Woke Up The Cowboy

In 1972 the counterculture movement in American Cinema had itself ingratiated with a surprise vessel. Legendary actor and iconic beacon of rugged iconoclast conservativism John Wayne played his most fully developed mortal character in his most human movie. By the time he made The Cowboys for Actor turned director Mark Rydell Wayne had played a hundred Cowboys. Mostly characters that were almost super heroic and stoic and void of emoting any complex thoughts and feelings outside of being the good guy fighting the bad guy. Cardboard tough guys with quote marks around them that fit into John Ford’s romantic and idealistic view of the early white western frontier. Mean men who feared nothing because they never lost a battle and because they never absorbed the world and people happening around them. They strictly operated in self-absorption. Never embracing their mortality or humanity of anyone else. The supposed toughness they exuded was just a defense that kept everything else at bay. Most of Wayne’s early cowboy movies were shot in black and very much contained a story communicated with black and white subtext. Good vs evil played out obviously with little human complexities or gray areas. However, in his crafting of Wil Anderson the main character in The Cowboys many dissimilar effects materialized that had never happened concerning a Wayne performance before. Wayne was able to find human contact. Despite being up against the elements and a tough guy Wayne as Will Anderson accepted and embraced the humanity around him. As the story begins, we realize that Anderson and his wife have lost both of their sons who were 21 years old and just into adulthood. This partially allowing Wayne to warm up to the idea of using boys instead of men for his latest cattle drive to Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Of which he can’t seem to wrangle the men to do it for him this time. All the men in the area have left town and gone out to the Ruby river to pan for Gold. It’s a desperate and selfish act by Wil Anderson to use school children instead of men as his trail hands for a cattle drive but certain complexities come to the forefront to soften this hard act of crossing the line as well. He does pay them each $50 the same amount he would have paid men and he’s extending something beneficial to them in their lives while also exploiting them for his own benefit. Part of the humanity Anderson accepts comes in the form of a black cook he’s unknowingly hired to cater the cattle drive. “I was expecting a white man.” Will announces as Mr. Nightlinger arrives on his ranch to show up for work as his cook. This is another desperate compromise Anderson has to make in the face of all or nothing. John Wayne children and black man representatives of a new and changing America along with the old-time gunslinger for one last ride, one last look at the vastly changing prairie, one last time to teach how it’s done the old way. As the cattle drive and the story moves on Wayne stands up to the conventional cowboy character to embrace and even safeguard the humanity all around him despite the differences opposing his own character even though they may seem scary and threatening. It’s not that he exactly becomes a flaming liberal, but the softening of Wayne happens on the margins it seems to seep into his character gradually throughout The Cowboys. He and Mr. Nightlinger showing Boys how to become Men. When Mr. Nightlinger snaps Wayne is taken aback yet ultimately listens and after some self-reflecting admits that he might have been wrong and chooses to take his black cook’s advice. Wayne even practices some gun control in the film refusing to give and angry boy back his gun “I’m not in the habit of pouring kerosene on a fire” He announces as he keeps the gun. Wil Anderson is the most accepting character Wayne ever played throughout his historic career. The complexities facing the character of Will Anderson and the film stand mainly in him using children to do a man’s job. It’s not just riding horses around, it’s hard labor and dangerous labor at that. The tough Cowboy who’s been through hell and back and keeps going but Wil Anderson can’t keep going there’s only so much punishment he can take because he’s human with real human weaknesses. He’s not a superhero. In a shocking plot twist at the end of The Cowboys the invincible John Wayne the toughest man alive succumbs to the beating and the bullets of the bad guy and departs this silver screen life for the first time. Wayne dying at the end of The Cowboys is perfectly fitting for him playing such a human character who was actually mortal. For the first time Audiences worried about him, didn’t feel that same old confidence because The Cowboys showed his frailty. The weaknesses or what a traditionalist perceives as weakness like caring for others, empathy and god forbid social assistance to others. At the beginning of the movie, we’re told Anderson’s age 60, which for the time was pretty ancient for a man of his day still working so hard. In the end being human for the first time was his strength and the weakness that ended him. It was the complexities of humanity which kept him from another happy ending.