Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of Western Films Among American Indians and Anglos

Abstract

I examine sociological models of how people use and interpret cultural materials. My focus is on how minorities participate in and rework central myths of dominant culture. After viewing a Western film, matched groups of American Indian and Anglo males answered written questionnaires and participated in focus-group interviews. American Indians and Anglos both liked thefilm, but for different reasons. Indians perceived Westerns as representing a set of values about land, autonomy, andfreedom, while Anglos linked Western myth to their own history and turned into an affirmation of values their ancestors strove for and imposed on West. These results imply that meaning imputed to cultural works varies over social space. Lack of data on audience interpretations of cultural products has rendered existing models of cultural significance of Western films and other genres speculative. T he dominant approach to understanding cultural products typically selects a particular popular genre for analysis in hope of generating conclusions about societal values expressed in cultural product (some exceptions are Radway 1984; Griswold 1987; and Liebes and Katz 1990).1 For example, Cawelti (1970, 1976), on basis of his reading of Western novels, concluded that these novels are a vehicle for exploring value conflicts, such as communal ideas versus individualistic impulses, and traditional ways of life versus progress. Cawelti argued that Westerns are formulaic works that provide readers with a vehicle for escape and moral fantasy. In major sociological study of Western films, Wright (1977) used his own viewing of most popular Western movies from 1931 to 1972 to argue that Westerns resemble primitive myths. Drawing on Levi-Strauss, Wright developed a cognitive theory of mythic structures in which the receivers of Western myth learn how to act by recognizing their own situation in it (p. 186). Wright's main thesis is that narrative themes of Western resolve crucial contradictions in modern capitalism and provide viewers with strategies to deal with their economic worlds. The popularity of Westerns, Wright argued, lies in genre's reflection of changing economic system, which allows viewers to use Western as a guide for living. These explanations of Western's popularity attend to cultural texts but ignore viewers, whose motives and experiences are crucial. The lack of solid data about audience interpretations of various formulas renders existing models of cultural significance of Westerns and other genres speculative.