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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMI ‘FEELS LIKE TIMES HAVE CHANGED”: SIXTIES WESTERN HEROES DISSERTATION Presented in I^rtial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of ftilosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Matthew Stephen Wanat, M. A. ***** The Ohio State University 2001 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Linda Mizejewski, Adviser . Professor Chadwick Allen ^ Adviser Professor Patrick Mullen English Graduate Program UMI Number 3031281 UMI* UMI Microform 3031281 Copyright 2002 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT The topic of my dissertation is the genre of the western in popular music, film, literature, and television from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. In particular, I focus on the western formula hero as refigured through an era of cultural transition. My project joins an ongoing discussion of how the transformation of popular genres reflects and informs social transformation. Specifically, this dissertation explores the politics of influential artists such as Sam Peckinpah, Bob Dylan, and Elmore Leonard in order to facilitate a closer reading of the relationship between artistic production and sociopolitical contexts in a decade of profound social and political change. Western formula heroes have traditionally protected versions of white, capitalist democracy, saving stage coaches from Indians, saving farmers from land barons, and saving towns from bullies. These heroes have never been without a certain degree of ambivalence, but in 1960s westerns they become increasingly reluctant about the communities their deeds serve, and their reluctance reflects specific sociopolitical issues of the decade. The westerns of this time reveal an awareness of the cultural and political limitations of western heroes, and the reluctance of these heroes also provides a means by which artists, producers, and audiences articulate anxieties about cultural and political alliances at large. Equations of small western towns with a unified notion of American community give way to a world where “community” could mean any number of disparate groups and a world where the hero’s ability or desire to serve a given community is in question. There is a growing body of critical work that approaches westerns through the cultural contexts of their initial date of release, i.e., an approach to the western as “sociopolitical allegory.” However, theories reading genre texts as reflections of their ii sociopolitical moment frequently isolate a single event to which their chosen texts respond, neither accounting for the variety of sociopolitical contexts surrounding the text nor accounting for significant artistic and media-specific trends informing the text’s production. My dissertation proposes an author-based approach as a means of restoring artistic context to the study of the connections between genre and sociopolitical context One of the contributions my study makes to discussions of the western as sociopolitical allegory lies in my attention to how the values and public images of artists contribute to sociopolitical subtext Most interestingly, these artists often self-reflexively foreground their own sociopolitical anxieties alongside those of the heroes in their westerns. I am interested in the possibilities and limitations of these self-reflexive strategies as a means of sociopolitical commentary through a popular geme hero. m For Jenny, Henry, and Family. IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser Linda Mizejewski for her hard work and support, both on the dissertation and throughout my graduate experience. I am also grateful to Chad Allen and Pat Mullen for their kind words and many thoughtful suggestions. Additionally, this dissertation was made possible with a little help from my friends: John Roberts, Jessica Prinz, Mike Smrtic, Richard Hood, Jeremy Aufrance, Jenny Wanat, and an inordinate number of talented students. Finally, I am grateful to the Museum of Television and Radio for their collection and assistance, and I would like to thank the English Department at Ohio State for fellowships, teaching and administrative experiences, scholarly support, and spirited conversations always. VITA January 20, 1973 .................................Bom - Wooster, Ohio 1995 ......................................................B.A. English and Education, Denison University 1995 - 1996 .........................................University Fellow, The Ohio State University 1996 - 1997 .........................................Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 199 7 ..................................................... M.A. English, The Ohio State University 1997-1998 ...........................................Graduate Administrative Associate, The Ohio State University 1998-2001 ...........................................Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Page A bstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication.......................................................................................................................... iv t Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ v V ita ...................................................................................................................................... vi Chapters: 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 2. Equalizers and Outcasts: From “Problem Plot” to Reluctant Hero ................................................................47 3. Muchos Hombres: Observations on the Elmore Leonard Hero ........................................................... 71 4. “Never Stopped Searching”: Politics and the Peckinpah H ero...........................................................................I ll 5. “Let’s Go”: Commitment, Gender, and Mexico in The Wild Bunch ....................................155 6. “Drifter’s Escape”: Bob Dylan’s Western Heroes .................................................................................199 7. “Romance in Durango”: Collaboration and the Counterculture Western ................................................... 260 Bibliography .........................................................................................................................301 vu CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Frederick Jackson Turner, in his 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” writes, “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier” (2). Turner’s essay helped initiate a critical debate on the value of the West to American national identity. Today the gerue of the western remains a key element of this debate. Westerns reflect and inform social and political values, and the relationship between the genre and America’s sociopolitical climate is particularly interesting in the 1960s, a time of upheaval and possibility. This dissertation focuses on the genre of the western in popular music, film, literature, and television from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. In particular, this project characterizes the western hero as refigured through an era of cultural transition. The 1960s can be historicized as the Vietnam era, the Civil Rights era, or an era of multiple revolutions surrounding class, gender, race, sexual orientation, and generational conflict. My project reads 1960s western heroes as responses to the period’s rapid change. Western heroes have traditionally protected versions of white, capitalist democracy, saving stage coaches from Indians, saving farmers from land barons, and saving towns from bullies. These heroes have never been without a certain degree of ambivalence, but in 1960s westerns they become increasingly reluctant about the communities their