A Fate Worse Than Death: Racism, Transgression, and Westerns

Abstract

A curiously recurring scene in American cinema is the one in which a white woman–or in some cases, a child–is about to be killed by a loved one. Such a moment is obviously a terrible one, a violation of the innocent, a transgression of trust and blood ties, and one that seems to call into question the very nature of love. Yet it is also, our narratives repeatedly affirm, practically necessary, ultimately even a gauge of the depths of the potential killer's feelings for the victim. For the scene usually happens in the context of racial conflict and responds to what seems the unspeakably savage violence anticipated of the other. In the face of such dire circumstances, of what is typically known as “a fate worse than death,” the victim's only salvation seems to be death itself, mercifully and lovingly delivered by someone near and dear. Yet as that description should begin to suggest, and as Foucault's commentary on such liminal situations underscores, transgression is never simple, easy to sort out in terms of victim and victimizer, good and evil. As he says, in the act of transgression all “certainties … are immediately upset” (34)–and not just certainties about the world in which we live, but certainties about our cultural and racial identities. The “upset” of certainties, I would suggest, reflects tellingly on the racist attitude implicit in that recurring scene, especially as our western films have interpreted it.