Reconstruction 7.3 (2007)


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The Geography of Frontier / tyler lorey adams

 

Abstract: "In classic Hollywood cinema, the cowboy was a fearless man of character, the rugged exemplar of manly virtue ... laconic and spare ... wielding force in a morally climactic act of ... violence to do justice and save the community from the chaos and barbarism of the outside wilderness ... conquering mighty obstacles (rivers, mountains, storms, Indians) to plant free communities across a vast continent of majestic beauty that symbolized God's providence for the young nation" (Warren 1). This idealization of the West via the Western and its hero as a place to be conquered, domesticated yet freed symbolized an era and its people. This conception however began a freefall with the cinematic depictions of postmodern Westerns. The space of the West suddenly becomes claustrophobic. The hero, this iconic image, becomes tired of it all. Space and time in the west and thus our hero becomes disoriented. This disconnection culminates in the 1990s with a recognized feeling of claustrophobia and weariness that our hero wears like a scarlet letter as his space consumes him by its sudden shrinking of potential. The West no longer appears unbreakable, resolute and full of potential. The heroic image suffers as the hero who now glances over his indomitable space realizes as its possibilities of infinite forever shrink so does he. Two films of the 1990s embody this disillusion of a dream deferred: Unforgiven (1992) and Tombstone (1993). Both films confine the hero and by extension his space. Retired, sick, domesticated, the cultural ideal of the West now embodies the realistic notion that the space no longer exists to fertilize unbridled freedom and an unspoken, but understood, unlimited potential. This West has now come to embody a realism branded to the realization that the notions of the west were never quite attainable, never as good as promised.

 

<1> "The geography of the Frontier represented in Western movies is that of a world divided by significant and signifying borders, usually marked by some strong visual sign" (Slotkin, 351). In traditional westerns the borders do not signify containment, but rather the potential to movement beyond. The hero is not as much confined as he is always ready to dominate, always making the borders shift to his movements. The cultural icon of the American west and by association "the Western" is not so much the hero, white tried and true, but the idealization that is brought forth through his whiteness, his persistence and his true nature, this idealization reinforced by "the West" itself. The space inhabited by the "hero" defines him as much as his outward characteristics. Solitary, unconfined, weathered, resolute, unbreakable defines "the hero" but it also is an apt definition of the space he inhabits at any given time. "In classic Hollywood cinema, the cowboy was a fearless man of character, the rugged exemplar of manly virtue ... laconic and spare ... wielding force in a morally climactic act of ... violence to do justice and save the community from the chaos and barbarism of the outside wilderness ... conquering mighty obstacles (rivers, mountains, storms, Indians) to plant free communities across a vast continent of majestic beauty that symbolized God's providence for the young nation" (Warren 1). This idealization of the West via the Western and its hero as a place to be conquered, domesticated yet freed symbolized an era and its people. This conception however began a freefall with the cinematic depictions of postmodern Westerns. The space of the West suddenly becomes claustrophobic. The hero, this iconic image, becomes tired of it all. Space and time in the west and thus our hero becomes disoriented. This disconnection culminates in the 1990s with a recognized feeling of claustrophobia and weariness that our hero wears like a scarlet letter as his space consumes him by its sudden shrinking of potential. The West no longer appears unbreakable, resolute and full of potential. The heroic image suffers as the hero who now glances over his indomitable space realizes as its possibilities of infinite forever shrink so does he. Two films of the 1990s embody this disillusion of a dream deferred: Unforgiven (1992) and Tombstone (1993). Both films confine the hero and by extension his space. Retired, sick, domesticated, the cultural ideal of the West now embodies the realistic notion that the space no longer exists to fertilize unbridled freedom and an unspoken, but understood, unlimited potential. This West has now come to embody a realism branded to the realization that the notions of the west were never quite attainable, never as good as promised. The conversation between Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp from Tombstone provides an example:

Wyatt: All I ever wanted was to live a normal life.

Doc: When will you wake up? You wouldn't know a normal life if it bit you in the ass.

Wyatt: That's great coming from you.

Doc: I played the cards I was dealt Wyatt. Your problem is you're always trying to play someone else's. Allow me to tell you the truth and thus set your free: There is no happiness, Wyatt there is no normal life. There's life, that's all. Just life. The rest is relative.

This is the realization that Doc Holliday and William Munny respectively bring, the idealization of the West is a thing of the past. The hero is no longer a gunfighter but a killer, the West is not all encompassing of idealized notions but home to a tired, retired hero who not only is confined within his space but is confined to an abysmal place within himself.

"I ain't like that anymore."

<2> With that somber statement William Munny proclaims the mantra of the new frontier. Neither he nor his surroundings "are like that anymore" - the idealism of the old has been replaced by the disenchantment of the new. The west and all its illusions are a thing of the past. Idealism has beaten a rather worn past into the sunset. All the cowboy and his image have left are the memories of what he and it were supposed to be like. "There is no normal" because normalcy as it was defined was a myth that never really existed. In Unforgiven when sheriff Little Bill Daggett tells the writer W. W. Beauchamp of the real story of a gunfight in which English Bob was involved:

Little Bill: Bob walked right into the bar and shot at Corky, only he misses, 'cause he was so damn drunk he couldn't see straight. Old Corky went for his gun and got in such a hurry that he shot his own toe off. Bob shot at Corky again, and he misses again, because he's still so damn drunk. He hits this thousand dollar mirror over the bar. And now, the Duck of Death is as good as dead. Because this time, Corky does it right. He takes careful aim, slowly squeezes the trigger, and ... BAM! That Walker Colt he was carrying blew up in his hand, a failing common to that model. See, what I'm trying to tell you is if Corky really had two guns instead of a big dick, he'd be alive today.

<3> Unforgiven and William Munny as directed and portrayed by a Western icon himself expose the realism that was always embedded in the ideal. "We may recall that Eastwood's earliest movie Western protagonists were mercenary killers and bounty hunters and that in those roles the occupation did not constitute a moral difficulty for viewers. But in Unforgiven ... the film debates the values of community versus individual, justified versus unjustified violence and the place of heroic transcendence in a frontier environment balanced between institutional rigidity and unusual anarchy (Atherton 2000). The hero and his space become cramped by the withdrawal of the idealistic notion of the frontier. The space once looming large and indefinable becomes limited in a contest of different outcomes, none of which were probable when the Western space represented the Western ideal. This new attitude is represented even before the movie is started; it begins with the promotion poster for the movie. The poster is controlled by dark hues with splashes of red and muted orange/yellow hybrid. The poster itself is dominated on the right hand side by the back of a man. This man, neither looking forward or backward, his head titled slightly to the left, appears neither to be anxious or in a state of anticipation - he is simply there. The most auspicious trait(s) of the man is under his large cowboy hat - a curly mane of graying hair. While behind his back in one hand he holds a rather large pistol while the other hand seemingly steadies the hand holding the gun. This older cowboy who faces neither what is in front of him nor what is behind is on the edge of the chasm. His back is so close to the edge of the poster that he cannot retreat backward and does not appear to be looking for a forward destination either. He appears quite comfortable in his stillness. But it is a comfort borne of the realization there is nothing and nowhere else to be. He seems to be quite content to be confined to the space - to wait. This in itself signifies a departure of the traditional cowboy space.

<4> Past posters advertising Mr. Eastwood's cowboy films are full frontal shots. His face is either in a mask of fury or a sardonic smile; his body in perpetual motion, propelled forward to the destination awaiting him. While the anonymity of the gunfighter (especially as portrayed by Mr. Eastwood) is not new to the genre, this anonymous man is usually met head on. He is anonymous because we are never properly introduced. The "man with no name" in all his guises is still seen; he still commands the open spaces of the West and all it has to offer is his for the taking. But this reincarnation is something different. This poster represents true anonymity. This still of the West also has on the lower right hand side three shadows of men riding out of the sunset as the sun slowly retreats into the red sky under the horizon. Again this is a departure of the ideal of the cowboy who, after successfully completing his venture, rides into the sunset. This delusion is not afforded these three companions either in still life or the reality of the film. There is never an ideal sunset that offers the delusion of grandeur. The retreat, if the poster is to be believed, is riding away from the ideals of yesteryear. And as the movie shows the completion is a ride into the stormy night full of hail, lighting and rain. And finally the poster is completed with the four faces of the four gunfighters placed in stepping stone fashion to the left of the graying cowboy. The only face which dares to look front with the obligatory sneer is the face of the "villain", Little Bill Daggett, from all others we get a side profile. From the dark hues to the gun being held behind the back with both hands (perhaps to steady it, and owing its symbolism to male potency) we are alluded to the fact that the Western and its hero have changed. Both have become stagnant. There is no reference to movement either forward or backward from the solitary male silhouette. The "hero" and the land he has commanded are slowly succumbing to the inevitability of exhaustion with the result being a restriction of movement and options. Neither the cowboy nor the West commands the open space and its delusion of something just beyond the reach, just beyond the sunset. The hero, as the grandeur of the West, has grown old and tired. The space for the hero, as the space for the mythical West, has become claustrophobic from its ideals and promises that keep piling up - full of flash and fury but in the end signifying unattainable ideals.

<5> When the movie begins we are aware that the character with his back to us holding onto the gun with two hands is William Munny - ex-gunfighter, current pig farmer. He has given up his ways for the love of a good woman who has died of smallpox two years before we meet Munny. He now has two children and a pig farm that is replete with sick pigs. Munny is sought out by a young wannabe gunfighter who has heard of his exploits.

The Schofield Kid: Like I was saying, you don't look no meaner than hell, cold-blooded, damn killer.

William Munny: Maybe I ain't.

The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, Uncle Pete says you was the meanest goddamn son-of-a-bitch alive, and if I ever wanted a partner for a killin' you were the worst one. Meaning the best on account as your's as cold as the snow and you don't have no weak nerve no ear.

Their mission is to revenge the brutal cutting of a prostitute, for the fee offered by the madam and the prostitutes: "Whores' gold". Munny finally reluctantly agrees and with his old riding buddy Ned Logan and "the Kid" set out to revenge the cutting of the whore, for a fee.

<6> While similar to traditional Westerns Munny, Logan, and "the Kid" set out, quest-like, from a pig farm in Kansas to Big Whiskey, Wyoming to avenge the wrong and gather the monetary compensation; we are always aware of the boundaries to their quest. This is highlighted by the fact that Munny has trouble even mounting a horse on their voyage. They, Munny, Logan, and "the Kid", set off for a destination, but they are constricted by the possibilities. The most significant boundary being that their quest involves a bounty assimilated and offered by women to redress an injustice. "The whores form a coherent faction ... that threatens the patriarchal social order, the right of cowboys to respect for their masculinity" (Goss 2004). The offense which began the need for the quest is that a woman, Delilah, makes fun of the size of Quick Mike's penis. He, in retaliation, cuts her face. The sheriff, Little Bill Doggett, offers compensation to the owner of the brothel where Delilah works, but not punishment. This angers the madam, Strawberry Alice, who decides to get money together for a bounty for "justice." While, as Goss states, "Westerns are ... also about the establishment of law and politics in a new nation, dramatizing the Enlightenment's profound questions on the limits of human freedom," this expands any traditional Western's idea on human freedom thus simultaneously limiting the boundaries of the Western itself.

Ned Logan: All right, so what did these fellas do? Cheat at cards? Steal some strays? Spit on a rich fella? What?

Will Munny: No, they cut up a woman.

Ned Logan: What?

Will Munny: Yeah, they cut up her face, cut her eyes out, cut her fingers off, cut her tits, everything but her cunty, I suppose.

Women, traditionally classified as Whores or Madonnas in Westerns, are accorded justice and protection with their designation. They are rarely heard from except to stifle the hero with their moralizing ways (the Madonnas) and they are never capable of seeking redress on their own behalf. The Western, built upon the idea of limitless freedom for the male, suffers when its foundation upon which it relies opens up to the complexity of the reality, at least for the men. "Exposing the frontier as a morally and socially complex place . . . if good and evil, and truth and falsehood are confused, so shall we see are the ethnicity, class, gender, and identity of 'America' itself" (Goss 2004). The signifying borders with the actions of the women become borders within the idyllic Western itself, signifying a containment of cherished ideals. The actions of the women start the process in motion. The inaction of the sheriff to properly redress the crime (according to the wishes of the women) continues the process. The most domesticating symbol of the West, the symbol it runs from is the one symbol that begins a cycle of violence in the name of justice. The West is in a freefall: head over heels, petticoat over head, bottoms up. The women signify how tired and old the heroes and their landscape have become - from a masculine point of view male impotence must be saved by women; from a feminine perspective the aging West makes room for female accomplishment. The man who will eventually save the day cannot mount a horse and admittedly wins his gunfights through sheer luck. As Munny tells the writer Beauchamp, "I was lucky in the order, but I've always been lucky when it comes to killin' folks." The demarcation in the landscape is tightening around the ideals the Western has learned to lean upon. Luck, not skill, is the secret to the successful killer. He is lucky in the order his opponent falls, he is lucky because a gun misfires, but most of all he is lucky because his secret of luck over skill has been masked for so long as a type of manifest destiny. According to the traditional thought he commanded the terrain as he commanded the symbols of the burgeoning West. He dominated because he was meant to dominate. The wide open land was proof of his prowess. But now the hero, growing old and gray, still rides the landscape, but the terrain has changed both overtly and subtly. It is the subtle changes that are more confounding, more restricting. When Munny proclaims, "I aint like that anymore" he is not only referring to himself, but the terrain he once so viciously and skillfully dominated.

<7> In contrast to the anonymity of William Munny portrayed by the cultural icon Clint Eastwood stands the historical icon Doc Holiday as portrayed by Val Kilmer, not known for his portrayal of cowboys. Tombstone, released in 1993, is the story of the shootout at the OK Corral. It is in opposition to Unforgiven as it is replete with action. The poster heralding the movie announces movement, with the slogan "Justice is coming" added as a tagline. The poster pictures the full body shot of four men walking towards the viewer. All the men are in mid stride. Decked out in full cowboy gear all men are carrying shotguns or pistols and each has the determined look of the dispenser of justice. Depending on the poster the four men are aligned in different sequence, but movement with a sense of purpose is always present. The poster is shaded in dark but the men are always against a background of contrasting white hues. This is in stark contrast to their cowboy uniform, which is black. What is remarkable about the promise of movement the poster guarantees is the lack of destination that actually culminates. Tombstoneforsakes the idealism of the classic Western, with Doc Holliday as its soothsayer. In Tombstone the Earps represent the idealization of the West. As Morgan Earp rhapsodizes, "look at all the stars. You look up and think, 'god made all this and he remembered to make a little speck like me.' It's kind of flattering really." This is the traditional West and its hero - sure of his place within the universe while equally sure that the universe (that is the West) is his to dominate. Always moving towards a destination of better, he is there to dispense justice and move on. His westward movement is always toward something better than that which lies before him. The landscape always points west.

Wyatt Earp: I did my duty, now I'd like to get on with my life. I'm going to Tombstone.

Crawley Drake: Ah, I see. To strike it rich. Well all right, that's fine. Tell you one thing, though...I never saw a rich man who didn't wind up with a guilty conscience.

Wyatt Earp: Already got a guilty conscience. Might as well have the money too. Good day, now.

The Earps are rugged and independent. Though dependent on one another, they are thought to be solitary. They convey the traditional impression of the Western landscape, independent and solitary. In opposition Doc Holliday and his cancer embrace the confinement which is more true to the ideal. Doc Holliday represents the antithesis of the traditional West. He understands the daydream of the West is just that, an illusion.

Sheriff John Behan: We are growing. Be as big as San Francisco in a few years, and just as sophisticated.

Doc Holliday: Very cosmopolitan.

Throughout the movie Doc Holliday and his growing sense of confinement due to the restrictions of his disease is the real harbinger of the West. His sense of containment, his slow physical deterioration balanced by his sense of self and loyalty are the true symbioses of the West and its hero. It is Doc, not the Earps, that represent the West. As the Earps go down one by one, it is Doc who comes to the rescue. It is the realism that will eventually save the idealistic notion that is strangling the life out of the Western and its hero. It is the realization of the folly of the dream that keeps the landscape and its hero alive on broken promises. It is the weariness of Doc who understands there is no happiness. It is Doc who survives the ordeal only to succumb to the inevitable. Death in one form or another is the end. The traditional West never acknowledged that for the hero. He was forever riding into the sunset. He was forever in motion. The promise of the West is an empty promise. It is one that can never be fulfilled.

Doc: I played the cards I was dealt, Wyatt. Your problem is you're always trying to play someone else's. Allow me to tell you the truth and thus set your free: There is no happiness, Wyatt there is no normal life. There's life that's all. Just life. The rest is relative.

<8> Doc's consumption mirrors the claustrophobia and despair of the West, while Wyatt Earp's idealism is the mantra of the traditional West. While it is the Earp brothers' fight, it is Doc Holliday who realizes that the life of the West is "nasty, brutish, and unkind" for both the hero and all its inhabitants. It is Doc who realizes in the grip of death that the promises of the West are destined to remain unfulfilled because its foundation is a promise of happiness just beyond one's reach. The landscape and the hero have reached the boundaries and have found the potential for movement further does not lie within the landscape but within oneself. It is all the more despondent then that the self and the landscape have somehow become one in the same.

<9> William Munny and Doc Holliday as portrayed in Unforgiven and Tombstone respectively represent the demise of the traditional icon of the West. Its hero is the landscape and the landscape is the hero. Neither can rely upon the other for a life without borders, or for an endless sunset to continue the dream. The promise of forever, embodied in the hero slowly riding off into the sunset, a place without limits has been exposed. The sunset does not go on for eternity and so neither does the hero. The dream of infiniteness held by the landscape has proved to be a hoax. The hero embodied within the landscape has shown he is not omnipotent - his belief in his infallibility and the belief he dared others to dream was also a hoax; magnificently drawn on a landscape of seemingly endless possibilities that has slowly withered under the scrutiny of time. And while the dream has not quite become a nightmare it does hold the possibility of living forever in purgatory. The West is no longer without borders and so its heroes are no longer without constraint. The space still defines the hero of the west, and as the space diminishes and the possibilities weaken so does the stature of the hero. He is still heroic but he like his landscape is a hero tempered with melancholy.


Works Cited

Atherton, Mike. "Unforgiven: Rewriting the Gendered Territory of the Western". 2000. (Accessed 2 April 2007). <http://www.sizemore.freeuk.com/unforgiven.htm.>

Goss, Jon. "Unforgiven and the Spirit of the Laws: Despotism, Monarch and Democratic Virtue in Clint Eastwood's Last Western". 2004. Film and History CD-Rom Annual. (Accessed 30 March 2007). <http://jongoss.info/papers/unforgiven.htm>

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. 1992.

Warren, Spencer. "Rediscovering the Classic Western," American Outlook, Summer 2003.

 

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