Film Images of Oklahoma

FILM IMAGES OF OKLAHOMA by Thomas W. Bohn and Joseph Mi Ili chap Hollywood films have frequently been an imperfect mirror of American society, as numerous studies have demonstrated.1 Since motion pictures are powerful communicators of many forms of subjective reality ranging from images of women to characteristics of the American West, it becomes important to identify and understand these images in popular film.2 To the best of our knowledge, however, no studies exist which probe the relationships between the reality of a geographical state and its filmed images. The purpose of this article is the identification, analysis, and evaluation of feature length narrative films which depict the physical, historical, and cultural images of Oklahoma. Specifically, this study examines the tensions existing between Oklahoma's reality and its public image created and communicated by American feature length, narrative films. We first became involved in this study because of a general interest in American film and its affinity for important elements in the national experience. As relative newcomers to Oklahoma, we encountered the realities of the state long after experiencing powerful sight and sound images of it in dozens of Hollywood films. In thinking about Oklahoma , scenes from two movies immediately come to mind, Oklahoma and The Grapes of Wrath. 3 While polar opposi tes in every sense, they more than any other films have established the most dominant images of Oklahoma— as Garden of the West and Western Wasteland— in the minds of the American people. Reflections on these and other films about the state triggered this inquiry into what popular film has done to and with Oklahoma. Our investigation followed four separate stages. The first was to This papen was fairst delivered at the 7th Annual Oklahoma State University FlZmathon In February, 1979. Pnofaessons Bohn and MlZZlchap both teach at the University ofa Tulsa. 83 determine which films, beyond the obvious examples, were concerned with Oklahoma. The resources for this search were sketchy and incomplete, a problem not unfamiliar in popular film scholarship. This survey produced a tentative filmography of fifty-fi ve feature length narrative films about Oklahoma, which is incorporated in the notes. ^ After compiling this filmography several key films were selected for primary analysis. The criteria of choice included popular and artistic importance, as well as historical and thematic variety.5 Next, major thematic patterns were identified in these critically significant films. The final stage involved the analysis of the conceptual tensions between Oklahoma's reality and its film image. The analysis of important films about Oklahoma and other non-filmic materials revealed four basic themes: (1) setting, (2) land, (3) people, and (4) history. The first use of Oklahoma is simply as a setting for narrative action, most often seen in the Western genre. Oklahoma functions in this way as a general environmental identity with little or no specific reference to the state's unique physical, cultural, and historical characteristics. Many films use Oklahoma in their titles yet contain little meaning for the state other than as a general location. Oklahoma is often used for easy audience identification of B Westerns as can be seen in such titles as Home in Oklahoma, Oklahoma Badlands, or Old Oklahoma Plains. The other three themes assume greater importance in identifying the affinities and tensions between the reality of Oklahoma and its film images. The land theme is illustrated by images ranging from green pastures and fertile farms in Oklahoma, to barren earth and abandoned homesteads in The Grapes of Wrath. Other land images include raw prairie settled by land rush Sooners in Cimarron and Tumbleweeds, oil boomtowns mushrooming overnight in Boomtown and Oklahoma Crude, and vast forests of oil derricks dominating urban landscapes in Tulsa. One of the most unusual images of Oklahoma's landscape exists in the impressionistic backdrops to Agnes DeMi lie' s dance sequences in Oklahoma. Here the stylized landscape resembles Oklahoma's physical reality more than the supposedly realistic scenes in the rest of the film, most of which actually were shot in Arizona. In contrast, one of the first narrative films about the state, Early Oklahoma, made in 1912, uses the real landscape of the famous Miller Brothers 101 Ranch near...