its history. This hypersexualization is effectively conveyed through the stylistic decisions in filming and editing which allow the filmmakers to underscore the gendered dynamics they feel are at play during the pageant, giving a window into their perspective as creators of this representational work.

The camera takes a similarly voyeuristic perspective when it trails behind the girls as they make their way from the pageant stage and out into the Rattlesnake Roundup itself.

Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey argues that “characters on screen can never really

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return the spectator’s gaze” and that “the camera is used as a tool of voyeurism and sadism, disempowering those before its look” (Sturken and Cartwright 2009, 125). Choosing to follow behind the girls with the camera places the filmmakers and audience in a predatory position. Mulvey argues that the methods of looking in patriarchal society are “split between active/male and passive/female,” meaning that the spectator takes on the masculine position due to societal context (Lutz and Collins 1993, 189). Additionally,

“focusing on women’s appearance and placing women in a competitive display event licenses the public gaze on them” (Stoeltje 1996, 18), so the very nature of the pageant positions the contestants as submissive objects of the gaze with limited opportunities to exercise agency on the stage. This posterior point of view of the camera, as well as the framing and editing choices made in presenting the dance performances, succeeds in portraying the Miss Snake Charmer pageant as one which positions contestants, the emerging ideal women of the West, as objects of the male gaze.

If, as Beverly Stoeltje suggests, the Miss Snake Charmer Pageant can be seen as a ritualized rite of passage for young girls into womanhood in the American West, The Miss

Snake Charmer documentary provides a window into each stage of this transition. It is no accident that the filmmakers focus on the preparation period of the pageant, as the set is built, costumes and evening gowns selected, and pageant posture perfected. It is in this liminal phase that a society’s primary instruction to the young initiates is conveyed from one generation to the next. During individual interviews, contestants and organizers alike share their pride in following in their mother’s, sister’s, and aunt’s footsteps in upholding the tradition of participating in the pageant. The Miss Snake Charmer documentary comes

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to depict the ways in which generations of girls in the American West attempt their ritualized transformation into the ideal Western woman. Through filming the inner- workings of the competition, the filmmakers have provided a window into the values and qualities fostered in rural Western girls as they become young women in society. This is the essential focus of the documentary, as it concentrates on the community’s prolonged effort to indoctrinate the girls through the various stages of the pageant preparations, rather than pageant night itself as the centerpiece for the film. In this way, the filmmakers share a story about the rite of passage experience for many women across the West. In this chapter, I have explored how this idea is communicated through the filmmakers’ use of particular filmic techniques, such as extreme long shots of the landscape and an expositional montage of iconic images of the West; the handheld camera which signals the presence of the filmmakers, as well as a level of intimacy with the contestants; and finally, non-diegetic sound, close-up framing of the body, and slowed-down clips which speak to the contestants’ position within the masculine gaze. Overall, through the use of these cinematic techniques, the Miss Snake Charmer documentary depicts the formation of girls into a feminine ideal particular to the American West through the lens of the Miss Snake

Charmer pageant at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater.

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Conclusion

Toward the end of my research, I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 Rattlesnake

Roundup for the third time in my life. Approaching the event with a newly critical lens, I found myself acutely attuned to the levels on which representation functions within the festival. For example, during the pageant ceremony, Miss Snake Charmer 2018 and the master of ceremonies discussed their pride in being featured in the Miss Snake Charmer documentary. Standing on the pageant stage, they acknowledged the community’s awareness that “outsiders” are fascinated by the Roundup. This fascination is capitalized on in more ways than just tourism, as Miss Snake Charmer 2018 shared that she intended to use her experience participating in the Miss Snake Charmer documentary as a resume booster for her dream career as an actress.

When my mother learned that my sister and I were brought to the Roundup as young children, she was horrified. She had never been herself, but all she needed to hear was that it centered around the killing of thousands of rattlesnakes to decide that it was an unsafe, cruel, and bizarre event. I decided to bring her with me as I attended the 2019 Roundup, curious to see her reaction years on. To her surprise, she found the event somewhat underwhelming in comparison to the sensationalized reports she had read online. There is no denying the ethical and environmental concerns with mass wildlife slaughter, and while my mother will not likely attend again, she did grow a real appreciation for the tradition and knowledge passed down between generations about rattlesnake hunting, an important factor of the Roundup which is often overlooked in its representations for the more provocative focus on danger and violence.

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Talking to folks around town—in shops, at the bank, on the sidewalk—people shared their delight in tourists’ fascination with the event and dismay at “the people who are against us,” referring to Roundup protestors. They would then explain that those who are “up-in-arms” about the Roundup simply do not understand the event and rattlesnake issues in West Texas. A woman working in a boutique shared with me that she once found a rattlesnake in her office and that when her dogs were bitten she spent thousands of dollars in medical bills due to the exorbitant cost of antivenom medication—still a small fraction of the cost of antivenom vials for a human. This was a passionate defense for a woman who does not participate in the Roundup herself. It quickly became evident that few conversations could occur about the event without addressing the controversy of it all, demonstrating the degree to which the Roundup continues to be a representational lightning rod for Sweetwater residents and beyond.

Portrayals of the Roundup are drawn from a long history of myths of the American

West. In some ways, these narratives, are not limited to the West, but come to shape broader

American heritage as well. In their book, The American West: Competing Visions, historians and cultural theorists Karen R. Jones and John Willis write that “the frontier was sanctified, nostalgised, and patriotised in the movie-making process” (Jones and Wills

2009, 235), defining the cowboy “as a symbol of Western (and national) qualities of individualism, justice, freedom, and self-reliance” (Jones and Wills 2009, 61). The frontier depicted in glamorous Hollywood Western portrayals is situated between civilization and savagery, “a place defined by conflict and which in turn defines a US-specific national character” (Cooper 2016, 8). Understanding how myths of the American West have come

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to be both challenged and appropriated in contemporary society is of growing significance, as “the Americanness of the cowboy [has historically] appealed in a period of patriotic soul-searching” (Jones and Wills 2009, 240). In moments of collective pain and fear,

Americans still seek this national hero in efforts to reconcile a crisis of identity.

In this work, I have selected three modes of storytelling to explore the shifting representations of American identity in the late 20th and 21st centuries. I argue that the iconic photographs taken by Richard Avedon at the Roundup for his In the American West series seek to present the tragic West of Avedon’s imagination. This body of work subverts the heroic cowboy narrative, instead presenting a story of isolation, desperation, and frightening beauty. I also analyzed an episode of the popular animated sitcom, the

Simpsons, which is titled “Whacking Day.” This episode utilizes parody to comment on issues of hypermasculinity, education, religion, environmentalism, and mob-mentality in rural, working-class, Western America. Finally, I examined the Miss Snake Charmer documentary directed by Rachael Wexler and EmaLee Arroyo as it depicts the liminal phase of the beauty pageant ritual facilitated by the Roundup. Cameras record as contestants prepare for the competition, and are therein molded into the ideal Western woman, exploring the identities and performances encouraged in and available to women in the West. These three portrayals of the Roundup are only some of many, and selected rather arbitrarily. I suspect that similar analysis involving other works and modes of representation would uniquely complicate or support the narratives presented in the sources

I have examined. In fact, this point is essential, as through the specific representations of the Roundup in photography, film, and television which I have explored in this thesis, I

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have investigated how a single event comes to serve as a narrative tool for those wishing to uphold or challenge dominant myths of the American West, and more broadly, American heritage and identity tied to the values embedded in popular stories of the Wild West.

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