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ANQ: A Quarterly Journal

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What Rough Beast—New

Westerns?
a
John G. Cawelti
a
University of Kentucky
Published online: 25 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: John G. Cawelti (1996) What Rough Beast—New Westerns?,
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 9:3, 4-15, DOI:
10.1080/0895769X.1996.10543149

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.1996.10543149

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 4 AN Q

the American West of New Mexico, in parti cul ar the Taos valley, on per-
hap s the most brill iant Engl ish writer of the twenti eth cen tury and his
American patroness. Alth ou gh man y have written about Lawrence and
Luh an in term s of their co nflic ting personalities, Blythe is the first to focu s
on their co mpleme ntary eco log ica l views . In doin g so, she respond s to the
rise of "ecocriticisrn," or the study of literature and nature. One of the
1990s' most interesting de velopmen ts, ecocriticism enco urag es us to
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recon sider in term s of ea rth-res po nsible life choices both literatur e-the
western -influ en ced writings of Lawrence and Luh an , for example-and
our ow n lives. To dem on strate what she ca lls Luh an and Lawren ce's "ec o-
critical sy mbiosis," Blythe draws upon the writings of Wend ell Berry, as
she looks at these famo us Taosites fro m the perspect ive of two paint ings of
the tim e-Ernest Blum en schein 's Ourselves and Taos Neighbors and
Lawren ce' s (and Dorothy Brett ' s) The Kiowa Ranch.
JOHN CLUBB E
Unive rsity of Kentu cky

Essays
What Rough Beast-New Westerns?
In Gunfighter Nation ( 1992), the third volume of his monument al study of
the myth of the front ier in America n culture, Richard Slatkin suggests that
the disillu sionment resulting from our disastrous involvement in the Viet-
nam War and our growi ng uncertaint y about the American eco nomy and its
future have deepl y eroded the ideo logy of American uniqueness that the tra-
ditional western mythic ized . Slotkin thinks that the notable decline of the
western in the 1970 s means that "the western has therefore been relegated
to the margins of the 'genre map ' " (633) and will never agai n occ upy the
central place it once held in the express ive pattern s of American culture .
Though, acco rding to Slotkin, the wes tern film "reached the pea k of its pop-
ularity and cultura l pre-eminence from 1969 to 1972 " (627), its declin e has
been precipitous since then, and "the failed attempts to rev ive the wes tern
after Vietnam indicate the charac ter and strength of the soc ial and cultural
forces that fractured the myth/ideology of the liberal co nsensus" (628) . Just
as alm ost exac tly a century ago Frederick Jackson Turn er inspired a redefi-
nition of the meanin g of America n history by his co mmentary on the end of
the frontier, today "it may be time for a post-mortem assess me nt of the sig-
nificance of the Front ier Myth in America n history" (627) .
Slotk in goe s on to suggest that "the rejection of the wes tern had go ne
beyond antipathy for a part icular ideology to a rejection of the very idea
that the Fronti er co uld provide the basis of a national public myth" (632).
 Summer 1996, Vol. 9, No.3 5

We have arrived at a "Timinal ' moment in our cultural history" when we

are "in the process of giving up a myth/ideology that no longer helps us see
our way through the modern world" (654) . In particular, we need new
mythical patterns that express "the fact that our history .. . was shaped
from the beginning by the meeting, conversation and mutual adaptation of
different cultures." In short, the old epic of the American frontier as locus
for white America's conquest of a savage wilderness is in the process of
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giving way to a new mythical dialectic of multiculturalism that cannot be

contained within the patterns of the western.
Slotkin's argument is very persuasive, both in relation to the significance
of the frontier myth in American history and in light of the precipitous
decline in the creation and popularity of western films and TV programs
during the later seventies and throughout most of the eighties. Yet, strange-
ly enough, in the middle of the 1990s, we seem to be in the midst of a
remarkable revival of the western . "Today westerns are back, guns blazing"
a lead essay in the November 15, 1993, issue of Time announced with great
eclat (Richard Zoglin, "Return from Boot Hill," 90-95). Time traces this
upsurge in the production of westerns to the 1989 television mini-series
based on Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, the popular TV series Dr.
Quinn . Medicine Woman, and the combined critical and popular acclaim
that greeted two recent films, Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves and
Clint Eastwood's Unforgi ven. The popular success of these works paved
the way for such productions as three versions of Geronimo (PBS , TNT,
and Walter Hill), two variations on the Wyatt Earp saga, a new Maverick,
a plethora of new TV documentary series (Wests "Untold," "Real," and
Native American), a "Return to Lonesome Dove," and such gender west-
erns as The Ballad (~f Billie Joe . Still another Larry McMurtry mini-series
based on his Buffalo Girls premiered in the spring of 1995.
This flurry of new westerns clearly indicates that the genre is far from
dead, but there is some question as to just what this new activity signifies . Is
the genre experiencing a revival, that is to say, the continuation of an estab-
lished tradition after a period of interruption, or can we better characterize
what is going on as a rebirth, a much more significant artistic and cultural
event that involves not just a revitalization, but a significant transformation
of cultural traditions? Although it is clearly premature to attempt a definitive
answer to this question, some attempt to see these new western films in the
context of other contemporary developments in our understanding of the
American West may offer at least some preliminary guesses.
Dances with Wolves seemed to be at once a radical departure and a sig-
nificant reaffirmation of the major traditions of the western. Most obvious-
ly, by making a group of Native Americans the sympathetic protagonists
and by showing the U.S. Cavalry as an aggressive and brutal invader, the
film reversed the western's mythical polarity between savage Indians and
civilizing pioneers. However, as many critics have pointed out, this was not
 6 ANQ

as much of a dep arture fro m traditi on as it might see m. From the earliest
Euro pea n encounters with non-Eu ropean cultures, there has always been a
certain ambiva lence about Native Americans, which man ifested itse lf in
divided portrayals of native peoples as diabolical savages o n the one hand
and nobl e innocent s on the other. As Slotkin points out, this doubleness
toward the Native Amer ica n was always a signicant part of the myth of the
West, fro m James Fenimo re Coo per's magnifi cent Mohicans to what
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Slotk in ca lls the "cult of the Indian" in the wes tern film. Was there any sig-
nificant difference in the way the Nati ve American was portrayed in
Dances with Woll'es than in ea rlier "c ult of the the Indian wes terns" such
as Broken Ar/l) \I', Soldier Blue, or Little Big Man?
Certai nly the film co uld be criticized for simply revising the old stereo -
type of the white man 's ambiguous enco unte r with the nobl e savage . On e
Native Amer ican cr itic observed that Dances with Wolves should really be
ca lled La wrence of South Dakota . The movie is clearl y co nnected to ear li-
er western s and to the long tradit ion of fro ntier narrative goi ng back to the
seve ntee nth ce ntury by its ada ptatio n of the theme of "captivity," which has
always been one of the most poten t of wes tern themes. But there are sig -
nificant departures. The leadin g female charac ter, Stan ds-With-a-Fis t, is
ac tually a wh ite wom an ca ptured as a g irl and raised by the Indians. She
has eve n marr ied a warrio r, who has recentl y died , and she since rely
mourn s him. Th ough in tradit ional term s she has suffe red a "fate worse
than death ," she see ms to have thri ved on it and has become so co mplete-
ly integrated into the tribe that she has almos t forgotten her origi nal lan-
guage . She beco mes the teacher and guide for Lt. Dunb ar's willing "ca p-
tivity" by the tribe. Dunb ar him self has "lit out for the territory" after being
sy mbo lica lly killed and reborn in the vio lent madness of the Civil War. He
see ks so mething better than the "c ivilized" milit ary culture of madness and
destruction . Eventu ally he rel inqu ishes his for mer identi ty and becom es a
memb er of the tribe. When the madn ess of civi liza tion follows afte r him ,
he is forced to leave the tribe. However, he vows to co ntinue his opposi tion
to the destructiveness of white civiliza tion.
There are many simi larities between Dances with Wolves and Little Big
Man ( 1970), which appea red j ust before the western began its precipitou s
decl ine in the ea rly 1970s. Both were strongly intlu en ced by the traged y of
the Vietnam War and port ray the invasio n of the Amer ican West very criti-
ca lly. Both ce nter aro und a protagon ist who becomes integrated into a tribe
that is experiencing the destruction of its trad itional culture, that of the
migrator y buffalo hunt ers of the Great Plain s. Finally, both treat Native
American cultures- the Sio ux in Dances with Wo!l'es and the Cheye nne in
Little Big Man-with some attemp t at historical acc uracy and co mplexity
as we ll as great sy mpathy.
Th ough Dances with Wolves may be overly romantic in its view of
Native America n cultures, it is still a rem arkabl y effective film and a
 Summer 1996. Vol. 9. No.3 7

unique attempt to represent the Native American perspective in a popular

cultural form . It doe s have similarities with Little Big Mall, but there are
some important new elements. Jack Crabb of Little Big Mall is captured as
a child and brought up by the Cheyenne. He has already been acculturated
as a Cheyenne when he is taken back by the white s, recaptured again by
the Indians, and so on. Thi s is an excellent premise for satirizing cultural
differences and inverting con ventional perceptions, which Little Big Mall
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effectively doe s. But throughout his story, Jack Crabb remains es sentially
external to both the cultures he is invol ved in. To the end , he is, like Huck-
leberry Finn , alway s on the out side . Dunbar is not a more complex char-
acter, but his role is different. He enabl es us to participate vicariously in the
realization of, and finally the initiation into , a different culture.
This aspect of the narrative is further supported by three other aspects of
the film. First, there was the deci sion to use Native American actors for
several of the most important role s. In the traditional western, of course, it
was most common to use white actors for the major Indi an roles. J One of
the striking exceptions to this practice, Chief Dan George 's delightful por-
trayal of Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man, was reall y more cari cature
than character. On the other hand , Graham Greene's portrayal of Kicking
Bird in Wolves was a fully rounded and per suasive portrayal of a strong and
dignified hum an being who represented a different set of cultural norm s.
Thi s effect was reinforced by the use of the Sioux language . which helped
give us the sense of encountering the world of another culture. Finally, the
film 's choice of location was extremely important. Instead of being filmed
in the convention al western landscape of de sert, mountain, and frontier
town , Wolves was filmed in South Dakota on the Great Plain s. which was,
in fact, the real locale of the Sioux culture. This landscape differs enough
fro m the traditional western setting that our sense of the mythical frontier
world is subtly displ aced. and we do not immediately recognize the famil-
iar mythic West.
Two other recent "Cavalry and Indian" films attempt to acknowledge
more fully a Native American perspective. Significantly, both the se film s
center around the most feared and hated of Indian war leaders, the Apache
Geronimo. Can anyone forget the famous opening scene of Ford 's Stage-
coach. where the soldiers at an isolated cavalry post suddenly real ize that
the telegraph wire has been cut , and one of them pronounces in awed tones
the dread word "Geronimo!"? In TNT's version, the story is narrated by the
age d Geronimo, who has been made into a celebrity by his former enemies,
though never really freed from the imprisonment he entered after his sur-
rend er. From this standpoint at the end of his life, Geronimo tell s a younger
Apache warrior, now a West Point Cadet. about his long resistance to the
whit e incursion . The film also contains a few scenes of Apache relig iou s
ceremonies and other cultural epi sod es beyond the stereotypical image of
Apa che s as fear some raiders and torturers. Walter Hill's Geronimo is an
 8 ANQ

eve n more co mplex and powerful film that sugges ts that the destruction of
the Apac he culture was not only a histori cal trage dy but a betrayal as well.
These new representations of the Native American situatio n in the histo-
ry of the West are not without unintenti onal ironies or occas ional rever -
sions to the sentime ntalizi ng stereo types of the noble savage traditi on . Still ,
the film s I have been discu ssing illustrate a new co ncern for historical co m-
plexity and for the acknow ledging of different cultura l perspectives. In this
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way, they relate to othe r imp ortant developm ent s in our treatm ent of the
western past.
One of these is particul arly evi de nt in the new wes tern history, which
rej ects the tradit ional approach to that history as ce ntered aro und the Euro-
pean settleme nt of the western front ier. Instead, co nte mpora ry histor ians
emphasize the clash of cultures and its lasting impli cations for the present.
Significantl y, one of the most widely read of the new histories is Limer-
ick 's The Legacy of Conq uest ( 1987) , wh ich not only rejected the Turn er-
ian emphasis on the uniqu eness of Amer ica 's fro ntier exper ience, but
insisted on the American West as "an important meet ing ground, the point
where Indian America, Latin America, Anglo-A mer ica, Afro-America, and
Asia intersected . .. . The workings of con quest tied these diverse groups
into the sa me story" (27).
Anoth er importa nt co ntemporary developm ent is the great flower ing of
Native American fiction and poetry in English . More tha n anything else,
the fascinating novels and poem s of writers like N. Sco tt Mom aday, Leslie
Si lko, James Welch , Gerald Vizenor, and Louise Erdri ch have offe red a
new kind of insig ht into the cultures and the perp ectives on Am erica of a
varie ty of Ind ian groups. On e of the most striking of these wo rks, Leslie
Silko's co ntemporary epic fantasy, Almanac of the Dead ( 199 1), startling-
ly displaces our traditi onal sense of the West as the victory of American
civiliza tion ove r savagery by represe nting the present as a tim e in whic h
the temp orary European incu rsion into the Amer icas is beginning to show
signs of drawing to an end. These Native American fictions should provide
a rich literary so urce for the western films of the futu re.
A second aspec t of rece nt western films reflect s important changes in
our understand ing of the significa nce of the West but invol ves Native
Americans only tangenti all y. This appears in Clint Eastwood's film Unfor-
give n and the television series based on Larry Mclvlurtry's best-sell ing
novel , Lonesom e Dove. One stri king quality shared by both these works is
a highl y co mplex and many-sided relat ionship to the trad itional mytholo-
gy of the West. Both wo rks begin by placin g them sel ves in we ll-estab-
lished ge neric trad itions: Unforgiven is clearly in the line of gunfig hter
wes terns . most notabl y perh aps that of Shane and its ilk. whereas Lone-
some Dove relates to ca ttle-drive wes terns such as Howard Hawks's Red
River. In addition. both films make co ntinual allusio ns to ea rlier wes tern
films, and this allusive textu re is so co mplex that one is so metimes rem ind-
 Summer 1996. Vol. 9. No.3 9

ed of mod ern ist novels and poem s by writers such as Joyce, Faulkner,
Eliot, and Pound, in whose works layers of the mythi cal past are also co n-
tinuall y invoked thro ugh allus ions. But allusions to western myth ology are
co unterpoi nted in these film s by a co nstant se nse that the characters and
action are in continual danger of falling out of the mythical wor ld. In Unfor-
given , for exa mple, the gunfig hter is almos t unable to carry out his mission
when he nearly dies fro m a bad case of the flu . In Lonesom e Do ve, acc ide nts,
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chance encounters, and sudden revelations are co ntinually undercutt ing and
reducing to absurdity the significance of the protagonists' myth ical quest. As
if to remind us of the falsity of the gunfighter myth, Unfo rgiven provides us
with a dim e-novel hero acco mpanied by his writer. English Bob is, in goo d
postmodernist fashion , ambivalently referre d to throughout his episode as the
" Duke (Duck) of Death" and is literally decon structed by the sadistic sheriff
Little Bill, who redu ces him to a pathetic victim. On the other hand. in the
film's vio lent cl imax, Will Mun ny ac tua lly improves on dim e-novel
shoo touts by escalating the body co unt when he kills the bar-and-b rothel
owner, the sheriff, and three deput ies.
These works ne ither affirm nor reject the myth . and that is the way they
differ significa ntly fro m most previous wes terns, whic h eit he r repea ted
so me versio n of the myth or cla imed to reveal at last the "true" history that
lay behind the myth , a " reality" that, more often than not. turn ed out to be
another mythi cal invent ion. Lonesom e Dove and Unfo rgive n manage, it
see ms to me, to do something sti ll more complex: they show both the
power of myth and its dangers, revea ling not ju st the ambig uity of the
myth s, but the way in whic h myth and history are engaged in a problemat-
ic dialectic. Th e chaos, rando mness, and futi lity of history ca ll fort h the
great exc itements and simplicities of myth , but once evo ked or entere d, the
myth ic worl d develop s an impetus of its own that. imposed on history, can
ge nera te a new and more terrifying apocalypse .
In Lonesome Dove and Unforgiven, the mythi c world is associated with
the vio lence and heroism of the protagoni sts' yo uths, j ust as the myth ic era
of the wild West is associated with an ea rlier period of America's history.
In Lonesome Do ve G us and Ca ll have a nostalgic feelin g for thei r earlier
lives as Texas Rangers, and they see k to recreate this tim e of adve nture by
leaving beh ind the dull and predictabl e world of Lonesom e Dove . William
Munn y of Unfo rgive n look s back on his vio lent yo uth with fear and regret,
but he too feels trapp ed in the present on a wretched hardscrabbl e farm,
trying to raise pigs. The lure of money and adve nture dra ws him once aga in
into a vortex of drunkenn ess and vio lence , which leaves a trail of corpses
and his best friend dead . It is perh ap s the ultim ate irony that he is rum ored
afte r that to have becom e a successful merch ant in San Fra ncisco.
T he ambivalence of these wes terns toward the trad ition al mythic world
of the fronti er is also related to a more co mplex treatm ent of ge nder issues,
for one charac teristic of the western was its stereotyping of wome n by si m-
 10 ANQ

plification (as in the limitation of women's roles to schoo lmarms and dance-
hall girls) or subordination (by arrangi ng for any important women charac-
ters to be co nverted to the patriarchal code of values) . Lonesome Dove and
Unforg iven unfurl a variety of new gender possiblities, from the virtual mar-
riage of Gu s McCrae and Woodrow Call to the employer-e mployee rela-
tionship betwee n the victimized prostitutes of Unforgiven and the retired
gunfighter William Munn y. The co mplexities of gender were eve n more fas-
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cinatingly deployed in another rece nt western, The Ballad of Billie Joe, in

which the central character is forced to masquerade as a man to make a
decent life for herself in the West. But perhaps in part because this film went
even further in its exploratory probing of the absurdity of tradit ional ge nde r
stereotypes as a found ation of the myth of the West, it did not achieve the
wide popula rity of Lonesome Dove and Unfo rgiven.
These changes in the treatment of the West are also reflected in much new
fiction and in the revisionist approac h to western history. Such cultural phe-
nomen a as the extraord inary vitality of Native American and Hispanic writ-
ing suggest that the new weste rn is not j ust part of a momentary revival, but
may be one sign of an import ant cultura l renaissance of the sort that another
major American region-the South-underwent in the co urse of the 1920s
and 1930s, when a new generation of writers strugg led to free them selves
from the cultural devastation of another grea t myth of American history, that
of the Lost Cause. In that case , the result was some of the grea test novels and
stories ever written about the American dream and its tragic failure. Perhaps
today, it is the final decay of the myth of the frontier that makes possible the
creativity of the new western literature, film, and history.
Among the them es that ex press the particul ar co ncerns of the new wes t-
ern literatur e and film are the sense of the loss of a world that see med to be
more fulfilling and more hum an than the present and the story of the init i-
ation of potentially heroic young men into a world where there is no longer
any roo m for the kind of mean ingful action that was once possible." T he
new wes tern, like many novels of the South ern renaissance , is filled with a
dee p sense of belat edness and nostalgia for a more unified traditi onal cul-
ture. Larry McMurtry pioneered th is ge nre of western literature with his
two ea rly novel s of Thalia, Texas, Horseman , Pass By ( 1961) and The Last
Picture Show ( 1966) . In both these novels, the prot agoni sts not only co n-
front the usual strai ns of gro wing up and acce pting the knowled ge and lim-
itations of adulthood , but also must deal with a very difficult sense of
diminishin g expec tations and of the loss of a bygone time of grea ter sig-
nificance and meanin g associated with the heyday of the cattle indu stry and
the gre at cattle dr ives of the nineteenth ce ntury. In Horseman, Pass By, the
yo ung narrator fee ls a deep sense of loss: " <Things used to be better around
here: I said. ' I fee l like I want something back " ( 123). And loss does co me
to charac terize yo ung Lonn ie 's world , when his beloved gra ndfa ther' s dis-
ease d ca ttle must be destroyed and the gra ndfa ther himsel f is killed afte r he
 Summer 1996. Vo!. 9. No.3 II

is terri bly hurt in an acc ide nt. The Last Picture Sho w ends with the closi ng
of T halia's one movie theater and wi th it, the dream of the old West. which
inspire d so ma ny of the pic tures show n there . Peter Bogd anovich , who
directed the exce lle nt movie base d on McMurtry' s novel, ap propriate ly
ended the film with the grea t sce ne fro m Howard Hawks's wes tern Red
River (1947) in whic h John Wayne se ts off on the first great cattle dr ive
fro m Texas. In co ntrast to th is heroic mo me nt, the yo ung peopl e of Th ali a
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are left only with the vac uous empti ness of a depressed oil boom town.
This se nse of the end of the heroic West hau nts suc h major works of the
new wes tern fict ion as Norman Maclean 's A Ri ver Run s Throug h It ( 1976),
in which an old man is haunted by mem or ies of his lon g-d ead fat her and
brot her and of the fishi ng that they shared, and still brood s abou t his inabi l-
ity to save his broth er from the vio lence that destroyed him . In other sto-
ries, Macl ean evo kes a lost world of skill wit h tool s and heroic physical
lab or and show s how powerful an experience it was to be initiated into suc h
a wor ld. His nonfi cti on study Young Men and Fire (1992) beaut ifull y rep -
rese nts the hero ism and tragedy of tra dit iona l wes te rn wor k in his recon -
struc tio n of the last ho urs of a fire-fight ing crew destroyed by a grea t fire
in Mo nta na in 1949 in the wo rds of an o ld man who is fac ing his ow n
enco unter with death . Like the myt hical western, these works portray a
West that is largel y go ne, but unlike the once -do minant tales of wi ld cow-
tow ns and ca ttle drives, outlaws and marsh als, gun fighters and schoo l-
marms that popul ated the nation 's imagi ned West, they ce leb rate the hero-
ism not of gunfig hte rs. but of logger s, miner s, fores t service workers, and
fi refig hters- those ordi nary peopl e who built the West and then saw it
tran sform ed into somethi ng else.
T hus far, the greatest treatm en t of the wes tern them e of initia tion and
be latedness may be fo und in th e tran spl ant ed So uthe rner Cormac
McCarth y 's novel All The Pretty Horses ( 1992). McCarthy tran sforms the
mythical fantasy worl d of wild we stern gunfig hters, outlaws, and savage
Ind ians into the last remnan t of an age-old worl d of tradi tiona l work in
whic h men are part of the un ity of life and find great fu lfillm ent in thei r
ac tio ns, because these ac tio ns are integ ra l with hor ses and the rest of
natu re. Horses. whic h have been man 's primar y instrumen t in the use of
natu re and the cre atio n of culture for ce nturies , are, as the novel's title
wo uld suggest, the sy mbo l of a tra ditio nal unit y bet ween man and the
worl d that is bein g increasingly de stroyed by mod ern technology and
industrialis m. As McCarth y portrays it, wes t Texas, once one of the las t
ba stio ns of trad ition al pastoral ism in Ame rica, ' is already a was teland of
oi l derrick s and on the verge of the postwar oil boom that wi ll utte rly
des troy the tradi tio na l ca ttle culture ( I I I).
Like Larr y McMurtry 's ea rlie r work, A ll The Pretty Horses beg ins in a
depressed we st Texas, in the immedia te afterma th of World War II. Its pro-
tagoni st, Joh n Grady Co le, is sixtee n years old and very much alo ne in the
 12 ANQ

wo rld . His fath er is sepa rated from his moth er and is slowly dyin g from a
co nditio n incurred in a prison ca mp in the war. Co le 's gra ndfa ther is a
ra ncher, and Co le, loving horses and ranch ing, wo uld like nothing bett er
than to co ntinue the ranch, but the old man dies, and Cole 's moth er pla ns
to se ll the fami ly ranch and leave the area. To co ntinue the wo rk he loves,
Co le crosses the bord er into Mexico with a yo ung frie nd, and the two find
work on a large hacienda where the tra ditiona l work with hor ses and catt le
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is still ca rried on.

However, this mom entar y recovery of parad ise is di srupted wh en Cole
fa lls desp er ately in love with the daught er of the grea t hac ienda 's propri-
etor. When she returns his love and the two embark on a passion ate affa ir,
her pow erful famil y has Cole wron gfull y ar res ted . After bein g nearl y killed
in a Mexican pri son , Cole is freed after his lover promises never to see him
again. Th e last sec tion of the novel deals with Co le's reve nge on the cor-
rupt Mexican pol icem an wh o has betr ayed him and stolen his horses.
Finall y, hard ened and matured by his ordeal and deepl y sadde ned by the
loss of his love and his enco unters with death , Cole returns to Texas.
Th e Texas he finds is on the verge of the postwar oi l boom that will
destroy the trad ition al ca tt le culture, the sa me process McMurtry portrayed
in his series of Th al ia no vel s and wh ich furn ished the background for tel e-
vis ion's popular wes tern soa p ope ra Dallas. Alth ou gh the trad itional c ul-
ture still exists in the late I940s on the great haciend as of Mexico, it too is
clearl y on borrow ed time . It is sig nifica nt that the wea lthy hacendado of
McCarthy 's novel keep s his ra nch more as a hobby than a way of life and
uses an airp lane to fly back and forth bet ween the haciend a and his other
life in Mexico Ci ty.
John Gr ady Cole is not only a maste r of horses but so me thi ng of a
vis ionary as we ll, and the story is pun ctu ated by his drea ms of horses,
wh ich picture an eterna l par adi se wh ere wi ld hor ses sy m bo lize the po ssi-
bilit y of man 's redemption :
That night as he lay in his cot he could hear music from the house and as he
was drifting to sleep his thoughts were of horses and of the open country and
of horses. Horses still wild on the mesa who'd never seen a man afoot and
who knew nothing of him or his life yet in whose souls he would come to
reside forever. ( 117- 18)
On e of the most striking mom ent s in the novel co mes in a co nversa tio n
betw een Col e, his yo ung friend Rawlins, and an o ld man wh o sy mbo lizes
the tradition al wis do m of the world of natu ral work . It is this o ld man who
ex pre sses most clearly the full spiritua l significance of horses in this tradi -
tion al vision of the wo rld:
Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among hors-
es and the notion that man can be understood at all was probably an illusion.
Rawlins asked him in his bad spanish if there was a heaven for horses but he
shook his head and said that a horse had no need of heaven. Finally John
 Summer 1996, Vol. 9, No.3 13

Grady asked him if it were not true that should all horses vanish from the face
of the earth the soul of the horse would not also perish for there would be
nothing out of which to replenish it but the old man only said that it was point-
less to speak of there being no horses in the world for God would not permit
such a thing. ( I II )

Th e maj or th ing John G rad y Col e mu st learn in the pro ce ss o f h is ini ti-
atio n into mature life is the hard est to ac ce pt: that suc h a wo rld no lon ger
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exists for him. Th e Mexican hac ienda is, for him , a Parad ise Lo st. Even in
Mexico , the modern wo rld of politics and revolution , technol ogy and c ities,
is erodi ng and destroyin g the tradition s of the countryside , and in the Texa s
to which he mu st return, the only ves tig es o f the tradition al wo rld o f man
and nature are in the few rem ain ing Indian en campments in the midst o f
the o il fields:

In four days' riding he crossed the Pecos at Iraan Texas and rode up out of the
river breaks where the pumpjacks in the Yates Field ranged against the sky-
line rose and dipped like mechanical birds. Like great primitive birds welded
up out of iron by hearsay in a land perhap s where such birds once had been.
At that time there were still indians camped on the western plains and late in
the day he passed in his riding a scattered group of their wickiups propped
upon that scoured and trembling waste. They were perhaps a quarter mile to
the north, just huts made from poles and brush with a few goathides draped
across them. The indians stood watching him. He could see that none of them
spoke among themselves or commented on his riding there nor did they raise
a hand in greeting or call out to him. They had no curiosity about him at all.
As if they knew all that they needed to know. They stood and watched him
pass and watched him vanish upon that landscape solely because he was pass-
ing. Solely because he could vanish. (30 1)

In thi s profoundly elegiac co ncl usion McCarthy evokes th at mythi cal

western scene o f the hero rid ing o ff into the sunse t, but for John Grady
Cole the re is no more myth ical wo rld to cross over into, there is o nly " the
dark en ing land, the wo rld to co me" (302). In the e nd , McCarthy 's vision o f
the We st is as apocalyptic in its way as Lesli e Silko's, thou gh he sees o nly
a darkening waste la nd, w he reas S ilk o imagines the ultimat e re storat ion o f
the land through an ecolog ica l catas tro phe of mod ern technol og ical c ivi -
lizati on and a return o f tribal cultures .
The new western liter ature, like that of the Southern ren aissance before
it, is centrally concerned with the failu re of wh ite American civilization
and with the burden of g ui lt left by the exploitation of nature and the trag-
ic heritage of racism. The co nte m po rary literary expl oration o f the history
and c ulture of the se regi on s, o nce so important as so urces of rom antic
m yth s o f otherness in Ameri can culture, ha s produced co m pe lling reevalu-
atio ns o f the basic myth s of Am erican ex ceptio na lism and supe rio rity and
powerful critiq ues of the multiple fai lures o f the Am erican dream .
It' s striking , thou gh perhap s not surp risi ng, th at these deepl y c ritica l lit -
erary mo vements have emer ged almost sim ulta neo us ly wi th a new surge of
 14 ANQ

politi cal co nse rvatism and funda me ntalism in America, also ce ntered in the
South and the West and see king to manipul ate the same symbo lic and ide-
o logica l traditions for their ow n very different purp oses. As many co m-
ment ator s have noted , Ronald Reagan tried to reenact the wes tern myth of
the shoo to ut between the heroic marshall and the lawless outlaw on the
national and interna tional sce nes . Th e new breed of South ern Republicans
who have recentl y becom e so imp ortant in American polit ics have found
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that a traditi onal South ern rhetoric of less gove rnme nt, family values,
localism , and even a co ded wh ite supremacy disgu ised as opposi tio n to
affirma tive action has proved highl y effective on the national sce ne. Th ese
reaction s are almos t always antithetica l to those of serious co ntemporary
So uthern and Western writers, but though differentl y focused , they are
responses to the same uncertainties that have beset Amer ica in the last
quarter of the twent ieth ce ntury: a profound loss of co nfide nce in Amer i-
ca 's uniqu eness, moral superiority, and global omnipote nce. In the cont ext
of this ongo ing spiritual crisis, the South and the West, wh ich once help ed
define Amer ica mythi call y and sy mbolica lly through their otherness, are
now being pur sued by both intellec tua l critics and co nserva tive funda me n-
talists as sy mbols of the rea l truth of America.

JOHN G. CAWELTI
Univers ity of Kentucky

NOT ES
I . O ne of the most successful of these portrayals was that of the Apac he chief
Coc hise by Jeff Chandler in Broken Arro\\". a port rayal that C hand ler repeated in
The Batt le at Apache Pass and Taw. SOil ()l Coc hise.
2. Th e conce rn for the loss o f a tradit ion al way of life is also reflected in the rece nt
reaction s of some westerne rs agai nst the Fede ral Government's control of publ ic
lands and enviro nme ntal regulations. T hese are re ported in a recent cove r story in
Time magazine. " Do n't Tread On Me: An Inside Loo k at the West's Growi ng
Rebell ion " (Oc to ber 23 , 1995. pp. 52-7 1). Ironi cally, if these movem e nts succeed.
they wi ll probabl y acce lera te the very tran sform ation s they seem to dep lore. Simi-
larly, the peri od of the So uthern literary ren aissance, the 1920s and 1930s. was also
marked by a reactionary resur gen ce of social movement s like the Ku Klux Klan and
Protestant fundamentalism. whic h sought desperate ly to hold on to the trad ition al
social. racial, and economic pattern s of the "So lid So uth."
3. West Texa s was also the os tensi ble setti ng of John Ford 's grea t movie The
Searchers ( 1956) . a power ful trea tment of the clash betw ee n pioneers and Indians
and of the mythica l versio n of the Ind ian captivity and the initiation of a young
man. Ac tua lly. the movie was largel y filmed in Ford 's favor ite locale of Mon ume nt
Valley. The Sea rche rs is co nside red by ma ny to be the tinest of all Western films .

WORKS C ITE D
Berger. Th omas. Lillie BiM Man. New York: Dial. 1964 .
Limerick. Patr icia. The Legacv of Conqu est: The Unbroken Past of th e American
West. New York : Norton . 1987.
 Summer 1996, Vol. 9, No.3 15

Macle an, Norman . A River Runs Through it and Other Sto ries. Chicago: U of Chi-
cago P, 1976.
- . Younl: Men and Fire. Chicag o: U of Ch icag o P. )992.
McCarth y, Cormac. All The Pretty Horses. New York: Knopf. 1992.
McMurty, Larry. Horseman, Pass By. New York: Harper, 1961.
- . Lon esome Do ve. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985 .
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His Master's Voice(over): Revisionist Ethos and

Narrative Dependence from Broken Arrow (1950)
to Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)

I, please Our Lord, will carr y off six of them at my departure to Your High-
nesses, that they may learn to speak.
-Columbus, Diorio ( 12 Octobe r 1492)

"We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of our hearing his voice,
before Wawatam had ceas ed to offer up his prayers." We never hear of him
again.
-Alexander Henry, Travels and
Adventures (1807 )fThoreau , A Week on the
Concord lind Merrimack Rivers (1849 )

Word by word these men were disposing of him in langu age, their language ,
and they were makin g a bad job of it.
-Momaday, House Made (I f Dawn ( 1968)

Revisionist Ethos and Narrative Agency

The Indian that Hollywood presents as counterimage to its own popular
images of a despised savage produces not a new Indian, but a new form of
Indian dependence on the white man 's discours e. In the Westerns that I
propo se to examine-Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950), Cheyenne Autumn
(Ford, 1964), Little Big Man (Penn, 1970), Soldier Blue (Nelson, 1970),
Dances with Wolves (Costner, 1990), and Geronimo : An American Legend
(Hill, I993 )-the refigured Indian is, suppos edly, the central concern . I The
list is limited , but a consideration of the revisioni st, or pro-Indian, Western
would be nearly impossible without these titles ." These are the landmark
films, and also the ones most clearly committed to produc ing a new Indi-
an, so much so that their revisionist ethos-the presumably redemptive
vision that would atone for Hollywood 's past offenses again st Native
Americans-can be postulated as their identifying charac teristic. In all of
them , without exception, we are meant to see the Indian as if with new