A Sense of Place

?Yet however successfully it may create the illusion of a self-sustaining world, the Western film has its origins in a specific historical experience and in the wide variety of cultural responses to it. Ever since the discovery of America by Europeans in 1492, those who encountered this strange new land have been trying to make sense of it through factual accounts, imaginative literature, visual representations and other forms of discourse.

? The first accounts of the West are travellers' tales, written for a European audience eager to hear of the marvels discovered in this 'new world'. From the time of Columbus, America was a source of exotic descriptions of wondrous landscapes, animals and people, and of events both terrifying and inspiring. By the beginning of the 19th century the American 'West' had taken on a character of its own as its location had shifted, first out across the Appalachians and then beyond into that vast area west of the Mississippi,?? opened?? up? to?? exploration?? by?? the?? United?? States? through? the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The exploits of explorers such as Lewis and Clark, Zehulon Pike, John Fremont and John Wesley Powell were written up and disseminated to armchair travellers in the east and in Europe. As the hardships and dangers associated with journeying through the interior of North America became more manageable, scores of writers, celebrated and obscure, rushed into print with their impressions. Several of these, including George Frederick Ruxton, Washington Irving, Francis Parkman and Mark Twain, directly influenced the popular image of what the West was like. Ruxton helped create the figure of the mountain man, Irving and Parkman captured something of the vastness and wildness of the Great Plains before settlers arrived, and Mark Twain produced an unforgettable portrait of the mining frontier in Nevada. As the very name 'Western' indicates, one of the ways in which we most readily identify a Western film is through its setting. It seems safe to say that a large part of the Western's appeal, especially to easterners and non-Americans, derives from the exotic beauty of the wide open spaces of the plains, mountains and deserts of the trans-Mississippi West. Though very few Westerns have dealt with the actual exploits of explorers or travellers, the evocation of the spirit of place, that sense of the West as a distinctive and special environment which they first articulated, can scarcely be over-estimated as an attraction of Western films. Think, for example, how many contain a place name in their title: Colorado Territory, Rio Bravo, North to Alaska. This is just as true of the B-Western, which we might suppose would operate in a fantasy no-man's-land in which specific geographical reference is subordinate to plot and action. To take an arbitrary example, between 1936 and 1943 the Republic studio made 51 films in their Three Mesquiteers series. Of these, 17 make an explicit reference in their title to a particular locality: the Rockies twice, the Black Hills, Santa Fe twice, the Red River, Texas three times, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, the Pecos, Sonora, the Cherokee Trail, the Cimarron, the Rio Grande. What is evoked is of course an imaginative rather than an actual geography. The B-Western with its budget restrictions could rarely afford to shoot in the locations the titles invoked. Even in bigger-budget films authenticity is by no means always observed. The real physical locations in which John Ford's Westerns are shot are often hundreds of miles from where the drama is set. Nevertheless, geographical allusion would appear to constitute one of the parameters of the genre. Westerns must be set in the West. Attempts by critics to pin down the geographical limits of the genre, however, fail to understand the subtlety of the relation between actual and imaginative geography. Philip French in his book Westerns defines the limits as 'west of the Mississippi, south of the 49th Parallel and north of the Rio Grande'. This surely will not do. Many films set outside the trans-Mississippi West still fall within the genre. Mexico and the far north are legitimate settings. Both physically and culturally Mexico can be seen as an extension of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, while Canada is a northern continuation of the Rockies and plains. It would be an odd definition of the Western which excluded The Far Country (set in the Yukon) or The Wild Bunch (set mostly in Mexico). Drums Along the Mohawk and Northwest Passage are notable Westerns set east of the Mississippi. Then there is the Florida Western, dealing with the wars against the Seminole. And what of Hopalong Cassidy, who journeyed as far as China and Arabia? The West of the imagination is grounded in real geography, but not confined by it. ?