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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Wyatt Earp
Dir: Lawrence Kasdan
‘Some people say it never happened that way’. So comments Wyatt Earp, played by Kevin Costner, looking back on one of the many legends about him in the final scene of Lawrence Kasdan’s new three hour epic on the life of America’s most famous deputy Marshal. It is an apt comment on the film.
Wyatt Earp is a household name in the US, and the subject of huge popular myth. Encouraged by previous Hollywood productions, including the recent release Tombstone, many perceive Earp as a heroic lawman in lawless times, whose vicious methods of maintaining law and order are necessary.
However, the real historical figure is rather different. The myths of the Wild West, romanticised so much by Hollywood productions and US presidents, seek to hide the brutal and violent atmosphere in which US capitalism rose and expanded in the late 19th century. The butchering of the indigenous population, the ‘Red Indians’, was only one face. Ruthless competition between rival capitalists and assorted fortune hunters seeking to exploit the massive natural resources of the ‘new frontier’ often resulted in shootouts, robbery and murder on a grand scale.
It was in this world that Earp and his family grew up. The main redeeming feature of Kasdan’s film is his portrayal of Earp’s development from a youth, physically sick at the sight of a gunfight, into a US Marshal. His life experiences, such as the death of his wife from typhoid, and his environment transform a harmless youth into a murderer.
When Earp supposedly fought for law and order in Dodge City and Tombstone, he was still under sentence of death in Arkansas. He, his brothers and Doc Holliday were held and indicted for murder after the shootout at the OK Corral. The film shows all these facts, along with his nasty and contemptuous attitude towards the women in his family. It also shows his belief that ‘nothing counts as much as blood’, which eventually pushes the Earp brothers, under Wyatt’s stubborn leadership, into a confrontation in which one is killed.
Kasdan, talking about his motive in the film, says that Earp typifies ‘a very American journey’, which ‘started out with optimistic, innocent ideas. But in the settlement of America, there was always a high level of violence and brutality’. Earp, as a killer with a badge, represents the bloody expansion of US capitalism and not by accident.
The question of law and order, the main issue of Wyatt Earp’s life and consequently of this film, is where Kasdan’s interpretation rots on the bone. The treatment of Earp’s attitude to the law reveals a nasty right wing bias.
Earp was a ‘hard ass’ as Marshal. He never tolerated a questioning of his methods. During the first of his two terms as a Marshal in Dodge City, his favourite means of stopping the carrying of guns in the city was to come up behind the offenders and pistol whip them with his gun, letting them go the next day if they agreed to comply. He was eventually dismissed by popular anger.
The gunfight at the OK Corral has nothing to do with the law but is a personal feud between two gangs, one of which (the Earps) have badges. Their indictment for murder follows a large demonstration at the funeral of their victims.
In all this, the film portrays him to be right. However, there are two major problems with this analysis.
The first is why the law exists at all in the anarchy of the gold rushes and scrambling for land and cattle in the West. It was never designed to defend the population against wild outlaws. Many gangs were allowed to roam free if they worked for the right capitalist in the area. The law provided rules for the competition and exploitation taking place.
Secondly, crime is the product of the inevitable mass poverty brought by capitalism. Huge expectations of finding wealth were dashed for the vast majority, whilst those with wealth defended it with arms. Disillusionment and desperation led many, as it does today, towards crime.
This film is, undoubtedly, an epic production. It is, however, epic in form but not in content. A dubious historical account of the ‘Wild West’ is accompanied by political bankruptcy.
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