Westerns: Films through History PDF
Preview Westerns: Films through History
westerns Previously published in the AFI Film Readers Series edited by Charles Wolfe and Edward Branigan Masculinity Peter Lehman Violence and American Cinema J. David Slocum The Persistence ofH istory Vivian Sobchack Home, Exile, Homeland Hamid Nancy Black Women Film and Video Artists Jacqueline Bobo The Revolution Wasnt Televised Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin 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 Psychoanalysis and Cinema E. Ann Kaplan westerns films through history edited by janet walker ~~ ~~o~;~;~~~up New York London Published in 2001 by Routledge 711 ThirdAvenue New York, NY 10017 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an inf orma business Copyright © 2001 by the American Film Institute 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 hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information stor age or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. "Life-like, Vivid, and Thrilling Pictures: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Early Cinema" by Joy S. Kasson has also appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild ~st: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (Hill & Wang, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Hill & Wang. An earlier version of "Cowboy Wonderland, History, and Myth: 'It Ain't All That Different Than Real Life'" by William G. Simon and Louise Spence appeared in the journal ofF ilm and Video, Vol. 47, Nos. 1-3 (Spring-Fall). Reprinted by permission. An earlier version of "Drums Along the L.A River: Scoring the Indian" by Claudia Gorbman appeared in ~stern Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in 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 California Press. "The Burden of History and John Sayles's Lone Star' by Tomas F. Sandoval, Jr. appeared in Bad Subjects, Issue 28 (October 1996). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Westerns: films through history I Janet Walker, editor. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-92423-5- 0-415-92424-3 (pbk.) 1. Western films-United States-History and criticism. I. Walker, Janet, 1955- II. Series. PN1995.9.W4 W44 2001 791.43'6278-dc21 00-051708 contents acknowledgments vii introduction: westerns through history 1 janet walker part one. historical metafiction: the 1990s western 1. generic subversion as counterhistory: 27 mario van peebles's posse alexandra keller 2. a tale N/nobody can tell: the return of a repressed 47 western history in jim jarmusch's dead man melinda szaloky 3. the burden of history and john sayles's lone star 71 f tomds sandoval, jr. part two. historiophoty: buffalo bill, the indians, and the western biopic 4. cowboy wonderland, history and myth: 89 "it ain't all that different than real life" william g. simon and louise spence 5. life-like, vivid, and thrilling pictures: 109 buffalo bill's wild west and early cinema joy s. kasson 6. buffalo bill (himself): 131 history and memory in the western biopic corey k. creekmur part three. film history: widening horizons 7. how the west was sung 151 kathryn kalinak 8. drums along the l.a. river: scoring the indian 177 claudia gorbman 9. beyond the western frontier: 197 reappropriations of the "good badman'' in france, the french colonies, and contemporary algeria peter j. bloom part four. history through narrative 10. captive images in the traumatic western: 219 the searchers, pursued, once upon a time in the west, and lone star janet walker contributors 253 index 255 acknowledgments An AFI Film Reader on the western has been a recurring dream of the wonderful editors of this series, Edward Branigan and Charles Wolfe, and I am honored to have been invited to imagine a way of realizing it. I could not have done so without the generous help of many people. Thanks are due to Chuck and Edward in their series editor hats and as brilliant commentators on my own contributions to the book. Their knowledge of the western and western history and their willingness to share it is boundless. Of course, the book wouldn't exist at all without the contributors, and I owe them a great debt for all the solitary and collaborative work it takes to make a volume. Special thanks are due to K. Kalinak whose intellectual acuiry and generosiry were ever evident during this process, who edited the editor, and whose longstanding friendship is a source of happiness. I can't help but take a historical view of acknowledgments, which means mentioning the inspiration of Janey (The western Films ofj ohn Ford) Place, my first film teacher, who was very influential indeed. Thanks also to my colleague Anna Brusutti, whose lectures to beginning film students I think of whenever I see Charles Bronson's eyes in close up; I appreciate her many insights into the western and the extended loan of her copy of Spaghetti westerns. I would also like to thank Robert Burgoyne for encouragement and support, and for the energizing, pro gressive conversation about history, heritage, and Thunderheartthat took place from Greenfield Village, Michigan, to Santa Barbara to Chicago. For able research assistance I would like to thank the highly competent film cognoscenti, Lauren Edwards and Jennifer Baumgartner. Jennifer continued to assist me even after graduating and becoming a profes sional archivist, and I am grateful for her skill, her generosiry, and the great cover still she found. For editorial assistance I thank Cynthia McCreery for her way with texts, fictional and otherwise, and Juan Monroy for his digital dexteriry. I am also grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer stipend that aided the writing of my own contribution, and to Constance Penley, chair of Film Studies at the Universiry of California, Santa Barbara, who enabled me to arrange my teaching schedule to accommodate the work on this vol ume. Thanks are due to Bill Germano at Routledge for his ethusiasm and faith that the volume would appear, to the hard-working and effi cient Damian Treffs, and to wonderful production editor Julie Ho. 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 familiar musical 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,"' for joining the expedition into territory that was for some familiar but for others unfamiliar, either 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 if I try to name you, but our conversations and your papers remain in my memory; thank you all for what you taught me. By name I would like to thank the film studies graduates who served as readers for the course and contributed their lively opinions and their judicious comments: Jamie Gluck, Lisa Brende, and, once again, Cynthia McCreery. Finally, thanks are due to Steve Nelson, who brought Signs and Meaning and Horizons "West to 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 for constancy and joy. V111 introduction westerns through history janet walker The insight that "the western is history'' is everywhere and nowhere. In "The Evolution of the Western" (1955), Andre Bazin declared that "the western is rooted in the history of the American nation."1 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 one of Richard Slotkin's chapter headings in Gunfighter Nation (1992), "The Western is American History."3 Absent from these latter two examples is Bazin's notion of the western's organic rootedness. The western does not "spring from," nor "grow out of" history. No sense of boundaries nor of separate entities is couched. The western is history. three paths in a conceptual topography Discussions of the western, from any perspective, generally begin with the acknowledgment that it is a historical genre by virtue of its constituent films being set in the past, and in particular, overwhelmingly, between the end of the Civil War and the "closing of the frontier" in 1890.4 And
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