{"id":562,"date":"2014-06-12T11:42:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/?page_id=562"},"modified":"2016-12-08T17:30:41","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T22:30:41","slug":"antonio-barrenechea-on-bandy-mary-lea-and-kevin-stoehr-ride-boldly-ride-the-evolution-of-the-american-western-berkeley-university-of-california-press-2012-330-pp-hardcover-isbn-978-0-520-25","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/previous-issues\/impact-vol-3-no-2-summer-2014\/antonio-barrenechea-on-bandy-mary-lea-and-kevin-stoehr-ride-boldly-ride-the-evolution-of-the-american-western-berkeley-university-of-california-press-2012-330-pp-hardcover-isbn-978-0-520-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Antonio Barrenechea on Bandy, Mary Lea, and Kevin Stoehr. Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bandy, Mary Lea, and Kevin Stoehr. Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 330 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-520-25866-2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Ride, Boldly Ride<\/i>, Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr offer a sweeping summation of the Western from the one-reel \u201coaters\u201d of the silent era to the genre-blending films of the digital age. The book is a labor of love, as is evident in the authors\u2019 privileging of filmic wisdom over critical models. This film-first treatment contrasts sharply with scholarship from the past thirty years, which has tended to reduce the genre to ideology. True to the book\u2019s subtitle, the authors\u2019 concern is with the evolutionary scale. To illustrate the expanse, Ride, Boldly Ride <\/i>has interspersed within it fifty-six black and white stills drawn from the archives of the Museum of Modern Art, a reader-friendly complement to the elegant and fluid prose of its authors. The volume will be useful to scholars in cinema, cultural, and American studies, and is well-suited for an undergraduate survey course on the Western.<\/p>\n

The book features eleven chapters and begins with a token preface from none other than Clint Eastwood. The introduction then outlines Western genre staples, but does so while romanticizing the self-realization of the hero. Bandy and Stoehr barely make references to Native Americans or to Mexicans (who are erroneously referred to as \u201cSpanish\u201d in a few places in the book). Whether one considers the historical West, or simply the genre\u2019s reimagining (and erasing) of these precursors to U.S. settlements, the inter-American playing field adds some unintended irony to the otherwise correct assertion that \u201cthe Western film helps to tell a story, usually more than a merely superficial one, about what it means to be\u2014and what it took to become\u2014an American<\/i>\u201d (6). Ride, Boldly Ride <\/i>sometimes glosses over the complex dynamics of the West (and the racism of the Western as treated\u2014and mistreated\u2014by ideological critiques), but the book\u2019s strength is in privileging films as individual works of art full of insight and contradiction. Discussions of imperialism and race occur principally within chapters that focus on films that are themselves critical of U.S. expansionism.<\/p>\n

The first chapter traces the Western to William \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody\u2019s 19th<\/sup> century Wild West shows, the public demand for which would find satisfaction through the new motion pictures. The authors locate some of the first examples of the genre in the films of D.W. Griffith, who established archetypes through his representation of the conflict between civilization (associated with white settlers) and savagery (a metaphor for Amerindians). Yet, Bandy and Stoehr also demonstrate how the Western left behind the blood-soaked conquest in favor of \u201cmorality tales that focus almost solely on the internal tensions between members of frontier society\u201d (20). Their discussion of hardships within fledgling settler communities disrupts genre clich\u00e9s about \u201ccowboys and Indians,\u201d and refocuses attention on the struggles of white pioneering communities. The chapter also interprets two silent films by John Ford, the genre\u2019s foremost director. His artistic concerns resonate throughout Ride, Boldly Ride<\/i>, as in the discussion of Indian-fighting, nation-building, and homesteading in chapter five, which considers Westerns made after the Great Depression. These big-budget films \u201ctook the form of trail-blazing and community-building frontier epics, reminding their audiences that a great nation had arisen eventually and successfully from a savage wilderness and a constant struggle against adversity\u201d (102).<\/p>\n

Chapters two and three cast light on largely unexplored issues, and films, within studies of the Western. The discussion in the first centers on Victor Sj\u00f6str\u00f6m\u2019s The Wind<\/i> (1928), and is the best reading of any single film in the book. The Wind <\/i>(which is currently unavailable on DVD), is a poetic and psychologically haunting film about the trials and tribulations of frontier life. Its strong female protagonist (Lillian Gish) disrupts the traditions of a genre preoccupied with male honor, as she fends off both lascivious men and the dark forces of nature. As the authors rightly contend, \u201c[n]one of the Westerns produced before 1928 prepare us for The Wind<\/i>\u2019s fierceness, its passion, and its unrelenting, swirling maelstrom of wind and sand\u201d (58). On a lighter note is Leo McCarey\u2019s Ruggles of Red Gap<\/i> (1935), the focus of the subsequent chapter. A brilliant comic Western about early settler social classes, the film parodies social pretentions among the American nouveau riche. Ultimately, however, the movie reflects the optimism of U.S. democratic ideals in line with classical Hollywood, for \u201cRuggles<\/i> contains messages about fundamental American concepts of democracy and equality and about the supposedly little man who can make a difference in people\u2019s lives\u201d (71).<\/p>\n

Chapter four approaches landscape and setting through close analysis of The Big Trail<\/i> (1930) and Stagecoach <\/i>(1939), two classic Ford Westerns starring John Wayne. The authors draw upon art historical sources to bring attention to the painterly compositions of Western cinematography. Their discussion of the ways in which history is reimagined, and landscapes get mythologized, makes this into one of the most sophisticated chapters in the book. Bandy and Stoehr also retain a sense of the sublime, and of man\u2019s transience on the earth, something that the Western highlights through photographic scale. For instance, in Ford\u2019s use of Monument Valley, the authors find \u201ca seemingly eternal canvas against which the variables and vagaries of human existence can be etched\u201d (95). Ford\u2019s oeuvre gets an additional treatment in chapter eight, which centers upon The Searchers <\/i>(1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance<\/i> (1962), \u201ctrue masterpieces within Ford\u2019s later project of disclosing the dark underbelly of the American West\u2019s progress from wilderness to civilization\u201d (187). While the treatment of the first film works a bit too hard to sanitize a work often labeled (not without good reason) as racist, the analysis of the second includes a fascinating take on how modernity\u2019s eclipsing of the West almost compels Ford\u2019s stage-bound mise-en-sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n

Chapter six likewise targets a single director, but in conjunction with John Wayne as a lynchpin of the Western. Here, Bandy and Stoehr dissect Howard Hawks\u2019s masterpieces Red River <\/i>(1948) and El Dorado <\/i>(1966). This results in an insightful and subtle discussion of quintessential Western themes: the paradox of American empire-building in the first, and the frailty of Western \u201cheroes\u201d in the second. Chapter ten also takes up a seminal figure, Clint Eastwood, star and director of stylish, and ultraviolent, post-classical Westerns. The discussion of infernal themes in High Plains Drifter<\/i> (1973) is especially illuminating, as is the complex reflection on the ending of Unforgiven <\/i>(1992), which provides a somewhat ambiguous coda to Eastwood\u2019s career-long portrayal of a mysterious stranger with no name. As the authors note regarding the bloodbath, \u201c[i]n these bullet-ridden final scenes, we are thrown into the central message of the movie, a lesson about the terrifying repercussions of violence, even when such acts seem absolutely necessary\u2014whether in self-defense, in the building of civilization, or for the sake of justified retribution\u201d (260).<\/p>\n

Chapters seven and nine center on how, post-World War II, \u201cthe Western became a popular narrative vehicle for the exploration of human instincts, emotions, and desires\u201d (166). In the case of psychological Westerns by Ford, King Vidor, and Delmer Daves, the authors draw attention to the blending of the genre with film noir to create \u201cnoir Westerns.\u201d These films about greed, lust, and murderous passion care less about majestic landscapes and more about Freudian mindscapes. As in film noir, the setting itself becomes a twisted psychological projection. More metaphysical is the existential Western of the 1960s, in which genre codes of behavior are no longer a given. Here, the authors provide a brilliant analysis of the underrated director Budd Boetticher, whose films \u201cdeal with an increasing need for self-knowledge rather than with goals of conquering the wilderness or fighting Indians or establishing a system of law and order\u201d (220). According to the authors, the moody and morally ambiguous works of Boetticher are not reducible to nihilism, for they also create possibilities for self-motivated action. However, Bandy and Stoehr\u2019s reading of Sam Peckinpah\u2019s The Wild Bunch<\/i> (1969) fails to elaborate significantly on what is widely-considered one of the greatest and most influential Westerns ever made. One missed opportunity, for instance, pertains to the omnipresence of laughter in the film, a defiant response to the absurd.<\/p>\n

A coda brings Ride, Boldly Ride<\/i> up to the present, but also leaves the reader clamoring for a fuller chapter, perhaps one premised upon the eclecticism that the authors identify as the only dominant trend post-1980. Yet, this craving for more attests to the powers of Bandy and Stoehr\u2019s otherwise cogent and magnificent vision. No doubt, it is also proof that this homegrown genre, which has been pronounced dead several times before, remains in the throes of its evolution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Antonio Barrenechea
\nUniversity of Mary Washington\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bandy, Mary Lea, and Kevin Stoehr. Ride, Boldly Ride: The Evolution of the American Western. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 330 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-520-25866-2. In Ride, Boldly Ride, Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr offer a sweeping summation of the Western from the one-reel \u201coaters\u201d of the silent era to the genre-blending films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7752,"featured_media":0,"parent":633,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/562\/revisions\/617"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}