Spanish Perspectives on The American West in 21st-Century Literature, Cinema and Culture

Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo

Everyone Remembers Westerns

Everyone remembers Westerns, in one form or another.

Everyone recalls tender domestic situations and moments of family connection when remembering Westerns.

Aitor remembers Daniel Boone and Bonanza. Amaia Soroa also watched Westerns on the Basque television with her grandpa and even if she did not like them then, she always recalls a feeling of family, domestic life and, in sum, her grandfather. Amaya says she learnt almost the complete dialogues between Terence Hill and Bud Spencer in Lo Chiamavano Trinità by heart, which she saw once and again on her VHS device when she was 5 or 6, who knows. Angel remembers a photograph of himself, a plump four years old in a cowboy disguise. And he also remembers the toy shotgun with a cork stopper tied to the barrel that his grandmother bought him at the village festivities; his Winchester 75 just like the ones in the Western movie he had just seen with his father, on any summer vacation afternoon. The Winchester with which he played with his friends to spot horses in the valleys of his childhood. David remembers the Fort Comansi and the “cowboys, Indians and cavalry” soldier figurines that he got as a Christmas present, and watching The Virginian and Alias Smith and Jones (Los dos mosqueteros; third one missing in the West) on TV in the early 1970s. Franciso also watched Westerns on TV with his grandfather on Saturday afternoons, and he remembers one, whose title is irrelevant, but starred Yon Vaine (as John Wayne was called in our then, non-English-speaking country). Gorka remembers his father, watching Western movies on the ETB, the Basque television channel, who had grown up watching Western movies with his own father. He remembers sitting with him, uninterested, while he waited for his turn in the shower after his brother. Ibon, too, associates Westerns with his grandfather and Basque television, and with the covers of his Western dime novels by Marcial Lafuente Estefanía, probably the most prolific dime novelist in the country. And years later, he remembers watching Wild, Wild, West. Jesús Angel remembers riding his bike as if it were a horse, as he had learned in the television shows Furia and Bonanza. And playing with his “cowboy and Indian” figurines, and of sometimes making the Indians be the good ones. Jon connects the West to Basque television and remembers his father watching Westerns, especially the Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s trilogy, Man with No Name. And he remembers Ennio Morricone’s music and admits it was finally impossible not to succumb to the presence of Clint Eastwood’s. Maite also remembers his grandfather watching his favourite John Baine (probably the same John Wayne of Francisco’s movie) films and his grandpa’s brother, an icy-eyed, serious and silent man who earned the nickname of Uncle Clint. Martin watched The Macahans as a kid on Swedish television and he admits his love for horses began then. Silvia remembers her shock (and some disappointment, too) when she found out the history that she learned about in Westerns was not the history of Spain. (Needless to say, there was not much place for critical thinking about Spanish history at the time and, of course, the West was more appealing and exciting!). And me, Amaia, I remember Little House on the Prairie and crying, crying a lot. And I also remember the “I want to be there” feeling when I first saw Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And the “very small cowboy books” on the shelves of my grandmother’s sitting room.

Everyone (in this research group, REWEST) remembers the West and associates it with a sweet remembrance of the past, where the domestic, the communal and the emotional intermingle. This volume gathers the work of a group of Spanish academics whose drive and interest in the West juggle between the personal and the academic. The academic aim of REWEST, the research group which brings them together, is not to theorize or dive into the numerous groundbreaking studies that have proliferated about the West in the last decades of the 20^th century and today. Its aim is to offer a European look at the study of the American West, from an external, yet “own/owned” perspective. The work of the members of REWEST, thus, is to add a new layer of interpretation to the analysis of the American West, both as a geographical and cultural space, but also as an idea. To the idea that grew out of our personal, emotional recollections.

As expressed by many of the participants in the volume, the American West has been strongly present in the Spanish communal literary and cinematographic tradition and, thus, in the imagination of those born in the 20^th century. The “national production” of Western dime novels boomed during the years of Franco’s dictatorship, when the importation of cultural products (and in general, of ideas) was banned and the strong censorship executed cultural massacres, which defined the sociocultural status quo (which a clear impoverishment) of the country. With the prohibition of the importation of US Western dime novels, which had an ample, faithful readership, came the works of the first Spanish Western dime novel writers. In a few years, the work of Marcial Lafuente Estefanía (who published approximately 2,600 novels), or/and José Mallorquí’s El Coyote became part of the shelves and pockets of the (mostly male) Spanish readership. Similarly, the impact of the Western Hollywood movies first, and the “Spaghetti Westerns” (many of which were shot in the Spanish Almerian desert) after, was quintessential to assimilating the idea of the American West as the historical and cultural foundation of the making of the American nation. And to include it in the emotional imaginary of the members of another nation, the Spanish one, who lived under the pressure of a fierce ideological, economic and sociocultural control. In this regard, the feelings of freedom, personal emancipation and development, justice, honor and “all things liberating” were soon associated with the Western genre. And a very particular idea of good and evil, center and margin, male and female, and “all things constraining,” too.

Starting from the fact that all the members of this research group grew up in some degree or another, in some way or another, with this idea of the American West, and that we are all growing, personally and academically, rediscovering a New and renewed American West, this book aims to offer a Spanish re-reading of this New West. Some of the works collected in the volume are academically “traditional” analyses of the works of, about and from the American West. Others aim at looking at the West in artistic representation, which are different to the customary literature/cinema binomial representation. Others, finally, offer some examples of the contemporary representation of the American West in Spain in particular, and in Europe.

The first part of this work, “Contemporary Representations of the West in US Cinema and Literature” gathers a collection of essays which propose a revision of the American West as it has been traditionally represented in US literature and cinema. Within this context, Maja Daniel explores Annie Proulx’s Wyoming Stories, observing the inextricable relationship between nature, economy and ecology. By reading the texts through the lens of political ecology, Daniel highlights that Proulx’s narrative is naturalistic, and her characters have to constantly quarrel with their own socio-economic issues, which are mostly derived from the tragic environmental situation of their surroundings. Martin Simonson and Jon Alkorta step aside from Proulx’s realistic narrative, to observe the way Ursula Le Guin incorporates a Western-specific essence to conventional European themes and tropes of fantasy literature. This choice makes Le Guin’s work original not only within the tradition of fantasy literature but also, within the “Western genre,” updating and adapting it to a 20^th mindset. Aitor Ibarrola-Armendariz analyzes this same contemporizing move in his reading of Paulette Jiles’s novel News of the World (2016). Ibarrola-Armendariz contends that the Western genre-specific conventions such as setting, plot and characterization are modernized by the inclusion an acknowledgment of the hero’s humanitarian motivations as well as by a deep awareness of the psychological state of the white children raised by Native communities. Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo’s text questions the notion of the feminist reinterpretation of the Western genre by the analysis of Kelly Reichardt’s Meeks Cutoff. In her text, the author observes the way the movie challenges traditional male discourse as well as the conventions of the genre, to draw conclusions on both its feminist essence and on the (male) essence of the genre itself.

Part Two of this volume offers the view of five Spanish scholars on “Western” artistic products, other than the purely cinematographic genre: literature; music; television; and pictorial art. Its first contributor, Silvia Martínez-Falquina, analyzes a collection of Indigenous authors who produce short comics, Not (Just) (An)Other (2018), edited by Gordon Henry and Elizabeth LaPensée. Through the analysis of these also diverse forms of representation (other than literature and cinema), Martínez-Falquina addresses the ways in which these authors challenge old ideas about the West and vindicate their sovereignty, both in representational and in actual ways. Amaia Soroa-Bacaicoa defends the re-description of the West as a Latinx, queer and female space, through the study of Puerto Rican author Gabby Rivera’s comic collection, America (2017–2018) and her young adult novel entitled Juliet Takes a Breath (2019). In her work, Soroa-Bacaicoa analyzes the way Rivera’s use of individual stories challenges and addresses structural social and economic issues both in the West in particular, and the US in general, and similarly vindicates the Latinx presence in them. Next comes Gorka Braceras’ essay, which establishes a connection between black metal music bands and the idea of the West, observing the music of three bands—Watcher, Untamed Land, and Wayfarer—and the influence of the West in their music and performances. Amaya Fernández-Menicucci’s exploration on how two contemporary science-fiction television shows, Altered Carbon (Laeta Kalogridis 2018–2020) and Raised by Wolves (Aaron Guzikowski 2020–2022) offer a new way of blending sci-fi and the Western genre. While they both deal with traditionally Western conventions, such as the expansion towards a New World, the idea of possibility and the dichotomic relationship between colonizers and natives, they also move beyond said conventions and address the confluence of the human, the nonhuman and the abhuman into the posthuman. On a different light, Monika Madinabeitia explores the representations of Basqueness in the American West. In particular, she analyzes said representation in diverse pieces of art, such as tree carvings, paintings, murals, photographs and sculptures, in order to highlight the work of artists within Basque diaspora studies.

Finally, Part Three of the book, “The New West and its Global Impact” gathers the essays of five Spanish scholars who analyze the relevance of the West as an artistic space and as an idea, through the exposition of different reinterpretations and redefinitions of the West by Spanish and European artists, as well as of their reception. This is the case of Angel Chaparro-Sainz’s work, who observes the way the traditional, romanticized and mythical representations of the American West are re-constructed in some examples of international cartoons for children broadcast on the public Spanish television channel for children, Clan TV. David Rio, on his part, explores Spanish playwright Juan Carlos Rubio’s play, Arizona (2017). It deals with the immigration flows that occur abundantly at the US–Mexico border. Río observes how the imagery and motifs related to the most traditional representation of the American West are inscribed in the play and are proof of the international impact of the West as an idea, which may be utilized to address the issue of real and allegorical frontiers in contemporary society. This same idea of the international impact and relevance of the American West is further expanded by Jesús Ángel González López, who addresses the issue by proposing an overview and analysis of different contemporary Spanish Westerns and post-Westerns. Maite Aperribay-Bermejo proposes a similar, yet different approach to the impact that Western art, or art produced in the west of the United States, has had internationally. In this case, she analyzes the impact of the Mexican rancheras, norteñas and corridos, and in particular, narcocorridos, in the music produced in the northern Spanish autonomous community of Galicia. To close the volume, Francisco Sáez de Adana proposes an analysis of the way the Western comic has traveled internationally, impacting the comic industry in Europe, and in particular, in Italy and France.