The Philosophy of the Western

MOMMAS, DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE PRAGMATISTS

55 MOMMAS, DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE PRAGMATISTS B. Steve Csaki There is no reasonable argument against the (true) assertion that the ultimate American cinematic cowboy was, and remains, John Wayne. The questions of exactly why and how he and his films so captured the American psyche remain somewhat open. In fact, there are myriad aspects to this question, but I believe that there is one overarching explanation as to why John Wayne was so clearly special: he was an excellent pragmatist. I shall argue that any cowboy hero must act pragmatically and that John Wayne so embodied the true sense of the classical American pragmatist that this was one of the primary factors that enabled him to become the symbol of not only the American West but also of American men in general. Since it would be impossible to cover all of John Wayne’s westerns in this essay, I shall concentrate on two of his films: Rooster Cogburn (1975, the sequel to True Grit, 1969) and The Cowboys (1971). I choose to examine these particular films for two primary reasons. First, Wayne’s persona had been perfected by the time he made these films. Second, and perhaps most obviously, Wayne is quite literally a father figure in The Cowboys, and so we very clearly see the attributes (in both Wayne and the boys) that a good (western/cowboy) man should possess and how they are earned by, rather than bestowed upon, a cowboy. Pragmatism is an empirically based philosophy and, as such, experience plays a critical role in the successful application of the methodology. A pragmatic approach expands the notion of experience to include not only one’s personal experience but the experiences of others as well. Thus a father figure, a library, TV, the Internet, or simple observation of others all count as types of experience that one can use to a pragmatic advantage. In 56 B. Steve Csaki western films the heroes are exemplified as role models so we ought to be able to learn from their experiences. Before we can directly proceed to examine the films, we must at least begin a rather monstrous undertaking. In a relatively short space, a framework (however structurally slender) of what it means to be a pragmatist must be erected. This is really a twofold task. First, the pragmatic theory must be outlined and then how this theory is utilized or lived on a day-to-day basis must be explained. Once some aspects of pragmatism have been introduced, then I shall draw from the films in order both to explain additional components of pragmatism and to show that John Wayne’s characters are pragmatic . Finally, once the framework of pragmatism has been completed and various examples have been examined, we can look at the films a bit more closely and see how pragmatism fits. Once the films have been examined, it will be possible to see that John Wayne’s characters typically represent an excellent example of the theory and technique that is pragmatism. In fact, we shall see that these characters are not only functional pragmatists but exceptionally good pragmatists. William James (1842–1910) offers a simple and yet gripping analogy to help us understand what pragmatism is and how it works in a series of lectures he gave in 1906–7 to explain just this issue—the meaning of pragmatism . In the second of these lectures James tells the story of a camping trip that he and some friends took. James went for a walk and returned to find that “a ferocious metaphysical dispute” had split the group into two equally opposed factions. As James puts it, “The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel —a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree’s opposite side a human being was imagined to stand.” The person in question is trying to get a good look at the squirrel, but every time the person tries to see the squirrel and circles the tree in order to do so, the squirrel moves fast enough (in the same direction) to keep the tree in between itself and the person. Thus, the person never can see the squirrel at all. James sums up the ensuing argument in this way: “The resulting metaphysical question now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is...