How does Rancho Notorious use the western genre to explore political themes that were controversial in America in the early 1950s? Introduction Amidst the uproar of the Cold War, Hollywood acted as a reflection of the anxieties and political tensions, as well as propaganda, in America during the early 1950s. Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952) was showcased as an unconventional western presenting a revenge narrative, which was common in Lang’s works, following cowboy, Vern Haskell, played by Arthur Kennedy. In a wider sense, Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952) emerges as a twisted artifact of its time, piecing together western tropes with the contemporary concerns of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and broader socio-political impacts of the Cold War. Cook …show more content…
Similarly to the contemporary atmosphere, Ranch Notorious displays key motifs of betrayal and paranoia. Throughout the entirety of the western, we experience a cat and mouse game between Vern and Kinch, as Vern combs through the entire country, Kinch escapes his clutches and hides in the Chuck-a-luck under Keane’s protection. As Vern represents the justice seeking hero, one could argue, Kinch (like many of the other outlaws in hiding) symbolises the communists in America living covertly from the law. During Vern’s journey after hearing about Chuck-a-luck we witness many moments of secrecy between people; for example, during the barber scene, a man accidentally reveals information to Vern without realising his true intent (most likely assuming him for a sheriff), therefore breaking out into a classic western fight, leaving the informant dead, and Vern arrested. The atmosphere, in which Lang creates within this scene, establishes the espionage, and uncover mass within America during the McCarthyism era. It is then made clear that the man, who was a wanted convict, could be seen as betraying the Chuck-a-luck‘s only law to not reveal it, hence why he fought Vern for his …show more content…
Pitarka examines that ‘this inquiry had a major side effect as it shattered many families and friendships, ruined numerous careers [in particular Hollywood screenwriters] and damaged reputations of those, on whom this question (of being a and/or involved in communist activity) was bestowed’ which ultimately, in Rancho Notorious, lead to the destructive end of the Chuck-a-luck, during the intense shoot-out (Pitarka, 2019). The Chuck-a-luck itself, protected by Altar Keane, displays its fair share of fear and stealth, including a scene where the outlaws escape the Chuck-a-luck after receiving an anonymous tip that it would be inspected for any suspects or anti-behaviour. Here Altar Keane fibs to the sheriffs that her barn is completely normal, and she had no clue of any convicts, thus sheltering them from the law; similarly to the ‘unfriendly Hollywood ten’ who were ‘uncooperative’ towards the HUAC investigations in the 1947 film industry and were ‘suspected of Communist activity’ (Ceplair,
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
To get a clear view and understanding of the book, first must review the time period in history. The book was written in the mid 1950's during the cold war. Former General McCarthy, then U.S. Senator started a fire ball of suspicion, suppression, and incarceration. This had a very huge impact on the entrainment industry, which included everyone from playwrights to filmmakers, as well as writers and actors. If anyone in that time period was suspected of being a communist, the government could come and pull them out of their home. At the least a suspected communist would be banned, or put on a black ball list. Printed in the Times, McCarthy's First Slander, "Overnight, his speech sparked a media firestorm that played to the basest fears of Americans swept up in a frightening cold war and triggered loyalty oaths, blacklists and personal betrayals that cost an estimated 10,000 Americans their jobs and some shattered innocents their lives." (Johanna McGeary 28) This happened to a number of actors and film makers during that time period. The black ball list was a list of names of people who were believed to be communist. The people on this list came from the movie industry as well as writers. These people would no longer be able to get work ...
My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.
In his book, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, author John Rollin Ridge introduces readers to a fictional character, who is a larger-than-life bandit. According to the story, Murieta set out on a path of revenge and organized a large band of outlaws to terrorize Californians. Murieta and his men committed terrible and bloody crimes (including robbery and murder). This pattern of criminal behavior continued until the band was pursued by mountain rangers, ending the story in a dramatic climax for the protagonist. However, this story is not an accurate depiction of the important elements of the “New” West according to author Patricia Nelson Limerick, in The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. Instead, the character Murieta exemplifies many of the myths of the American West and the idea of innocence.
A Documentary History (Paperback). Oxford University Press, USA, 1996. Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press; Reprint edition (June 22, 1996). Mitgang, Herbert Lillian Hellman's FBI File, Dangerous dossiers: exposing the secret war against America's greatest authors, New York: D.I. Fine, 1988, retrieved from a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html/a>. Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Random House, 1st edition, 2003.
Cormac McCarthy was wise in choosing the Southwest as the setting for a novel of unprecedented bloodshed. No other land would have done McCarthy’s ideas justice, given that only the Southwest harbored such wanton violence. A ...
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
Society in America during the 1950’s was one that portrayed men and women in very different, but rigid roles. Women were housewives, secretaries, and mothers. Men were providers, war heroes, and businessmen. Television, newspapers and magazines played an important role as well in determining ways men and women should behave. Advertisements for real estate were designed to sell to the “All-American” family. For example; Dad would be the returned home veteran who is now running the company, Mom is an ideal housewife who works a couple days a week for extra vacation cash, little Billy likes baseball and his sister Susie plays with dolls. Houses designed with this type of family in mind would prove very effective in luring away many from the city to live in suburbs like this at a rapid pace. Most jobs in the work place were gender divided. Help-wanted ads placed in newspapers in the 1950’s were very gender biased as well. Some ads with attention getting headlines could have read: “Sales Girl,” and “Brides! Housewives!” Occupations offered to women at this time were very limiting.
The story is an Eastern take on the Hollywood western with a dash of satire,
When the first Western Films were released at the beginning of the 20th century, most were characterized by dramatic scenes of fights between Native Americans and Anglo men. There was much more stereotyping of Native Americans in these films than can be described as simply black and white. Most of the time Native Americans were depicted as savages, something less than human; while white men represented the unbreakable macho. One movie which perfectly demonstrates this is Lesley Selander’s Tomahawk Trail. In this 1957 Western film, Cavalry veteran Sgt. Wade McCoy (Chuck Connors) butts heads with his new supervisor Lt. Jonathan Davenport (George Neise) over criticism of his experience on the dangerous road known as
When one thinks of the United States of America, they probably consider our history, our culture, our media, our impressive cities and the extremely wide variety of beautiful wildernesses that we are lucky enough to still enjoy. We are lucky enough to have a melting pot of cultures in this country, and many different kinds of people. However, when thinking of an original, all-American figure, cowboys come to mind for many people. Our history and the settlement of the U.S. was unlike any other country, and the development of the country in the more western states came with the unique and fascinating time period referred to now as “The Old West”. The Old West was a crucial time in American history, and though it was a simpler time it also came with its share of excitement. Some of the most memorable details about the Old West were the characters that came with it, and some extremely interesting ones were the least conforming- the outlaws. Jesse Woodson James was one of the most notorious outlaws in American history. His name would go down in history as one belonging to a tough as nails and fearless bank robber who led a group of outlaws across the mid-west robbing banks and trains, and even murdering people. When we look at the big picture of what the U.S. has become today, The Old West certainly has had a large impact on our culture, and Jesse James certainly had a large impact on the Old West. Though most would argue that he was not a decent or moral person, one cannot argue that he was still a very interesting and unique icon of the west. So how did Jesse Woodson James change and leave his mark on the United St...
The development of the Western genre originally had its beginnings in biographies of frontiersmen and novels written about the western frontier in the late 1800’s based on myth and Manifest Destiny. When the film industry decided to turn its lenses onto the cowboy in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery there was a plethora of literature on the subject both in non-fiction and fiction. The Western also found roots in the ‘Wild West’ stage productions and rodeos of the time. Within the early areas of American literature and stage productions the legend and fear of the west being a savage untamed wilderness was set in the minds of the American people. The productions and rodeos added action and frivolity to the Western film genre.
As World War Two came to a close, a new American culture was developing all across the United States. Families were moving away from crowded cities into spacious suburban towns to help create a better life for them during and after the baby boom of the post-war era. Teenagers were starting to become independent by listing to their own music and not wearing the same style of clothing as their parents. Aside from the progress of society that was made during this time period, many people still did not discuss controversial issues such as divorce and sexual relations between young people. While many historians regard the 1950s as a time of true conservatism at its finest, it could really be considered a time of true progression in the American way of life.
Brower, Sue. ""They'd Kill Us If They Knew": Transgression and the Western." Journal of Film and Video 62.4 (2010): 47-57. Web.
Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.