The Good, the Bad, and the American: Interrogating the Morality of the Western in A History of Violence

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the broadcast media were saturated with evocations of the Western. It is perhaps unsurprising that this genre, which centers on myths of national identity and which held significant cultural currency throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, should be employed at a time of intense national crisis; the familiar heroic characters and themes of victory and triumph typical of the western provided traumatized citizens with a means to make sense of, and find comfort in, the aftermath of 9/11. The extent of this turn toward the imagery and narratives of the Western is documented in some detail by Susan Faludi in her book on post-9/11 broadcast media, The Terror Dream. Observing how journalists "cast city firefighters as tall-in-the-saddle cowboys patrolling a Wild West stage set," and deciphering the explicit frontier rhetoric surrounding the instigation of the "war on terror," Faludi declares the narrativization of 9/11 in the broadcast media as a "reenactment of the fifties Western."¹ At the heart of this nostalgic turn toward the Western was an often crude binary opposition of good (the United States, "us") and evil (those against the United States, "them") that, as Richard Jackson notes, failed to critically question either the narrative of 9/11 or the proposed political and military response to the attacks.²

With ten years having passed since 9/11, temporal distance has allowed for a more nuanced consideration of these issues of morality and culpability. Furthermore, these years have been shadowed by media scandals revealing the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US soldiers, severely undermining the construction of the United States as innocent victim that underpinned the cultural narrative of 9/11. A number of films produced during this time have attempted, in varying degrees, to challenge the binary oppositions that pervaded post-9/11 political rhetoric. For example, Rendition (Gavin Hood, 2007) and Redacted (Brian De Palma, 2007) reveal the racial discrimination, abuse, and torture that have taken place in the name of the war on terror. A similar political awareness can be identified in Michael Moore's high-profile documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which critiques the political and military response to 9/11 and overtly mocks the heroic cowboy persona adopted by George W. Bush. In these examples, however, there seems to be an effort to either resolve these controversial issues or to adopt an alternative but equally crude perspective on the US response to 9/11.

A more ambiguous critique of the simplistic, polarized views of good and evil, victim and perpetrator, that dominated post-9/11 broadcast media and political rhetoric can be identified in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005). The film tells the story of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a typical all-American male, married with two children and his own business, whose true identity is revealed to be that of Joey Cusack, a violent gangster from Philadelphia. Although the film never explicitly references 9/11 or the war on terror, Cronenberg has highlighted the evocation of the Western by the Bush administration and its potential consequences as an inspiration for the film: "We thought of the Western—and yes, of course, how political do you want to get? When westerns are mentioned by the President as part of his foreign policy, when Osama bin Laden is wanted 'dead or alive,' you have to seriously think about the 'interblending' of genre, myth and realpolitik, which, I guess, is not that real."³ Evidence of this direct influence can be identified in the character of sheriff Sam Carney (Peter MacNeill), who echoes President Bush's rhetoric in phrases such as "This is a nice town. We have nice people here. We take care of our nice people."⁴ This notion of a heroic, generous, and selfless American identity, in opposition to a villainous other who is indifferent to human life and suffering, is introduced in the opening two sequences of the film. However, as the film progresses...