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A Weakness for Westerns: A Poem

Of course there’s almost everything
wrong with Westerns: the term ‘Red Indian’
for a start and that, from Fenimore
Cooper onwards, noble savages
and/or a dying race is the best
they’re allowed to be (see Fort Courageous,
et al or, later, Dances with Wolves).
And it’s basically a male world:
women relegated to angel
or demon; the men strong, silent types
played by Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood ….
those shoot-outs, all that phallic swagger –
some model of masculinity.
As for John Wayne, Stagecoach is good,
(though the plot’s lifted from ‘Boule de Suif’),
and The Searchers is subtler than it looks,
if still morally suspect. Probably better
to skip the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
It’s true, there’s almost everything
wrong with Westerns. Yet there’s still something
about a man riding slowly into town,
slowly dismounting, and slowly tying up his horse.
Or a small boy crying brokenheartedly in the dusk
to a vanishing figure: ‘We love you, Shane.’
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Harry Ricketts is a poet, biographer, editor and essayist. Born and brought up in England, he lives in Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand where he taught for many years in the English Programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

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