The Philosophy of the Western (review)

The best essays in The Philosophy of the Western respect the preposition of its title: they examine how the genre raises and develops its own particular ideas about selfhood, community, moral relations, and social justice. When necessary, their ethical and political arguments cite relevant philosophers, but the films remain uncut and in focus. Writing about society and the state of nature in Deadwood, Paul A. Cantor demonstrates beautifully how the television series explores "the potential disjunction between law and order," and he invokes Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau—each of whom had savage America in mind—to identify the philosophical disagreements that lead to frontier violence (115). Stephen J. Mexal also draws upon Locke to explain clearly how differences between the 1957 and 2007 versions of 3:10 to Yuma reflect "the evolution of masculine liberalism in America," while Michael Valdez Moses uses Rousseau to argue persuasively that "revisionist westerns of the early and mid-1970s represent the American Indian as a countercultural ideal" (72, 271).

The editors' introduction, however, uses a different preposition in its title—"Philosophy and the Western"—that signifies the way other essays yoke films to philosophers, an approach that chops up reflective motion pictures into illustrative freeze frames. Arguing that Marshal Will Kane is "Kant's ideal moral agent" (171) oversimplifies both his character and the moral universe of High Noon (1952); arguing that "we need only to watch John Wayne's characters to understand how a great pragmatist would function" and "to admire that way of acting" (66) ignores his dysfunctional roles in Red River (1948), Rio Grande (1950), and The Searchers (1956). This philosophy-first approach tends not only to reduce but also to distort the meaning of the films: "According to Stoicism, because the lone rider accepts this role, he is able to be happy," but just try telling that to either Kane or Shane, who nonetheless somehow here exemplify men "subjectively comfortable in their objective solitude" (25, 18). Precisely because "characters in westerns typically eschew the intellectualism associated with philosophy," the most convincing essays allow Westerns to buck rather than submit to philosophical abstractions (2). As Ken Hada observes in his ethical analysis of High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Westerns dramatize the practical and emotional "consequences of holding various theoretical positions," none of which they flatly illustrate (187).

The collection is evenly divided between classic and contemporary Westerns, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of the genre, although writers on later films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and No Country for Old Men (2007) tend to underestimate the moral ambiguity and complexity of earlier films. "What the classic western is not, even in its darker moments, is ironic" (250)—but just try telling that one to drunk Doc Boone at the end of Stagecoach (1939), when he drily pronounces the convict and the prostitute "saved from the blessings of civilization." When it comes to philosophy, on the other hand, the volume enlists far more classic than contemporary writers, even when the quick have more to say than the dead. In analyzing the Western's representation of horses, why call upon Sartre, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, who "pay little attention to animals in their philosophic works," rather than Tom Regan and Peter Singer, whose work does attend to human-animal relations (330)? Similarly, if crossing Hegel with Bakhtin to discuss women's dress and the performance of gender roles on the frontier compels the invention of a whole new critical term—"x-glossic"—then perhaps it is time to find more relevant and recent philosophers, such as Judith Butler (312).

The series to which this volume belongs, The Philosophy of Popular Culture, emphasizes traditional philosophical ideas, which explains why Derrida is nowhere in sight, but the forced application of those ideas can break the creative spirit of the genre. "Westerns and philosophy may seem to have little to do with one another," but all the essays here prove otherwise, fulfilling the main goal of...