Posted on 06/24/2005 9:28:51 PM PDT by neverdem
DEADWOOD, S.D.
The actors from HBO's "Deadwood" are coming to the scene of their crimes today, and they can expect a hero's welcome when they pose for pictures on Main Street. Some people in the real Deadwood are offended by the series' lurid language and scenes, but the ones who work in the tourist industry recognize a central truth about the Old West: violence sells.
The casino operators here stage shootings on the hour. At 1, 3 and 5 p.m., you can sit inside Saloon No. 10 and watch Wild Bill Hickok gunned down at a card table. At 2, 4 and 6 p.m., there are gunfights in the street. The bodies aren't being fed to hogs yet, as in the television series, perhaps because that would hurt the restaurant business.
Between the murders on "Deadwood" and the massacres on "Into the West," the Steven Spielberg epic that seems to be playing round the clock on TNT, the popular version of the frontier looks scarier than ever. There's nothing like blood on high-def TV to illustrate Hobbes's theory that life before government was nasty, brutish and short.
But if you talk to some historians and economists about Deadwood and the rest of the West, you get a much different picture from what's on television - or what's been taught in history classes.
These revisionists' history, unlike the one now fashionable in academia, is not a grim saga of settlers exploiting one another, annihilating natives and despoiling nature. Nor is it like the previously fashionable history depicting the settlers as heroic individualists who tamed the frontier by developing the great American virtue of self-reliance.
The Westerners in this history survived by learning to get along, as Terry Anderson and Peter Hill document in their new book, "The Not So Wild, Wild..."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The West is a big place. There's enough West for all of us.
They damn sure weren't socialists either.
I think not.
South Dakota was part of the Old West. Kansas too, actually Kansas even more so, possibly even more so than here in AZ, lots of important western events happened in Kansas. The West was HUGE, even a lot of Canada.
Wattcha gonna do....while visiting wifey's family in Minnesota, I swear I heard references to Fargo, ND, as "West Coast".
(I guess I'm on Waikiki beach and just don't know it yet....)
I live in South Dakota and Deadwood is nowhere near here... Then again the portrayals of SD are essentially confined to 1. Deadwood, 2. Dances with Wolves, or 3. Little House on the Prairie. Last fall, I met a female reporter from the NYTimes who was out here covering the demise of Gridlock Tom and she seemed rather surprised that we "normal" people. That being said,"the West" from a historical standing means anything left of the Mississippi River. Though Wild Bill and Calamity Jane (South Dakota),the gunfights at OK Corral (Kansas), Custer's Last Stand (eastern Wyoming) and the Jesse James gang (Missouri) were all hallmarks of the Wild West, they are all just part of MidWestern (Central Plains?) folklore now...
Am I mistaken, or wasn't the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ? Also, I believe I visited Custer Battlefield in MT. Jesse James rode thru SD too escaping from the law, jumping a gulch by Garretson.
Yep, the OK Corral is in Tombstone, AZ
That's the line! Great to see that in the Times, lol!
I love Deadwood, it has really inspired in me and interest in the old west that I didn't have before.
You REALLY need to check your geography/history before posting...
A fellow Freeper recommended "Deadwood" to me. I rented past season DVD's -- I Loved! the series. At first, yes, the language can be offputting; but moi, having been raised on history of the Old West KNOWS that language in the old west was ESPECIALLY colorful. Superb series (and show) for those looking for a fairly accurate depiction of the wild, old west. Superb! acting. Bravo.
Jeremiah Johnson and Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles. Johnson's body was relocated to Cody, Wyoming. One of the pall bearers was Robert Redford.
she seemed rather surprised that we "normal" people. That being said..
What being said (written)? What were you trying to communicate?
According the the MSM, Pennsylvania is "The West." Let's face it, if it's not on the east coast, or the west coast, according to them, it's just "fly-over country."
Mark
When I first bought my house here in Lee's Summit, MO (it's a suburb of Kansas City), while it's only a 15 minute drive to KC "proper." it still had something of a "small town" feel. There was a little family owned drug store that just happened to sell guns, ammo, and reloading supplies! You could go into the local Hy Vee (a "big city" style, 24 hr grocery store) and buy shotgun shells and a hunting license at the video rental counter.
The city of Lee's Summit even used to have a festival every year known as "Cole Younger Days." I guess over the years, the "city fathers" decided that the fastest growing municipality in the state of Missouri shouldn't have a festival named after a notorious murderer like him (he was a member of Quantril's Raiders, participating in the Lawrence, KS massacre, and he rode with the James Gang), so it was renamed to "Old Tyme Days." Cole Younger is burried in the Lee's Summit cemetary.
Mark
Well, the West bank of the Red River of the North anyways.
Hubby watched the first season, I didn't because the language really put me off. Then there was an article about the creator of the show in the New Yorker, the guy is basically a super genius. When HBO complained to him about the bad language (they, did, if you can beleive it!) he wrote them a lengty academic style paper, complete with footnotes, etc. defending the salty talk as historially accurate.
By the time I got to the end of the piece, I was convinced. I told hubby "let's get HBO back so we can watch Deadwood". (We'd cancelled it since all we watch are the series, we weren't going to get it back until the Sopranos resumed) He was very pleasantly surprised at my reaction.
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