Monday Movie Review: The Long Riders, the Wild West, and Whores, Whores, Whores

The Long Riders (1980) 7/10
Jesse and Frank James (James and Stacy Keach) ride with the Younger brothers (David, Keith, and Robert Carradine) and Clell Miller (Randy Quaid), robbing banks and being pursued by the Pinkertons.

The Long Riders is stylish and earthy. It feels authentic and sticks fairly close to history. It is a sweeping celebration of outlaw machismo, a pure boy sort of experience. This movie is so obsessed with the idea of brothers—real brothers—that the fourth Younger brother, John, is here called a cousin, presumably because there wasn't a fourth Carradine to play him. (The brothers motif continues into Dennis Quaid playing Ed Miller, and Christopher and Nicholas Guest playing the Ford brothers.)

David Carradine gives one of his most relaxed performances. He's terrific, and the performances in general are good. The complex history of the Civil War guerrilla actions that took place on the Missouri/Kansas border; important to the story of these men, is lost, but then, it is complex, and it's not the story the movie chooses to tell.

I have lately been fascinated by Westerns. I find them terribly sexy—not in an artificial fetishistic Midnight Cowboy sort of way, but in a cool, silent, scary Man With No Name sort of way; although I suppose that, too, is fetishistic. They are washed, rinsed, and wiped down in testosterone; stark, iconic, and dramatic. They rely on silence, restraint, and very cool costumes.

So naturally, they are usually sexist.

Now, I don't have any notion to portray a sexist culture in a non-sexist way. Women in the Old West were not well-treated, and I am totally good with a portrayal that is true to that. But it is often the case that movies are more sexist than the historical period they portray. Annie Get Your Gun, for example, treats Annie Oakley's marriage as a battle of the sexes, because her husband, sharpshooter Frank Butler, could not accept being bested by a mere woman. But in real life, Frank Butler recognized Annie's superior shooting skills early on and made her the focus of the show, taking the role of her assistant.

It is as if the act of making a Western is a boys club (No Girlz Alowed!) and any successful or interesting women have to be erased, diminished, insulted, or turned into whores. Whores are okay in a Western, they're a toy for boys to play with. (Plus the whores tend to have good costumes, just like the boys. Whereas the "nice" girls in Westerns have pretty boring costumes.)

So, back to Long Riders. I'm not an expert on the history of the Old West, but the movie is accurate enough to survive a cursory glance. James brothers, Younger brothers, Ford brothers, check. Confrontation with the Pinkertons that kills two detectives and John Younger, check. Jesse marries Zee Mimm, check.

Until we get to Belle Starr.

In real life, Belle Starr was a lifelong friend of Cole Younger. They met as children, and she provided a hideout and other help to the James-Younger Gang. Cole was rumored to be the father of her daughter Pearl. She became an outlaw herself, trying assorted banditry until hitting her stride as a renowned horse thief.

In the movie, Belle Starr is a whore.

Not just a whore, but a repository for every negative cliché ever devised about women, and a foil to allow Cole Younger to say every misogynist thing ever said by men. Belle wants Cole to "make an honest woman" of her, but Cole refuses. "You're a whore, you'll always be a whore" he says as her face sinks, "That's why I like you."

When Belle marries Sam Starr, Cole follows them to Texas. There, Belle struts her "wildness" and "freedom" by kissing an (apparent) stranger, knocking back whiskey, and shooting her gun in the air. When Sam arrives and draws on Cole, Belle insists that if they must fight over her, they do it "man to man." Cole stabs Sam, "winning" Belle, whom he walks away from, leaving her looking alone and pathetic. Which is, of course, what a dirty whore deserves for presuming to marry and attracting a heroic macho outlaw to her.

Who was keeping score? I count (1) exciting, interesting historic woman demoted to sex toy, (2) insulted for being sex toy, (3) longs to be "respectable" but cannot because she is a sex toy, (3) who forces men to behave in violent ways that they don't really like, (4) and is punished for it by those men, which (5) restores the men (but not the whore) to respectability.

Wow. High score.

Remember, this occurs in a movie in which every other character behaves more or less as they did in real life.

Of course, all the other characters are wives, mothers, or interesting men. The one and only interesting woman in the tale of the James-Younger Gang had to be, not just disappeared, but humiliated for daring to be a Girl when Girlz Aren't Alowed! And how do we punish women? Oh yeah, we make them whores.

Sigh. Other than that, it's a pretty good movie.

(Cross-posts are your friends.)