Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Winter 2003Abstract: Discussions of masculinity in the Western regularly characterize it as in a state of crisis, pointing to heroes hamstrung between ideologically opposed models of manhood, one endorsing commitment to community and family, the other advocating freedom from them. Yet, the metaphor of crisis, with its suggestion of irresolution and immobility, fails to account for the competence of heroes who display behavior from both models. Such heroes realize their goals precisely because they combine behaviors from both models as their strategies for success. The heroes of postwar Westerns thus redefine masculinity as they transgress the limitations of the two models to create a new ideal of masculinity that incorporates all manner of behaviors, provided that they lead to male success.
Key words: Broken Arrow, Fort Apache, John Ford, masculinity, Western
In the film Broken Arrow (1950), questions about the masculine fitness of the hero arise early, as Tom Jeffords (Jimmy Stewart) is asked by Apache braves why he did not kill a sick Apache boy when he had the opportunity:
APACHE 1: White men pay many dollars for the scalp of an Apache.
JEFFORDS: I know.
APACHE 1: Then why did you not take his scalp?
JEFFORDS: If I kill an Apache, it'll not be for scalp or money.
APACHE 1: Why not? My people and your people are at war.
JEFFORDS: It is not my way to fight.
APACHE 1: It's the way of all white eyes!
JEFFORDS: It's not my way.
APACHE 2: You are a woman maybe.
JEFFORDS: It is well known that Apaches do not take scalps either, and they are not women.
The issues raised in this scene, about the assumed conflict between masculinity and peace, are encountered frequently in the Western, as characters return to the saloon, the sheriff's office, or the dusty street cleared of traffic to ask the same questions in ritualized form: Is violence the only measure of masculinity? Must social cohesion and masculinity always be in conflict? Does "peaceful" always equal "effeminate"?
My thoughts on this topic come from reading Martin Pumphrey's essay on "Masculinity" in The BFI Companion to the Western. In his essay Pumphrey argues that these questions are more complicated than they first appear, for it is the very nature of masculinity to make contradictory demands, as it urges men to be
both dominant and deferential, gentle and violent, self-contained yet sensitive, practical yet idealistic, individualist but conformist, rational but intuitive, peace-loving yet ready to fight without "quitting." (Pumphrey 181) 1
The particular challenge of the Western hero, Pumphrey argues, is that he must "bridge ... the anxiously guarded ... frontier between the two worlds usually coded as masculine and feminine" (181), a bridging Pumphrey characterizes in negative terms, describing it variously as a "conflict," a "paradox," "generat[ing] contradictory social attitudes" and "embedded unresolvable tensions" that lead to "gender confusion" (181). The strange conclusion that one reaches, then, is that even when the hero succeeds in being masculine, he actually fails to be masculine, for he is now of confused gender, neither truly feminine nor truly masculine. That is a paradox.
This paradox would be avoided, however, if we changed the model, and hence the metaphor, that characterizes the relationship between these two types of behavior. I propose another model that does better in accounting for the nuances of masculinity in the Western, for I do not find the genre's representation of masculinity as insolubly conflicted as Pumphrey suggests. If one looks at the behaviors Pumphrey cites as they unfold in the course of the narrative, then they cease to be contradictory and become complementary. Viewed diachronically, to be at one time dominant and at another deferential is not a contradiction but a strategy, one that several prominent Western protagonists use to achieve their goals. It is this kind of interplay between masculine and feminine characteristics that enables the heroes of Broken Arrow, Jeffords and his friend Cochise (also accused of being a woman because he loves peace), to achieve the success they desire. They realize their goals precisely because they incorporate behavior marked as feminine into their strategy. This incorporation is not of the same order as Pumphrey's "bridg[ing]," because rather than being the inevitable outcome of the hamstrung hero's predicament, it is part of a strategy that is rational and willed, directed toward the specific goal of success.
These complications in Broken Arrow suggest that the metaphor of conflict fails to account fully for the Western hero's gendered behavior for three reasons that I discuss here: (1) logical: the terms that Pumphrey puts in opposition to one another are not necessarily in conflict either in or out of the Western; (2) semantic: some of the behaviors that Pumphrey and other commentators mark as feminine are actually components of masculinity as well; and (3) generic: strange as it seems, success matters more than masculinity in the Western. Of ultimate importance is not whether the hero is ideally masculine or ideally feminine but whether he is ideally successful. This success often demands that the Western hero negotiate between the poles of masculine and feminine performance to find the mean of behavior that will ultimately achieve that success. It is because masculinity can be divorced from competence, because the hero can achieve success even when his masculine fitness is called into question, that one can see that competence finally matters more than phallic masculinity. Although females in the Western are regularly dismissed, ridiculed, or reviled, it does not necessarily follow that effeminacy bears an irrevocable taint, for the assumption of feminine behavior by male heroes bespeaks strategy, not essence.
My argument is that the Western is not primarily a romance of masculinity but a romance of competence, and that the man who demonstrates a range of abilities broad enough to address any perilous situation gets to be the hero. How competence is defined, however, which abilities are shown to succeed, varies from period to period. The Westerns of the late 1960s and 1970s, for example, often value unstinting violence as the key to success. But in postwar Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s, competence involves the mastery of a variety of skills, some marked as masculine, others as feminine. Competence does not entail simply being the baddest man in town; in fact, that kind of monolithic masculinity is regularly represented as impeding success. Instead, the competent man knows when to quell his ferocity and when to let it loose. Mental acuity, which can judge from experience what needs to be done and the best way to go about it, trumps youth and physical ability every time. 2
Of course, not all Westerns depict the tensions that Pumphrey outlines. The heroes of postwar B-Westerns, as well as many A-Westerns (e.g., The Tall Men), are blissfully free of complicating elements. For that reason, both Pumphrey's diagnosis and my response work best when applied to the so-called "psychological" Westerns of the 1950s (all of Pumphrey's examples of Westerns that display these tensions are postwar films). The necessity of competence becomes especially charged when the hero's masculinity is explicitly questioned, as regularly occurs in these "golden age" Westerns. Yet even less overtly "psychological" Westerns also depict heroes who embrace femininity as a strategy for success. To test my theory, I focus on one of the more surprising bearers of this message, John Ford's Fort Apache (1948), a film that because of its celebration of military culture would seem to resist any flexible models of masculinity. But even such a recalcitrant film as this--derided for its "inadequate performances" (Anderson 123), its "unrewarding views of domestic life around the post" (review in Time 104), and its female characters who are "little more than appendages of their men" (Davis 213)--offers evidence of a masculinity that does not fight femininity but incorporates it. As Fort Apache demonstrates, the achievement of competence demands that the hero use a variety of behaviors, including those "coded" as feminine, to realize his goals and that he engage in these behaviors without being irrevocably marked by that effeminacy. This Western does not mourn the feminization of the hero; rather, it celebrates his versatility and the special "flexibility" that it takes to play the woman.
What follows from this celebration is especially surprising: The romance of competence includes a critique of phallic masculinity at a time when American culture was redefining masculinity to counter prewar models. As the cinematic heroes of these postwar Westerns incorporate feminine behavior into their strategies for success, that behavior is still classified as masculine (precisely because it is successful), although the behaviors that compose masculinity are now radically different.
This project first demands a careful look at some assumptions made about masculinity. What have critics meant when they used the term "masculinity"? What is masculinity in the context of the Western? And how did this trope of contradiction come to dominate studies of masculinity in the Western?
How Many Masculinities?
Although the Western is a celebration of men and success, it is not necessarily a celebration of masculinity. The difference is instructive, for not everything that men do is masculine, nor is everything that is masculine done by men. Although this much seems obvious, it is important to review what this difference means in the Western, a genre devoted to the activities of men. Pace other commentators who think that because the Western is about men, it is therefore overwhelmingly concerned with masculinity, I think that exactly the opposite is true: Because the Western is so manifestly about men, masculinity is of secondary concern. The proof of this assertion lies in the representation of hypermasculinity in the Western. The only men in Westerns who do express explicit concern about masculinity are all failures: the nameless hostile Apache of Broken Arrow, Hunt Bromley (Skip Homeier) of The Gunfighter (1950), Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) of High Noon (1952), Coley Trimble (Ernest Borgnine) of Bad Day at Black Rock (1954), and so on. Those men who fear doing anything unmasculine, who wield the charge of femininity like a weapon, are finally undone by that fear. Being nothing but masculine makes one as vulnerable in the Western as being nothing but feminine.
It follows that because Westerns are primarily about men, masculinity becomes a more fluid and flexible term. By limiting the participation of women and their concerns (which, Jane Tompkins argues, is the genesis of the genre), 3 Westerns become a "safe space" in which to raise questions about masculinity, to perform different kinds of masculinities, and to explore the pleasures and perils of male bonding, with its flagrantly erotic rituals and homosocial dynamics. Although women do threaten men in the Western, serving as sources of critical judgment, sexual distraction, or emasculation (these three usually working together as a triple-headed demon), these gender conflicts are played out in the confines of a genre that virtually guarantees male success. As opposed to film noir where male achievement is rarely assured, the Western usually secures success for its male protagonist, although often at a great price. Nevertheless, that kind of generic security offers male characters an enormous amount of freedom to engage in whatever behaviors are necessary to ensure success. Almost invariably, that success will depend on violence (with important exceptions, such as The Big Country). But the genre's investment in violence does not preclude the use of other strategies, including those coded as feminine. It seems, then, that Western heroes can be feminine, as long as they are still men.
The price of this freedom for men is the restriction of women, who are much more limited in their range of roles precisely so that men can engage in feminine behavior. The notoriety of the exceptions, such as Duel in the Sun and Johnny Guitar, simply proves the point. For male heroes to adopt variously gendered behaviors as a means to their success, the heterosexual matrix must remain stable, which means that female characters must remain feminine. As Raymond Bellour points out, "the woman [in the Western] occupies a central place only to the extent that it's a place assigned to her by the logic of masculine desire" (192). With unambiguously feminine foils, male characters then have the freedom to wander all over the gender landscape.
But what kind of masculinity do we talk about when we talk about masculinity in the Western? Although critics may talk about a variety of masculinities, at root there seems to be only one: the phallic masculinity of the bully, the loner, the desperado. Pumphrey, too, gets caught between the one and the many. Although he refers to a masculinity "founded on fundamental contradictions" (181), his later use of the term outlines a clear, unambiguous, noncontradictory maleness:
[T]he genre makes an absolute and value-laden division between the masculine and feminine spheres. While it links masculinity with activity, mobility, adventure, emotional restraint and public power, it associates femininity with passivity, softness, romance and domestic containment. (181)
According to this statement, the tension does not actually exist within masculinity, here presented in very monolithic terms ("activity, mobility, adventure," etc.), but only between masculinity and femininity. Thus, the real source of conflict is not intramasculine but rather intergender. The paradox seems to be a paradox of maleness rather than of masculinity: Men are expected to occupy two contradictory roles, whereas masculinity remains simple and unconflicted in its demands.
This confusion of terms is not unique to Pumphrey but follows from a confusion built into the very definition of "masculine." Even my humble American Heritage Dictionary recognizes this messy state of affairs as it gives two main definitions for "masculine": "1. Of or pertaining to men and boys; male. 2. Mannish; unwomanly." The first definition expresses what one might call real masculinity, as it sets out qualities, attributes, and actions that relate to men and boys. That could be anything short of producing ova. The second definition, however, fences in an ideal masculinity: behavior of a certain and limited type: "Mannish"--further defined as "1. Of or befitting a man. 2. Resembling a man: A woman impudent and mannish grown/ Is not more loathed than an effeminate man (Shakespeare)." With the second definition of "masculine" and its kin, three new elements are introduced: judgment ("befitting a man"), the binary and oppositional relationship that serves to define masculinity and femininity, and the influence of cultural models (no less an authority than Shakespeare [forced once more to endorse the opinions of all his characters] confers the judgment of loathsomeness on those who fail to "befit" their sex). The problem arises in that being masculine in the first definition, a person could fail to be masculine in the second definition. According to the latter, certain kinds of behavior, although clearly and regularly performed by men and boys, are not masculine. As specified by the definition of "mannish," we judge these men to be unmasculine, we note their lack of masculinity by their failure to be opposed to femininity, and we refer to a variety of cultural models, Westerns among them, to support our judgment.
The disjunction between the two terms, however, offers a solution to Pumphrey's paradox, for between the real and the ideal is room to negotiate. And it is precisely within this disjunction that the postwar Western hero operates, as he triangulates the masculine/feminine binary with a third term, success. The new masculinity, then, is redefined as success by a man who employs behaviors that are not always masculine according to definition 2, although they are always masculine according to definition 1. He may not always be "mannish"; in fact, he may be downright womanish (the sting of this repeated accusation in the Western is that it is usually true), but he will be doing what a man does. Women in Westerns do not behave this way, do not achieve the desired success, simply because they are not men. In contrast to the hypermasculine failures of the Western, those who wear their masculinity like a starched suit, these Western heroes do not simply tout their resemblance to men (anyone, even women, can be "mannish"); they are men, regardless of how they act or appear. 4 In Westerns, then, the most important thing is to be a man. The second most important thing is to be successful. Ideal masculinity matters only to the extent that it supports the other two, which may be not at all. The hero of the postwar Western is thus redefining ideal masculinity as he transgresses the limitations of ideal, phallic masculinity to create, per accidens, a new model of ideal masculinity that incorporates all manner of behaviors, provided they lead to male success. These late Westerns express this struggle for redefinition as they strive to expand an impoverished notion of ideal masculinity into one conceptually rich.
History of a Mistake
My disagreement about the representation of masculinity in the Westerns is not just with Martin Pumphrey but rather with a critical idiom that has dominated film studies of the genre since the 1960s. Critics have tended to classify Westerns in terms of the conflicts they represent, conflicts between a variety of forces: man and nature, farmers and ranchers, civilization and wilderness, order and chaos. Indeed, John Cawelti argues that this thematic conflict is one of the essential features of the genre: "A Western that does not take place in the West, near the frontier, at a point in history when social order and anarchy are in tension, and that does not involve some form of pursuit, is simply not a Western" (my emphasis, 31). This critical idiom develops from Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land (1950), a work whose careful analysis of nineteenth-century conceptions of the West highlighted "the paired but contradictory ideas of nature and civilization" (260). Smith contextualizes this conflict by demonstrating that it grows out of the tension between two powerful eighteenth-century ideals: the celebration of romantic primitivism and the belief that civilization must triumph over barbarism.
Although Smith's study focused on the West as shaped in popular literature and public policy, his theme of contradiction was applied to Western films (for which Smith famously expressed his contempt) in the work of three prominent critics of the late 1960s and 1970s: Jim Kitses in Horizons West (1969), John Cawelti in The Six-Gun Mystique (1971), and Will Wright in Six Guns and Society (1975). Kitses takes Smith's account of conflict and dramatically expands the number of terms in conflict to include what Kitses calls "an ambiguous cluster of meanings and attitudes that provide the traditional thematic structure of the genre" (11). Added to Smith's conflicts are Kitses's "series of antinomies" (11):
THE WILDERNESS CIVILIZATION
The Individual: The Community:
freedom restriction
honour institutions
self-knowledge illusion
integrity compromise
...
Nature: Culture:
purity corruption
experience knowledge
empiricism legalism
pragmatism idealism
brutalization refinement
savagery humanity
The West: The East:
...
The crucial terms that Kitses implies but omits from this accreted list are made explicit two years later in John Cawelti's The Six-Gun Mystique. Cawelti adds male and female to his study of similar conflicts in the Western, pointing out that "the hero and the savages are men while the town is strongly dominated by women" (47). 5 These three influential writers figure the conflict on the model of Levi-Strauss structuralism, arguing that these narratives function as myths whose cultural aim is to resolve terms in opposition: As Wright notes, "In my study of the Western, I have found that the idea of oppositional structure is useful for analysis and, as Levi-Strauss argues, is seemingly inherent in the myth" (21).
In the 1980s and 1990s, the influence of poststructuralism modified this view by arguing that the Western did not resolve the conflict (although all still agreed that conflict was a central metaphor). For example, Martin Pumphrey wrote, "The conflict between male toughness and social order has embedded unresolvable tensions in the Western's representations of masculinity" (181). Michael Coyne said, "The Western held its authoritarian and libertarian components in productive tension" (3), and Douglas Pye, "The fantasy that these figures can, like Owen Wister's Virginian, keep their identity and strength as Westerners while contentedly and successfully settling is strongly undercut" (172). Although these critics may differ in their accounts of the components of the conflict and whether or not a resolution exists, none of their works challenges the central figure of crisis, tension, conflict, and ambiguity.
There are, however, several glaring problems with this metaphor. First, it is too general to be of any use in distinguishing one narrative genre from another. What narrative genre is not organized around tension or conflict? Working with this feature alone, one cannot distinguish the Western from the melodrama, the epic, the musical, and so forth. Further, there is a logical problem: It is not clear that the terms that compose Pumphrey's paradox actually do constitute a conflict, for the terms he cites as contradicting each other have relational rather than absolute value. For example, a major in the army can be simultaneously dominant over a captain and deferential to a colonel. Even though words or phrases may look like contradictions (e.g., dominant, nondominant), they can be contradictions only when used in exactly the same sense in both cases. Applying this standard, dominant and deferential are not contradictions. "Dominant" (e.g., an officer in relation to enlisted men) does not contradict "nondominant" (e.g., that same officer in relation to his commanding officer) any more than "north" (e.g., of the fort) contradicts "south" (e.g., of the Apache camp), that is, the same site can be simultaneously north of one point of reference and south of another.
A third problem arises from the source of the theme. It developed out of Smith's observations of a particular instance of the Western, Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, which, he argues, establish the paradigmatic tensions of the genre. But Smith's research stops at Frederick Jackson Turner's speech at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and Virgin Land itself was published in 1950. What of the Westerns produced after 1950? How well does this theory of conflict apply to them? If the genre is really as "pliable" as its critics claim (Coyne 6), then what happens to those tensions from Western to Western? Furthermore, can we simply pile ambiguity upon ambiguity as though all are the same? Is the representation of masculinity and femininity in the Western a conflict, an "unresolvable ambiguity," of the same sort as the conflict between love of civilization and love of nature? As the critics who followed Smith's work to establish their critical difference and distance from him, their strategy, merely to add more ambiguities, simply recapitulates the same terms that he initially laid out, but often without the crucial contextual work. Since the terms femininity and masculinity come with a complex history, it seems naive to think that they can be added to the list of Western "conflicts" without doing injustice to that complexity. If we set aside this metaphor and look at these Westerns again, what will we see about the relations between masculine and feminine behaviors that we missed before?
Masculinity Is More Complex than We Thought
Fort Apache is a particularly interesting counterexample to Pumphrey's theory, because behaviors that he identifies as feminine cut wide swaths across the two main male characters, Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) and Captain Kirby York (John Wayne). Both characters are presented as masculine, although that adjective is conferred by different authorities and marked by different types of signs. Thursday is officially masculine, as determined by conventional symbols: He is the ranking officer, his orders are contravened at great peril, and, as Cochise (Miguel Inclan) says, he is the legal representative of "the Great White Father." As a subordinate officer, York is unofficially masculine, as determined by iconic signs. Although of a subordinate rank, he nevertheless displays the image and behavior of a masculine man. For example, he is as independent as military discipline will allow. When speaking with Thursday, York is open and frank, even at times rude. He offers contrary advice without being asked, and he questions Thursday's orders. At the first dance on screen, he even turns away from Thursday before Thursday can complete his answer to York's question. In these circumstances, York embodies one pole of Pumphrey's masculine sphere: He is dominant, with a hint of violence, individualistic, independent. But the hypermasculine military life to which both of these men have dedicated themselves encourages behaviors that commentators often associate with femininity, two of which receive special attention in Fort Apache: excessive attention to appearance and humble subservience. 6
When Michael O'Rourke returns to Fort Apache from West Point with his new officer's uniform, his father's friends make a great fuss about the cut of his coat. Lest we miss the significance of the exchange, Ford dramatizes it visually by having Sergeant Mulcahy (Victor McLaglen) run his gloved hand down O'Rourke's back to the top of his buttocks in admiration of the tailoring: "Well, look at the fit. A perfect soldier." This theme is picked up again when Thursday chastises York for being out of uniform, specifically criticizing the hat and bandanna that had become John Wayne's cinematic uniform by 1948:
You're not properly uniformed, Captain, nor are your men. They look like scratch farmers on market day. Their hats should be creased fore and aft like a fedora, and I don't like exposed galluses.
In context, Thursday's lecture seems fair, if fussy, but his final gesture of the scene seemingly undercuts the authority of the message when he places his own army-issue hat on his head, a dandified affair with a white scarf across the back like a reverse veil (in military nomenclature it is known as a forage cap with an attached havelock). 7 American audiences had not seen so romantic a hat since Beau Geste. Yet the wearing of the havelock is an anachronistic gesture, as Ford, detail maven, and screenwriter Frank Nugent (assigned fifty books to read in preparation for this film) would have known. The havelock was used by American troops only in the Civil War and then only briefly: It ceased to be worn after the first Battle of Bull Run, when men put away the grand trappings of idyllic gallantry to settle into the grim realities of war. Yet in postwar Fort Apache, the havelock is still worn and by an officer who would have known better. As Peter Stowall writes, "Thursday demands that dress code be West Point regulation, but wears his own desert-style hat" (81).
Yet all of this effeminate display, every billowing snow-white linen inch of it, is recuperated in the film, especially in two scenes late in the narrative: when Thursday returns to the remains of his command to face certain death with them, thereby redeeming his fastidious display with a show of manly courage, and when York and the U.S. Government endorse "Thursday's Charge" and celebrate his legend. In fact, the film ends with a pointed bit of parallelism involving this very hat. After securing the lie of Thursday's gallantry, York himself dons the identical hat with havelock attached, a gesture that legitimizes Thursday's effeminate display as an honored and emulated signifier in this masculine fraternity.
But the gesture also reveals how the process of being incorporated into the military is a kind of feminization. Visually, the scene is quite striking because it is the strapping John Wayne, never completely subsumed in a character, who puts on the frilly havelock (when I showed this scene in a film class, some students gasped). The point seems specifically to be that the army makes women of us all, as it demands a subservience to higher ideals no matter how much the actual details of their achievement may stick in one's personal craw. Although part of York no doubt hates Thursday for humiliating him--first by dismissing him from his command, and second by having him survive the massacre of his comrades--he realizes that the greater glory of the regiment depends on myths like Thursday's, and so he silences himself, quells the anger, and plays the sap, all because the army needs him to. This point about York's and Thursday's ultimate subservience to the army is iterated visually in the same scene. As York confirms the reporter's ludicrously inaccurate account of the battle with Cochise ("Correct in every detail"), his face is shot in a medium close-up on the left side of the screen. Thursday's portrait shows up on the right with the regimental flag between and slightly above them in a triangulated composition. The message is clear: However divisive their personal relationship, Thursday and York are united and subsumed in the paternal authority of the U.S. Cavalry. But the scene is also a humbling reminder to the individual soldier, for, while his corporate identity is secure, his individual identity must be sacrificed to the needs of the Great White Father. This realization raises an intriguing question: Just how far apart are the struggles of York and Cochise from the perspective of an administration, explicitly figured as male in the terms of the film, to whom individual honor, loyalty, and ultimately truth mean very little?
These characteristics, labeled conflicts in Pumphrey's argument, are built into our cultural definition of masculinity. The military costumes that Thursday orders the men to wear are not some discards from his trunk of drag; they are government-issue gear, a fact that reveals the love of display already built into the most masculine of institutions, the military. Thursday's love of spectacle, adornment, and intellectualism (he is given to citing military history) is not particular to him; it is a traditional component of the military, which rewards achievement with triumphal fanfare, prettier uniforms, and cushy assignments to West Point.
York, too, displays behavior coded as feminine, as seen in his subservience to authorities both inside and outside of the army. When meeting with Cochise, for example, York visibly contracts in anxious deference as he works to win Cochise's favor. He then makes a remarkable gesture of humility. Taking a deep breath, York steps dangerously close to Cochise and raises his two hands, palms down and side by side, until they are parallel to the earth. He awaits the reaction of Cochise who eventually approaches and places one of his hands, palm down, on York's, in a gesture of acceptance, which York receives with a smile and a respectful greeting, "Buenas tardes, jefe." This scene surprises because we expect to see John Wayne in an imperious posture, dominating Cochise just as he dominated the good guys and the bad guys in Stagecoach (1939), or at least treating him as brusquely as he treated Thursday at the opening dance.
The issue of dominance and subordination is further dramatized in this scene by Ford's placement of the camera. To shoot this moment, Ford used camera angles that draw attention to themselves, most unusual from a man who complained that other directors fiddled too much with the camera. 8 The first shot (a long shot) looks down on the meeting from the cliffs above and slightly behind York. There is a cut to a medium close-up of York, but strangely the camera is placed below and behind Cochise, so that the viewer is acutely aware of how York's gesture reverses the anticipated hierarchical relationship, just as the camera reverses its angles. In this shot, York and his companion Beaufort (Pedro Almendariz) are framed by the bodies of Cochise and Geronimo, who appear from the angle to dominate the two white men. The visual containment of the cavalry men is made complete by the barrel of Geronimo's rifle, which looms over their heads like a Winchester of Damocles. Here, York is the passive suppliant, seeking Cochise's acceptance with a kind of nakedness we had not seen in him previously. But the gesture is necessary to secure Cochise's trust, and it is effective. York returns to Fort Apache with his mission accomplished successfully, precisely because he made himself vulnerable before another man.
Commentators on masculinity often ignore the extent to which American masculinity, including and especially as depicted by John Ford, honors behavior that is ultimately subservient to some manner of father. Deferral to that higher masculine authority is as much a component of masculinity as is dominance over a subordinate. Yet this subservience is not in conflict with masculine dominance because the two are relational. We defer to those we respect and dominate those we do not, and we can do these acts simultaneously without contradiction. 9
The Hero's Success Comprises a Range of Behaviors
The language of the "mean" is, of course, Aristotelian, and it is instructive to review how closely the actions of Western heroes seem to follow from Aristotle's notion of behavior regulated by reason. The point is not to argue for intentionality but rather to emphasize the extent to which the behavior of the Western hero results from a rational strategy rather than from an insoluble paradox. In Fort Apache, York's reliance on a personal code, both outside of and in opposition to the military hierarchy represented by Thursday, accords with Aristotle's definition of the "intermediate man," the person who must decide for himself what the appropriate action is in any given situation. According to Aristotle, "questions about action and expediency, like questions about health, have no fixed [and invariable answers] ... the agents themselves must consider in each case what the opportune action is" (Nicomachean Ethics 1104a3-9). Because each circumstance is particular, the virtuous person must vary his response to suit its particularities. Consequently, to love peace is no more an absolute imperative than to wage war, as Aristotle notes in his comments on anger:
Anger also admits of an excess, deficiency and mean. These are all practically nameless; but since we call the intermediate person mild, let us call the mean mildness. Among the extreme people let the excessive person be irascible, and the vice be irascibility, and let the deficient person be a sort of inirascible person, and the deficiency be inirascibility. (NE 1108a5-10)
Note that Aristotle does not argue that anger is a vice; rather, he includes it among his "Virtues concerned with social life." He recognizes that anger is in some situations an appropriate response to the circumstances. For example, the proper response to something outrageous is outrage. The intermediate position of "mildness" does not mean "without anger"; rather, it means neither prone to nor incapable of anger.
This skill that Aristotle describes, wherein one must take care to choose the appropriate action in a given situation, is especially relevant to the Western, a genre that focuses on conflicts that must be resolved with limited or no support from an institutionalized legal system. In Shane (1952), another film Pumphrey refers to, the farmers mention repeatedly that they are "three hours from the law"; in The Big Country (1958), rancher Major Terrill (Charles Bickford) tells newcomer Jim McKay (Gregory Peck), "You can't call a policeman here. You have to be your own law"; in Red River, there simply is no law or even mention of any law to limit Dunson's actions.
The dramatic appeal of this specific tension is a stock feature of Westerns, replayed most often when the character sees someone riding in but cannot see who it is. In The Tall T (1956), this situation begins the film. Anticipating the possibility of trouble when he sees a stranger ride toward his stagecoach station, Hank, the station manager, keeps his gun at the ready. When he recognizes Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott), he relaxes, saying, "Been a station man too long, I guess. Gettin' so I cock a hammer for near no reason at all." We later learn that Hank's caution is not unwarranted: After Brennan leaves the station, it is taken over by a band of thieves who kill Hank and his son. The drama of this type of ambiguity is also epitomized in one of the most famous Western paintings, Frederic Remington's "The Scout: Friends or Enemies?" which features an Indian leaning in to the gleam of distant lights, trying in vain to discern their significance. The appeal of this convention is that Everyman must determine the appropriate intermediate behavior and find the strength within himself to enact that behavior.
For Aristotle, a man is virtuous if he succeeds in finding the action appropriate for any given situation, whether that action be peace or war, love or hate, speech or silence. Although this definition of virtue may not be as glamorous as the view of the hero hamstrung between opposed alternatives, it is nevertheless difficult to achieve. As Aristotle writes,
it is hard work to be excellent, since in each case it is hard work to find what is intermediate; e.g., not everyone, but only one who knows, finds the midpoint in a circle. So also getting angry, or giving and spending money, is easy and anyone can do it; but doing it to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end, and in the right way is no longer easy, nor can everyone do it. Hence [doing these things] well is rare, praiseworthy and fine. (NE 1109a24-30)
A premise underlies Aristotle's view, namely, that there is an appropriate response to any given situation, and this latent assumption has several implications for the drama. For one thing, the Western could never be truly tragic were a negotiated resolution completely out of reach. If the conflict is unresolvable, if the demands of a situation place the hero in an impossible position, tragedy cannot be achieved. Without the possibility of a happy ending won through strength of character, the drama cannot inspire pity or fear, the components necessary for Aristotelian tragedy; without them, the story evokes only "revulsion" (Aristotle, Poetics 1452b).
The difficulty of the struggle to enact the appropriate behavior is dramatized in those scenes in Broken Arrow when both Tom Jeffords and Cochise (Jeff Chandler) are called women by men who wonder why they will not fight. In both instances, the tension of the moment is marked by the hero's assumption of a hostile stance: To love peace is clearly an attribute of femininity (High Noon, anyone?). Although the Apache's question is part of his own strategy, a rhetorical feint designed to incite Jeffords to react violently, thereby justifying an all-out Apache attack, Jeffords wins the moment because he astutely distinguishes between the implicit charge of gender and the explicit charge of sex. Jeffords's counterstrategy is not to bridge the sexes but to reclassify the confusing behavior, as though he were saying, "It's not that I am a woman, but I am as womanly as you." The behavior may appear to be that of a woman, yet it is also that of an Apache. The taint of effeminacy does not stick, because essence (I am a man) overcomes resemblance (I act like a woman). By honoring the virtue of success more than that of masculinity, Jeffords achieves his goal--peace between the Apaches and the whites--because, in this particular instance, although importantly not in others, he refuses to fight the men who challenge him. To restate Aristotle's point about this behavior in the terms established by Red River, the difficult choice Western heroes make is not whether to be Dunson or Matt but when to be Dunson and when to be Matt. And one can be assured that in the course of time and a Western narrative, the hero will be called on to play both roles.
The challenge of being an intermediate man is also marked by the number of characters in Westerns who fall on one side of the divide or the other; as Aristotle says, it "is easy" to fail. There are those who are consistently deferential, to the point of cowardice and humiliation. These are usually the figures of comedy--the barber, the bartender, the green immigrant. Opposed to them are the characters who never defer, who struggle to dominate in all circumstances. If minor characters, they are figures of contempt (e.g., Harvey Pell, Hunt Bromley). If major characters, they are the figures of tragedy: Colonel Thursday, Thomas Dunson, Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956). These men are tragic because they contain the possibility of change; they are intelligent, often astute, attentive to the failures of others. Yet they are blind to the fault in themselves, and that blindness marks them for tragedy. 10 In Aristotle's terms, they fail to enact the virtuous behavior of which they are eminently capable. Although they may be the protagonists of their narratives, they are surely not the heroes.
The "rare, praiseworthy and fine" nature of intermediate behavior is repeatedly dramatized in Fort Apache in Captain York's confrontations with Colonel Thursday, demonstrating how anger can function as a "social virtue." When Thursday reveals his plan to enter the canyon mounted in fours, York yells at Thursday, saying that to ride into the canyon filled with Apaches would be "suicide." York's breach of military protocol is evidenced by two gestures: throwing down his gauntlet and pulling his horse in front of Thursday's mount to confront him directly. But although his anger causes him to disregard the proprieties of speech that govern behavior in the cavalry, it is appropriate here, as his aim is to save the troop. Later in the battle York's behavior toward Thursday changes to fit the needs of that situation. When he sees Thursday struggling to get a horse to ride back into the battle, York offers Thursday his own horse, thinking that Thursday will ride to safety. Thursday instead asks for York's saber, saying that he will rejoin his command. When York points out that the "command is wiped out," Thursday repeats his request for the saber, asking, "Any questions, Captain?" The camera cuts to a close-up of John Wayne, who responds slowly and quietly, long after Thursday is out of hearing range, "No questions." The different situations require different strategies. When it is right to resist, York resists; when it is right to acquiesce, York acquiesces. He is both peace-loving and "ready to fight without `quitting.'" Furthermore, it is York's ability to enact each ability at the proper time that makes him what Peter Stowell calls "[Ford's] model leader. This figure was flexible, pragmatic, and humane.... This was Ford's consummate military professional, individual hero, and mythic mediator" (82).
The most "rare, praiseworthy and fine" moment is the dramatic final scene when an idolatrous reporter runs his hand along the saber mounted to the frame of Thursday's portrait (ironically, it may be York's saber), gushing, "He must have been a great man and a great soldier." Ford lets us anticipate York's response for a long five seconds before he answers, "No man died more gallantly, nor won more honor for his regiment." While one can debate whether York does the right thing in lying about Thursday's charge, one cannot doubt that, in Ford's mind, York is doing the right thing, "doing it to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end." As Ford said in his interview with Peter Bogdanovich, "We've had a lot of people who were supposed to be great heroes, and you know damn well they weren't. But it's good for the country to have heroes to live up to" (Bogdanovich 86).
One can characterize these behaviors as masculine and feminine, but for the heroes who incorporate them into strategies for success, those gender attributes are beside the point. Jeffords handles the Apache's "woman" charge as deftly as he handles his six-shooter. Larger issues merit his attention. This is not to say, however, that the hero's apparent disregard of gender categories means that they do not merit our interest. Ironically, the hero's lack of interest in gender is precisely what makes gender interesting in these films. If Jeffords does not strike at the charge of "woman," if York gladly humbles himself before another man, what kind of men are these? That is the question that the postwar Western works to answer.
Success Comes from Imitating Women: Fort Apache
I want now to take my reading of Fort Apache one step further and suggest that the reason York succeeds and lives and Thursday fails and dies is precisely because York pursues behavior specifically marked as feminine within the context of the film, whereas Thursday adheres to a rigid ideal masculinity. The film clearly lays out two competing lines of affiliation between people: vertical and horizontal. Vertical affiliations are characterized by the military hierarchy; horizontal affiliations are marked by camaraderie across divides of class, gender, race, ethnicity, age, and history. In fact, the film repeatedly stages horizontal affiliations that work against the strict hierarchies of the cavalry. When Sergeant Mulcahy drills the new recruits, he asks whether anyone is from County Cork--no. From Limerick? No. From County Sligo? One man responds, and Mulcahy steps forward to say, "Now we don't want to show any favoritism about this, but you're now an acting corporal." A nearly identical scene is staged with Beaufort, who makes a fellow former Confederate a corporal.
Importantly, it is the women of the film who first establish such horizontal affiliations on screen. 11 The first scene emphasizing horizontal relations occurs when the young Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) seeks help in organizing her household from Emily Collingwood (Anna Lee), who states that all the women rely on Mrs. O'Rourke. When told that Thursday has made no arrangements for Philadelphia to set up the household, Mrs. Collingwood says in anger, "Owen! Owen Thursday, that man!" Unlike the men of the fort, Mrs. Collingwood addresses him not by his title but by his first name, a gesture that cuts through the formality of vertical relations to express anger at him as a person in a horizontal relationship with her. Mrs. Collingwood then states that "in times of trouble we call on Mrs. O'Rourke," using her title as a gesture of respect. As she sweeps out the front door, the camera cuts to a full, eye-level shot down the wooden sidewalk, displaying the row houses that Richard Slotkin calls one of the "two dominant architectural frames of Fort Apache" (338). Visually striking, this scene displays the central metaphor for the social (as opposed to military) relations at the fort, as characters differentiated by sex, class, and ethnicity work together to solve common problems. This theme is developed in the interaction between the characters in the scene. Mrs. Collingwood asks a woman on the walk, "Martha, where's Mrs. O'Rourke?" Martha then calls, "Mrs. O'Rourke!" The call is picked up by another woman, then by several men in unison, until Mrs. O'Rourke (Irene Rich) shows up and runs toward the camera. The eye-level camera is stationary during the entire scene, suggesting the connections and unity shared by all these characters as they run into focus. They are all equal in the camera's eye. The message introduced in this scene becomes clear by the film's end: Female networks based on horizontal relations lead to success, whereas male hierarchies based on vertical relations lead to failure.
Mrs. O'Rourke is a key figure in the development of this theme. Although of a lower social class, a point made clear by Thursday, she is the one who successfully links characters of different classes, sexes, and ranks. When Philadelphia visits the O'Rourkes and the men tell her to leave as she is visiting against her father's orders, Philadelphia protests, citing an alternative code of conduct--the behavior expected from a young man in love. Although the two men, Mr. O'Rourke Senior (Ward Bond) and Junior (John Agar), protest, appealing to Colonel Thursday's military authority, Mrs. O'Rourke steps in to agree with Philadelphia, orders her husband to sit down, and wins the argument. Women's affiliations dominate male hierarchies, and that is a good thing in the view of the film.
Mrs. O'Rourke's further success in transforming vertical relations to horizontal ones is registered visually at the second dance in the film, the noncommissioned officers' dance. The formalities of Fort Apache tradition and rules of the Grand March begin the transformation, for the wife of the ranking noncommissioned officer (O'Rourke) must dance with the regimental leader (Thursday) while her husband must dance with the commander's lady (in this case Philadelphia). Mrs. O'Rourke takes Thursday's arm and begins the dance. They march toward the camera and down the center of the hall arm in arm. The second go-round of the reel demands that the two couples join up arm in arm and repeat the march down the center of the hall and again toward the camera. In this shot (which is also shown during the opening credits of the film, as if to establish early the importance of these horizontal relations), Mrs. Collingwood links the arms of her husband and Thursday as she stands in the center of the shot. Shirley Temple, one of the stars of the film, is forced to the edge of the frame, as the camera centers on Mrs. O'Rourke and her successful subversion of military hierarchy, as she triumphantly links the two combative officers.
This connection and respect among people across hierarchical lines extend to Mrs. Collingwood's decision not to have her husband notified that his military transfer came in before he goes to battle Cochise. Although the orders come in time for her to stop him, Mrs. Collingwood, announcing that "Sam is no coward" (notice she does not use his military title), decides to let him ride off to possible death. While her decision might be read as her capitulation to military honor, it seems rather to be a gesture of respect for the man she loves. This character does not abide by the Western's usual gender stereotypes (the nonviolent woman who seeks to keep her husband whipped, exemplified by Amy Kane in High Noon); instead she breaks out of that stereotype to appeal to a sense of honor that she shares with her husband, against the supposed precepts of her sex. Even though characters share horizontal affiliations that may seem to isolate them from the larger community (the Irish, the Confederates), those affiliations, precisely because horizontal, easily meld into larger communities (the platoon, the regiment, the army).
Mrs. Collingwood's empathy in this scene reiterates the success of feminine virtues, for her ability to place herself in another's position, to conceive of what another would think or desire, makes it possible for her to imagine what her husband would want. 12 The film makes it clear that this same quality also functions as successful military strategy. When the regiment engages in its fatal pursuit of Cochise, York advises Thursday that Cochise and his men are probably hiding among the stones of the canyon:
THURSDAY: Well, I don't see them, not a one.
YORK: They're down there, sir, among the rocks.
THURSDAY: Have you seen them, Captain?
YORK: I don't have to. I know.
THURSDAY: How?
YORK: 'Cause if I were Cochise that's where I'd take up position.
THURSDAY: And that dust cloud beyond?
YORK: It's an Apache trick, probably squaws and children dragging mesquite.
THURSDAY: Very ingenious, Captain. You make me suspect your Cochise has studied under Alexander the Great or Bonaparte at the least. Gentleman, mount your troops. We'll charge in column of fours.
YORK: Mounted in fours? That's suicide, Colonel. I tell you they're down there.
THURSDAY: York! Captain York, you're relieved of command of your troop. There's no room in this regiment for a coward.
York's ability to place himself in Cochise's position, to occupy a relation of similarity with him ("your Cochise"), enables him to predict accurately both Cochise's position and the regiment's loss of the battle. Thursday's failure to respect any kind of horizontal relation, even imaginary, results in not only his death but that of most of his troop. He simply cannot imagine that he might share anything with one so far beneath him as Cochise.
The failure of this hierarchical thinking is evident outside the world of the fort as well. When Cochise complains that "we looked to the Great White Father for protection. He gave us slow death," he speaks as much for Collingwood, O'Rourke, Beaufort, and the other dead men in Thursday's company as for the Apaches. They look to the army for security, but instead they are given the incompetent commandering of Thursday. These men attempt to reason with Thursday by appeals to alternative horizontal relations, to notions of honor, shared history, ethnicity, manly conduct, yet their efforts fail. The following exchange, York's protest against Thursday's command that they attack Cochise, reveals the two directions of affiliation in conflict:
YORK: Colonel, if you send out the regiment, Cochise'll think that we tricked him.
THURSDAY: Exactly. We have tricked him. Tricked him into returning to American soil, and I intend to see that he stays there.
YORK: Colonel Thursday, I gave my word to Cochise. No man's going to make a liar out of me, sir.
THURSDAY: Your word to a breach-clouted savage, illiterate, uncivilized murderer, and treaty-breaker? There's no question of honor, sir, between an American officer and Cochise.
YORK: There is to me, sir.
THURSDAY: Captain York, you may have commanded your own regiment in the late war, but so long as you command a troop in mine you will obey my orders.
York's appeal to an idea of honor shared between men of good will is lost on Thursday, who sees the world only in terms of hierarchies whose authority is inviolable. York ends up as the sympathetic hero of the story because he can competently negotiate between both poles, the hierarchy represented by Thursday and the cross-status affiliations represented by the women. 13
Whereas several writers have argued that the women in Fort Apache, although more developed than in other Westerns, are largely incidental to the main narrative, I argue that their presence is the key to the thematics of the film because their model of mutual respect and their emphasis on community and horizontal affiliation are endorsed as well by the most sympathetic characters: O'Rourke, Beaufort, York, and Cochise. Furthermore, the tragedy of Thursday's troop is caused by Thursday's disdain for those very qualities. Had Thursday listened to York, respected his similarity with Cochise as a leader in a difficult position, and developed his camaraderie with his men rather than the authority of his position over them, either they would have avoided battle with Cochise or they would have defeated him. Ironically, the qualities exemplified by the women promise military success in this film. In Fort Apache, acting like women is not a symptom of emasculation but a strategy for success.
Conclusion
John Ford's The Searchers opens and closes with a song that poses a number of questions about men and their conduct: "What makes a man to wander? What makes a man to roam? What makes a man leave bed and board and turn his back on home?" The song offers no answers, only iterating the closing command: "Ride away." It is possible to see that injunction to mobility as a recommendation for flight, an escape from the hard questions and harder answers about masculinity, so that these questions linger without hope of solution. But it is also possible to see that command as an incitement to keep seeking, continue searching, as if the answer is to be found in the effort expended to find it. In the gap between the interrogatory and the imperative lies an answer for the man himself to seek out.
These different interpretations of The Searchers' lyrics also mark my difference from other critics of postwar Western masculinity: Whereas others see the contradictions within masculinity as static paradoxes that can find no resolution, I see these conflicts as opportunities for Western heroes to expand the confining categories of the past, thereby making themselves into new men. Different Westerns offer different models of this new man, a diversity that invites greater critical scrutiny, but the most popular of the postwar Westerns seem bound by this resemblance--that all engage in the construction of a new masculinity, one that incorporates many, variously gendered kinds of behavior to create success for the hero. In these Westerns, masculinity is not a static condition but a dynamic force, a question actively seeking an answer. These films celebrate those heroes who seek those answers, dramatizing their repeated success in opposition to an "ideal" masculinity that is consistently represented as limiting, self-defeating, and ultimately sterile. With Thomas Dunson, Ethan Edwards, and Owen Thursday in the rear view mirror, riding away looks better and better.
NOTES
1. Cawelti and Wright become straw men in Pumphrey's representation of their critical positions because, although they do believe that Westerns are "an artistic device for resolving problems rather than confronting their irreconcilable ambiguities" (Cawelti 37), thus endorsing Pumphrey's charge that they are "integrationists," one can also find evidence in their work of an important qualifying belief: "The myth is not a theoretical effort to analyze an institutional contradiction but a conceptual and unconscious effort to live with the contradiction by providing a model of action which can utilize and overcome it" (Wright 150; my emphasis). According to Wright, then, the contradiction lives despite the myth's attempt to overcome it. Pumphrey's point of difference with these critics rests on whether one believes that the artistic form is successful in resolving these ambiguities: He claims that the form is not successful, whereas they (according to him) claim it is. But note that neither Cawelti or Wright claims that the Western formula is successful in resolving what they see as irresolvable ambiguities; they merely state that it tries.
2. Although some critics, notably Peter Biskind, Michael Coyne, and, to a lesser extent, Philip French, read this conflict strictly as generational (because the competent man is usually, although not always, mature, and the "hothead" is usually, although not always, young), I regard the conflict as a difference in strategies, although the experienced man often has an advantage because he has had the time to develop multiple strategies. Notable exceptions to this rule are Ethan and Martin of The Searchers: Although Ethan has many skills that Martin learns from him, it is finally Martin, the man who learns to behave in a manner appropriate to each situation, who finally negotiates the successful return of Debbie.
3. Although women can be prominent in Westerns, they usually function not as individuals but as symbols--of domesticity, castration, etc.--without much latitude given to their characterization.
4. In the service of a different argument, Lee Clark Mitchell also points to the Western's distinction between being a man and making a man, although he characterizes the relation between the two actions as a "paradox": "The paradox lies in the fact that we watch them become what they already are, as we exult in the culturally encoded confirmation of a man again becoming an ideological man" (174-75).
5. Cawelti's views seem to be influenced by Robert Warshow's comments on the conflict between men and women in The Immediate Experience: "Very often this woman [that the Western hero loves] is from the East and her failure to understand represents a clash of cultures" (137). Cawelti also explicitly cites Leslie Fiedler's thesis that the female in Westerns is more disruptive to the hero's way of life than the savage, with whom the hero shares key characteristics. Although Warshow and Fiedler are important critics of the Western, I have concentrated my discussion on Kitses, Cawelti, and Wright because they are most regularly cited in recent criticism, and they are critics explicitly mentioned in Pumphrey's article.
6. Although Pumphrey does not specifically point to attention to fashion or appearance as one of the contradictions of masculinity, he does note in the same article that "By the 1930s ... any significant attention to bodily display in mainstream Westerns (beyond neatness and selected character touches) marks a male character as a villain, city slicker or weakling" (182).
As Lee Clark Mitchell points out, however, this generic rule is not universally true, and he puts forth a convincing study of the "cowboy's preening self-regard--how much interest he has found in himself as an object `good to look at'" (163).
7. Although York's fastidious appearance has a historical motive (the film is based on Custer and the massacre at Little Big Horn), this particular allusion does not negate the larger principle that love of display has long been integral to military culture, as anyone who has spent hours researching military costumes to find the history of the havelock will tell you.
8. Ford on fiddling with the camera: "Instead of looking at their people, they [later directors] look at the camera ... they think that is the secret. It isn't" (Davis 4).
9. Lee Clark Mitchell does a similar study of the permeability of gender categories in the Western, although he focuses more on the masculinity of female characters (in Shane, Hondo, and High Noon) than the femininity of male characters (218-20).
10. Peter French points out that the tragic flaws of Western heroes do not make them tragic heroes in the strict classical sense: "The westerner may display flaws of character that usually drive the plot; for example, Tom Dunson and Will Anderson are tyrannical. Josey Wales is obsessive, etc., but those flaws do not cause their eventual downfall and are usually overcome in external struggles and acts of vengeful violence. Though they cause suffering both for the hero and others, their faults do not result in the hero's tragic downfall" (77). Warshow, however, makes the point that death need not be necessary for tragedy in the Western: The Western hero "seek[s] not to extend his dominion but only to assert his personal value, and his tragedy lies in the fact that even this circumscribed demand cannot be fully realized" (143).
See French's Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in the Western for another Aristotelian approach to the Western.
11. As Garry Wills points out, Frank Nugent, Fort Apache's screenwriter, was specifically "asked to introduce women to the imperial tale" (168). Richard Slotkin has also noticed the importance of women in Fort Apache, arguing that "they are identified with the principles of democratic egalitarianism" (338).
12. Empathy is coded as a feminine virtue in the film as it is first associated with a woman and then adopted by York in the scene following Mrs. Collingwood's employment of this quality.
13. For an enlightening discussion of other models of "masterless consociations" in the real West, see Jim Corbett's discussion of posses in Goatwalking, especially chapter 6.
WORKS CONSULTED
Anderson, Lindsay. About John Ford. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981.
Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics. Trans. James Hutton. New York: Norton, 1982.
--------. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985.
Bellour, Raymond. "Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Raymond Bellour--An Excerpt." Interview with Janet Bergstrom. Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 186-95.
Bogdanovich, Peter. John Ford. Rev. ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1978.
Broken Arrow. Dir. Delmer Daves. Perf. James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Debra Paget. Twentieth Century-Fox, 1950.
Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green: Bowling Green U Popular P, 1984.
Cohan, Steven. Masked Men: Masculinity and Movies in the Fifties. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997.
Corbett, Jim. Goatwalking. New York: Viking, 1991.
Coyne, Michael. Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western. London: Tauris, 1997.
Davis, Ronald L. John Ford: Hollywood's Old Master. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1995.
Fort Apache. Dir. John Ford. Perf. Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Shirley Temple. Argosy/RKO, 1948.
French, Peter A. Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in the Western. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997.
The Gunfighter. Dir. Henry King. Perf. Gregory Peck, Millard Mitchell. Twentieth Century-Fox, 1950.
High Noon. Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Perf. Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado. United Artists, 1952.
Kitses, Jim. Horizons West. Cinema One Series 12. London: Thames and Hudson, 1969.
Meyer, William R. The Making of the Great Westerns. New Rochelle: Arlington, 1979.
Mitchell, Lee Clark. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.
Peek, Wendy Chapman. "Cherchez la Femme: The Searchers, Vertigo and Masculinity in post-Kinsey America." Journal of American Culture 21.2 (Summer 1998): 73-87.
Pumphrey, Martin. "Masculinity." The BFI Companion to the Western. Ed. Edward Buscombe. New York: Atheneum, 1981.
Pye, Douglas. "The Collapse of Fantasy: Masculinity in the Westerns of Anthony Mann." The Book of Westerns. Ed. Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York: Continuum, 1995. 167-73.
Red River. Dir. Howard Hawks. Perf. John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru. United Artists, 1948.
Rev. of Fort Apache. Time May 10, 1948: 102, 104.
The Searchers. Dir. John Ford. Perf. John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles. Warner Bros., 1956.
Shane. Dir. George Stevens. Perf. Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin. Paramount, 1953.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. 1992. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1998.
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West in Symbol and Myth. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1950.
Stowell, Peter. John Ford. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
The Tall T. Dir. Budd Boetticher. Perf. Randolph Scott, Maureen O'Sullivan. Columbia, 1957.
Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Experience. 1964. New York: Atheneum, 1975.
Wills, Garry. John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Wright, Will. Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western. Berkeley: U of California P, 1975.
WENDY CHAPMAN PEEK is an associate professor of English at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. She is currently completing a book on Western films of the 1950s.
Photograph (Publicity photo for Fort Apache.)
My Research
