>--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Does the (deeply tedious) myth of the cowboy really have that much
> > of a
> > death grip on the national consciousness?
><snip>
> > I think (hope) that cultural archetypes burn out after awhile. If
> > they
> > didn't, Scandinavians would still dream about launching Viking
> > raids instead
> > of being preoccupied with keeping the welfare state alive.
>
>Or perhaps, sadly in this case, they just morph. In her op-ed, Smith
>quotes:
>
Too lazy to go look it up, but there's a bit of cultural analysis that Bellah et al draw on in Habits of the Heart. They argue that the myth of the cowboy hero is really just the same myth found in hard-boiled detective novels/tv series/films. And the hard boiled detective is really just made over in the action/buddy flix. The hero is always a bit of a misfit who isn't really capable of living among people. He's a loner. Whenever he has a love interest, she always dies. He mourns, and her death becomes impetus for lashing out at the bad guys. He also tends to adopt others as his family, but refuses to get involved emotionally. (A good example is Gibson's character in the action hero/buddy flicks, Lethal Weapon.)
The bad guys are, of course, the usual suspects but also bureaucratic LEOs and LEAs and crooked LEOs and LEAs. The cowboy/detective/action hero always swoops in to save the day against crime, bureaucracy, and corruption. Those things are always aberrations in a system that would otherwise work fine.
See, an individual can fix the problems. It's not systematic and systemic. It's just corruption. Not surprisingly, fed this stuff from the day we are born, it's pretty hard to shake the hegemony of capitalist individualism.
Blah blah. Quickly cultural analysis, just for you.
Kelley
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'