Commie Cowboys by Ryan W McMaken

Are cowboys right-wing or left?

After recent discussion on this blog by readers about a book, Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre, by Ryan A McMaken (an economist who taught political science) with a foreword by the late Paul A Cantor (a writer on popular culture), first published in 2012, revised in 2022, I finally decided to read it. I was reluctant at first because I was put off by the title: I don’t generally care for the practice of “intellectualizing” Western films, and am wary of books which discuss the politics or economics of cowboy movies, and above all their “philosophy”. But I did read it in the end, because, well, it’s a book about Westerns. And it was only 120 pages long. I thought I might as well see if it contained anything interesting.

McMaken believes that the Western is “one of the most message-laden genres extant due to its status as a type of American origin story” and I suppose there is something to that. The idea of the ‘Wild West’ frontier as a dangerous and wild place where order could only be imposed at the point of a gun – with the wielder of that gun the noble hero – “continues to shape American ideas about the nation’s history”. The author suggests that even though the Western is in decline now compared with its “classical” heyday of the 1940s and 50s (down but not out, I’d say), modern genres such as zombie movies or superhero epics continue the theme. “Zombie films provide similar story lines to the Indian extermination narratives” and “superheroes act as modern gunfighters on a global stage.”

And the writer concludes by saying, “The Western is more powerful than these other genres, however, because it purports to be a type of American history.” Myself, I’m not so sure about this. Yes, Western movies sometimes did begin with (absurd) claims about ‘this is how it really happened’ but in general you have to suspend your disbelief to watch the films at all, and few people, I reckon, or few reasonably intelligent and well-read people anyway, really believed that what they were seeing on screen was some kind of historical truth.

Still, there’s no denying that the Western as genre has been enormously popular for well over a century, since the dime novel in fact, not just in America (even if it is “the most distinctively American of pop cultures”), and it still is in certain quarters (guilty). Films do reflect the mores of the times they were made in (much more that of the times they purport to be set in) and maybe that is especially true of our beloved genre.

And there is equally no denying that an intelligent Western (there are such things) can raise such questions as individuality as opposed to community, freedom versus order, and, yes, issues of American history – the episodes to admire and the ones to be less proud of.

The basic thesis of the book is that the Western is often regarded as a politically conservative genre, providing ideological support for capitalism, and that has been reinforced by its big stars, the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, being identified with right-wing causes. “The gunfighter of the classical Westerns is now often viewed by many Americans as a symbol of a sexist and racist American value system that is best left in the past.”

In fact, however, as Cantor says in his foreword, “the American West has proved fertile ground for liberal and even left-wing storytelling.” The capitalists are the bad guys: rich ranchers, shady businessmen (especially saloon owners), corporate interests such as railroads, and so on. Often they have a corrupt official, such as a crooked sheriff, to do their bidding. The goodies are the individuals, the small farmers and homesteaders, the store owners and such – the ‘little man’.

McMaken says, rightly, “The real story of the West was one of tedium and repetitive agricultural and mining work … and not of showdowns on Main Street.” In fact, “Westerns aren’t really about the West at all.” They are myths, set on the frontier. They are great myths, and the author loved Silverado and Louis L’Amour’s The Tall Stranger. But they are fables. As the writer says, from the silent era on, “The moral certainty and the violence of the Western dominated cinemas for decades more.”

In reality, says, McMaken, quoting W Eugene Hollon in his book Frontier Violence: Another Look, “the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than America society is today.” Robert Dykstra found that in the cattle town of Abilene, so often in Westerns a place whose streets and saloon floors were stained with blood, “Nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings.” Or, to quote another author, Richard Shenkman, “Many more people have died in Hollywood Westerns than ever died on the real frontier.” Deadwood, SD and Tombstone, AZ during their worst years of violence (so beloved by Westerns) saw four and five murders, respectively. Disappointing, ain’t it?

Many believe that the Western genre embodies such values as hard work, private property, family, community and a Christian moral framework, and as such, novels and movies of this kind are pretty traditional and conservative. Politicians such as Ronald Reagan and George W Bush believed this and referred often to these traits as being all-American.

But is this really so? In so many Westerns the dull toil is not for the hero: he (it was always a he then) is too busy gunfighting, chasing down bad guys. Family and community? No, he was more often than not a loner, going his own way, free of ties. Maybe he had a wife, once, but now he is a widower. Religion? More often than not the Western hero is, if not atheistic, at least not a part of a regular congregation. Often clergymen are shown as crazed and/or incompetent. “Put an amen to it!” angrily rebukes Ethan. Churches, and family life, schools too, are the woman’s domain. The Western male is not interested.

As McMaken says, “Bourgeois middle-class values would eventually be established on the frontier, but only after the gunfighter successfully tamed the land.”

Despite what the likes of Reagan and Bush said, the typical ‘bourgeois’ inhabitants of the Western frontier, those God-fearing merchants and schoolteachers and mayors, were as often as not in Westerns if not the villains, then at least pusillanimous townsfolk who hadn’t the guts to stand up and be counted. They wouldn’t stand by their (heroic, gunfighting) man. “The gunfighter serves a near-messianic role on the frontier,” says McMaken, “as he saves the bewildered townspeople from their enemies, pulls them away from their petty bourgeois concerns, and unifies them in a struggle against evil.” Those Reaganite folk are naïve, selfish and hypocritical. Sometimes all on the same day.

And the worst of all, of course, in the Western hero’s eyes, is the Easterner. Incompetent, stupid, effete, wrongly dressed, unable to ride or shoot, what on earth good were they? City dwellers, pshaw!

The Western is overwhelming a male genre. Women are essential, for the love interest, and to act as contrast, to heighten the heroism of the man, but for much of the history of the Western, that’s all. Women fail to grasp the vital importance of the hero’s mission. Females such as Yorke’s wife in Rio Grande or Kane’s in High Noon try to convince the hero to abandon his quest and put away his guns. They even give him ultimatums. It’s only at the end that they learn how wrong they were, and come over to the side of their man (and his gun). We often talk about the ‘good badman’ being redeemed the love of a woman (in William S Hart Westerns, especially) but just as often it’s the woman who is ‘redeemed’ by finally learning to stand by her man. In some Westerns there are no inconvenient women at all. Pa Cartwright in Bonanza is a widower with three male offspring. Dunson in Red River explains to his (unnamed) love that frontier life is “too much for a woman” and leaves her (she is killed by Indians shortly after and never repined). Wyatt Earp leaves Clementine in the last reel and The Man from Laramie rides off alone too. Women, who needs ‘em?

As the “classical” Western declined, and the “revisionist” Western came in, things changed. The mythology of the West, and the Western, altered, to reflect the zeitgeist. The image of the heroic gunfighter as righter of wrongs, restorer or order and harbinger of civilization no longer had the same moral authority or credibility. Government institutions, especially, are shown far more negatively. ‘Heroes’ become cynical and self-interested types out for Number 1, like Leone’s cowboys, or more than half-crazed men like Peckinpah’s Major Dundee or Custer in Little Big Man. These figures aren’t “right wing” or “left wing”. They don’t really have a philosophy at all – apart from personal profit or bloodlust. Erstwhile goodies (even outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the Kid had been goodies) now became lowlife punks. The US Cavalry was just as likely to slaughter women and children in an Indian village as protect them. Women and African-Americans could be the central characters, even the heroes.

McMaken does make some (to me) perplexing statements and indeed some mistakes (he talks about “Howard Hawks’ The Furies,” for example, and “The Broken Lance.”). He thinks John Ford made only four cavalry Westerns. He says that “Everywhere in the Western, the railroads are a sign of Eastern decadence.” No, not everywhere. In The Iron Horse, just as one example, they are a sign of nobility and progress. He thinks that “The conventions of the classical Western require little moral uncertainty or ambiguity” and “in the Western, people are simply good or evil”. Not in good ones, they aren’t. Heroes have failings and bad guys have saving graces. “Classical Westerns almost unanimously treat Indians as a uniformly malevolent force.” Not after Devil’s Doorway and Broken Arrow, they didn’t. Some sentences I just didn’t understand, such as when talking about the TV show Deadwood he says that Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) works to “ensure the political interdependence of Deadwood”. Surely he must mean ‘independence’? And surely he must mean ‘Deadwood’ and not ‘Deadwood’?

But these are quibbles. Overall, the book wasn’t as dreadedly “intellectual” as I feared, and it did get me thinking. Or what passes for thinking in my case.