The Wild West, the industrial East and the outlaw

Abstract

This paper argues that dominant academic understandings of the Wild West overstate the extent to which it can be understood as a pro-capitalist mythology. The paper begins with an account of the making of the mythic West, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century. I then consider the cultural economics of this process, noting that, for most of the twentieth century, the Western was the dominant genre across whole swathes of cultural production. This is followed by a consideration of the place of the outlaw and related figures that appear to problematize the legitimacy of new forms of social order, particularly in relation to land and ownership. I conclude with some thoughts on what it might mean to propose an anti-modern and radical reading of the Western, and to connect the cowboy with other social bandits, such as the pirate and the Mafiosi.

Keywords:

• Wild West
• cowboy
• outlaw
• cultural representations
• social bandit

Notes

Thanks to Phil Hancock for the book, Gavin Jack and Ruud Kaulingfreks for their ideas, the audience at CMS6 Warwick in 2009 for their comments, and to the referees for this journal. A different version of this paper appears as chapter five in Parker 2011.

Though whether the Western really is a genre might be a questionable point. A film like Fort Apache (1948) actually contains a whole series of different genres – comedy of manners, slapstick, musical, romance and Western.

As Cole Younger is made to say in The Long Riders (1980), ‘When all this is over, I'm going to write me a book. Make myself even more famous than I already am.’

See also John Gast's 1872 painting ‘American Progress’, in which the westward moving settlers are accompanied by an angel gazing at the horizon (Durham and Hill 2005, 149).

A historical episode given a rather different spin in John Wayne's Chisum (1970), which pits Billy the Kid against W.G. Murphy, a cruel local businessman intent on buying all the land in the valley.

To which might be added, anyone who concentrates power, such as a family patriarch, trading post owner, politician or judge.

Parodied in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) in which a member of the gang nicknamed ‘News’ reads accounts of their exploits from clippings.

Wister's book is also deeply homoerotic, as if the Western man is a real man – ‘at this deeply feminine remark, the Virginian looked at her with such a smile, that, had I been a woman, it would have made me his to do with what he pleased on the spot’. (1998, 167).

Though he also suggests variations on this theme, in terms of ‘vengeance’ and ‘professionalism’. His interpretation of the latter theme does not fit with the analysis I am suggesting here, simply because he suggests that the team of professional gunslingers plot necessarily equates to an ideological accommodation with the employment requirements of large organizations.

A suggestion made by other thinkers too. See, for example, Derrida (1992).

Just how violent these towns actually were is open to question. See Horan and Sann (1954), Nolan (2003), Ames (2004).

Bearing in mind that the Western film became a globalized phenomenon, popular outside the ordinary range of English speaking or European countries, with film production taking place in India, Japan, Russia and many other countries (Simpson 2006, 241 passim).

See, for an early example Apache (1954). In Dances with Wolves (1990), a white man discovers harmony by joining the natives. ‘I knew for the first time who I really was’ he says. This plot is essentially revived for the 3D science fiction film Avatar (2009).

Though the appropriation of the hyper masculine cowboy by some gay men does suggest something about the tractability of cultural representations which is broadly helpful for my argument here.

Or, in Ride the High Country (1962), ‘The day of the forty-niner is over. The day of the steady businessman has arrived.’

William H. Whyte's The Organization Man, a scathing critique of obedience and collectivism, was first published in 1956, the same year as the release of The Searchers.

I am grateful to Ruud Kaulingfreks for his observation that there were plenty of cowboys in South America too, but that the figure of the cowboy never became a focus for resistance there. This seems to underline the North American particularity of the early myth, and suggests no necessary link between anti-modernism and this particular group of workers.