Everyday its like the wild, wild west
Bunch of bad boys from the vista outlawed
The softest of beat, the killa get away
He leave Vegas in the end of the day in a fast car
Driving a fast car, Are you ready to ride!?1
- - Wycelf Jean, 2008
Among other things, Studies in Red and White2 presents us with some fairly straightforward ideas. One of the most pronounced is the fact that certain elements within very genre specific works (i.e. Westerns) can allude to things outside of that genre. The town-tamer Western provided a field on which metropolitan issues (crime and punishment, division and solidarity, conformity and individualism) could be heroically projected.3
Gunfighter Nation is the close of a trilogy of books that was intended to examine the way American culture has been influenced and formed by it's own myths and experiences. It seems apt to note that, on top of his academic writing, Slotkin has also published three historical novels, about Nomads, Cavalry and the Old West.
This particular work was published in 1991, 46 years after Animal Farm4 and 37 years after Lord of the Flies5. As a reader who thought I was going to be engaging with an academic text, I felt slightly belittled by the way in which Slotkin outlined all of the possible ways in which allegory could exist within works of fiction, presenting it like some sort of new discovery. I'm aware of the fact that both of the works of fiction I mentioned are of British descent; and that Slotkin is attempting to outline a particularly American condition. I'm just not so sure that American allegory, besides from it's heroic overtones, is different from any other nation's allegory.
Slotkins' use of dates and statistics seems to stage cause and effect relationships, between the popularity of the Western, and various historical moments; Posing the Western as an almost too perfect vehicle for intent. A perfect, stream lined medium (in the modernist Greenbergian sense6).This article comes across like a fan trying to justify his obsessions: or maybe give them some critical weight.
Might be time to take another horse for a ride.
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1 Fiasco, Lupe, and Wyclef Jean. “Fast Cars (Remix).” Lupe Fiasco – Return of the Jedi.
Unreleased/Bootleg, 2008.
2 Slotkin, Richard. “Studies in Red and White” Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America. New York: University of Oklahoma.
3 Slotkin, 352.
4 Orwell, George. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. London: Secker and Warburg, 1945.
5 Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, .1954
"the fact that certain elements within very genre specific works can allude to things outside of that genre" is a basic theme, true. it holds true in music also, but what the reading is asking everyone to assess is how much of an influence these mediums have on real life: political elections resulting in military action.
ReplyDeleteWhy didnt ya quote something from lord of the flies?
You can relate most anything to the time period it is produced in and other things that were occurring in that time it just depends how well you relate them. Often the direct intent of the author/film director is unsure but has that ever stopped relating what seem to be disparate event in their own scheme of things. The vehicles perfection could to relate to the solidness of the argument even if the materials to produce the vehicle are m-d-f rather than steel when has that stopped anyone making a soluble car.
ReplyDeleteThis just seems like an anti-position in lieu of a better argument, of a better idea. I'm sorry if that's not 'constructive', but it's certainly instructive. It's very silly to say that American allegory has no substantive difference from the allegory of another nation, because it's flat out wrong. It's not a question of the western being posited as a vehicle for intent - it was - there is no question. Slotkin is no more a fan as you put it than Toscano is of Communism, but you were more than willing to buy into that. Jane Smiley talks about how those who don't read fiction in the era prior to the twentieth century couldn't understand anybody else, were effectively devoid of empathy. Bias is a part, unfortunately, of every act of selection. Philosophy has the same power for mere distraction as stories, my dear boy. I can't be kinder than this, but to tell you straight up is the kindness you need to hear. You won't though, sadly, even though a cold splash in the face is a good horse to ride every so often.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever shed a tear, over anything, I guess is what I wanted to ask? It often serves one well. That may not be 'critical' in one sense, but it's sure as shoot critical to the human being being human.
ReplyDelete