Indie critics hype a Joan Crawford ‘woman’s picture’ as the greatest western. What a surprise.
Timed for release just before July Fourth, Independence Day, “The 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time” poll at the IndieWire website was poisonously calculated, just like the incessant polls conducted by partisan media organizations and political consultants. IndieWire canvassed its staff to make a curious assessment of the quintessential American movie genre, the Western. Its results reflect the same anti-American cultural politics as most left-leaning publications, which are partisan, attention-seeking, and ideological rather than scholarly or informative.
What makes the Western the most representative genre of American filmmaking is its Americana subject — typically the creation of the United States and its territorial expansion from the east to west coast, and the history between 1850 and 1900, with emphasis on the Indian Wars and the Civil War.
The Western augments the foundational mythology of the U.S.A. It’s of intrinsic interest to its citizens and the world, especially for how the genre dramatizes the conflict between civilization and the wilderness (according to scholar Will Wright) as well as conflicts between right and wrong, good and evil, power and its opposite. The Western’s template — our Homeric epic and Greek tragedy — also informs the genres that have recently overtaken it in popularity, whether the gangster film or the sci-fi spectacular.
With its awesome landscapes, intrepid characters, and often tragic, electrifying violence, the Western has been the genre that most defines the concept of “America,” so the films that IndieWire’s poll deemed significant were those that best represented corporate media ideology — not “greatest” in terms of popularity or artistic achievement, but using the appellation “greatest” to create a sense of importance in this embittered cultural moment.
The revelation of Johnny Guitar as the film that topped the poll is therefore anticlimactic, because IndieWire copies the same stupid feminist prejudice as Sight and Sound magazine’s decadal poll, which foisted Jeanne Dielman on us as the greatest film of all time.
There’s no point in knocking Johnny Guitar (1954) for its obscurity or oddity, or for the eerie psychological intensity in its story of outsiders whose twisted passions were the specialty of director Nicholas Ray. It’s a strangely moving, beautiful film with a cult legacy that contradicted the popularity of other Westerns. It was already canonical because of its idiosyncrasy. (Godard and Truffaut frequently quoted it for the universal effect of its love story: “Lie to me!” Sterling Hayden requests, and Joan Crawford obliges him with a superficial coldness that shows us her wounded passion.)
The awful thing is, Johnny Guitar is not a “woman’s picture,” as silly feminists might argue. But it’s so unlike the conventional idea of a Western that its poll position obviously indicates an attempt to force it into the same feminist mold as Jeanne Dielman. And this dishonest perversion of film-critic journalism derives from the authoritarianism of progressive ideology — positioning Johnny Guitar to critique the Western genre and dismantle patriarchy. This includes toppling the Western’s indisputable male masters — John Ford, Budd Boetticher, André de Toth, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah, and Walter Hill — from their pedestals.
IndieWire’s introductory paragraph is foolish enough to confess this crime:
Westerns have been inextricably linked with a strain of classical white masculinity — mostly glorifying it, sometimes critiquing it, but always centering it. So maybe that’s why cinema’s most surprising, unique, unforgettable Western is one that throws out all of that baggage.
The “nonbinary” mindset (baggage) that is destroying culture has infected film journalism.
The shame of IndieWire’s list is consistent with the site’s petty mission: It’s designed to promote the independent film movement’s assumed difference from institutional Hollywood, although IndieWire itself is seldom distinguishable from such film-industry publications as Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the Wrap, or the Los Angeles Times. By granting real estate to already established, well-connected filmmakers, IndieWire’s promotional-hype journalism proves that most indie filmmakers and film journalists are just envious poor cousins to those who have made the big time.
A more honest, suitable list would confine IndieWire to indies that are actual Westerns (Ride the Whirlwind, The Shooting, Straight to Hell, Lonesome Cowboys, Bone Tomahawk). These pollsters don’t understand why the Western is great. (Desperate poll entries such as Brokeback Mountain, Nope and The Rider miss the point.) Critic John Demetry has cited the Western as America’s “ur-narrative,” and Gregory Solman has noted how “malleable” its facts and legends have been over the decades. But IndieWire couldn’t figure out any of this.
Demoralized times inspire a demoralized mission. And so the site, putatively dedicated to film art, contradicts itself. IndieWire’s “Greatest Westerns” poll is an act of misandry and a failed attempt at denying the masculine psychology at the heart of America and the creation of the Western genre.
