Page 72 - Cinematic Thinking Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema

62 MichaelJ. Shapiro

in his Buffalo Bill and the Indians: Or Sitting Bulls History Lesson, In this
film Altman turns his attention not simply to the unjust immiseration
of Native America but also to an issue that preoccupied John Ford: the
distinction between history and legend.

History as Countermemory:
Buffalo Bill and the Indians

Altmans Buffalo Bill and the Indians draws on elements from both
Nashville and McCabe—Nashville because the film is "about show busi-
ness" and McCabe because it is aimed at sweeping away mythic or legend-
ary forms of history. He wanted, he said, "to take a more honest ook... at
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some of our myths . . to see what they are. Its no accident that the picture
.
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is subtitled Sitting Bulls History Lesson? ** Yet, as Altman puts it, "It s go-
ing the opposite way from McCabe—its saying that this idea of the West
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is all show business." Whereas Altmans McCabe becomes intelligible as
a critical intervention in the symbolic production of the American West
when viewed against some of John Fords cinematic clichés, his Buffalo Bill
articulates the Ford inspiration constitutive of the narrative in Ford's The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance-, Altmans Buffalo Bill, like Liberty Valance,
renders the heroic story of the West as mythic. Although competence with
the gun (a feature of the heroic cowboy) remains very much in the mor-
al center of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Fords most complicated
western, the gunplay is mythical rather than heroic, and the typical narra-
tive of the classic western—the taming of the West by the spread of eastern
culture and the territorial extension of the white American imaginary—is
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undercut by the paradoxes the film explores. And most significantly for
purposes of comparison with Altmans Buffalo Bill, publicists are some of
the films major characters.
Ford's Liberty Valance begins with Senator Ransom Stoddards
(James Stewart) account—told to the editorial staff of the local paper and
shown as an extended flashback—of his experiences from the time he first
arrived in the town of Shinbone. Toward the end of his account, while he
is covering the moment of his nomination as territorial representative, the
then newsman, Dutton Peabody, stands up at the nominating conven-
tion and provides a soliloquy about the accomplishments of the candidate,
Ransom Stoddard, a young lawyer who arrives as a victim of violence at
the hands of Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and ultimately builds a repu-