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. Western be it implicit or explicit,for conceptualizing the film/realityr elationship. A great many authors are satisfied merely to disabuse the public of film­ er In Schatz's t ms: e i r o e e ee orre o i�duc d mis mp essi ns that what they se on th scr n c sp nds �reedy t what r ally happened. For example, Buck Rainey's half-page documents, the earlier silent Westerns differ � � AB cultural and historical mtrodumon to his 1998 publication of Western Gunslingers in Fact and In fact these earlier films have a unique and from the later Westerns. on Film indicates that "[t]here are still many folks who honestly believe Although they were made on the virtual somewhat paradoxical position: that Jesse James was a modern day Robin Hood, that Wyatt Earp was a Age,they also came at a time when westward threshold of the Modern staunch upholder of law and order and that Wild Bill Hickok was the down [but was still going on] .... (In fact,The expansionwas winding greatest gunslinger the West produced. Generally speaking, they base related events that had occurred only a few years Great Train Robbery these beliefs on what they have learned from film and novels .... This was something of a turn-of-the-century gangster previously and as such book allows the reader to compare film characters with their real life effects of Western storytelling in film.) But eventually, the cumulative o e served to c unt rparts."12 the face of contemporary civilization's steady encroachment 6 �et, other authors are concerned with both the ideological rami­ s historicalfunction to its mythical one. subordinate the genre' fications of the departures from fact and the ideological ramifications of t e will to accuracy itself as shared by scholars and quality filmmakers o o o le out from � e o i the "western is hist ry'' t p graphy ads A s c nd path n alike. For example, Ward Churchill's provocative review of Black Robe o or r o the period in e e o e western is n t hist ical by vi tue f th perc pti n that th (1991) shows the disingenuousness of the production's drastic measures e er e e ency to e e e, as everyone knows, w st ns hav a t nd which it is s t (b caus in the name of accuracy (paying $37,000 to transport cedar bark for use er o r e e e re r o e od and p s n), but by vi tu of th be inauth ntic with ga d t p ri i o o le e o o oo e 3 r in bu lding Hur n huts; fashi ning digging imp m nts ut f m s 2 l produced. The Searchers is, as B ian period in which a given fi m was o l e o o er i e l o eri in sh u d r b nes) by contrasting it with th ways in wh ch th fi m's o e er e e argued, as much ab ut Am ca Henders n and P t L hman hav or o r e o l i e e l e e ro o eo e io o e e er �ist i g aphy is gri v us y b as d. Th fi m d picts th I qu is p pl o e i "The convent ns f th w st n as it is ab ut T xas n 1868: e e o e e e o o e 1956 o m 1634 N w Franc (n w Qu b c), nj ying acts f cru lty that extend l e re e r i ensions int o e e r o Ford to disp ac p s nt-day ac al t all w d [dir cto J hn] to the rem rseles execution of an Algonquin child, even though r re l o e r contribution � � e o o other race."7 O , cal R b rt Skla 's th past and nt an ro olo e e e re ro o lan o e e discusses anth p gical vid nce sugg sts that in ality I qu is c m th rs e olo History!American Film in which h to th anth gy American controlled village life and would likely have adopted and raised a child e l ro "is not only e o r estern Red River. Th fi m,Sklar w te, th H wa d Hawks w held captive.13 Thus, in Churchill's view, the film's pretentions to e ere also the products of about capitalism; its form and its d stiny w historical authenticity are highly selective and, as such, part of the film's setting and themes that are so conspicuous initfally as to suggest that they strongly racist import. Of course, I vastly prefer the theoretical are the western's most salient feature are not as important, finally, as the sophistication of Churchill's orientation to the nai:vete of Rainey's operations of genre and authorship that require attention to "form and approach, but it's likely that Rainey's work is the more representative of archetype." western film criticism and modes of reception at large. Although informed by historical consciousness (Schatz went on to My cartographic metaphor serves to delineate the routes of western write the well-known studio history The Genius of the System17), Kitses's film historiography, but it must be qualified to allow that the historian book and Schatz's substantial chapter on the western epitomize-and can be, and often is, in two places at once. Slotkin, for example, while indeed help to constitute-the genre approach to the western. They do emphasizing the currency of films for audiences of the early 1940s (the not purport in the final analysis to be historical studies, but rather formal second path), reflects as well on their relationship to the real subjects they analyses of the narrative and iconographic patterns of genre film. It is, represent (the third path), including Dodge City, Kansas, the Civil War, however, that very slide-fromtaking seriously the historical function of George Armstrong Custer, and Jesse James. All told, the insight that the the western to seeing that function as antiquated in the genre (and in western is history would seem to pervade and perhaps even to dominate genre criticism), usurped by formal and ideological issues-that I wish to the critical literature on the western. point to as being characteristic of literature on the western. But I would like to suggest something to the contrary. A close What is most surprising is that avowedly historical approaches share examination of the major writings on the western genre reveals a marked with the genre-based approach this disinclination to investigate the disinclination to give substantive attention to the western as historical. historical aspects of the genre. Even the best historical scholarship on film Genre approaches to the western deliberately eschew the suggestion that evinces a tendency to separate the historiographic impetus of the western westerns are genuinely historical, concentrating instead on narrative and film, perceived as being merely felicitous or "nominal,"18 from its structure: "The fact is," writes Schatz, "that Hollywood's version of the contemporaneous context of production, perceived as being significant­ Old West has as little to do with agriculture-although it has much to do but not necessarily historical. The BFI Companion to the Western, an 14 with rural values-as it does with history." This ahistoricity is often intelligent, invaluable guide (and a historical one at that, with its longest attributed to the changing nature of the filmsthemselves. As exemplified section devoted to "A Cultural and Historical Dictionary" of actual by Schatz's passage, the genre's historical function is seen as having western people, events, places, and themes), begins with a disclaimer become subordinated to its mythical one. According to this line of about the genre's historicity: "The Western's narrative structure and reasoning, if it was appropriate for George N. Fenin and William K. motifs are seen to derive less from anyreal world than fromthe economic Everson in The Western(1962) and Kevin Brownlow in his long section in and artistic imperatives of Hollywood, each film finding its plausibility The Warthe Westand the Wilderness(I 978) to give prominent attention to and terms of reference in the audience's previous experience of the 19 the western as historical, that is because they wrote about silent westerns. genre." In the thought that the western's intrinsic material "derive[s] less Later westerns did not share the genre's coevality with events in western from any real world" and more from "the economic and artistic history. imperative of Hollywood," the historical specificity of the generic Observe in addition the clear statement that it is present-day America material, be it relevant to past or present contexts, is lost; for such as much as, if not more than, America's past that is the subject of the imperatives must govern the representational patterns of American mature western. As Schatz notes, "effortsto document the historical West cinema as a whole. on film steadily gave way to the impulse to exploit the past as a means of Even Richard Slotkin's magisterial trilogy on myths of the American examining the values and attitudes of contemporary America."15 Here the frontier evincesa tendency (and granted, as with The BFI Companion to Old West is viewed as apt subject matter that supports the wider the Western, it is one tendency among others, but a significant one I sociological function of the western. believe) to receive the western-as-myth as being set 4 apart from history. Perhaps Kitses's statement that "the western is history" is not That is, the film western (as with other cultural forms) is not historical 5 metaphoric but rather metonymic; that is to say that from a certain in and of itself, it draws on historical material. But while history is perspective, the historical dimensions of the western (its milieu and argumentative and discursive, westerns give narrative formto ideological mores) seem to represent the whole. From another perspective, however, beliefs and values. As Slotkin writes, "myths are stories drawn from[but one of greater distance, this dimension recedes fromview, as Kitses claims not discursive renditions of ] a society's history. "20 This is a division that "Ford is not the western; nor is the western history. For if we stand emphasized by the cover blurb for Slotkin's Gunfighter Nation, which back fromthe western, we are less aware of historical (or representational) identifies the book as a work of "literary and history scholarship elements than of form and archerype."16 In genre criticism, the historical [emphasis mine]," thus dividing the two. The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood es ern e en asser W t fr qu tly ... ts i ts basis in his or h n en a e by historian Michael Coyne, makes a similar distinc ion t y as 't be d quately Western, � consi ere i es o d d," wr t C rey Creekmur in his con ri u on o between western films and historiographic function. As a h1_ stonan, t b ti t this volume. is cha e alon h his o u H pt r, g wit t v l me as a whole is an a e o e n Coyne is critical of the "mythic approach" (represented by John Cawelti s , tt mpt t b gi to : rec ify l s es n e t that ack.Ye , w ter s tak dramatic licen e u i is so ue a The Six-Gun Mystique), "the auteurist aproach" (which saw the analysis s ; b t t al tr th t westerns take historical license. o l s irec o s inclu in o ar a hon a n u f fi m by d t r d g H w d H wks, Ant y M n , B dd n ica e o e I i d t d ab v that one tenden n o n s or i o oe icher ou alsh an o hers an he s ruc ur lis a ro c cy i Sl tki ' w k s t separate the B tt , Ra l W , d t ), d "t t t a t pp a h'' holo ic l nc ion myt g a fu t of t he narra i ern o he as e re en e ill ri h s an a ain t ve west fr m t discursive or ( r p s t d by W W g t' Sixguns and Society, d, g , by ar u n a i e n ion _ g me t t v fu ct of histor ri i n o n s a el i r ha o ne re ar a hei nsu en a en ion o he y w t ng. I fact, Sl tki ' conceptual C w t ) fo w t C y g ds s t r i ffici t tt t t t a e o is a r an fr m w rk l rge d more sugges e hin h u his o cal co e o es ern l o uc ion he ol cal alle orical tiv , and I t k t at ltimately the t ri nt xt f w t fi m pr d t .T "p iti / g rou lin se ar io o t b g p at n f myth and history in his oo reso s i sel approach'' as represented by Philip French in Westerns,J ohn L n han in b k lve t f into a � ! use l, if ine ici is inc ion e , fu xpl t, d t t b tween the two a her han crea in an Showdown, and once again by Wright, seems more to Coyne s liking and r t t t g absolute o osi on he ra ec pp ti . T t j tory t raced in is he locates his own " in-depth appraisal of the crucial relationship between Gunfighter Nation chrono o i al concen r n on l g c , t ati g the changes ha h an enres era and artifict" within it.21 However, in setting out what he sees as the t t myt s d g undergo o er i e as he are a ec v t m t y ff ted by "historical con in en 22 he four main approaches that have been adopted with regard to he fil t g cy." T � � book i s a cu ural h s o n he lt i t ry; a d t western genre e e n li era ure western, the text/ context distinction between westerns and history 1s , th refor , i t t an l i a olo i d fi m s myth g cal "activity an rocess hrou h hich rese e es rns a in rac his o o ne r s u h d p " t g w people p rv d.W te m y " te t it� t y," C y ffi m , b t ula ra le i h � ,: � : � form te, g pp w t , and revise ro le s ha ri e i e e n as e i eolo icall se uc e u_ es en all erican the "p b m t t a s n the course w st r , th " d g y d nv ' and q mt s n y Am o his oric e er en f t al xp i ce,"23 with h istorical e er nce e melodrama, is not history. xp ie tak n t o be fundame al o he con en an nt t t t t d patterns of cul ural ro u in u in The third path down which the thought that the western is history is t p d cts cl d g films. Th e s a his or o ra i er i t i g ph c element to mytho o i al i cour e pursued-that of prolific accuracy/inaccuracy deliberations-is similarly l g c d s s . And the reverse a e rue as e m y b t w ll for Slotkin here an e subject to mudslides. If film studio publicity departments touted the . T m y b a mythographi co onen o his or c mp t t t y writing. ''A cu ure has i s he i a authenticity of their output (which they did), and if the films themselves lt t r t ge of 'lore i s lo n hic is ," wr te S tki , w h "preserved for use lore a rs s o would begin quite often with a statement to the effect that "wha you are by -m ste , t ry­ � tellers, or historians. "24 about to see is a true story" (which they did), then film scholarship would define itself in and through the task of illuminating the dramatic license taken by western films. For example, the format of Past Imperfect:History dramatic license/historical license is o inc u e i h ea h cha er a a e l ou According to the Movies t l d w t c pt p g ay t e ne o e seriousl W ed t tak y the profoun an i ce e his orical or ani e aroun h hea i s s o n ol oo n he d d mult fa t d t and g z d d t e d ng "Hi t ry" a d "H lyw d." I t historiogra hic n ions o he p fu ct f t film western; the are e su ec o hi "History'' section we are given the facts of the matter: a capsule summary y th bj t f t s volume. His ori al in er e a ion is t c t pr t t a feature of the es ern s el of Custer's career for They Died with Their Boots On; a photograph of the film w t a w l as of w es rn hi or an es e te st y, d w t rn history, li e he es ern l is real Fort Apache fort he Fort's filmic namesake; and so on ith Wyatt k t w t fi m, :' consti u e hrou h na r i e an t t d t g r at v d ideological a e ns s no Earp, Davy Crockett, and the other subj ects of the westerns mclude m_ p tt r .This i t to � su es ha he es an gg t t t t W t d t he wes ern e con a e o eo he oo he oll oo sec ion ro i es ain l ro uc ion t b fl t d. M r ver, I d o t b k.T "H yw d" t p v d m ly fi m p d t believe in he u ili o he i inc t t ty f t d st tion between non c ional n c ional history: how many Academy Award nominations The Alam receive , fi t a d :fi t � � modes o re rese ion u f p ntat ; b t when history is conce e o arious arryl Zanuck's editorial interference in In this iv d t take v D My Darling Clementine. narra i e r as oe he t v fo ms ( d s t western) an he es e n s oncei e a he non is orica n ure o es erns e hasi e es e ns e d t w t r i c v d to take w y t h t l at f w t is mp z d.W t r g t arious ar u en a i e v g m t t v modes (as does ri en his o one nee heir c s ron an he enco ass a l r e i ina i e co onen w tt t ry), ds to look t fa t w g d t y mp a g mag t v mp t, c re l o un an le a ful y t t g and highligh h i eren rea in 6 he e re h a e no his orical u a he a ai holo ical t t e d ff t d g p rotocols t r fo , t ey r t t ...b t r t r, g n, myt g . a o e in d pt d the two for s o re resen a ion he 7 m f p t t . T rejection of the western's historicity on he as s o i a a ic t b i f ts dr m t license is specious si i no There is, however, an advantage to be gained from scholarship that has ; and fal ty s t a grounds r is ssal s nce c ions fo d mi , i fi t are not simply se nor on c ions ell established the dramatic license that westerns inevitably take and fal n fi t w simply true. disabused readers of the western film's historical conceit. Now, largely In stu n he h or c n ure dyi g t ist i al at of w esterns i is use l o e because of these developments and the dangers to which they've alerted t fu t mak referen o on orar s ce t c temp y film- tudies literature on h h s ori a l us, it is possible to study the relationship to the real that absolute y does t e i t c l fi m. � Bo h eor e s s in us t G g Cu ten' d trial anal s s o o oo io ics in r he o l oo es ern he con i er e e en o h h he y i f H llyw d b p and fo m t H l yw d w t . "T s d abl xt t t w 1e t o er R b t B urgoyne's s u o he hi oric l l t dy f t st a fi m of t he 1980s and 1990s he n l ze 2 n understand-an e e i i r i n er he take seriously t he historical function of the films t y a a y , 5 a d d b caus t s c uc al to u d stand-t historical i n he l n r vicissitudes of the l e r re e e h er n n e neither author falls prey to the historical myst ficatio of t fi ms u de fi m w ste n. To v rs t e t ms a d co c ntrate on n r n in he studies of hi i l h n r r e e ern e study. Custen refers to biopics' "obvious distortio s a g g from t stor ca films t at i co po at w st s, G orge Custen's h l e h study does include ern i e n er ne minor to the outright camp," and Burgoyne to suc fi ms' "som w at _ some west t d s a d Rob t Burgoy 's book 2 e ei her h r contams a c hapter n nei her i e glancing relationship to the historical record. " 6 Nor do s t aut o o Thunderheart, but t book s d signed to h e he e l in n i n l andle westerns as r ee r ree r h er neglect the contributions t he films mak to t vo v g at o a a g oup (s Co ey C kmu 's c apt for more i e h e e ni i n he d scussion of this poin i h re r en n l imaginary in the p resent. Indeed, for Cust n t e v ry d fi t o of t t w t ga d to Cust 's book). I fact,I wou d h r in r he suggest that it's pre i e e e he l e re r e in e biopic "shiftsa new with each generation'' so t at "[t] ac g a code fo t c s ly b caus t fi ms ar ga d d thes studies n li n i n 27 mainly as historical films n nl e n ril ener e ern h biopic is an exercise in reconstructing a shifti g pub c ot o of fame," a d o y s co da y as g ic w st s t at he l in n their hospitabili hi ri r hi i e i r nize and Burgoyne's book is thoroughly involved with h ow t fi ms a d ty to sto og ap c pract c s ecog d. h h l ie n i n r he T e restraint in genre r i i in re nizin h h r l implied by his corpus reconstruct American myt o og s of at o fo t c it c sm aga st cog g t e isto ica he n h e e aspects of the western h n n i e e he e i n en contemporary audience. Yet while they confront ad o t e v ry issu s as a a c llary ff ct: t d flect o of att tion he ern away from nonwhi e h r er n heir re l rl n er that have led many scholars of the western away from t west as t c a act s a d t a -wo d cou t parts. en r li he hi ri l Although Native Ameri n e r h r er in ne h history, these authors continue to assert the c t a ty of t sto ca ca s ar majo c a act s about o -fift of all ne el en l er westerns, minor ch r er in re n h ne re in dimension of the films they study. As Burgoy oqu t y ass ts, "What a act s many mo , a d t e e my of cord still r en l others, the dominan r r i e he hi her I try to stress ... is t he way the cinematic rewriting of history cu r t y t sto y fo m nvolv s t myt c cowboy o a nd i n 2 the mythic function he ni n i i iliz i n n he unfolding articulates a counternarrative of nat o ." 8 of t commu ty as a oas s of c v at o i t in i h hi r n ilderness. In we ern e h e rne he i he re Custen and Burgoyne both allow-indeed s st-t at sto y a d � st s, as w ave l a d, t cowboy s t b akaway er h here h hin nd of Manifest De in he i n r he e le en e narrative are capable of interpenetration and t at t is suc a t g as st y; s ot pa t of t s tt m t pack, but cl ars r n i e the way for western e n i n n r he i ne r h he historical narrative. Directly influenced by the wo k of Hayde Wh t , xpa s o a d fo t p o e s to w om, as t films he i i h h i have it, we owe "our" heri e both film historians emphasize the validity of t ns g t at t e bas s of tag . e l l r r in Genre criticism h l en niz n e he i e his work (which insight W hite attribut s to Pau Va e y, Ma t as actua ly tak cog a c of t b as s of the e r re n i hel w stern, acknowledgin he n n n n re en i n i Heidegger, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sa t , a d M c Foucault): g t co comita t ( o )rep s tat o of Nat ve i e n en ll i e American worldviews. e nre ri i i h en e e namely, that history is a lways reconstruct v a d g era y fict v . Of How ver, ge c t c sm as be b tt r at niz l r er n i r i i n h in l e re g ing such biases, of which i i r i l h n ini i in n course White's work is part of a a g a alyt cal t ad t o t at c ud s �� _ t s c it ca , t a at t at g a y l e ne e er i nt1cal practice that can er e he he ax n the work of E. H. Carr, J. H. Hexter, Pau V y , P t Nov ck, � sup c de t m. "T Anglo-S o focus may h i ne he mdeed have been en r he i e l i er he e er Dominick LaCapra, and Michel de Certeau, and t at s attu d to "t c t al to t d o og cal pow of t W st n and its n e n her i e ostalgic appeal," wr e l e n hi n r i n rhetoric of history," to "the tropes, argum nts, a d ot dev c s of ot Doug as Py i s i t oduct o to The Book of e ien e 2 i e Westerns, coedited w i h er n 6 r r language used to write history a nd to persuad aud c s." 9 Wh t 's t Ian Cam o .3 O , as Edwa d Buscombe he r le en explai s, "T he Western en e h i i n l ele e h particular contribution h as been to study "t 'a tistic' e m ts of a � as a g r as trad t o al y c brat d t e m yth he hi ri er i n he re i e of tammg the frontier 'wilderne h h en le ee he 'realistic' historiography, "30 or t sto cal p mutat o s of t p m s ss.' As suc it as be ab to s t n i e r n r e h n he I d an only as the unknown he r h e e hi h hre that "the historical monograph is no less 'shap d' o co st uct d t a t 'ot r,' pa t of t os forc s w c t aten he 1 he i e in t onward march r eri n i il z i n n e n l i historical film or historical novel."3 And fromt oppos t vantage po t of Eu o-Am ca c v i at o a d t ch o og cal e i n r i n h e progress ... [C]on e en he r r i e e i n he assumes (and elaborates when necessary) that r al st ar at ve ca av s qu dy, t po t ayal of Nat v Am r ca s could i e ri e in he n scar el but be unsymp he i r n i e r in a historical component. "T here is no reason," Wh t w t s t co text � � �t t c, Eu oce tr c and d g ad g.'' 37 As Pye e i ll sees It, ' Women and n n e e er in he en ri e i of a discussion of historical n ovels and films, sp c fica y The Return of I dia s ar k y t ms t g e c quat on, as it ri e en h l were, but with heir re re n n l r e n ine hei r Martin Guerre, "why a filmed representation of histo cal v ts s ou d t p se tatio a g ly co stra d by t r oles in a i i i n i en n 2 h ien s m ol c drama dominated by the fan ie i e en e not be as analytical and real st c as a y wr tt accou t. "3 T e sal t � � tas s ofWh t m ."38 If w stay h 8 r n n rr i e n r e en w1t m the story realm i en he e n e i i i i e 9 distinction for White i s not between histo y a d a at v , o v g v by t w ster t xt t s d fficult nde d (but n e een hi r r h ot impossible, as e rie h in n n ri i n hi between fiction and nonfiction, but rather b tw " sto iog ap y'' - I'v t d to s ow my ow co t but o to t s he re re en i n hi volume) to discern, against he r in he e li r written history-and "historiophoty"-"t p s tat o of story and t g a of t t xt, a "symbo c d ama'' at i r e least informed by he n e n hi i h e re our thought about it in visual images and filmic d scou s ."33 t fa tasi s of India s. T s s w y g n study, as a i e rre n in text-dependent form n l i i e l l l n i n T his rhetoric-of-history approach, and Hayden Wh t 's co spo d g of a a ys s, g v s so itt e p ay to I d a s w hose n in l ie stories are "lost," l he h ri en ideas about history and narrative, are quite well know fi m stud s as Tag Ga lag r as w tt .39 e re 4 re in r r nl r i l in G criticism wants to have h h n i h and in film historiography, 3 but a co po ated o y spo ad cal y to � _ it bot ways w e t comes to myt i i e re and history m t he e er e ern re e hi studies of the western.35 T hat must change, I subm t, f w a to w st n: w st s a said to b myt c with respect to the portrayal of Indians. John Ford's Indian characters are "mythic Apted, 1992), Smoke Signals(Chris Eyre, 1998), and Backroads(Shirley apparitions" and "icons of savage violent beauty dread," in Gallagher's Cheechoo, 2000). These films feature contemporary Native-American words;40 therefore, since everybody knows that those are not "real protagonists, but they are still very much about the past: about how Indians" up there on the screen, nobody should be offended by their tribal values may or may not figure in the lives of present-day Native negative portrayal. But then shouldn't the same thing hold when it ricans; Ame and about the consequences in the present of a history of comes to the white characters? If Indians qua Indians can't be conquest, genocide, and survival. represented in a mythic system, how can whites qua whites be The chapters in this book are deeply concerned with this counter­ represented? To accept Gallagher's terms for the moment, I would say historical function of the western. It is no coincidence that all of the that the stories of settlers are also lost-in an inflated narrative of authors represented in the book have elected to contribute writing defensive self-satisfaction. Genre criticism, however, tends to renege on on films and issues that prioritize perspectives outside the white­ protestations that westerns are mythic in the assumption that white dominated mainstream. For example, a significant section of Alexandra stories, unlike Indian stories, can be told in westerns. Genre criticism Keller's chapter considers a film (Posse) by a black director (Mario Van has a tendency to recapitulate the bias it pretends only to reveal. It Peebles) portraying black characters, and Peter Bloom has written about allows historical interpretation presented in narrative form to parade as Algerian the redubbing of a French "camembert" western. The chapter by mere myth. Melinda Szaloky, ''A Tale N/nobody Can Tell: The Return of a Repressed If we accept that westerns do have a historical function, one could Western History in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man," and chapters by Claudia assert that Indian stories were never really lost. The films are as much Gorbman and myself, discuss Indians as nobodies and somebodies. about Indians (even where the latter are represented by their non­ To mas Sandoval's chapter investigates the counterhistorical possibilities appearance as a structuring absence) as they are about settlers. It's just that in Lone Star-a film about everybody: blacks, whites, Indians, and the stories are told from the colonists' perspective-from the perspective Mexicans. of celebration rather than boundless grief at the "taming of the frontier That histories as well as westerns must absolutely be received in their 'wilderness."' My point is that history and myth are related and textual. If fully rhetorical dimensionality as constructed texts struck me recently this weren't so, then the western corpus could include a narrative turn in when I attended the exhibit on Buffalo Bill's Wild West at the Gene which Europeans are repulsed, pushed back across the sea, or in which Autry Museum in Los Angeles. I had just read Kevin Brownlow's account they decide to withdraw once they see how their diseases are killing of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's involvement in events preceding and Native Americans. But these possibilities seem ludicrous because that'snot following the massacre at Wounded Knee in December of 1890, the way it actuallyhappened. The western is a profoundlyhistorical genre. including the execution of Sitting Bull one week prior to the massacre: As such, the western is a genre that repays a historical approach to its

analysis. And when we go outside the text for our points of reference in The general o oo c mmanding the tr ps was Nelson Appleton Miles, a reading westerns, alternatives begin to present themselves. Yes, it's true veteran o v o f the Ci il War, wh had defeatedthe Kiowas, the Comanches, that white perspectives also dominate historical accounts of the frontier and ov the Cheyennes .... As the g ernment had been alarmed by the era, but the plentiful existing primary documents and the appearance of Gho o o oo st Dancers, s the Si ux t k fright at the troops. They evacuated more and more counterhistories in the subfield known as New Western the reservatio o n and fled t the Bad Lands, where they were joined by a History provide the cultural historian of the western with new bases for o th usand more tribesmen. Sitting Bull had returned o 4 fr m exile in analysis. 1 Some such counterhistories have begun to press the argument Canada, and General Miles decided to isolate him in case he tried t o that somewhere between nine million and twenty million Native Ameri­ seize co o o mmand f the Si ux. Miles asked C ody, on the staffo f the cans were living in North America at the time of Columbus's landing ov o o g ern r f Nebraska and recently returned from a o 42 highly successfult ur here. Ward Churchill states unequivocally that the American holocaust of Europe with the o o 10 Wild West, t talk t his formertr ouper [Sitting Bull "was and remains unparalleled, both in terms of its magnitude and the had o 11 appeared with Buffal Bill's Wild West in 1885]. Cody agreed, but degree to which its goals were met, and in terms of the extent to which he co o uld n t resist an all-night drinking session with cavalry officers. its ferocity was sustained over time by not one but several participating Next day President Benjamin Harrison, alerted by the local Indian agencies."43 Knowledge of this history can aid film analysis in identifying agent, o canceled Cody's missi n.The agent sent a detachment of Indian the nature of "lost stories," in finding what is there residually, and in police; o Sitting Bull refused t submit and was killed. His white horse, comprehending a new formof western being made in the late 198Os and given o o him by C dy, was trained t kneel at the sound of gunfire.As the '9Os, a form that includes stories of Native American heritage such as Indian o o p lice sh t Sitting Bull, the horse knelt-a source of wonder in Powwow Highway (Jonathan Wacks, 1989), Thunderheart (Michael Indian oral history. 44 Here the tragic ironies are multiplied. The defensive actions of the Sioux of disease were exterminated as surely as their compatriots who died in were misunderstood. Cody just missed an opportunity to intervene. Sit­ gas chambers), is to place a very differentinterpretation on the history of ting Bull was shot by fellow Sioux. Sitting Bull's horse mistook reality for hemispheric holocaust. stage play. History, then, may be said to take dramatic license just as films take Imagine my surprise at the museum exhibit's very different treatment historical license. There are valuable insights to be gained in studying the of these events. To give its visitors some historical background, the two in concert, as is the goal of this volume concisely put. printed commentary mounted on the museum's walls describes the death of Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee massacre. But then, as we move from that panel to the next, we read that "Buffalo Bill's Wild West had westerns and histories been touring Europe at that time and had set up its winter quarters. It The relationship between westerns and histories has various facetsthat are was not certain that the Indians, who had returned to the USA, would be intrinsic to the subject matter and capable of serving as heuristic permitted to rejoin the show, so Cody and his business partner Nate Sals­ categories. We can study westerns in their variety and as they have bury decided to incorporate a new element into their performance, one developed through(out) history and film history from the silentera to the 'that would embody the whole subject of horsemanship."' This is rather present. Or we can regard westerns as histories on film, interpreting past confusing.Where were the winter quarters set up? Were they in Europe events alongside written histories from which they may draw. We can or America? When did the Indians return? Was it before or after the mas­ even see some westerns as fulfilling a historiographic function by evincing sacre at Wounded Knee? The main elision, however, is that of the pres­ a self-consciousness about the history writing process at the same time ence of Cody in the military camp at the time of Sitting Bull's death. The that they share in it. Through the lens of history, we come to realize that passage suggests, without stating it, that he was nowhere around, perhaps westerns incorporate, elide, embellish, mythologize, allegorize, erase, even as far away as Europe. Yet the exhibit also includes a painted poster duplicate, and rethink past events that are themselves-as history­ that depicts General Miles and William Cody at Pine Ridge in January of fragmented, fuzzy, and striated with fantasy constructions. The relation 1891 and bears the label "Viewing Hostile Indian Camp." between the western and the history of the West must be more complex My guess is that the exhibit's curators sought to downplay Cody's indi­ than an "is." rect involvement in Sitting Bull's death in case such a referencemight cast To complicate matters, these categories forengaging in the study of a pall over the commemorative aspects of the exhibit or undermine the westerns are not discrete. This is largely because westerns themselves fall illusion of Cody's powers-powers that justify him as the subject of an into different subcategories with varying relationships to the past-as­ exhibit in the first place-by suggesting that Cody couldn't save his "for­ thematic-material, and varying formulations of the fictive material that mer trouper." bears the historical along. Some, hut not all, westerns are biopics or event The point is that written history, be it found in books or on the walls pies, which means that some but not all are what film scholars generally of museums, is not necessarily less selective or interpretive than the mean by historical films.46 These particular westerns lend themselves to history presented in film westerns. For another example, consider the analysis as histories because their relationship to the real past is avowed statistics provided here with regard to the genocide of Native Americans. and detailed in their treatment of historical personages and events and Informedreaders of the aforementionedpassage may have been skeptical not just landscape and historical sweep. And in fact there have been about the figures quoted, perhaps finding them inflated. The several articles (fewer in number than we may have thought) that have Smithsonian Institution had asserted until recently that not more than measured individual biopics and biopic cycles against historical record one million people lived north of Mexico prior to the arrival of while keeping in mind the aesthetic specificity of historiophoty and not Columbus. Lately, however, they have upped their estimate to two falling into simplistic comparisons between film and "reality. "47 Other million, indicating that the earlier estimate was in error. But in a long 12 westerns are "merely" set in the past making no reference to actual impeccably researched chapter with more than six hundred footnotes, 13 historical events and personages. These have not generally been discussed Ward Churchill surveys military, government, newspaper, scholarly, and as historical films. And yet, as Creekmur indicates in chapter 6 of this epidemiological documents and literatures to show that work based on volume, "While most film genres, including the most fantastic, often archival records indicates a preinvasion population that scholars have make some claims upon historical reality, the Western appears unique in begun to approximate at fifteen million.45 Obviously, the death of 90 its regular, perhaps even inherent, reference to a geographically and percent of two million people is harrowing enough. But to say that nearly historically delimited time and space." fifteen million died, and to argue as Churchill does that they were How can we begin to account for the subcategories of the western exterminated (since we accept that Jews who died in concentration camps genre's characteristic "reference to a historically delineated time and space?" In "Traces of the Past: From Historicity to Film," Philip Rosen the 1970s. Thus, they are also at pains to reference real events and used the nineteenth-century debate in architecture between restorationists cultural practices of that decade. Matters are more complicated still: and preservationists to begin a taxonomy of historical filmmaking Powwow Highway and Thunderheart hark back to even earlier 1970s practice.48 Whereas the restorationist's urge (epitomized by Eugene­ events, with both films making reference to the Vietnam War; Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc) is to return a historical building to its original Thunderheart also brings in the 1975 firefight at the Pine Ridge style even if it means razing subsequent, even centuries-old additions that Reservation and the 1973 occupation of the Wounded Knee monument. are viewed as inauthentic, the preservationist (represented by William The continuum, however, could use a third dimension, for all Morris or John Ruskin) is "willing to subordinate organic order to the stretches of the line support the potential for a film, however balanced disordering work of time.49 Applied to film-like architecture a medium between fictive and historical elements, to function also as a where there is "an iconicized trace-a mechanical presentation of sights "historiographic metafiction." Coined by Linda Hutcheon in her book and sounds from the past"-the restorationist/preservationist dialectic is The Poetics of Postmodernism, this phrase is adopted by William Simon echoed most simply in the documentary/fiction dyad. Whereas and Louise Spence (in chapter 4, here) to describe how Robert Altman's documentaries are concerned with providing a real relation to the past, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson "self­ fiction films are later versions, products of their own time as well as of past consciously suggest[s] the discursive nature of all reference"-induding, I time. Extrapolating from Rosen's argument to the western, one achieves would emphasize, historical reference. One might say the same about the ability to distinguish between more or less highly interpretive, Altman'sother anti-western McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Although the filmis embellished, stylized, or add-on histories of the west on film. fiction, it nonetheless points up gritty realities that were a feature of I see westerns arrayed along a continuum, at the right end of which actual life on the frontier and it highlights, by contrast, the prettification are found the mainly fictional westerns and at the left end of which are engaged in by classical westerns. Self-consciousness about historical foundthe mainly "biopictional." Wholly fictional films (but I doubt such representation characterizes many westerns because-no matter how an animal exists; all films, including science-fiction films, refer to the attuned a twentieth-century filmis to the ideologies of the nineteenth relationships of an inhabited world and so make reference to our own) century-the time lapse creates the potential for metahistorical reflection. would be offthe scale to the right; wholly documentary films (or at least In analyzing an individual Altman film as historiographically our imagined conception of them, since I'm sure such a thing does not metafictional, Simon and Spence thus offer an analysis with wider exist) would be offthe scale to the left. The Searchers would crowd the applicability to the genre as a whole. right end of the continnum; Ethan Edwards and his quest are made up, What, then, are we to make of this melange of history, fiction, and but Te xas 1868 and the Civil War, from which Edwards is supposed to historiographic metafiction that characterizes the western genre while have just returned, are real. The Life of Buffalo Bill (Thomas Edison, figuring in individual films and film groupings in seemingly endless 1912) would crowd the left end; William Frederick Cody plays himself combination? Although boundaries between heuristic categories are in part of the film, and the exploits he recalls are based on historical blurred, I submit that there are distinct affinitiesamong types of westerns occurrence, but sheer imagination and the fictional trappings of and types of perspectives on the western. It is these affinities that govern reenactment also play a signficant role just as they did in BuffaloBill's the section divisions of this book traveling Wild West exhibition. In this volume, the chapters by Corey In chapter 1, "Generic Subversion as Counterhistory: Mario Van Creekmur and Joy Kasson contain explicit discussions of these matters Peebles's Posse," Alexandra Keller proposes that 1990s postmodern and they, along with the chapter by William Simon and Louise Spence, westerns are unique in that they "show a marked preoccupation not only grapple with the historically interpretive features of BuffaloBill vehicles with their own generic value as westerns, but also with the discourse of as a case study of the historical function of the western biopic. history itself, and their relation to it." Left to my own devices I would In the middle of the continuum we find films such as Thunderheart hang onto the possibility that a rogue postmodern western could be 14 15 and Powwow Highway that are fictional in the main but also figure past foundin any decade and I suspect that Simon and Spence would disagree historical incident as resurgent material with which the films' characters with Keller's claim that Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's must deal. In Thunderheart a modern-day FBI agent (played by Val History Lesson (1976) falls short of "full-blown postmodernism." But Kilmer) has several visions including a vision of himself "running with these are fascinating questions and Keller has met the challenge of the elders" at Wounded Knee. In Powwow Highway the main character explaining, finally, what our intuitions have told us: that the "90s (played by Gary Farmer) has a vision of Cheyenne Indians led by Dull postmodern western" is a coherent category whose coherence relies on the Knife escaping from Fort Robinson. Moreover, instead of being way its constituent films are skeptical of official history and "foreground contemporary to the time they were made, both films are actually set in the difference between history and the past." She argues that if the western "has always been a revisionist genre it has not, until relatively Louise Spence provides a detailed analysis of a single film, Altman's recently, wanted to announce itself as such." Her essay specifies such Buffalo Billand the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, as a self­ distinctions in wonderful detail and with reference to a number of key conscious work of historiography. On this basis the essay fits in well with filmsincluding Walkerand Dances with Wolves.It then brings these ideas the three essays in part 1, and I could have placed it there and let you as to bear on a close analysis of Posse. Part 1 of this volume was therefore readers figure out whether the film'srevisionist characteristics are different established to follow Keller's lead (and her chapter leads off), and it than or the same as those of the more recent 1990s films.But the essay features three essays on the postmodern 1990s western as the self­ also belongs with the two other chapters on BuffaloBill westerns, and, in consciously historiographic western par excellence. the absence of a graphic (hypertextual?) means to place the essay in two In her essay, ''A Tale N/nobody Can Tell: The Return of a Repressed places at once, I have elected to include it as the firstessay in part 2. Western History in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man," Melinda Szaloky poses Each of the three chapters in this section uses Buffalo Bill-the the question of whether revisionist westerns can "remember differently'' historical personage and fictionalized persona-to investigate issues of the frontier history they have been "forced to forget" as we have become biography, authenticity, representation, and history. "No single character more enlightened about racial inequities and national statism. Can the summarizes the transformation of the historical reality of the American "scattered remnants of the frontier myth'' reappear as history, or are they frontier into commercial entertainment as fully as William F. 'Buffalo merely countermyth? This is the same litmus test of the postmodern Bill' Cody," writes Corey Creekmur. It was Cody who "made familiar western posed by Keller, and, by those standards, Szaloky's close reading throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe" the "most of Dead Man would indicate that it is indeed a postmodern text. Drawing memorable scenes and incidents [that] had been part of the popular on the work of Michel de Certeau and of Sigmund Freud, Szaloky imagination fora quarter-century," writes Joy Kasson. He did it by being suggests that history writing necessarily involves a process of selection and not only a scout in the "Indian Wars" but a showman as well. One is erasure, and that traumatic events that have been erased/repressed from almost sympathetic to the hyperbole of the BuffaloBill exhibit at the mainstream histories do have the potential to return in revisionist Gene Autry Museum, which tags Cody the "most famousperson living" westerns. This they do in Dead Man,she argues, particularly through the at the time. With its 600 men, 500 horses, 11-acre mobile showground, character of N/nobody, whose captivity by whites and abduction overseas and 23,000 yards of tent canvas, Buffalo Bill's Wild West company reverses the captivity narrative trope of the western, and whose points of needed 52 train cars to travel. And travel they did, on the European tour view and dreams upon his return are manifestationsof the "return of the of 1895, for example, to 131 sites in 190 days, covering 9,000 miles. The white man's repressed other." The representations of death and violence German Army was ordered to study the operation. in the western, and their frequent poeticization, Szaloky argues, are The chapters in this section approach the Buffalo Bill phenomenon exposed in Dead Man as being linked to the "Westerner's quest for fromvarious angles. Simon and Spence are interested in Altman's filmcri­ origins" and identity. Dead Man renders these dilemmas differently by tique of BuffaloBill mythology, and they discuss the use of Paul Newman posing them in relation to "Nobody's desire to return the white man to in the title role and the film's numerous inventive metafictional devices. the land of his fathers."The perspectives of the other, Szaloky argues, But the teeth of that critique-the pointed result of the film's ample allu­ suppressed in life and repressed in films and histories, return in the sions to the mechanic of storytelling-chew on Sitting Bull's History Les­ postmodern strategies of Dead Man. son, the film's subtitular indication that "the story of the American West is In chapter 3, Tomas Sandoval refers to ideas in Hayden White's less a tale of civilization, progress, heroic action and triumph than oppres­ famous essay "The Burdenof History'' to bring out Lone Star's initiative sion, displacement, exclusion, and defeat." It is no coincidence, Simon with regard to the weight of historical occurrence.50 Not only does the and Spence point out, that the Altman film is set "between 1885 (when film suggest alternate remembrances of things past (revisionism Sitting Bull joined BuffaloBill's Wild West) and 1890 (when Sitting Bull foregrounded),it also suggests that past occurrences may be taken up­ was killed at Standing Rock)." The chapter ends with an intriguing discus­ 17 16 or not-in the present and future of human endeavor. The film, in his sion of the film's inclusion of the Wild West's inclusion of two rather dif­ reading of it, suggests that historical subjects need not also be subjugated ferent Last Stand scenes. The first shows Custer being vanquished, but in to past events: "blood only means what you let it," quotes Sandoval. And the second sequence Newman plays BuffaloBill playing Custer, who van­ he demonstrates how this "belief in human agency'' is particularly crucial quishes Sitting Bull played by Will Sampson playing William Halsey play­ for those groups whose blood was let in a past that included inequality, ing Sitting Bull. The first sequence is a "comic travesty," write Simon and slavery, and conquest in the face of democracy. Spence, the second a "postmodern parody." I have indicated above that "Cowboy Wonderland, History and Myth: While Altman confined himself to Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Kasson 'It Ain't All That Different than Real Life,"' by William Simon and informs us that Cody directed much more. He was the subject of numerous films, as Kasson and Creekmur both point out, and in being a mix of social and aesthetic film history with furtherreflections on addition was the driving force behind an ambitious undertaking how the two necessarily entwine in western film history. And even the discussed by Kasson: the filming of the Indian Wars, including the Battle four essays on single films set their analyses within the historical context of Wounded Knee by involving the actual participants. of the genre's propensity to become more and more self-conscious. The As an American studies scholar, Joy Kasson fleshes out her three chapters in this third part of the volume, however, examine characterization of Cody and his endeavors through an astute reading of successive westerns in the context of diverse research materials ranging diverse documents from archives including the Yale Collection of from minstrel song sheets (Kathryn Kalinak) to field recordings of American Literature, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, American Indian tribal music (Claudia Gorbman) to journalism in the Wyoming, and the Library of Congress. Here the reminiscences of Cody's colonies of French North Africa (Peter Bloom). business partner Nate Salsburyare analyzed in light of the grand claims of Listening to the car radio a few days ago, I heard an interview with the Wild West's program notes and other promotional materials. composer-guitarist Bill Frisell talking about new developments in his Apparently Salsbury himself saw the contradictions in the BuffaloBill musical interests. He had always been most interested in the newest, persona that Altman, and Simon and Spence, develop. According to coolest thing, he said. But now he's older, more secure, and more willing Kasson's research findings, Salsbury wrote, "There were two of him to to explore musical formsthat he would have rejected previously as unhip. me. One the true Cody as he has always been from his birth, and the What was the particular musical form in question? American popular other was a commercial proposition that I discovered when I [!] invented song. That's what he now finds crucial to his development as an American the Wild West." musician. Those of us who have grown up in the United States can hum Indian WarPictures overreached Cody's masterful use of artifice, for and probably muster lyric fragments of "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown with that project he "diminished the element of fictionality and Races," "Dixie," and others. These songs represent our heritage. They heightened the claims to authenticity." There were difficulties, however, were sung in mining camps, on western trails, and in film westerns, by and the film ended up disrupting "the delicate balance between role­ soldiers, explorers, and cowboys. They are authentic western music, or so playing and memory'' that he had been able to maintain with the Wild we thought. Kathryn Kalinak's chapter "How the West Was Sung" West. A contributing factor musthave been the disturbing subject matter teaches us that there's much more to know (surprises perhaps) about the itself. Cody had never before staged the massacre at Wounded Knee, history of such songs, and about their plentiful incorporation into film during which 146 Indians including women and children were killed by westerns, both silent and sound. Their use in western film narrative, the Seventh Cavalry, and the attempt to do so failed to draw in an Kalinak argues, redoubles the filmwork to affirmAmerican community audience. The death of Sitting Bull also figured into Indian WarPictures, through the exclusion of African Americans, Native Americans, and the Kasson explains. problems of racism. And yet, since the songs themselves cannot always Moving in this section from an essay focused on one film to an essay sustain the totalizing white supremacy of their overt meanings, and focused on Cody productions we arrive at chapter 6, "Buffalo Bill certain songs are explicitly about the tragedies of slavery, their adoption (Himself)," by Corey Creekmur. He, like Kasson, is interested in Edison's by films can sometimes bring up racial issues, including antiracist The Life ofBuffalo Bill as a film within which "reality and artifice" do perspectives. battle: as I mentioned above, Cody plays himself in the framingstory. But Focused on composer Stephen Foster but ranging farwider, Kalinak's where Kasson moves on from The Life of BuffaloBill to analyze Cody's essay is the definitiveword on the music of the frontier as used in western subsequent attempt with Indian WarPictures to make what contemporary films, fromJames Cruz's silent The Covered Wagon to John Ford's Civil critics might call "docudrama'' or documentary reenactment, Creekmur's War westerns, The Horse Soldiers and Sergeant Rutledge. It also suggests essay moves from The Lifeof Buffalo Bill, with its elements of "actuality," how knowing the "archaeology," as she puts it, of these songs expands the Wellman, 1944) as a standard biopic. corpus of films we must study to understand the western. Until now, who to BuffaloBill (William 19 18 In keeping with the other contributions in this section, Creekmur's realized the importance of the 1939 Vitaphone short Royal Rodeo, or goal is to examine these individual films not only to understand their heard the strain of abolitionism in The Telegraph Trail? Through their particular combination of dramatization and reportage, but as part of a songs, these films figure the "racial turmoil" that has "always been at the larger project: to investigate "a consistent blurring between the western center of American identity." and the biopic that hasn't been directly investigated." Where one film music scholar, Kathryn Kalinak, explores the racial Part 3 of the volume is given over to new essays on the history of the content of frontier songs,another, Claudia Gorbman, discusses the role western. This is not to say that other essays in the volume do not pertain of the film score in "determining the spectator's reception of the other." to film history. Kasson's and Creekmur's essays might be categorized as "How," Gorbman asks, "does music inflect the nature and degree of the Indian's otherness?" Technical, but made accessible to film scholars with were shown in film caravans as well as first- and second-run movie much less musical knowledge than Gorbman, the essay "Drums Along theaters. Then, turning to contemporaneous sources, including French the L.A. River: Scoring the Indian," begins by identifying "musical journalism in the colonies, he suggests how the adventures of "Bronco cliches" such as "tom-tom" drumming that have cuedthe presentation of Billy'' Anderson, William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Art Acord, and the other Indians on screen. She confirms our suspicion that these musical western stars might have been received at a distance fromthe context that stereotypes "bear little relation to authentic Indian music," but their gave birth to them. This entails an understanding of the Algerian political history, as described, is fascinating.Moreover, art composers of the turn context and a close description of the films' themes, both of which Bloom of the century did appropriate Indian music, known from ethnographers' provides. The western, with its "good badman'' hero, was subject, Bloom transcriptions and field recordings, and their use of it raises issues of shows, to local translation, and even allegorization, by its avid spectators. accessibility and translation that are of particular relevance to the musical This was the context for the development of a form of spectatorship scene today where "commercial interests pick and choose among the involving parody and cultural translation. And it was the context forthe world's musicians and musical traditions in the insatiable search fornew Algerian redubbing (Dynamite "Moh," 1966) of a French "camembert" sounds to add to the global pop mix." western (Dynamite Jack, 1961) that was itself a parody of the American This is the framework for Gorbman's analysis of "Indian music" as it westerns with which the European and Africanscreens had been flooded. has developed over time from classical westerns (including Stagecoach, "Dynamite 'Moh,"'writes Bloom, suggests that "the subversion of domi­ scored by Richard Hageman, John Liepold, W Franke Harling, and Leo nant meanings is an ongoing, dynamic process, nearly simultaneous with Shuken), to postwar liberal westerns (Broken Arrow, scored by Hugo the reception of the speech act itself "-and it is profoundly historical. Friedhofer), to 1970s westerns (A Man Called Horse, with its "faux Cathy Caruth, whom I quote in the volume's concluding chapter, has ethnographic" score by Leonard Rosenman), to recent offerings (Dances written that "to be traumatized is precisely to be possessed by an image or 3 with Wolves, scored by John Barry). The essay enlightens us as to the event."5 Alone in part 4, my own essay makes the claim that, even when communication of "unheard" meanings.51 For example, Gorbman's they do not explicitly reference outside events-or perhaps because they do analysis of Friedhofer's score for Broken Arrow reveals how the liberalism not-some westerns allude to the violent history of American settlement through narrative retrospection and stylistic antirealism. Such westerns­ of the film's story is undercut in various ways by the score in spite of­ and there is a surprisingly large number of them-are internallyhistorical. but yet in some respect because of-the film's use of diegetic Indian music in the form of the "actual music and dance of the Mountain Spirit from Evoking the past through flashbacks, ellipses, and indeterminate signi­ the girls' puberty ceremony of the White Mountain Apache." Apache fiers-images that hold characters and audiences captive-these "trau­ chanting is also used in Ry Cooder's score for Geronimo: An American matic westerns" mark an obsessive return to troubling memories that Legend, but this time to rather different effect-onethat seems to link the refuseto dis-/resolve. The form of the films themselves is traumatized, as promise of earlier appropriations to an American counterhistory of loss. are the worthy spectators inscribed by their texts. In chapter 9, Peter Bloom takes us not only "Beyond the Western The essay studies two patterns that lend themselves to traumatic Frontier," to quote the essay's main title, but beyond national boundaries representation: the narrative of captivity and the narrative of familial as well. Recent years have seen a proliferation of new work by established succession. The Seachers provides the main example of the first, while scholars on political economies and cultures under globalization. And the Pursued, Once Upon a Time in the West,and Lone Star, exemplify the importance of new media technologies to these configurations is not lost second pattern. These filmsare part of a prominent subgroup of westerns on these scholars, among them Nestor Canclini, Fredric Jameson and "in which past events of catastrophic nature are represented so as to Masao Miyoshi, Saskia Sasson, and Zillah Eisenstein.52 But these very challenge both the realist representational strategies of a genre that often important accounts of the processes of globalization risk becoming, in a trades on historical authenticity and the ideological precepts of the myth of ManifestDestiny." word, global. It's extremely difficult to paint a picture as meaningful 21 20 close-up as it is from afar. With only a few exceptions, the essays presented here were written Peter Bloom's essay does just that, however. His study of "an evolving expressly forthis volume. They all share the aim to consider the "western process of reception and reappropriation of the Western film genre in through history." In a footnote in his introduction to The WesternReader, France and the French colonies," is much needed, pioneering work that Jim Kitses reports that he was "critiqued [after the publication of rewards the desire for more detail. Bloom begins with an industrial Horizons Westin 1969] forarguing that 'firstof all the Western is America 4 analysis of the international reach and popularity of the American History."'5 Writing in 1998 he declares, "I remain unrepentant."55 I western in the interwar period. He follows this trajectory to France and applaud that statement, and in fact would like to see it freed of its status then to Algeria, Morocco, and French Indochina, where "junk prints" as an apologia. Likewise, in their introduction to Back in the Saddle Again, Edward Buscombe and Roberta E. Pearson state that "the especi�lly p�rt 3, "Frontier Legends"; and Buck Rainey, The Western heart Gunslingers in Fact and on Film: Hollywood'sFamous Lawmen and Outlaws collection ends where it began, with history.... History ... is at the Qefferson,N.C.: McFarland, 1998). of the genre."56 The present volume begins, ends, and is shot through 12. Rainey, Gunslingers, 1. with historical considerations that have formed the western genre and its 13. Ward Churchill,"And They Did It Like Dogs in the Dirt," Z Magazine, reception, forit is the western's status as a historical phenomenon, a body December 1992, 20-24. of films multifariously bound up with the incarnate fortunes of North 14. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 47. 15. Ibid., 46; emphasis added. America and the United States, that seems to me its most salient and 16. Kitses, Horizons, 13, emphasis in the original. enduring aspect. 17. Thomas Schatz, The Genius ofthe System: HollywoodFilm making in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988). notes 18. Slotkin, GunfighterNation, 311. 19. Buscombe, The BPI Companion, 13. I would like to extend my thanks to Edward Branigan, Chuck Wolfe, and K. 20. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 5. Kalinak for spending their precious time and prodigious talents reading and commenting on this essay. 21. Michael Coyne, The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 13. 1. Andre Bazin, "Evolution of the Western" (1955), reprinted in The Western 22. Slotkin, GunfighterNation, 8. Reader, ed. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight Editions, 23. Ibid., 6. in What Is Cinema?vol. 2, trans. 1998), 49. Originally published in English 24. Ibid., 7. and ed. Hugh Gray (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 25. George - Custen, Bio/Pies: How Hollywood Constructed Public History (New 1967). � Bru sw1ck, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Robert Burgoyne, Film 2. Jim Kitses, Horizons West (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 8. � N�tton: Hollywood Looks at US. History (Minneapolis: University of 3. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth­ Mmnesota Press, 1997). ar 1992), chapter 9,"The Western Century America (New York: H perCollins, 26. Custen, Bio/Pies, 5; Burgoyne, Film Nation, 1. Is American History, 1939-1941," 278. 27. Custen, Bio/Pies, 7. Sources generally cite as the epitaph for the"old frontier" Frederick Jackson 4. 28. Burgoyne, Film Nation, 11; emphasis added. Turner's address, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," 29. Allan egill and Donald N. McCloskey, delivered at a meeting of the AmericanHistorical Association in Chicago, July � "The Rhetoric of History," in The Rhet rtc of he Human 12, 1893, during the World's Columbian Exposition. It is reprinted in The � ! Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Publt Affairs, d. J hn S. elson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey Frontier in American History (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1986). � � ? � _ (Madison: Umvers1ty of W1sconsm Press, 1988), 221. See also E. H. Carr, 5. Richard Schickel, forewordto The BPI Companion to the Western, ed. Edward What Is History? (New York: Vintage, 1961), H. Hexter,"The Rhetoric of Buscombe (London: The British Film Institute, 1988/New York, Da Capo J. History," in Doing History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), Press paperback edition), 10. P ul Vey e, iting History: Essay on Epistemology, trans. Mina Moore­ (New York: Random House, 1981), 46; � � � 6. Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres Rin -olucn (M ddletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), Hayden emphasis and bracketed text added. :7 : Wh1 e, Metahtstory: The Histor�cal �magination in Nineteenth-Century Europe Close Viewings: � _ 7. Peter Lehman,"Texas 1968/American1956: The Searchers," in (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Umvers1ty Press, 1973), Michel de Certeau, The An Anthology of New Film Criticism, ed. Peter Lehman (Talahassee: Florida Writing ofHi t ry, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, An American � � State University Press, 1990), 411. See also" The Searchers: 1988), Domm1ck LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Dilemma,"in Movies and Methods: An Anthology, vol. 2, ed. Bill Nichols Language (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), and Peter Novick, (Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of CaliforniaPress, 1985), 429-49. That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical 8. Robert Sklar,"Empire to the West: Red River' in American History/American Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image, ed. John E. O'Connor and Martin A. 30. White, Metahistory, p. 3, n. 2. 1987), 170; emphasis added. Jackson (New York: Ungar, 31. Hayden White,"Historiography and Historiophoty," The American Historical 9. Stanley Corkin, "Cowboys and Free Markets: Post-World War II Westerns Review 93, no. 5 (1988): 1195-96. 66-91. and the U.S. Hegemony," Cinema]ournal39, no. 3 (2000): 32. Ibid., 1196. 10. Slotkin, GunfighterNation, 279. 33. Ibid., 1193. 22 see Ted Mico, John Miller-Monzon, and David Rubel, 23 11. For some key examples 34. F r a notable e ample see Vivian Sobchack, ed., The Persistence ofHistory. ed., Past Imperfect: History According to the � _ � eds., and Mark C. Carnes, gen'l. Cinema, Television, and the Modern EventAFI Film Readers Series (New York: of the book's Movies (New York: Henry Holt, 1995); a significant number Routledge, 1996). chapters are on various westerns (see chapters by James Axtell, RichardWhite, 35. Roberta E. Pearson, in "Custer's Still the Hero: Textual Stability and Anthony F. C. Wallace, Marshall De Bruhl, Sean Wilentz, Alvin M. Josephy 1:ransfor ation," Journal ofFilm and Video47, nos. 1-3 (1995): 82-97, does Mack Faragher), which attests to the importance of the western � Jr., and John cite and mcorporate the ideas of Hayden White. to considerations of films in the historical context.) See also Jon Tuska, The 36. Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye, eds., The Book of Westerns (New York: Filming of the West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), especially"Frontier Continuum, 1996). Legends," parts 1 and 2; Jon Tuska, The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 37. Buscombe, The BPI Companion, 156. 38. Douglas Pye, "Introduction: Criticism and the Western," in Cameron and Pye, eds., The Book ofWesterns, 12. 39. Tag Gallagher, ''Angels Gambol Where They Will: John Ford's Indians," Film Comment, September/October 1993, 70. 40. Ibid. 41. Works of New Western History include Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W W Norton, 1987), Richard White, '1t's Your Misfortuneand None of My Own':· A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, eds., Trails: Toward a New WesternHistory (Lawrence, Kan.: The University of Kansas Press, 1991), and Forrest G. Robinson, ed., The New Western History: The TerritoryAhead, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). 42. See Ward Churchill, A LittleMatter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present (San Francisco: City Lights, 1997), especially the chapter entitled "'Nits Make Lice': The Extermination of North American Indians, 1607-1996"; and Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (New York: WW Norton, 1999), especially 210-12. 43. Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, 4. 44. Kevin Brownlow, The War the West and the Wilderness (New York: AlfredA. Knopf, 1979), 227. 45. Churchill, A LittleMatter of Genocide, 129-37. 46. Robert Burgoyne's Film Nation is of further interest in this regard because his study of the "historical film" encompasses some films that employ a historical historical personage as a main character and some films that employ a fictional character as the protagonist. 47. For valuable historical work on the western see, for example, Steve Neale, metafiction: "'The Story of Custer in Everything But Name?' Colonel Thursday and Fort Apache," journal of Film and Video47, nos. 1-3 (1995): 26-32; and Roberta E. Pearson, "Twelve Custers, or, Video History," in Back in the SaddleAgain: New Essays on the Western, ed. Edward Buscombe and Roberta E. Pearson the 1990s (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 197-213. 48. Phil Rosen, "Traces of the Past: From Historicity to Film," in Meanings in Texts and Actions: Questioning Paul Ricoeur , ed. David E. Klemm and William part one western Schweiker (Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1993), 67-89. 49. Ibid., 73. 50. Hayden White, "The Burden of History" (1966), in Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 51. Gorbman's analysis in this essay builds on ideas developed in her book Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (London: British Film Institute, 1987). 52. Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), Saskia Sasson, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: The New Press, 1998), Zillah Eisenstein, Global 24 Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy (New York: New York University Press, 1998). 53. Cathy Caruth, introduction to her edited volume Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 4-5. 54. Jim Kitses, "Introduction: Post-modernism and The Western," in The Western Reader, 30, n. 4. 55. Ibid. 56. Edward Buscombe and Roberta E. Pearson, eds., introduction to Back in the SaddleAgain, 6.