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Every American cultural product is a Western

Ganesh

21:55 / 20.05.04

I first came across this idea in Sardar & Davies' Why Do People Hate America?, and I'm remembering it now, as Xoc watches his Firefly DVD, in the background. As a theory, it's clearly overstated, but it taps into my abiding irritation with Star Trek (the myth of the frontier, and the need to bring American morals/values to 'savages') and American science-fiction/fantasy in general. In Sardar & Davies' book, they use the example of Alias, but I'm also thinking Stargate, Babylon 5, etc.

Basically, the frontier stuff, civilising 'barbarians', predominantly JudaeoChristian belief system, the redemptive power of violence (particularly armed violence). That sort of thang.

I'm gonna marshall my scattered opinions on this, and present them in a more coherent way, but I'd be interested in other people's thoughts...

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

23:11 / 20.05.04

Interesting book, anyhow. I seem to remember the phrase "to really get things sorted, a man's gotta do what a man's goota do, and blood is going to have to be spilled". The authors do a real one-two on Alias as I recall.

I'd say that most of Sky 1's new output follows this theory pretty closely, with the added flavour of Superior Technology and good old fashioned Heart saving the day every time (Jake 2.0 springs to mind).

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

23:12 / 20.05.04

Of course, when posting at this hour after a loooong days work, it helps not to point out the same thing that has just been pointed out in the post before by actually reading it closely and not being a chump.

D Terminator XXXIII

00:15 / 21.05.04

Could anyone fill me in on how they analysed Alias?

The second only thing I watch after the, I think, Melrose Place-afflicted (but only with higher production values) Six Feet Under.

I will contribute - but we'll see what anyone has to say ...

eddie thirteen

06:28 / 21.05.04

Sadly, my brilliant epic post was lost when the storm over here jacked up my connection and I was forced to reboot. So, uh, I will instead boil my reply down to the time-honored American sentiment of, "What a crock of shit." Like, *every* American cultural product, *ever*? Get tae fuck. That can't possibly really be his thesis. He'd get laughed out of any undergrad poli-sci class with that. I guess you *can* have a unified theory that links Adrienne Rich to Outkast and the A-Team to Orson Welles and Tom Clancy to Andrew Wyeth, but the simple fact of said theory's existence would not for an instant cease to make it...stupid. The frontier myth and its downsides certainly manifest in American art -- not especially shocking, since the frontier myth is basically *the* American myth -- but come on, this is the thematic underpinning of Friends? Dubious.

Ganesh

07:43 / 21.05.04

That'd be why I said "clearly overstated" in my first post, then, eh?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:27 / 21.05.04

I would argue that Babylon 5 isn't really a Western because, on the whole, they aren't going where no-one has gone before, they're going where people have been so many times before that they've forgotten the places significance. They occasionally meet the unknowable, such as the whole B4 thing, or meeting the Walkers, but on the whole they are quite happy being away from the frontline and having the Explorer class ships turn up for an episode to talk about The Rim. And how would The X-Files work in this? Or indeed Buffangel?

Mazarine

13:20 / 21.05.04

Well, in Buffy/Angel, it's been stated that the demons existed first, and that the humans are the new arrivals/interlopers.

Sax

13:29 / 21.05.04

I think if there's one programme you could make a case for proving that hypothesis it would be Friends. Morality/civilisation is represented by the tightly-nit, white, good-looking central group. Any strangers who come into the set-up are either assimilated into their micro-culture (Mike) or rebuffed and ignored (Any boy/girlfriend who didn't last more than two episodes).

Triplets

15:51 / 21.05.04

Has there only been one black named character on Friends?

All I can think of is Ross' current girlfriend. You know, what's-her-name...

Triplets

15:54 / 21.05.04

X-Files works because you have two cowboys: The Mulder With No Name and Doc Scully venturing off into the Frontier (the unknown). When they meet the Indians - all the weird beasties that threaten the world (western society) - the Indians usually get killed or capture, never to be seen again.

It's further revealed that the white man is behind everything (the Conspiracy) and is working or in cahoots with aliens (God/angels).

eddie thirteen

16:18 / 21.05.04

Yeah, I mean, I know that you mentioned it was an overstatement, but calling it such seems like...well...a bit of an understatement to me. Unless the theory is so broad that you can actually, with a bit of work, apply it to absolutely anything, whereupon it would seem to become something like an intellectual game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It might be kinda fun, but it doesn't sound like any kind of serious scholarship, at least not to me. And with an inflammatory title like the one the book in question has, I get the impression (maybe I'm wrong) that readers are intended to take this quite seriously.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:04 / 21.05.04

Well, you could also take it all the way back to the theory that every "cultural product" is created in a kind of "frontier spirit"; i.e. we don't know what will happen if we combine new orleans funeral dirges/drawings with ragtime/words (jazz/comics), but we're going to "go there" anyway and "tame" the "heathen" void in which this story concept or idea did not previously exist.

I like the Six Degrees type better, though.

Six Feet Under is a western because the Fischers are out to conquer the heathen Corporate-Style Homogenization of the Mourning Process.

It can be boiled down to the idea of the Protagonist. A protagonist, by his/her very nature, sets out to battle either a) change or b) stagnation, and you could easily ascribe an analogue of that antagonistic force to heathen savagery without much of a stretch.

Deadwood is a western because, and it's fucking awesome, and that's that. Here's hoping it shows up in the UK toot sweet.

at the scarwash

19:41 / 21.05.04

What model of the western do the authors use? A case can certainly be made for Westerns from the thirties to the early 60s that the Western is a condensed White American foundation myth, certainly pendant upon the idea of taming the frontier. However, it can be argued that as early as Shane ( dir George Stevens, 1953) the focus of the Western film shifted to an examination of the Western hero as outsider, rather than upon his (they are almost always men) supposed task of delivering order and subduing the frontier.

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