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. i 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, ii 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. iii 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 iv 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 v 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 1 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 2 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. 3 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).