Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 40

July 6-7, 2024: Critical Patriotism in 2024

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism from acrossAmerican history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of Of Thee ISing: critical patriotism. Leading up to this weekend post on thestate of critical patriotism in 2024!]

Onprotests that exemplify critical patriotism, protests that don’t quite, and whyit’s not as simple as that.

As part ofa Patriots’ Day series back in 2016, I highlighted#BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza as an example of 21stcentury critical patriotism. I believe the last eight years have more thanborne that out, and would go further and argue that the Summer2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests exemplify critical patriotism as well asany recent events. There are lots of ways I could make that case, including ofcourse the protests’ overarching goal of pushing the nation closer to itsstated ideals of (among others) equality and justice for all. But one detailthat really struck me with each and every protest was the fact that virtuallyall the participants (or atleast a clear majority, but often the vast majority) were wearing masks, lookingout for each other and their communities during that pandemic moment. To mymind, critical patriotism isn’t just about what we say, but also and especiallywhat we do; and while protesting is one meaningful such action, protesting inways that look out for each other is an even more inspiring example.

I was veryhesitant to write about this year’s campus protests as part of this post (or anywhereelse), because I think they’re a genuine minefield of complex and contradictoryissues. I absolutely support students’ expressing their freedom of speech andstanding up for what they believe, as I hope thiscolumn made clear. But I would also argue that in some significant ways thesecampus protests do not qualify as examples of critical patriotism, and I’dhighlight two such ways in particular: the number of speakers and chants at theprotests that have quite specifically definedthe United States as a negative presence if not indeed a villain on theglobal landscape (a perfectly understandable perspective to argue for, butdefinitely not a critical patriotic one); and the too-frequent ways in which atleast some protest participants have attacked members of their own communities,especially Jewishcommunity members and at least sometimeswith Nazi imagery (which is not at all understandable as a perspective, andcloser to the form of patriotism I define as mythic and exclusionary than anyother).

Thosedifferences between the 2020 and 2024 mass protests are real and significant,and do to my mind mean that the 2020 protests qualify as critical patriotism farmore than do the 2024 ones (which of course is far from the only way to defineor measure them). But at the same time, even if we acknowledge that those 2024elements were present and even more consistent than would be ideal, I wouldnonetheless add that the campus protests did in fact help push the nation, andmore exactly the federal government, closer to our shared ideals, with oneexcellent example being the Biden administration suspendingmilitary support for the Netanyahu administration’s campaign of genocidalviolence against the Gazan city of Rafah. Protests always exist on a spectrumfrom the most inspiring and critical patriotic to the least so (January6th, anyone?), and while I believe the 2020 protests were furtheralong that spectrum than the 2024 ones have been, there are still without questioncritical patriotic effects of this year’s protests. And if that helps remind usof both what protests can accomplish and the overarching value of critical patriotism,that’ll be a great pair of July 4th lessons to keep in mind, in thiselection year and at every American moment.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples of critical patriotism, past or present, you’dhighlight?

July 5, 2024: Models of Critical Patriotism: MLK and Baldwin, Kaepernick and the 1619 Project

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism fromacross American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of OfThee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the stateof critical patriotism in 2024!]

I’vewritten about critical patriotism beyond this blog series a good bit over thelast few years, including for both the History News Network (HNN) andthe UnitedStates Intellectual History (USIH) blog. But I would say that I expressedboth my vision of the concept and my case for its vital importance most clearlyin this January2020 Saturday Evening PostConsidering History column on Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin,Colin Kaepernick, the 1619 Project, and more!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

July 4, 2024: Models of Critical Patriotism: America is in the Heart

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism fromacross American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of OfThee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the stateof critical patriotism in 2024!]

On an author and book that both introduce under-narrated histories andredefine American identity.

One of my biggerpet peeves with the dominant narratives of American history is thenotion that multi-national and –ethnic immigration has been a relatively recentphenomenon, or at least that it has been most pronounced in the last fewdecades. It’s true that the 1965Immigration and Nationality Act, the first immigration law thatopened up rather than closed down immigration for various groups andnationalities, led directly to certain significant waves, especially those fromwar-torn Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. And itis also true that certain ethnic groups represented particularly sizeablepercentages of the immigrants in the last decades of the 20thcentury: Asian Americans, again, and also Hispanic and West Indian immigrants.None of those facts are insignificant, and our understanding of America in the1970s and 80s (for example) needs to include them in a prominent place. But myissue is with the very different notion that America prior to 1965 didn’tinclude immigrants from these nations (an idea advanced in its most overt form,for example, by PatBuchanan in an editorial after the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, which heblamed on the shooter’s status as the son of South Korean immigrants).

Multicultural historian Ronald Takakinotes this belief in the introduction to his magisterialbook A Different Mirror (1993),recounting a conversation when a cab-driver asks him how long he has been inthe US, and he has to reply that his family has been here for over 100 years.While the most obvious and widespread problem with this belief is that it makesit much easier to define members of these groups as less American than others,I would argue that another very significant downside is that it enables us tomore easily forget or ignore the stories of earlier such immigrants; that groupwould include Yung Wing, MariaAmparo Ruiz de Burton, Sui SinFar, and my focus for today, the Filipino-American migrant worker,novelist, poet, and labor activist Carlos Bulosan. Bulosancame to the United States in 1930 at the age of 17 (or so, his birthdate is abit fuzzy), and only lived another 26 years, but in that time he workedliterally hundreds of different jobs up and down the West Coast, agitated onbehalf of migrant and impoverished laborers and citizens during and after theDepression, published various poems and short stories (and wrote many othersthat remained unpublished upon his far too early death), and wrote theautobiographical, complex, deeply moving, and critically patriotic novel America is in the Heart (1946).

For themost part the book—which is certainly very autobiographical but apparentlyincludes many fictionalized characters, hence the designation of it as a novel(in the vein of something like On theRoad or The Bell-Jar)—paintsan incredibly bleak picture of its multiple, interconnected worlds: of migrantlaborers; of the lower and working classes in the Depression; and ofFilipino-American immigrants. In the first two focal points, and especially inits tone, which mixes bleak psychological realism with strident social criticism,Bulosan’s book certainly echoes (or at least parallels, since it is difficultto know if Bulosan had read the earlier work) and importantly complements TheGrapes of Wrath. But despite that tone, Heart’s ultimate trajectory (like that of Steinbeck’s novel, whichis why I paired them in a chapter in my fourthbook) is surprisingly and powerfully hopeful. That’s true partlybecause of the opening chapters, which are set in Bulosan’s native Philippinesand make it much more difficult to see the book’s America as an entirely bleakplace; but mostly because of the evocative concluding chapter, where Bulosandevelops at length his title’s argument for the continuing and definingexistence of a more ideal America, in the very hearts of all those seeminglyleast advantaged Americans on whom his book has focused. The idea might soundclichéd, but all I can say is “Read the book”; it works, and works beautifully,as a unique and potent literary model of critical patriotism.

Last modelof critical patriotism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

July 3, 2024: Models of Critical Patriotism: Suffrage Activists at the Centennial Exposition

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism fromacross American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of OfThee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the stateof critical patriotism in 2024!]

Onnational divisions and critical patriotism at America’s 100thbirthday celebration.

Birthday parties tend to bring out boththe best and the worst in those being celebrated, so perhaps it should be nosurprise that America’s 100th birthday party, the Centennial Exposition held overthe six months between May and November of 1876 in Philadelphia’s newlydesigned FairmountPark, was nothing if not profoundly divided in all sorts of complexways. I’ve written at length (in the Intro tomy first book) about the most defining such division, between the Exposition’sostensible purpose (to celebrate the 100th anniversary of theDeclaration of Independence and thus reflect on America’s historical originsand identity) and its central focus and tone (a thoroughly forward-lookingcelebration of the nation’s material and cultural prowess and possibilities forcontinued upward progress). But on any number of specific issues and themes theExposition displayed similarly multiple personalities: for example, it featuredthe firstAmerican statue dedicated to an African American figure (AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church founder Richard Allen) but alsoincluded a restaurant known as theSouthern Restaurant where a group of “old-time darkies”continually serenaded patrons with happy songs of the antebellum South.

Of the many such divisions andcontradictions present on and around the Exposition grounds, though, I don’tknow that any were as striking as those connected to women’s identities,perspectives, and issues. The Exposition was the first World’s Fair to includewomen’s voices in a central way, both in planning (through an all-female Women’sCentennial Executive Committee) and on the ground (through the Women’sPavilion that was created as a result of that committee’s efforts andfundraising). The Pavilion was certainly a striking success in many respects,featuring work created and designed solely by women; yet it was equallystriking for the near-complete absence of political perspectives or issues,including the most prominent such issue of the period, women’s suffrage. Sincethe inception of the Women’s Committee organizations such as the National Woman Suffrage Association hadprotested the absence of such perspectives and voices from the committee and inthe planning process, not only from a representational standpoint but throughthe lens of a particularly salient irony: that women from around the countrywere asked to contribute money and support to this federal organization, butcould not themselves vote in a federal (or any other kind of) election. TheNWSA in fact scheduled their national meeting for Philadelphia in May, on thesame day that the Exposition (including the Women’s Pavilion) opened,presenting another division within that city and moment for sure.

Yet the most overt and symbolic (yetalso very real and critically patriotic) such division would be presented onJuly 4th. On that day, for obvious reasons, the Exposition reachedits fever pitch, with numerous activities and events focused around a mainstage where impressive speakers and Americans gathered to lead the festivities.The NWSA asked if they could be a part of that stage and those festivities andwere refused, but in truly American (and Revolutionary) fashion they created asecond stage of their own elsewhere on the grounds. From that stagethey read the full text of the “Declaration of Rights and Sentimentsof Women,” a text that had been initially composed for the 1848 women’srights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, and had become as much a foundingdocument for this organization and cause as the Declaration of Independence wasfor the nation of which they were a complicated but vital part. Thosecontrasting stages were only one of many July 4th, 1876 events thathighlighted such complex national conversations and divisions—word was justreaching the East on this day of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn; a group ofparading black militiamen in Hamburg,South Carolina refused to cede the sidewalk to a white group, leading to aviolent reprisal and the start of multiple days of anti-black violence in thetown—but their location and proximity can drive home just how multi-vocalAmerica was in this Centennial year, and in particular how much criticalpatriots like these suffrage activists were adding their voices to the mix.

Nextcritical patriot tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

July 2, 2024: Models of Critical Patriotism: “Eulogy on King Philip”

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism fromacross American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of OfThee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the stateof critical patriotism in 2024!]

On onespeech that offers two complementary models of critical patriotism.

Many ofthe ways I’d make the case for WilliamApess as an exemplary American critical patriot were summed up in this post. I don’tthink it’s the slightest bit hyperbolic to describe Apess as the 19thcentury’s Martin Luther King Jr.—a fiery preacher of supreme oratorical andrhetorical talents who dedicated his life to pursuing civil and human rightsfor his people and for all his fellow citizens of the world, one whose life wastragically cut short but who achieved a great deal in that time and has left alasting legacy down into our own. If Apess’ era had had the technology torecord and broadcast his speeches, or even to publish his writings in moremass-market ways, I have no doubt that we’d listen to and read his voice andwords alongside those of King (and yesterday’s subject Frederick Douglass) andour other most potent orators. Andhowever and wherever we encounter them, we consistently find in Apess’ worksmodels of bitingly critical yet still patriotic visions of our shared Americansociety, community, identity, and history.

In thatprior post I focused on Apess’ 1833 essay/sermon “AnIndian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” but I would argue that his criticalpatriotism is best illustrated by his January1836 speech “Eulogy on King Philip.” Delivered at Boston’s Odeon lecture and concerthall, which had opened the year before and would go on to hostspeeches and readings by such luminaries as William Ellery Channing, RalphWaldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe, Apess’ stunning speech uses his own lifestory and mixed-race heritage (as scholar Patricia Bizzell traces at length inthis excellent piece) to argue for his alternative vision ofAmerican history, community, and identity. While much of the speech is asrighteously angry about both past injustices and present oppressions as was“Looking-Glass,” the final lines, addressed overtly to his (likely entirelynon-native) audience, reflect the optimistic core of Apess’ criticalpatriotism: “You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for ourfathers’ crimes; neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. Wecan only regret it, and flee from it; and from henceforth, let peace andrighteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever, is the wish of apoor Indian.”

WhileApess thus ranges across a number of topics and themes in the course of hisspeech, its central focus is indeed KingPhilip (Metacomet), the 17th century Wampanoag chiefand distant ancestor of Apess’ mother who was and remains best known inAmerican collective memory for the 1670swar that came to bear his name. Yet from the start of his speech,Apess presents a stunning shift in those narratives, arguing that this supposedenemy of the English should be collectively remembered instead as arevolutionary hero: “so will every patriot, especially in this enlightened age,respect the rude yet all accomplished son of the forest, that died a martyr tohis cause, though unsuccessful, yet as glorious as the American Revolution.”Arguing for that vision of Philip, in the same 1830sBoston that was cementing its collective narratives of theFounding Fathers and the American Revolution, was as bold a rhetorical move asDouglass’ July 4th speech. Yet if we can see the MassachusettsPuritans and the Wampanoags as two founding American cultures (as I’ve arguedmultiple times in this space and elsewhere), there’sno reason why we can’t see Philip as a revolutionary, critical patriot, onewhose tragic end shouldn’t overshadow his worktoward a collective American community.

Nextcritical patriot tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

July 1, 2024: Models of Critical Patriotism: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”

[For my Patriots’Day series this year, I highlighted examples of mythic patriotism fromacross American history. So I thought for my July 4th series I wouldAmericanStudy examples of the other, directly opposed category at the heart of OfThee I Sing: critical patriotism. Leading up to a weekend post on the stateof critical patriotism in 2024!]

On the stunningspeech that challenges us as much today as it did 172 years ago.

I’vewritten many times, in thisspace and elsewhere, aboutthe inspiring history of Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and theirRevolutionary-era peers. Freeman and Walker, and the abolitionist activistswith whom they worked, used the language and ideas of the Declaration ofIndependence (along with the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution) in support oftheir anti-slavery petitions and legal victories, and in so doing contributedsignificantly to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. I’m hard-pressed tothink of a more inspiring application of our national ideals, or of a morecompelling example of my argument (made in this piece) thatblack history is American history. Yet at the same time, it would bedisingenuous in the extreme for me to claim that Freeman and Walker’s cases wererepresentative ones, either in their era or at any time in the more than twoand a half centuries of American slavery; nor would I want to use Freeman andWalker’s successful legal victories as evidence that the Declaration’s “All menare created equal” sentiment did not in a slaveholding nation include (indeed,embody) a centralstrain of hypocrisy.

If I everneed reminding of that foundational American hypocrisy, I can turn to one ofour most fiery texts: FrederickDouglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass’sspeech is long and multi-layered, and I don’t want to reduce itshistorical and social visions to any one moment; but I would argue that itbuilds with particular power to this passage, one of the most trenchant inAmerican oration and writing: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, whyam I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to dowith your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedomand of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extendedto us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to thenational altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude forthe blessings resulting from your independence to us?” The subsequent secondhalf of the speech sustains that perspective and passion, impugning everyelement of a nation still entirely defined by slavery and its effects. Despitehaving begun his speech by noting his “quailing sensation,” his feeling ofappearing before the august gathering “shrinkingly,” Douglass thus buildsinstead to one of the most full-throated, confident critiques of Americanhypocrisy and failure ever articulated.

As anavowed and thoroughgoing optimist, it’s far easier for me to grapple withFreeman and Walker’s use of the Declaration and the 4th of July thanwith Douglass’s—which, of course, makes it that much more important for me toinclude Douglass in my purview, and which is why I wanted to begin this week’sseries on critical patriotism with Douglass’s speech. There’s a reason, afterall, why the most famous American enslaved person is undoubtedly Harriet Tubman—we likeour histories overtly inspiring, and if we’re going to remember slavery at all,why not do so through the lens of someone who resisted it so successfully? Yetwhile Tubman, like Freeman and Walker, is certainly worth remembering, theoverarching truth of slavery in America is captured far better by Douglass’sspeech and its forceful attention to our national hypocrisies and flaws. Anddespite the ridiculous recent attacks on “toonegative” histories or the concept of “apologizingfor America,” there’s no way we can understand our nation or move forwardcollectively without a fuller engagement with precisely the criticallypatriotic lens provided by Douglass and his stunning speech.

Nextcritical patriot tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other examples or forms of patriotism you’d highlight?

June 28, 2024: WesternStudying: Deadwood and Justified

[75 yearsago this week, the firstnetwork TV Western, Hopalong Cassidy debuted. Fewgenres have been influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’llAmericanStudy Hopalong and other Westerns—add your responses &analyses in the comments, pardner!]

On what links twogreat (and very Western) TV shows, and what differentiates them.

If I’m tobelieve my usually reliable friends at the , Justified creator GrahamYost had no role in the production of DavidMilch’s groundbreaking and wonderful Deadwood (2004-06, & then anawesome 2019 movie). One reason for my disbelief is that in the course of its six-seasonrun Justified employed a very verylarge numberof Deadwood alums, not only star Timothy Olyphant (who played a U.S.Marshal in both shows) but also W. Earl Brown, Sean Bridgers, Jim Beaver, PeterJason, Garret Dillahunt, and Gerald McRaney (and that’s just the ones I knowfor sure). And it’s not just the common cast list that links the two shows: inthe opening seasons of both, Olyphant’s quick-draw and hot-tempered marshalcharacter arrives in town and develops an enduring love-hate dynamic with anespecially eloquent but dangerous local crime boss (with Ian McShane’s charismaticAl Swearengen serving as Deadwood’sequivalent of Boyd Crowder) while romancing a recent widow (with Molly Parker’sheadstrong Alma Garret as Deadwood’sequivalent of Ava Crowder). Even the fact that Deadwood is set in 1876 South Dakota, not early 21stcentury Kentucky, isn’t a big a distinction between the two shows as you mightthink, given the heavy emphasis throughout Justifiedon weddinga Wild West main character and tone to that contemporary setting andcontext.

The two showsare connected by more than just a stable of actors and a similar premise andgenre, however. Both, it seems to me, are fundamentally focused on questions ofcommunity and individual identity, and of whether and how each side of thatduality affects the other. While this is a reductive point in each case, itwould be possible to say that Deadwoodwas centrally about whether the town would become more Swearengen’s or SethBullock’s (Olyphant’s character), while Justifiedwas about whether Raylan’s or Boyd’s vision for Harlan’s future would cometo pass. At the same time, each setting was exerting its pull and influence onthe two men (and everyone else within its purview); the unofficial Justified anthem “You’ll Never Leave HarlanAlive” could just as easily substitute in “Deadwood” and work equally wellfor that setting and show. Similarly, characters like Ava and Alma offer achance to see how the same questions play out for a strong single woman, while Deadwood’s Chinese community boss Mr.Wu (Keone Young) parallels Justified’sLimehouse (Mykelti Williamson) as a complex and compelling spokesperson (if inWu’s case one who by choice doesn’t speak much English) for a powerful minoritycommunity in town. The more I write these first two paragraphs, the more I feelthat Yost learned a great deal from Milch’s show, and wedded those lessons toElmore Leonard’s novella to create the template for Justified’s setting and world.

There are ofcourse lots of differences between the shows as well, and I would highlight inparticular an overarching element of Deadwoodthat, perhaps, pushes that show into a stratosphere that the excellent Justified didn’t quite achieve. David Milch clearly believesthat what happened in Deadwood in 1876 and after represents no less than thebirth of the modern United States, and over the course of the show’s arc workedhard to suggest precisely that sort of symbolic change and growth beneath themuddy realities of his frontier town. Whether we agree or disagree with thatconcept—I find it echoes a bit too closely Frederick JacksonTurner’s Frontier Thesis, and would highlight a number of other nationalorigin points as more broadly representative than Deadwood—it reflects a levelof artistic and national ambition behind Deadwoodthat seems to me to have been present in only a handful of TV shows. Justified is much of the time a lessweighty pleasure, one with compelling stories to tell and an equally engrossingcommunity to create, but not quite as ambitious a sense of the symbolic valueof either those stories or that community. But as I hope this2017 blog series made abundantly clear, I very much love Justified for what it is, and wouldrecommend it to anyone for a binge-watching session.

June Recapthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?

June 27, 2024: WesternStudying: Clint Eastwood Westerns

[75 yearsago this week, the firstnetwork TV Western, Hopalong Cassidy debuted. Fewgenres have been influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’llAmericanStudy Hopalong and other Westerns—add your responses &analyses in the comments, pardner!]

On AmericanStudiescontexts for three stages in the Western icon’s filmography.

1)     Spaghetti Westerns: Clint Eastwood had been acting on TVsince the mid-1950s, and his first significant role was ina popular TV Western that debuted a decade after Hopalong Cassidy, Rawhide(1959-65). But it was his film work toward the end of that show’s run, in atrio of mid-1960s films from Italian director Sergio Leone—A Fistful ofDollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, TheBad, and the Ugly (1966)—that truly cemented not just his stardom but his close association with thegenre. I think those “Spaghetti Westerns” exemplify the stereotypicallayers to the genre and its gunfighter protagonists that I highlighted inyesterday’s post, not only in their actual details, but also in the very factthat they were made in Europe by a director who had apparently nevervisited the United States. There’s no one way films have to be made nor oneperson who can make them, of course, but I would just say that Leone’s AmericanWest has a lot in common with Tintin’s.

2)     Revisionist Westerns: Eastwood continued tomake those kinds of iconic Western films for another decade-plus, furthercementing that overall association as well as other specific echoes ofcharacters like Wister’s Virginian (such as the Confederate veteran protagonistof The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976]). Then he took about a decade off fromthe genre, and when he returned to it, it was to direct as well as star in oneof the most famouslyrevisionist Westerns, Unforgiven (1992). No other Eastwood film isquite the same as that one, but I would say that the next two he directed andstarred in could also be defined as revisions of Western character types and tropes:A Perfect World(1993) and The Bridgesof Madison County (1995). What links all three films is both arecognition of the costs of violence and a willingness to complicate and evensoften the gunfighter protagonist stereotype, each elements that hearken backto layers of earlier texts like The Virginian that had been largely absentfrom the 60s and 70s versions.

3)     Extending Stereotypes: Eastwood hasn’t madeany films in the subsequent three decades that explicitly qualify as Westerns,but I would argue that a number of the films he’s directed during that timehave unfortunately returned to and reified Western stereotypes in contrast withthe more revisionist efforts. Topping that list would be Gran Torino(2008), with Eastwood playing a laconic violence-prone community-saviorwho literally makes fingerguns at the film’s black-hatted villains. A decade later, Eastwood directedand starred in TheMule (2018), a film in which he plays a war veteran who is forced to returnto his violent past due to outlaw crime lords who would not be out of place inthe Wild West. And I would also put American Sniper (2014) on this list—Eastwooddid not star in that one, but directed Bradley Cooper in a role that updated a numberof gunfighter stereotypes for a War on Terror setting. None of these filmsare simplistic, but I nonetheless find it telling and frustrating that towardthe end of his career Eastwood seems to have returned to some of those foundationalWestern tropes.

LastWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?

June 26, 2024: WesternStudying: The Virginian

[75 yearsago this week, the firstnetwork TV Western, Hopalong Cassidy debuted. Fewgenres have been influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’llAmericanStudy Hopalong and other Westerns—add your responses &analyses in the comments, pardner!]

On how ahugely influential novel adheres to the stereotypes and how it defies them.

I’veblogged about Owen Wister’s bestselling novel TheVirginian: A Horseman of the Plains (1902) on two prior occasions, in thispost on Walt Longmire and this one onblue jeans and cowboys. I hope those communicated my sense of the novel’s importance,so check them out if you would and come on back for some further thoughts.

Welcomeback! Wister’s novel isgenerally credited with establishing many of the key elements of the iconicWestern hero, and I would agree with that interpretation: the novel’s protagonistis a man with no name (he’s sometimes called “Jeff,” but that seems like a humorousnickname due to famous fellow Southerner Jefferson Davis rather than an actualname) who has a longstanding rivalry with a brutal villain that culminates in aduel where he guns down his rival, after which he wins the hand of his far moreinnocent love interest (a schoolmarm, no less). If I had to sum up that iconicand influential character and story type, it would be in one quote that wouldgo on to become ubiquitous in the genre: “When you call me that, smile!”The protagonist says that now-famous line to his villainous rival Trampasafter he has beaten Trampas at cards and been called “a son of a bitch” inresponse, and if that doesn’t all sum up the genre of the Western, I’m not surewhat does.

As I’vehighlighted before in this space, particularly when it comes to thehistory of Black cowboys, those iconic images of cowboys aren’t particularlyaccurate to the historical realities. And interestingly enough, Wister’s cowboycharacter actually connects to some of those historical realities in ways thathave been less well-remembered than the stereotypical details. For example, henot only works as a cowboy at the powerful JudgeHenry Garth’s ranch, but performs that work so impressively that he ispromoted to ranch foreman. And in that role, he is required to take part inevents that reinforce the community’s power structures, such as the hanging ofa cattle thief named Steve with whom he had been friends. As I’ll think about abit more in tomorrow’s post, over time the gunfighter hero would entirelydiverge from the working cowboy type, but in Owen Wister’s influential originstory those two roles were strikingly intertwined.

NextWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?

June 25, 2024: WesternStudying: Wild West Shows

[75 yearsago this week, the firstnetwork TV Western, Hopalong Cassidy debuted. Fewgenres have been influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’llAmericanStudy Hopalong and other Westerns—add your responses &analyses in the comments, pardner!]

On how amega-popular medium can embody the worst and best of America at the same time(and in some of the same elements).

As part ofthisJanuary post on origin points for Columbia Pictures (trust me, it makes sensein context), I noted that I’ve thought a good bit in recent years about howunder-remembered Vaudeville is compared to its significant influence on 20thcentury American culture. At least part of the reason for that gap, it seems tome, is that it can be difficult to remember older cultural forms that werebased on live performance, and thus harder to pass down than media that wereovertly captured and preserved (whether in print, recordings, video, etc.). Andthus we’ve also failed to adequately remember a late 19th century culturalmedium that was just as popular and influential in that period as Vaudeville wouldbecome a couple decades later: the Wild West Show. Asthat hyperlinked list illustrates, there were numerous popular such showstouring the nation in the last couple decades of the 19th century;moreover, the most successful of them, BuffaloBill Cody’s Wild West Show, was so popular that it staged performances justoutside of the grounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition for theentirety of the six-month-long fair, offering as that article indicates agenuine competitor to that hugely prominent attraction.

In alllikelihood, one of the specific pieces that was featured in many (if not all)of those 1893 Buffalo Bill Wild West Show performances was The Red RightHand, or, The First Scalp for Custer. That excellent hyperlinked Timemagazine article by Ijeoma Oluo (adapted from her 2021 book MEDIOCRE:The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America) describes that particular performanceof Cody’s in detail, as well as its links to his overarching self-mythologizingand the narratives of the American West which it and he embodied. It is ofcourse no secret that the genre of the Western too often featureddepictions of and roles for Native Americans that were stereotypical atbest and white supremacist at worst, as exemplified by perhaps the single most famousrecurring shot in film Westerns: Native Americans comingover a hill/ridge to threaten the white protagonists. So it’s prettysignificant to note that those narratives were quite present in this earlyiteration of the genre (perhaps the earliest, although dimenovels were at least contemporary with the Wild West Shows in the late 19thcentury), and indeed that Buffalo Bill’s version was even more aggressivelyviolent, focused not on threatening Native Americans so much as on white people’srighteous (in this highly constructed story) revenge.

There’s nogetting around those discriminatory layers to both Bill and his Show and thegenre of the Western more broadly, but it’s important to note that there wereother, quite distinct and even opposed (and certainly more positive) ways thathe and his Show engaged Native Americans. Exemplifying those more positivepossibilities was Cody’s longstanding friendshipwith the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, a relationship that included (but was notat all limited to) Sitting Bull’s many years of performancesas part of Bill’s Wild West Show. As thispiece on the Buffalo Bill Center of the West website puts it, NativeAmerican performers like Sitting Bull “generally were treated and paid the sameas other performers. They were able to travel with their families, and theyearned a living not possible to them on their reservations.” In thisblog post on Native American pop culture performers I highlighted the actorJay Silverheels, who had the chance to act in multiple mid-20thcentury Western films and as a result help change the way that medium depictedNative Americans; Sitting Bull reminds us that there was a longstanding legacyof such performers, one that connected to the equally complex and multi-layeredgenre of the Wild West Show.

NextWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?