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Westerns Edited by Charles Wolfe and Edward Branigan Masculinity Films Peter Lehman Violence and American Cinema J F Previously published in the AFI Film Readers Series westerns edited by Charles Wolfe and Edward Branigan Masculinity films Peter Lehman Violence and American Cinema J. David Slocum through The Persistence ofHistory Vivian Sobchack history Home, Exile, Homeland Hamid Naficy Black WomenFilm and Video Artists Jacqueline Bobo edit ed by The Revolution Wasn't Televised Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin Ja net wal ker Classical Hollywood Comedy Henry Jenkins and Kristine Brunovska Karnick Disney Discourse Eric Smoodin Black American Cinema Manthia Diawara Film Theory Goes to the Movies Jim Collins, Ava Preacher Collins, and Hilary Radner Theorizing Documentary Michael Renov Sound Theory/Sound Practice Rick Altman Fabrications Jane M. Gaines and Charlotte Herzog Psychoanalysisand Cinema E. AnnKaplan routledge newyork and london Published in 2001 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 contents Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE acknowledgments vii Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. introduction: westerns through history 1 Janet Copyright© 2001 by the American Film Institute walker Typography: Jack Donner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or part one. historical metafiction: the 1990s western hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information stor­ 1. age or retrieval system, without permission in writing fromthe publishers. generic subversion as counterhistory: 27 "Life-like,Vi vid, and Thrilling Pictures: BuffaloBill's Wild West and Early Cinema'' by mario van peebles's posse Joy S. Kasson has also appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and alexandra keller PopularHistory (Hill & Wang, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Hill & Wang. a tale N/nobody can tell: the An earlier version of "Cowboy Wonderland, History, and Myth: 'It Ain't All That 2. return of a repressed 47 Different Than Real Life' " by William G. Simon and Louise Spence appeared in the westernhistory in jim jarmusch's dead man Journal ofFilm and Video, Vol. 47, Nos. 1-3 (Spring-Fall). Reprinted by permission. melinda szaloky An earlier version of "Drums Along the L.A. River: Scoring the Indian" by Claudia 3. the burden of history and john sayles's lone star 71 Gorbman appeared in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and tomds f sandoval jr. Appropriationin Music, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh. (University of California Press, 2000). Copyright © 2000 The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of CaliforniaPress. "The Burden of History and John Sayles's Lone Star' by To mas F. Sandoval, Jr. appeared part in Bad Subjects, Issue 28 (October 1996). two. historiophoty: buffalo bill, the indians, and the western biopic Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 4. cowboy wonderland, history and myth: Westerns: films through history / Janet Walker, editor. 89 p. cm. "it ain't all that differentthan real life" Includes bibliographical referencesand index. william g. simon and louise ISBN 0-415-92423-5 - 0-415-92424-3 (pbk.) spence 1. Western films-United States-History and criticism. 5. life-like, vivid, I. Walker, Janet, 1955- II. Series. and thrilling pictures: 109 buffalo PN1995.9.W4 W44 2001 bill's wild west and early cinema 791.43'6278-dc21 00-051708 joy s. kasson 6. buffalobill (himself): 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 131 history and memory in the western biopic Printed in the United States of America on acid-freepaper. corey k. creekmur A student in a film history course I conducted traveled to the UCLA Film and Television Archives to view a print of the early sound western In Old Arizona; listening carefully to the now scratchy sound­ track, the student was stunned to hear a familiarmusical theme, a tune his grandfather had whistled for as long as he could remember. I would like to thank that former student, now turned film editor, Aram Nigoghossian, for his perceptions about how the past returns in west- erns. Also I would like to thank the students of "The Western: 'Cowboys' and 'Indians,"' forjoining the expedition into territory that was for some familiar but for others unfamiliar,eit her because movie westerns at the end of the century are fewer and farther between or because I insisted that one could love westerns and still approach them from a feminist and antiracist perspective. I am afraid I might forget one of you ifl try to name you, but our conversations and your papers introduction remain in my memory; thank you all forwhat you taught me. By name I would like to thank the film studies graduates who served as readers fort he course and contributed their lively opinions and their judicious comments: Jamie Gluck, Lisa Brende, and, once again, Cynthia westerns through history McCreery. Finally, thanks are due to Steve Nelson, who brought Signs and Meaning and Horizons Westto our marriage, and who is always willing to rent another western when nothing else appeals; and to Ariel Nelson, who encouraged my tendency to see westerns historically as well as mythologically, saying "you're right, Mom, if they were just myths they'd have gods and imaginary creatures and all that." Thank you both forconstancy and joy. janet walke r he insight h h h ; � at "t e western is istory'' is everywhere and nowhere. In The Evolut10n of h t e Western" (1955), Andre Bazin declared that "the western is rooted h h h in t e istory of t e American nation."l Jim Kitses was even bolder in 1969, and it is from him that I borrow the untamed metaphor of my first sentence,2 but I could just as well have borrowed it from on of Richard S h h ,� !otkin's c apter eadings in Gunfighter Nation (1992), Th e Western ts American History."3 Absent from these latter two examples is Bazin's h notion of t e western's organic rootedness. The western oes vm � not "spring from," nor "grow out of " history. No sense of boundanes nor of separate entities is couched. The western is history. three paths in a conceptual topography Discussions of the western, fromany perspective, generally begin with the acknowledgment h h t at it is a istorical genre by virtue of its constituent films being se in the past, � and in particular, overwhelmingly, between the end of the h Civil War and t e "closing of the frontier" in 1890.4 And capitalism, specifically of the changing economic structure of the e e e o pursue r e elo ons of the w st rn as historical t nd t sou c s that dev p discussi Hollywood film industry in the postwar years. "8 Stanley Corkin follows r o e e ed that or o o e of several paths. Fi st,it is ft n mphasiz its hist icity d wn n suit in is article on postwar westerns and My re e r e far � (Red River Darling l ro of m otion pictu w ste ns dat s back the industria p duction Clementine) and the Cold War, published in what is, as I write this,the le o o ier ettlement. o o e that dovetai d with that f fr nt s en ugh t hav a history most recent iss e of Cinema Journal9 Probably the most complex e ee o ernible � o er o e westerns may b s n t have a disc In th w rds, arly tr atment of this avowedly redoubled western historicity is that of o eir ability � e a c ertain authenticity springing fr m th docum ntary quality, Richard Slotkin. The full title of the aforementioned chapter is "The o e lo e e esterners as o e l e e ern settings and t mp y g nuin w t us stil xtant w st Western is History, 1939-1941," for there Slotkin makes the case that r e Thomas o e or r ers, and consultants. Richa d Schick l and act rs, dir ct s, w it we tern f those years are very much engaged with contemporaneous e r e o of early � � � e o sense o f actuality in th i d scripti ns Schatz r fer t this soc10polmcal currents,p resented with reference to a mythic past wherein e er e r es: w st ns. Schick l w it the more current dilemmas are seen to originate. Films of the turn of the decade were a response to "a widely felt need fora renewal of that sense of days [Los Angeles] was, moreover, in spirit a In those pre-metropolitan progressive and patriotic optimism."10 last railhead on the Santa Fe line. Ranching was real western town, the Third, there has been intense interest in the veracity of a given major industries,and Los Angeleswas always full still one of California's western's rendering of historical personages and events (in the "biopic" had driven their herds to market there or had of genuine cowboys who and the "event pie") and also of western settings (in the fictional film set to spend their pay. Raoul Walsh, a director who simply come to town against a western backdrop). In fact,such comparative studies of films in his youth,would recall that one of his firstmovie had been a cowhand a d their historical contexts make up what is likely the most prolific and after the saloons closed, helping � _ jobs was rounding up stray cowboys ll o o o e l o o e l er the hills to sti gr wmg area f c mm nt and pub icati n n th fi m west n.I I But them on their horses and,before dawn,leading them across 5 this is not to say that all writers employ the same theoretical framework, locations in the San Fernando Valley.
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