Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 24, 1993 TAG: 9311250330
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Marshall Fishwick
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Then, as now, the West was a place to hang your dreams. You left the world of unemployment and closed factories and roamed the open range with Tom Mix, Buck Jones or Hoot Gibson. You watched, spellbound, as the guys in white hats defeated those in black hats and set the world right - all this for a dime.
We had no idea we were dealing not only with history but mythology. Years later, I understood that the cowboy was America's chief contribution to world mythology; and the Western was our morality play. Sitting in the Rialto, I was learning what my distant ancestors learned on the cathedral steps - that life is a struggle between good and evil, and we must all choose sides.
Rousseau's "natural man," that romantic symbol of freedom, crossed the ocean and became the American cowboy. He captivated the world. A hero is one who looks like a hero: For us, he looks like a cowboy. On the back of Old Paint, Tony, Trigger or Silver, he has ridden through whole libraries of serious literature, thousands of novels, boxcar loads of pulp paper, and miles of celluloid: a world symbol of 20th century America. One out of four movies produced in Hollywood before 1960 was a Western.
Weather-beaten and self-reliant, this child of nature is innately handsome and invariably polite. He is a latter-day knight, and his prototype is "The Virginian," written by Owen Wister. Published in 1902, reprinted 15 times during the first year, it became the model for Western novels and movies.
It depicts the adventures of a chilvaric cowboy who woos and wins Molly Wood, a schoolteacher from "back East." They confront a villain named Trampas, who taunts the Virginian. But he stays cool, merely replying, "When you call me that, smile!" He knows that sooner or later Trampas will "ask for it," and our hero will see that he gets it. The world is made right again. Gary Cooper was the perfect cowboy hero and this was a great Western.
A quarter-century later, Gary Cooper starred again in "High Noon." Older and less sprightly now, he wants to retire and begin a new life. But he is compelled to return to the shootout. When his Quaker bride tries to stop him, he says, " It's no good. I've got to go back." A man must do what a man must do. In the end he wins - with the help of his wife, who eventually takes up arms to help him.
Between Cooper's two movies a host of Western heroes who were also entertainers cropped up: Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger. Still the myth was intact, even if the way of delivering it changed. And there was always John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, who carried on where Gary Cooper left off. We could always watch "Bonanza" and the Cartwrights on an all-time favorite TV series.
Then came the '60s, Vietnam, the counterculture, the Kent State massacre, and the Great Disillusionment. Westerns changed in tone and message. Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" featured cowboy killers who shot up women and children. Mel Brooks ridiculed a drunken cowboy-clown in "Blazing Saddles." "Little Big Man" poked fun at the old stories, featuring not Billy the Kid but the Soda Pop Kid. It became hard to tell whether to cheer the white hats or the black hats. Moral ambiguity set in.
But who was prepared for last year's "Unforgiven," an anti-Western starring that once tough hombre Clint Eastwood? No honor here - just meaningless violence and carnage. The movie's aspiring bounty-hunter, the Schofield Kid, kills his prey while he is sitting in a privy. We feel only horror and disgust. The cowboy was de-myth-o-lo-gized.
No longer could we say this is right and this is wrong. Psychology and therapy took over from mythology. Bill Witliff, who wrote the TV screenplay of "Lonesome Dove," the epic of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, commented: "Now we say, 'Maybe there's an explanation. Maybe they were abused as kids.'''
Now in 1993 we have a new genre - the feminist Western. The current example is "Ballad of Little Jo." In it, women assume the role of men. The heroine, Josephine Monagham, dresses like a man and scars her own face to look more macho. All the men in the movie are despicable except the Chinese laborer who becomes Jo's lover. Two men are shot down by Jo.
Other feminist movies are in the works: "Bad Girls," "The Outlaws" and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." A spokeswoman for the genre is Gail Gilchriest, author of "The Cowgirl Companion:" "Women are looking back and trying to find women in history who were really cool." Why did she overlook Little Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane?
All of which proves that Westerns still mirror a culture obsessed with gender, sexism and racism. If Columbus can be turned from gallant explorer into a cynical exploiter bent on genocide, should we not expect a new version of the cowboy?
In the larger context, we have moved from hero to antihero. Not only cowboys, but political, social and military heroes have been debunked and derided. Confidence in leadership is at an all-time low. Charles Schulz, whose comic strip, Peanuts, is a sharp reflector of the American mind, pictures Lucy saying on Election Day, "Vote for the blockhead of your choice!"
Can a culture survive without heroes? Can we choose them on the basis of victimization rather than achievement? Are we surprised when the majority of "heroes" named by today's schoolchildren are rock musicians or TV celebrities?
The open range has gone forever, along with the heroic cowboy. Only a polluted highway winds though what was once the unbroken sea of grass. What is left of the golden moment? Memories of those Saturdays in the Rialto; and names on the land: Rawhide Creek, Chugwater, Tensleep, Cody, Tombstone, Medicine Bow and Wounded Knee. They endure.
So do the memory and the heroic dream.
Marshall Fishwick is professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB