What makes the western so intriguing and just straight-up instructive is its purity, a word I am loath to employ. But "purity" gets at how the western boils down the complexity of a nation state to its scrappy origins (and yes, that includes the lies told about said origins). No zip/tax codes, no gerrymandering, no urban planning, sometimes no dwellings of any sort, e.g., The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1953), none of the contrivances of modernity that obscure like cobwebs the socio-legal carving up of space. The western is so spare that, at its best, it forces you to ponder why you are sitting where you are right now, a land acknowledgement avant la lettre.
The benefit of a western series is that it has time to trace the processes by which initial land grabs congeal into a modern nation state. And HBO's Deadwood is peerless in that category. Despite the coruscating personalities on display (Al Swearengen is as attractive/repulsive as Tony Soprano), Deadwood makes it easy for once to think in the macro, to swerve away from the micro concerns of the characters and ponder the changes wrought by the newspaper, the railroad, the telegraph, etc. The latter accoutrements threaten to bring not only law and order but transformations in consciousness the residents of Deadwood could never have foreseen. My favorite moment in this regard is one lasting not even a minute, as evanescent as a stranger passed on the street.
In Season 3, Episode 9: "Amateur Night," Samuel Fields (Franklyn Ajaye) visits the bank on his way out of town. He's chatting with owner/teller Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) but a line of customers has formed behind him. Alma eyes the line with concern as Fields babbles on. "I got a life to live of my own," he tells her. "As do all here in the camp," Alma responds tartly, causing Fields to notice at last the impatient customers snaking to the rear. "Sorry to hold you all up," he says sheepishly as he makes his exit. In an urban context, this exchange would prove too banal to narrativize. But to the denizens of a burgeoning 1870s town, waiting in close proximity to strangers is a new phenomenon requiring significant adjustments in expectations and behavior. It might even take on the contours of a novelty as it shades into loitering, a development which causes the ever-irascible Trixie (Paula Malcomson) to complain, "A lot of shitbags hang around a bank. Did you ever fuckin' notice?"
In short, Deadwood serves as the Prestige TV version of Wolfgang Schivelbusch's landmark 1977 tome The Railway Journey. As such, it doesn't lend itself well to listicling. The transformation of "our very perceptual experience of nature itself," to quote Wiki, takes precedence over individual gripes and local skirmishes. But below is an attempt to schematically rattle off the lows and highs of the series.
What's Bad About Deadwood (not much!):
1. Native Americans are, at best, a structured absence in Deadwood. The most prominent Native American character is a severed head in a box which Al uses for autotherapy like Yorick. Local tribes could have at least populated the margins as an ironic presence à la Beau Travail. Or they could have functioned as a nagging reminder of the bloody conquest of nature at the hands of white settlers.
2. Creator David Milch did not know what to do with his women characters. Once free of their respective pimps, Trixie and Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens) are unmoored and never self-actualized. Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) should have been in every episode (see below). Alma has nothing to do in the 13-years-aborning movie. Etc.
3. Viewers could have used more glimpses of the indifferent Deadwood public along the lines of the bank scene described above. We know controlling the newspaper and, later, the wire is crucial for Al. But scenes of the public reading the paper would have driven home that importance.
4. No fault of Milch (from what I gather) but ending the series with Season 3 in 2006 left us unmoored. And while Deadwood: The Movie (Daniel Minahan, 2019) was a welcome wrap up, it came off as a preposterously tardy half-measure more than anything.
What's Great About Deadwood (not much!):
1. Every damn thing else!
Other notes:
Best character: Calamity Jane (below), easily. Robin Weigert, we are not worthy of your ability to remain barky and hammered for so long.
Character I initially hated but came to appreciate because he was so crucial to the narrative(s): E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson). What a worm, though!
Character who improbably turned out to be a hottie: Whitney Ellsworth (Jim Beaver)
Obviously essential character but one who remained a usually inert cipher: Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant)
Ian McShane as Al let off most of the fireworks but don't sleep on this astonishing performance: Powers Boothe as Cy Tolliver
Time it would take you in each episode to require the emergency room if you took a shot every time some variation of "fuck" or even ("cocksucker") was uttered throughout the showy, Shakespearean dialogue: 20 minutes tops and that's a conservative estimate. More like 10 depending on the alcohol and one's tolerance.
Labels: fundamental attribution error, HBO, serial narrative, television, westerns, Wolfgang Schivelbusch
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