You start out
thinking Rio is one of the most nicely balanced Westerns, between Indian
and cowboy, mighty landscapes and miniature townscapes.
The Indians in The
Hide Butchers are portrayed as savages, merciless killers of cavalry troops
who yet have a code of honour that repays Rio with his life (and horse).
Gradually it
dawns on one that the stories aren’t as impartial as might first appear; this
is borne out in probably the best finished yarn, Red Dust in Tombstone.
As you are aware, the Earp brothers shot down the Clanton ranch gang at the OK
Corral, and this story follows the aftermath. Wyatt is now a bona fide
legend of the Old West and running for Sheriff, while Virgil is Marshal.
Several things
in the story point to Wildey’s not liking the Earps, and having vastly more affinity
for the wild, rowdy rough-house characters of the frankly irrational old west.
This could include the Clantons. In the one scene they are pictured, Wyatt is
philandering between two women, and makes a short speech on the merits of
electricity.
“Tie that
bull outside”
, is the Clantons rebuff, as they yeehaw out of town.
Mind you, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the female element
brightening up the promenades.
What Wildey is good at is the rough-hewn textures of roads, walls and
stairs where nothing is ever straight. The rough and beaten road contains less
order than will subsequently appear, but has a virile sense of languid figures
owning the place.
The symmetries of the body in an old west setting have a fluid sense
of power that really gives the scene meaning. In the days before electricity,
all the gear such as wagons is run by humans and animals in a cooperative way
that engenders a feeling of harmony.
The harmonic or female vibe is very evident in the macho context. Now,
I’m not saying in a Luddite way that electricity is all nasty; I’m saying that
this time – and setting – just after the shootout at the OK Corral was when an
industrial change took place that is only now finalising.
Electricity isn’t bad in itself – as can be seen from 50s scenes of
Harlem that are fairly similar and rickety (P95). It’s only a function like any other. But there is an order implicit in
electricity that has the capability of changing the symmetries and harmonics
that you see here.
Electricity is the device that enables the
logistics of capital-economics to vastly outweigh the harmonics of a commune.
The Earps, with their passion for order, are the first to usher in this new
era. In their zeal, they almost resemble killer-robots.
Further on, Doc Holliday foils a fake lawman’s
attempt on Wyatt’s life, and Wildey carries on the electrical zeal with the
notion that the plot was hatched by the gaslight company!
Wildey has a nice line in shadow that calls to
mind Grace Slick’s quote on the aesthetics of 1790 versus 1990 (Prev.)
Gaslight or candle-light certainly engenders a
communal harmonic in a way electricity doesn’t (as in Barry Lyndon
)
The way Wyatt equates it with order makes it clear that he is a
forerunner of the modern order of capital-economics vis-a-vis the gentler,
feminine harmonic of the commune.
The order itself
(light) is essentially Apollo, meaning appearance.
Appearance is everything in the modern order. However in nature appearances are constantly
changing. Buffy Saint-Marie’s (98 )
motto of “dry it out” so that dried buffalo manure makes campfires is very
germain. Other things occupy this such as song in the communal atmosphere of a
campfire.
The strength of
nature works in transformation, leading to regrowth and renewal. Whereas Apollo
is simply “the appearance of order”, a natural transformation is strength and
fertility. Dionysus, the wild, lusty god of the vine.
