by Alex Abdelal
An Introduction to the West
John Ford’s film My Darling Clementine culminates with the iconic Western imagery: a cowboy hero rides off into the sunset on his trusty horse. He fades off into the horizon as the film reaches its end. He leaves a familiar life behind to venture out into the mythic unknown. The scene leaves audiences with a confidence in the hero’s resolution of his tribulations. The sense of forward progress and the frontier’s endlessness in the finale suggest that the West holds an ideological meaning beyond its physical existence.
For Americans, the West is the quintessential embodiment of American values and identity. As Jacquelyn Kilpatrick explained in Celluloid Indians, the settling of the West was the defining aspect of the formation of American identity. The frontier was emblematic of ideals that became crucial in the development of American patriotism. In particular, the frontier represents several key values of American patriotism: liberty, equality of opportunity, and a belief in Manifest Destiny, the notion that Americans were obliged by God to spread freedom and democracy to the frontier and the rest of the world. The frontier was a noble challenge and a righteous pursuit of American ideals. The West’s association with core American values transformed it from a place into an ideology. For Americans, nothing captured the essence of their national identity better than the West.
The popularization of the film genre known as the Western foregrounded the idea of the West in American imagination. Stanley Corkin explained in Cowboys and Free Markets that “[t]he western commonly marks the transitional moment when social upheavals result in the coming of a reelaborated Anglo-Saxon civilization, when the social structures and values usually associated with American nationalism are reborn and reinvigorated in a western locale.” Westerns trace America’s self-image. The rebirth of American nationalism through cinema provides a lens into Americans’ evolving patriotism and belief in who they were. The Western film genre, specifically, underwent a Golden Age that coincided with major social and cultural shifts in the United States. The peak of the genre’s popularity coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War and the emergence of the United States as a global superpower during the Cold War. This emergence, however, led to a major cultural shift: Americans experienced sentiments of doubt and self-critique, and Westerns reflected this transition. The increasingly dark and critical portrayal of the settling of the West and the sense of mistreatment of Native Americans in the genre of Western films reveals how American patriotism transformed from a unified messianism to a contested self-image that invoked and even required moral doubt. A Prehistory of the Western: How the West Was Won
The ascendance of film as the dominant cultural medium heightened the importance of the Western film genre as the primary locus of American visions of patriotism. To fully understand the significance of the Western film genre, one must understand what the West meant for Americans. The West was, in fact, vital in American popular culture for over about eighty years before the Western film genre completed its rise to fame: [T]the first regular commercial packaging of the West and its adventures for mass audiences began as the actual "Wild West" was being tamed. Dime novels (beginning around 1860), frontier melodramas (at their height in the 1870s and 1880s), and Wild West shows (from 1883 onwards) all represented the West for a growing public eager to experience the exciting remnants of the living history that was fading away. The origins of the “Wild West,” therefore, became iconic for Americans through the various ways in which the West was commercialized for audiences; it became a lens into the patriotism of the American audience who understood how essential it was to their history. The idea of the “Wild West” led to Americans developing a patriotic belief in its meaning. The popularization of the West established a relationship between popular culture and patriotism in America. The hunger for Western stories extensively shaped the American public, and, as a result, “[b]y the early twentieth century, western novels such as Owen Wister's (1860–1938) The Virginian(1902) and the pulp magazines replacing the dime novel satisfied a growing appetite for western stories and images that early cinema was also quick to exploit.” Patriotism around the meaning of the West caused a strong demand for tales of the West. Western films capitalized on the patriotic, cultural significance of the West cultivated by American audiences since the 1860s. Shortly after, as Western films grew in demand among audiences, directors developed a formula for these films based on iconography, action-based plots, and classic western characters. The long-established cultural dominance of this Western formula indicates that Westerns offer an outlook into American popular culture. Overall, the Western became the principal mechanism of representing American views of patriotism because of its association with the surge of the ideology of the West.
The United States’ relationship with Native Americans, further, serves as a reference point for the identity and patriotism of white Americans. For example, “[c]lassic ‘westerns’ in the 1930s and 1940s featured recognizable plots in which tension and ambiguity are expressed by white settlers as they came into contact with the wilderness and ‘Indians’ who were portrayed as uncivilized and violent.” The recurring theme of white settlers or often Cowboys opposing Native Americans characterizes the Western, because the white settler or Cowboy fulfills his purpose by subduing the untamed. Native Americans are integral to Westerns to the point that they are essential to the major theme of the genre. The most recurrent themes in Western films originate from Frederick Jackson Turner, who believed that Native Americans obstructed Americans’ civilizing of the continent. Turner’s perception was inherently “Othering,” as it created a separation between “civilized” white Americans and “uncivilized” Native Americans. Western films rely on the existence of Native American outsiders. The separation expressed in Turner’s ideas remained a key aspect of the Western film genre for many decades, so it became a point of reference for various characteristics of Americans’ patriotism and visions of themselves. The inherent inferiority of Native Americans in Western film reinforced a jingoistic American patriotism. World War II-Era Westerns: How the West Was the World
In the years leading into and during the Second World War, American patriotism was characterized by an internal sense of unity around the war effort and American exceptionalism. For instance, John Cassell and Harry Rubinstein, who both lived through the Second World War, explained that “‘[e]verybody was for the war in those days’” and “‘[w]e’d love to feel united and fighting for a common goal.’” The Second World War invoked a sense of patriotism among Americans and created an internal homogeneity. Americans felt patriotic about fighting together. The patriotic nature of the Second World War reveals how American patriotism at the time was based on the development of internal coalescence and the pursuit of a common goal. Howard Zinn illustrates in A People's History of the United States that “[b]y certain evidence, it was the most popular war the United States had ever fought. Never had a greater proportion of the country participated in a war: 18 million served in the armed forces, 10 million overseas; 25 million workers gave of their pay envelope regularly for war bonds.” The Second World War reached its extreme level of popularity within the United States because, to Americans, it became a matter of patriotism and righteousness. Americans’ immense involvement in the armed forces and the war effort was indicative of how it was patriotic to devote oneself to the war. In addition, right before the famous D-Day invasion, Franklin Delano Roosevelt prayed: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.” Roosevelt’s mighty endeavor of preserving the virtue of American civilization while saving the suffering rest of the world encompasses the ethos of the American narrative during the Second World War. America’s narrative is simple and coherent—it offers a Manichean worldview in which the United States is the superior force and the only country capable of delivering justice to the world. Overall, the sense of American exceptionalism derived from the war effort was the central tenet of American patriotism.
Western films reflect the currents of exceptionalism and jingoism in American patriotism during the Second World War; for instance, the depiction of the Apaches in the World War II-era Western Stagecoach exhibits how American patriotism was based on unity around a shared sense of superiority. Janne Lahti expressed in Silver Screen Savages that the portrayal of Apaches in Western films during the Second World War such as Stagecoach not only reflects the viewpoints of individual directors but also reflects the social developments during the time period in which the films are made. Apaches represent non-Americans. By projecting Apaches as a metaphor for social currents in America during the Second World War, directors of Westerns were able to explore Americans’ view of themselves and patriotic sentiment. Kilpatrick explains in Celluloid Indians that the filmmaking technique in Stagecoach exhibits Americans’ sense of superiority. The camera angles of the Apaches emphasize their villainy, while the camera angles of the passengers on the Stagecoach emphasize their supremacy, and the Apache warriors’ inability to shoot makes them seem inept and primitive. Because the Apaches are representative of the rest of the world, the filmmaking technique reveals the narrative Americans created in terms of their relation to the rest of the world. Diminishing the Apaches through camera angles and non-functionality categorizes them as inferior. This categorization echoes how the Americans viewed themselves—unmatched by the ineptitude of the rest of the world. Making the Apaches seem primitive serves the purpose of making the people on the stagecoach appear superior; the superiority of the stagecoach passengers mirrors the American sense of superiority to a “less capable” world. Moreover, at the time of Stagecoach’s release, the actor John Wayne who played the protagonist was “idolized, suggesting he embodied the values mainstream America held most dear, and his attitudes including those regarding American Indians, were generally indicative of the attitudes of the majority of white citizens.” Americans felt pride in John Wayne’s characters’ degrading perception of Apaches in Stagecoach. John Wayne’s character viewed them as an inferior group of “others,” which fact represents how mainstream America held this attitude as well. Altogether, the portrayal of Apaches in Stagecoach embodied Americans’ patriotic sense of superiority.
The microcosm of the train presented in Stagecoach exemplifies how American patriotism was built on American exceptionalism. In the film, “the stagecoach, carrying people of diverse backgrounds and traveling alone in the savage wilderness of Indian country, represents a microcosm of civilized society. The people onboard work through their differences to form a cohesive unit.” The stagecoach’s civilized nature contrasted with the savageness of the Apaches and the outside world reflects a sense American exceptionalism.
The United States is like the stagecoach; Americans felt as if they are also on a noble quest through the “savage wilderness of the world.” During the Second World War, Americans were at a stage in the development of their patriotism where their priority was self-value, and the microcosm of the stagecoach represents this belief in self-value. The dependency on a crisis for the passengers’ to work together parallels how the crisis of the Second World War brought Americans together. The passengers on the stagecoach work as a team to triumph as a group of civilized people in order to combat the uncivilized antagonism of the Apaches they face. By recognizing the Apaches as villains who threaten their well being, the passengers establish themselves as a microcosmic civilization based on superiority, in this case, to the Apaches. The passengers’ collective purpose in fending off the inferior Apaches enhances their sense of unity. The differentiation between the passengers’ unity, which represented American patriotism, and the uncivilized Apaches, which represented the rest of the world, demonstrates Americans’ belief in the self-righteousness of their civilization during the Second World War. The passengers’ belief in the righteousness of their microcosmic civilization reflects American patriotism—Americans found a sense of pride in themselves as a nation supposedly unparalleled in its greatness.
The portrayal of General Custer and Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On, additionally, reveals how the essence of American patriotism was a matter of virtue. In order to reaffirm the virtue of the American hero, the film augments Americans’ “fantasies of omnipotence’ during WWII… The film portrayed the larger-than-life, courageous American male (General Custer) for an America about to charge through another world war.” Custer symbolizes the United States. America's belief in its own omnipotence is represented by the portrayal of the hero, Custer. Contrasting the romanticized depiction of Custer with the obvious evil of the savagely depicted Native Americans supports the reaffirmation of American righteousness. The vision of Custer as an American hero metaphorically represented Americans’ patriotism and self-image during the Second World War; this sense of righteousness was the essence of American patriotism. Furthermore, at the film’s climax when Crazy Horse kills Custer, it appears that it is an example of a “savage killing machine mowing down a righteous. Courageous ‘real American.’” By having a savage and inferior outside force cause the demise of the metaphorical American self-image, They Died With their Boots On further glorifies the righteousness of America. It represents how Americans believe in their own virtue. Custer observed “Yes. Yes, quite a lot of Sioux, Sharp. But the greater the odds, the greater the glory.” For Custer, the symbolic representation of America, the true purpose of conflict lies in its potential glory, not the reality of its consequences. The romanticisation of war and violence in They Died With their Boots On was similar to how Americans romanticized the Second World War. For Americans, the primary purpose of war was its consequences for their patriotism and self-image. By internalizing the meaning of externally influential events like war, They Died With their Boots On encapsulated Americans’ self-epitomization at the time. Therefore, the World War II-era Western reflected American patriotism as a matter of jingoism. Post-World War II America: How the West Was Questioned The United States’ attempt to remake the world in its own image in the decades after the Second World War led to two competing narratives among Americans: a story of imperious superiority contrasted with an account of fallibility. During the Cold War “mass media and government officials often juxtaposed Americanism with Communism as a battle between liberty and tyranny.” Americans created a narrative in which living up to the American value of liberty required externalizing a battle with the tyranny of Communism. After the Second World War, America attempted to reshape the world by eliminating the threats they grew to fear through the development of McCarthyism and involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars. American patriotism became characterized by a sense of imperious superiority—to Americans, the world would only be righteous and safe if it were more like the United States. American patriotism was imposed on the world. The American goal of reshaping the world was characterized by the patriotic culture created around McCarthyism and involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars. McCarthyism narrowed the political spectrum by demanding only one interpretation of what American politics should be: a pervasive and controlling anti-communist consensus. The absoluteness of McCarthyism suggested that to be American, one must be anti-communist. For McCarthy, not siding with him meant not siding with America. The United States was in a desperate struggle to define itself.
Westerns became a mechanism of expressing doubt in American patriotism after the Second World War; for example, the depiction of the main antagonist and Native Americans in The Lone Ranger undermined the putative morality of American patriotism by subverting traditional themes of Westerns. In the film, the main antagonist is a white rancher named Reece Kilgore, who is a self-made frontiersman and a traditional pioneer, and he creates the main source of conflict by trying to run Native Americans off their land to mine for silver. The Lone Ranger questions tradition in Western films by making the main source of antagonism Kilgore’s mistreatment of Native Americans. This new view of antagonism diverges from how Westerns previously recognized Native Americans as a force of evil in films such as Stagecoach and They Died With Their Boots On. The concept of the western hero changes—Kilgore has many qualities of a traditional western hero, yet the film accentuates the immorality of his character; Kilgore’s overarching villainy lies in his imperious attitude towards Native Americans and their land. The primary source of antagonism in The Lone Ranger mirrors American patriotism of the time: both involve an imperious attitude towards non-Americans. The film draws parallels between villany and American patriotism. By imposing himself on others as a villain, he provides commentary on the immorality of how the United States imposed its sense of patriotism on others. Kilgore asked of the Lone Ranger: “What are you, a renegade? A bandit? What kind of man are you, siding with the Indians against his own people?” Kilgore’s exclusive interpretation of his “own people,” meaning other white American men, implies that there exists an underlying immorality in the Americans’ patriotism. The film brings a greater conscience to the idea of American patriotism—being American is not siding with the policy of other people who live in the United States. Rather, it is living up to American values, which may even require opposing the status quo.
Likewise, the allegorical criticism of McCarthyism in High Noon undermined the ostensible morality of the mainstream “us against them” dichotomy in American patriotism. High Noon is widely interpreted to be a political allegory that emphasizes the dangers of McCarthyism; the director, Fred Zinnemann, explained that it was a story about a “‘man’s conflict of conscience.’” Zimmerman implies that Americans must be more conscious in their patriotism. The film was written in response to the paranoia of McCarthyite patriotism—it suggests that McCarthyism is a deviation from a truer, righteous patriotism that America neglects. The protagonist, Will Kane, fights the antagonists alone, despite his efforts to get help from the townspeople. After his unassisted victory, Kane walks away from the townspeople with contempt and bitterness at the end. The townspeople not helping is a metaphor for how Americans accepted McCarthyite patriotism. Through Kane’s contempt for the townspeople, High Noon implicitly criticizes Americans’ embracing of McCarthyism. Kane’s conclusion recognizes how, in the end, villains were also those who succumb to the jingoistic sense of patriotism surrounding McCarthyism. Zinnerman criticized those who are scared to transcend the standard of patriotism set by McCarthyism, and through High Noon he requires that America could be more than what it was becoming. The ultimate unhelpfulness of the townspeople when Kane asks for help is depicted.
Of course, in direct opposition to the mythology of the West, in which the venality of the common man is redeemed by a folk hero whose bravery in the face of overwhelming odds inspires the townspeople to rise above themselves for the common good. Alternatively, the contradictory currents running through the town (development versus frontier lawlessness) and the ambivalence of the citizens who, each for their own reasons, refuse to side with Kane can be taken to represent the currents of the American political climate in the 1950s. The townspeople collectively embody the flagging support for an undoubted and undoubtable sense of patriotism. By electing to ignore Kane’s pleas for help, they neglect a more virtuous patriotism. Thus, the hero is left to his own devices. As the film would suggest, America should be left to its own devices—without the central truth that became prevalent at the time of McCarthyism.
In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, lastly, war is portrayed as a futile struggle directed by leaders indifferent to the suffering of individuals, not a source of glory and patriotism as it was for America. As Peter Bondanella interprets in Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, “[t]he moral ambiguity of the three protagonists, ironically labeled ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘ugly,’ is overshadowed by the even more shocking moral ambiguity of the Civil War itself.” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly exhibits the diminishing morality of American patriotism. In the film, uniting to fight a war is not portrayed as patriotic—it is tragic, pointless, and immoral. This diverges from the sense of patriotism cultivated around the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War by suggesting that this sense of patriotism is misplaced and neglects the ethical responsibility. Moreover, in the film, the Union General constantly drank because he could not bear the reality of sending his soldiers to die every day. He wanted to blow up the bridge over which the soldiers fought, as it only caused pointless deaths, and his superiors were unsympathetic to the deaths of the soldiers. Being drunk and numb to the pain of seeing his men die is more favorable to the general than experiencing the excruciating pain of war sober. The film completely deconstructs the idea of finding collective identity and patriotic meaning in war; the director, Sergio Leone, implies that war is not a collective endeavour—it is an individual struggle based on morality, and glorifying war overlooks the importance of what is ethical. Additionally, in the film, the brutality imposed on the prisoners at the Union prison camp is a reference to Auschwitz, the most infamous Nazi concentration camp. The reference to the devastation and tragedy of Auschwitz demonstrates a sense of awareness and guilt about the United States’ pride in its increasing influence on the global stage. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly recognizes the sinister side of the Second World War; the film criticizes the idea of finding patriotism and a sense of purpose in war, a trend that began leading up to the Second World War and extended in subsequent wars. The criticism of war being an inspiration for patriotism also condemned Americans’ practice of romanticizing war. Leone recognizes an immorality and injustice to the Second World War that Americans neglected in their war-based patriotism.
Conclusion: How the West Was Lost
The evolution of American patriotism from a unified exceptionalism to a disputed self-image is reflected in the moral questioning of the settling of the West and the sense of mistreatment of Native Americans in Western films. Americans’ gradual condemnation of the West led to an eclipse of the genre, and the West’s significance increasingly became a remnant of the past. However, in 1990, a film that is widely regarded as the last Western epic embodied the culmination of Americans’ post-World War II self-awareness: Dances with Wolves. The film follows the story of a former American soldier, Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, who abandons his former life and completely immerses himself in the Lakota Sioux tribe. After fighting alongside the Lakota people in battle, Dunbar reflects to himself:
It was hard to know how to feel. I had never been in a battle like this one. This had not been a fight for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego. It had been fought to preserve the food stores that would see us through winter, to protect the lives of women and children and loved ones only a few feet away. I felt a pride I had never felt before.
Dunbar’s newfound rumination displays his new self-awareness. As an American soldier, he knew those who fought because they felt pride in a patriotic ego. As a member of the Lakota tribe, he knew those who fought because they felt pride in their loved ones. Dunbar’s ambivalence implies that the American story is far more complicated than a simple tale of good and evil. The West was no longer only the land of American values. Ideologically, it transcended the notion of exceptionalism and transformed into a realm that revealed the morality of Americans’ patriotic narrative. Although cinema has moved on from the once popular tales of a now bygone frontier, the Western film’s testament to American patriotism will invariably remain as a decisive facet in the American story.