The invention of the western film: a cultural history of the genre's first half-century

Abstract

THE INVENTION OF THE WESTERN FILM: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE GENRE'S FIRST HALF CENTURY Scott Simmon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 393 pp. Scott Simmon takes two negative aspects of the Western-its retrograde cultural attitudes and its tedious repetition of storylines and characters-and uses them as the framework for his study of the genre. First, he argues, all of the cultural baggage carried by Western films should allow them to be unpacked through a cultural history, by which I mean examining film aesthetics through a wide context of literature and visual arts, of social histories of the eras depicted and of the years when the films were produced, and of the ideologies propounded by the films. . . . Second, the repetitiousness of the stories told within Westerns means that it should be possible to place a limited number of films and filmmakers at the center of our investigations (xiv). Like many others, Simmon begins by examining the role of the Native American in Westerns, but he probes an often overlooked source: very early silent films. In part one, 'My Friend the Indian': Landscape and the Extermination of the Native American in the Silent he begins with the Edison Company's Sioux Ghost Dance (1894) and traces his theme through several more of the earliest short (two- to twelve-minute) films before settling his focus on the output of D. W. Griffith. In Griffith's East Coast Westerns such as The Redman and the Child (1908), The Mended Lute (1909), and Rose o' Salem-Town (1910)-full of lakes and trees and greenery-Simmon points out the prominence of Indian storylines and the emphasis (usually) on white-Indian friendships. To this he compares Thomas Ince's The Invaders (1913), a movie filmed in the western states that takes full advantage of its empty landscape. He argues that, in its racial battles, The Invaders is an example of the way the genre devolved ethically in its move west (67), and he concludes: [W]hat film most evidently learns in the wide, bright, harsh, 'empty' landscape of the West is how to narrate killing (45). John Wayne is Simmon's guide through the plethora of 19305 Westerns in the second section, 'It's Time for Your History Lesson, Dear: John Wayne and the Problem of History in the Hollywood Western in the 1930s. In an effort to uncover the philosophies of the Hollywood Western, Simmon begins with Wayne's first A-Western of the decade, The Big Trail (1930), and ends with his last, Stagecoach (1939). …