The American cowboy has everything we love in a national icon. He’s photogenic, physical, confident, casual, a little preoccupied, self-sufficient, and a loner. In the 1950’s, his aura of freedom looked as good to us kids at the Saturday afternoon movies as it did to the grownups who wanted to be a Marlboro Man.
But what’s a girl to do with a man like Roy Rogers? I’m sure some of us wanted to be by his side, like Dale Evans. Some wanted to be him. Then again, a lot of us just wanted a horse like Trigger.
While I was wondering what to do with the idea of a cowboy (I lived in Pennsylvania), I started collecting Photoplay magazine pictures. Some were of James Dean, and I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but I still have a manilla folder full of them. A Mirror Magazine article from 1956 says,
Jimmy had a rebellious spirit and independent nature. He lived wildly in the present. … Intense, emotional and obsessed. … He would stare unflinchingly … He represented the great restlessness that engulfs the present generation.
Yes, he was my teenage idea of a man, not only to look at, but to look for. In other words, trouble.
In my middle years, another loner caught my attention. May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, 1973, was so popular with us family women (many without careers), that for the rest of her life Sarton resented the fact that she was famous for her journals instead of for her poetry.
So by the ‘70’s, I no longer called my desire to escape real-life problems “freedom”. It was now “solitude”.
I know now that the one thing my icons shared was that they were actually well-crafted images, that were promoted by agents and the press. As fans, our part of the bargain was to see them as independent, self-reliant, free spirits.
There’s also a political side to cowboy independence. Today it means what I will call the freedom from having to care about anyone’s interests but your own.
Heather Cox Richardson has said that the cowboy image was used by the Republican Party starting in the 1950’s. She wrote,
A faction insisted that such government action [as President Franklin Roosevelt’s social programs] was a form of socialism. They thought individual entrepreneurs should be able to invest their money without government interference.
Those same people championed the image of the American cowboy as the symbol of the country: a man who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to work hard and prosper, and who protected himself and his family.
[But] that image was always a myth.
I admit the myth of personal freedom is irresistible. I was drawn to James Dean and then to May Sarton when my real life felt too complicated to respond to.
I chose it later, too, when I rejected the contradictions in both political parties, and became an Independent voter for a few years.
More recently, though, I’ve decided I’m a better member of my community when I identify with the one major party whose candidates clearly support my own values. To the word “freedom”, they add the words “for all”.
This famous quote by Margaret Mead is relevant: "Someone once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead what she considered to be the first evidence of civilization. She answered: a human thigh bone with a healed fracture found in an archaeological site 15,000 years old...Mead points out that for a person to survive a broken femur the individual had to have been cared for long enough for that bone to heal. Others must have provided shelter, protection, food and drink over an extended period of time for this kind of healing to be possible." Note that is somewhat apocryphal as to whether Mead actually said this, but whoever said it, makes an important point: Human beings are exceedingly altricial creatures, needing long periods of care before reaching maturity, and during periods when we are disabled. The current thinking among scientists is that the human brain does not fully mature until around ages 23-26! As I have grown older, I have been impressed with how each of us makes an effort to find our tribal affiliations--those groups of people who accept us, support us, and with whom we share values. These can involve religion, politics, language, art, music, science, gardening...so much more. But it is only when we come to realize how much we share with all of our fellow species members--indeed, with other species as well--we share 60% of our DNA with FRUIT FLIES!--that we begin to recognize our connectedness and responsibility to every other living thing and all the inanimate parts of our planet that make our lives possible--and worthwhile!
Lots to ponder here, Dear Deda.
We are subject to marketing all of our lives. It's a comforting feeling when we finally figure out that it's in our best interest to be part of a group that is working for the best interests of America. I vote Blue.
I think the conservative Roy Rogers was asked to run for Congress on the Republican ticket. Why am I not surprised?