Dirty Words in Deadwood: Literature and the Postwestern ed. by Melody Graulich, Nicolas S. Witschi, and: The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire ed. by Paul Stasi, Jennifer Greiman (review)

The three-year-long hbo series Deadwood, although it abruptly ended in 2006, has generated a stampede of stimulating scholarly and popular responses. Numerous articles in a variety of scholarly journals and conference panels galore attest to the series’ ongoing impact.

Two collections of essays published in 2013, Dirty Words in Deadwood and The Last Western, showcase diverse perspectives—in writings that are inevitably uneven, as in any such eclectic endeavor. In general the Dirty Words in Deadwood essayists utilize literary analysis. Coeditor Melody Graulich notes of the contributors that “the scholars writing in this volume, all literary or film critics, explore Deadwood as they would a novel by Hawthorne or a play by O’Neill . . .” (xxi). Topics range across film, masculinity, music, female characters, and emotion. Each essay contains an introduction by the editors, which creates the ambiance of a lively, interconnected conversation. This tone is initiated by Graulich’s description of such conversations with David Milch, followed by Nathaniel Lewis’s interview with Milch. The opening chronology of the Deadwood episodes that will be referenced in the essays, plus a cast list, are enormously helpful.

On the other hand, The Last Western editors’ introduction uses the perspective of postcolonial studies of American empire, reflecting on Tony Soprano’s lament, “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?” (1). These essayists represent perspectives not only from literary studies but from political science, film studies, and history. Coeditors Paul Stasi and Jennifer Greiman note that “these essays further track the fictive community of Deadwood as a profane synecdoche of the national one, reflecting on the political, economic, and social transformations of an empire at its edges and ends” (16). Topics include capitalism, the state, violence, race, and gender relations.

Both collections situate Deadwood vis-à-vis cultural studies, the New Western history, and past iconic Western films. They variously term Deadwood a post-Western, an anti-Western, a gothic Western, a meta-Western, an urban Western, a hybrid. In many places the essayists test, engage, and struggle with notions of authenticity, historical accuracy, and the “true West” that have enlivened our field for many years. Some see the hbo town of Deadwood as the toehold of empire, while others see it as a nascent community that coalesces strange bedfellows in order to resist corporate capitalism.

The collections handily meet the challenge that vexes much writing about film, an ephemeral genre in which retelling can overshadow reflection. One way the various essayists accomplish this is by recalling powerful scenes from Deadwood that form indelible tableaus. Among them are Seth Bullock’s hanging of a murderer to “save” him from a lynch mob; the death of Wild Bill Hickok; Al Swearingen’s tender mercy killing of deranged Reverend Smith; Bullock’s fight with a Sioux warrior and subsequent burial ritual; Swearingen’s confessional monologue-while-being-fellated; and the final episode’s march of children to the schoolhouse, led by lovers Joanie Stubbs and Calamity Jane.

This does not mean that the essayists agree upon the interpretation of these pivotal moments. For example, in Dirty Words Michael K. Johnson identifies numerous queer public and private spaces in some of the above scenes: “For a television series that has very few gay or lesbian characters, Deadwood contains an astonishing number of references to homosexuality and homosexual practices” (209). Building on Sedgwick’s theories of homosocial masculinity, Johnson finds Swearingen’s bedside suffocation of Reverend Smith “remarkable for his subdued dialogue and tenderness” (218). Queer spaces are everywhere: “There is no better subject for a subtextual queer reading than the relationship between Swearingen and Mr. Wu. After all, these are two men who...