Question for Discussion: According to Jane
Tompkins, what is the atrraction and power
Westerns have over American audiences?

Reading: Tompkins, pp. 3-19; Johnson, "The Western:
An Overview"

Video: The Searchers (1956), Shane (1953),
Pale Rider (1985)

Response Paper: How does the Indian's mythic story
of the West contrast with the "Mythic American West"?
Do these Indians intentionally tell their story of the West in order to challenge every point of the Anglo-American story? Is the Indian's Mythic West a counter-myth to the Anglo-American Mythic West? (1-2 page paper due on Monday, Feb. 23rd.)
( See Anglo-American vs. Indian Stories on
the American West )

Krugman: Cash for Trash:
On the $700 billion Financial Bailout
Telnaes Animation: Bankers Behaving Badly
Jeep Ad: The American Wild (in-class)
See Current Ad for the Ford Escape:
see the picture gallery of images (in-class)
Lewis, Understanding the Myth of the West
(in-class)
Tompkins on the West of Representation (in-class)
Cars named after Western Places,
Images, and Symbols (in-class)
Western Magazines (in-class)
Plot Summary for City Slickers (1991) (in-class)
Cowboy Pals Webpages (in-class)
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (in-class)
Posters from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (in-class)
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show Poster (in-class)
Frederick Remington Art Posters (in-class)
Tompkins, Introduction to West of Everything
(in-class)
Johnson, The Western: An Overview (in-class)
Westerns Web Links
American Progress by John Gast (1872) (in-class)
The Marlboro Man Myth (in-class)

Lewis, Understanding the Myth
of the West

"The West is both a modern myth and a real place.
The Western Myth in both novels and films have
made it harder for us to understand the American
West. It is even harder to understand the West
because it is so deeply connected with American
manhood, democracy, and our deepest hopes.
John Wayne and Ronald Reagan's America is
still our American Dream. And that America is
still located somewhere, out there in the West.
In the West everything is still possible, if we are just good enough, strong enough, and daring enough. "
........................................................ Chris Lewis, Ph.D .

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Tompkins on the West of Representation

"Though it's the West not of actuality but of representation I'm dealing with here--words and pictures, not flesh and blood--fiction and fact interpenetrate continually when one considers the life of Western writers in relation to their work. Owen Wister, Zane Grey, and Louis L'Amour in different ways all lived what they wrote. And Buffalo Bill spent the last half of his life playing out the first half theatrically." (p. 7)

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Plot Summary for City Slickers ( 1991 )

Mitch is a middle aged big-city radio ads salesman. He and his friends Ed and Phil are having mid-life crisis. They decide the best birthday gift is to go on a two week holiday in the wild west driving cattle from New Mexico to Colorado. There they meet cowboy Curly who not only teaches them how to become real cowboys, but also one or two other things about life in the open air of the west.

Plot Summary for Dances with Wolves
(1990)

"Lt. John Dunbar is dubbed a hero after he accidentally leads Union troops to a victory during the Civil War. He requests a position on the western frontier, but finds it deserted. He soon finds out he is not alone, but meets a wolf he dubs "Two-socks" and a curious Indian tribe. Dunbar quickly makes friends with the tribe, and discovers a white woman who was raised by the Indians. He gradually earns the respect of these native people, and sheds his white-man's ways."

Tompkins, Introduction to West of Everything

"Physical sensation are the bedrock of the
experience Westerns afford." (p. 3)

"The Western answers a need to get out of that apartment and into fresh air, sunlight, blue-sky, and open space....Not just any space will do. Big sky country is a psychological and spiritual place known by definite physical markers. It is the American West...the West of the desert, of mountains, and prairies." (4)

"The West functions as a symbol of freedom, and of the opportunity for conquest. It seems to offer escape from the conditions of life in modern industrial society: from a mechanized existence, economic dead ends, social entanglements, unhappy personal relations, political injustice. The desire to change places also signals a powerful need for self-determination." (4)

"The feeling of being "in a Western" -- the kind
of experience that is and the effects it has -- are
what I am attempting to record." (p. 6)

"...You know when you're in a Western." (p. 7)

"Why aren't Indians a part of most Westerns?
Does their absence tell us something about the
Western and its meaning?" (10)

"It was a hard land, and it bred hard men to
hard ways." (11)

"It says that the hero is tough and strong, that
the West made him that way...." (p. 11)

"Hard work, self-discipline, strength, determination,
concentration, pain,skill, ingenuity, and bravery
are all required of the Western hero."

The Western [and the West] "called the whole
soul of man into being; that is what, in their
way, the novels of Louis L'Amour aim to do."
(p. 15)

"Westerns created a model for men who came
of age in the twentieth century. The model was
not for women but for men: Westerns insist on
this point by emphasizing the importance of
manhood as an ideal." (p. 17)

"What matters it that he be a man. That is the
only side to be on." (p. 18)

"The expression is one of fear, distaste,
determination, and inward pain. It is impossible
not to share that pain with Western heroes if
one is to understand them." (p. 19)

Johnson, The Western: An Overview

"The Western has left an indelible mark on the world. Thanks to Hollywood, virtually everyone knows the ingredients of the Western--the lassos and the Colt 45s; the long-horned steers and the hanging trees; the stagecoaches and the Stetson hats; the outlaws and the lawmen; the gamblers and the gunfighters. And virtually everyone knows the settings of the Western--the red rock monoliths of Monument Valley; the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Teton Range; the treeless expanses of the prairie. The iconography of the Western is the largest and richest of all the film genres, and Hollywood has burned it into the minds of moviegoers from Dodge City to Timbuktu. "

"The Western provided infinite variety on a relatively small stable of situations and plots, with conflicts often growing out of several archetypal situations: ranchers vs. farmers ( Shane and Man Without a Star ), Indians vs. settlers ( The Searchers and Hondo ), and outlaws vs. civilization ( My Darling Clementine and High Noon ). Robert Warshow in his influential essay "Movie Chronicle: The Westerner" described the Western as "an art form for connoisseurs, where the spectator derives his pleasure from the appreciation of minor variations within the working out of a pre-established order" (Warshow, pg. 66)."

"Hollywood fed us a steady diet of Western myths, legends, and heroes for over five decades. And in the process, the Western myth engulfed American popular culture--from clothes (denim jackets, jeans, and cowboy boots) to children's toys (cap guns, rubber-tipped arrows, and tom toms). Its lexicon entered our language ("round up," "hog-tied" and "bury the hatchet"). The Western held our interest (with only minor lapses) until post-war cynicism ate away at the American psyche and we started doubting the heroes of the West. Gradually then the West began to fade away, struggling in spasms of violence in The Wild Bunch and the Spaghetti Westerns of Italy, until the Western hardly seemed relevant anymore. And not until the '90s arrived (with films such as Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven ) did it seem possible that the Western could survive in any form other than dewy-eyed nostalgia."

"The era of the American West lasted from about 1850 to 1900, when the country was expanding at a staggering rate. Settlers trudged West on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, cattle empires sprang from the prairies, cow towns grew around railroad stations, and legendary cattle drives cut great swaths across the plains. This time period provided the raw material for the Western."

"As it struggled into the '90s, the Western finally discovered salvation in the form of Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves . It packed in audiences and carted away the Academy Award for Best Picture. And soon afterwards, the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel) attracted a huge following. Eastwood's Unforgiven followed in 1992. It's a magnificent meditation on the Old West, filled with bitter ironies and brutal violence meted out by lawmen and outlaws alike. Unforgiven took home the Best Picture Academy Award in 1992."

"Even with the minor resurgence of the Western in the '90s, the Western exists in limbo. It still has the power to fan the sparks of imagination, but our distance from the West has weakened its authority. While the West once represented a simpler time in America's history, we now see that the power of the gun (as shown in Unforgiven and Tombstone ) could make lawmen just as dangerous as the outlaws. And although justice may have been swift; it was not necessarily fair and at times it was absolutely deadly."