Lecutre 2 - Buffalo Bill 1 Flashcards
What was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?
– sought “to create popular entertainments that replicated life on the Great Plains and afforded spectators an opportunity to witness and appreciate reproductions of frontier experiences” (Reddin 1999)
– it has been described as “Buffalo Bill’s most important myth-making enterprise, the basis of his later celebrity and continuing dime-novel fame” (Slotkin 1992)
– and as the “ritualization of American history” (Slotkin 1992: 74)
– the Wild West program was “publicized as ‘America’s National Entertainment,’ an exemplification of the entire course of American history” (Slotkin 1992)
– since 1886, the different scenes were presented “as typifications of the stages of frontier history” (Slotkin 1992)
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was an outdoor attraction that toured annually, it was very much focused on action and included?
– authentic performers of the Wild West, cowboys, scouts, and Native Americans
– wild animals (horses, buffalo, and wapiti)
– trick performances (rodeos, shooting exhibitions)
–theatrical re-enactments (battle scenes, characteristic western scenes, hunts of buffalo and wapiti)
What happened in 1893 and changed about the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?
– show’s title was changed to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World
– introduced an element of exoticism, included skillful riders from various European cavalry units and from the Arabian desert as well as Cossacks from Russia and gauchos from Latin America
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West key features
– Antecedents
– Competition
What was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?Antecedents basics
– Catlin’s “Gallery unique” can be considered a significant antecedent to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show
– it established the practice of exhibiting Native American culture and individuals to audiences fascinated by the American West.
– While Catlin aimed to portray Native Americans sympathetically and challenge stereotypes, his exhibitions nonetheless contributed to the romanticized and often exploitative representation of Native American culture in popular entertainment.
What was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?Antecedents Native Ameircans
–Catlin was sympathetic towards the Native Indians, noting that their encounter with civilization invariably led to their destruction
– his exhibitions reiterated the notion of “vanishing Indians,” as expressed, for instance, already in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
– Catlin challenged rampant and homogenizing stereotypes of Native Americans
– Catlin added “real” Indians to individual shows, first in New York in 1837
– 1839, Catlin took his Gallery unique to England
– He brought his exhibition to France & Belgium, several of his Native American performers contracted smallpox and died, Catlin discontinued his show
Who was Buffalo Bill?
– William F. Cody was a scout for the US Army and a celebrated buffalo hunter, hence his nom de guerre, Buffalo Bill
–in 1869, after a chance meeting with the scout, the writer Ned Buntline (i.e. Edward Zane Carroll Judson Sr.) published a novel featuring Cody, entitled Buffalo Bill, the King of Border Men – a venture which developed into a whole series of dime novels
When was the first Buffalo Bill Dime novel published?
1880
What is the The Scouts of the Prairie?
– 1872, Buntline adapted his novel into a stage production which debuted in Chicago as The Scouts of the Prairie
– it featured Buntline, Cody,Texas Jack Omohundro (1846–80), and the Italian-born ballerinaGiuseppina Morlacchi (1836–86)
– the play toured the American theater circuit until 1874
–when the company broke up in 1874, Cody founded, together with Texas Jack Omohundro and Giuseppina Morlacchi, theBuffalo Bill Combination, splitting his time between touring with the company and going scouting in the west
– in 1883, Cody – as Buffalo Bill – established his Wild West, initially together with William Frank “Doc” Carver
What was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?
Competition basics
–competitive landscape of Wild West shows, highlighting the emergence of various shows seeking to capitalize on the public’s fascination with the American West
– Wild West show industry was a dynamic and competitive field, driven by audience demand for entertainment and shaped by evolving technologies and cultural trends
What was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West?
Competition
– 1876, Texas Jack Omohundro left Buffalo Bill’s Combination and with Giuseppina Morlacchi, since 1873 his wife,created the Texas Jack Combination, similarly re-enacting scenes from the West on stage
–1888, Pawnee Bill (i.e. Gordon William Lillie) launched Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West, later to be called Pawnee Bill’s Historical Wild West Indian Museum and Encampment Show; Pawnee Bill for a short time was to join forces with Buffalo Bill in 1908
– 1907, the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show, initially confined to the actual ranch in the pre-state territory of Oklahoma, began to tour
– there were, around the turn of the century, also many other, mostly however quite ephemeral attempts to represent the Wild West in spectacular shows involving some of the original historical actors of the bygone period
The Cultural Productivity of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
– Advertisements
– Programs
– Contemporary documentation: photographs, films
– Postcards and cabinet cards
– Representation of Native Americans
– New projects
The Cultural Productivity of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Advertisements
– by depicting a historical narrative, usually in a natural setting and including its historical actors, they insist on the authenticity not only of the pictorial representation but also of the theatrical representation during performance
–performances were therefore not billed as “shows” but as “exhibitions,” suggesting “an entertaining and educational experience that exposed a factual account of events in ‘actual life’.” (Magelssen and Nees 2011)
– a significant part of the attraction of the earlier shows, and correspondingly advertised, was that the Show Indians had in fact been among those actively involved in the battles of the recent Indian Wars
– spectacularly, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West featured for instance Rain-in-the-Face, “the Indian who killed Custer”
–with the increasing historical distance to these events occurred an inevitable shift: “It had been the real-life experiences that had made Show Indians; now they increasingly represented just another class of actor. They were authentic because of their ‘race,’ if not for their deeds.” (Moses 1996)
– in addition, new spectacular features had therefore been developed to maintain the shows’ popular appeal, including the Congress of the Rough Riders of the World with an international cast of celebrated horsemen (see Moses 1996: 118–19) as well as events of global provenance which nevertheless resonated with the American audience
The Cultural Productivity of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Advertisements — The Great Train Robbery
– December 1903, the Edison Manufacturing Company released Edwin S. Porter’s silent film “The Great Train Robbery”
– exhibited in nickelodeons across the country, the film not only demonstrates an early interest in western subjects also in the nascent industry but illustrates the manner in which the new medium encroached on the spectacular Wild West shows
– it was based on a popular stage melodrama by Scott Marble: “The Great Train Robbery”, which premiered in Chicago in 1896 and was revived in New York in 1902
– Cody clearly felt he had to reciprocate to, and to compete with, the movie with his own version
– no longer than 11 minutes, Porter’s movie nevertheless captures in moving images the drama acted out by the performers of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
– this was another moment of liminality and transition; as yet, the movie lacked the sensual quality of the re-enactment in the show ground: sound, smell, and the immediacy of the drama as it unfolded
– we should also note, however, how the composition and iconography of a poster like this clearly influenced the cinematography of western films of a later period on which we will focus in another lecture
–more specifically, Cody’s “Hold-up of the Deadwood Stage” act itself provided the inspiration – and perhaps even the actors – for Thomas Edison’s Stage Coach Hold-up of 1901, redone in 1904 as “Western Stage Coach Hold Up”
– as we know, it did not take long for the new medium to supersede the Wild West shows and to turn into the most popular engagement with the west and its ethos
The Cultural Productivity of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Advertisements — Custer’s Last Fight
– originally, “Custer’s Last Fight” concluded the first half of the program of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
– since 1893, it was the last act in the Wild West and “served as an elegy for the entire period of American pioneering. What followed it was a vision of America assuming a new role on the world stage as leader of the imperial powers: the parade of the ‘Congress of the Rough Riders of the World’.” (Slotkin 1992)
