Trying to work at home as I recovered from the flu, I hooked onto the Grit channel — all westerns all the time. Something about those rolling wagon wheels and thundering horsemen, all those stalwart performances by the likes of Alan Ladd, Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott, kept me going while not distracting me. And yet, i was aware that these films both reflected and shaped a kind of white, male culture that has resurfaced under President Donald J. Trump — devoid of black people,;suspicious of foreigners and immigrants, particularly Mexicans, who have played such a decisive role in framing the Southwest; brutal toward native peoples; dismissive of women; and triumphing over all with the technology that tamed the West — the technology of the gun.
But these films were made by Hollywood, often in Hollywood. Often, too, they depicted flawed heroes who came to a broader understanding of women and minorities. Still, what did Hollywood really know about the West and did that matter given that these were works of the imagination?
I thought about this as I read about the controversy surrounding Jeanine Cummins’ new novel “American Dirt” (Flatiron). The story of a Mexican mother and child who flee to the United States after their family is gunned down by a drug cartel, “Dirt” would seem to be a novelist’s dream come true — a bidding war for the rights, a seven-figure advance, anointment by Oprah, endorsements by the likes of Stephen King, Sandra Cisneros and Salma Hayek selection by Barnes & Noble’s book club; and a movie deal. Yes, a dream come true — until, that is, the question of cultural appropriation arose.
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