The Cowboy is Back

Notes about life on the edge of extinction

Is the latent interest in westerns an unconscious critique of the Iraq war?
Right now western mythology is seeing a resurgence with big cowboy flicks, and western-styled television series coming out with guns blazing. Rotten Tomatoes gives 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' (starring Brad Pitt) a 7 out of 10 while ‘3:10 to Yuma’ (starring Russell Crowe) manages an impressive 8.7 out of 10.

In 1959 there were 26 westerns on prime time television in America. But until recently, the Western was dead. Gradually the Western ethos has begun to take root and resonate with audiences once more. In 1992 Clint Eastwood accurately brought back the genre with Unforgiven (shortly after Costner’s surprise hit ‘Dances With Wolves’ in 1990). Interestingly, the Western had returned with a better understanding of original native inhabitants, and a sense of bitterness towards the ruthless march of technology driven modernization.

Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman took the baton even further, putting the focus on an educated woman in ‘injun’ territories.
General George Custer: Dr. Quinn, you are a traitor.
Dr. Michaela 'Mike' Quinn: I've dedicated my life to repairing the damage that men like you bring on this world and frankly, Mr. Custer, I don't want any more of your business.

Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman emerged on CBS in 1993, was broadcast in 100 countries and ran for 6 seasons, winning plenty of Emmy’s along the way. In 2001, six years ago, a last movie version of this series was shot, and then for a while Westerns once again slipped off the radar.

What is a ‘Western’?

Believe it or not, one of the world’s greatest ever movie franchises was based on the Western myth: Star Wars. In fact Lucas’s first Star Wars flick had a distinctly pioneering title: Episode IV — A New Hope. Spielberg continued to evoke the myth of the cowboy by taking Indiana Jones from civilisation to the ancient world (the Developing World) and back. Westerns offset the primitive against the ‘civilized’ way of life, presenting as undercurrent to this theme the presiding technological change. Right now there’s Deadwood, a modern version of this genre, and as mentioned above, a lineup of big budget big star movies in the Western genre .

Don’t Kill the Cowboy

Perhaps unwittingly (perhaps not) filmmakers and sometime collaborators Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino helped audience lock into the original grittiness of the genre once more. Where Lucas and Spielberg gave the genre a fantasy edge that saved Hollywood, at the time, from giving itself over to a sort of Rock’n Roll decadence, these filmmakers also stripped the genre, in a sense, of its grit, its realism and vitality.

While the Western genre may be mythology, it is rooted, of course in reality. And here’s the rub. The resurgence of interest in the Western provides an interesting insight into an emerging zeitgeist; and one many people may not be conscious of to begin with.

Climate Change and Global Warming provide the angst, the threat, the tension to strain the survival of the mythical far-flung village in the countryside. The distant clamour of ‘energy crisis’ is thus faced in the mythological realm of far-flung communities under threat. We’re not yet ready to imagine these crisis in the city.

Bringing the Cowboy Home

Movies like Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003) Brokeback Mountain (2005) and even Kill Bill (2) have stimulated the public’s appetite for a return to the OK Corral, and the suggestion that the OK Corral could be as near as a backyard. Spielberg’s 6 episode TV epic Into the West (2005) has also explored the Western, but sympathetically, through the eyes of the vulnerable natives.

Spielberg introduced his series at a time when the cultural receptivity was at its zenith, except it seems, the interest in the Wild West is continuing to gain momentum.

Culure Shift

Adam Simon, a cultural critic and director astutely observed the following in a recent article in The Times (London): “For Americans, Westerns were always about paradise lost – a world already gone. Revivals correspond less to times of war than times of environmental anxiety, when we fear that a way of life is on the verge of extinction. The funny thing is,” Simon continues, “that this feeling of a way of life on the edge of extinction was already the point in the first Westerns. The Western,” Simon reflects, “was already an elegy.”

Centennial

There are few novels that capture this extinction theme (of men, environments and traditional lifestyle) as James A; Michener’s. His book starts in prehistory in fact, and shows to what extent extinction and change gains pace under the hand of man.

On public television in South Africa, some of the most popular stories have been revisited, looking closely at the facts behind the history. Recently TV audiences were treated to the real story behind Custer’s Last Stand, at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Our fascination with Western archives, it seems to me, demonstrates that we’re ready to face the future, in the guise of the past.

SABC 2: Friday 5 October 21:00 Wild West:
Documentary series about Billy the Kid, a man of many faces who was a bad guy as well as a good guy.