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preface
Depictions of the Old West are often featured in American films, television, and commercials: ·
Although these scenes are not entirely fictional, they have been dramatized and the 'West' as it is understood exists in the context created by media culture.
The West in propaganda
In fact, for the American pioneers of the 19th century, the West was a promise, a yearning, a sign of land, home, and success. When the western frontier was about to disappear, it was also the beginning of the American mystification of the west.
Thus, in the collective unconscious of modern man, the West is an archetype of ancient mythology, a source of the American national spirit, a romantic and adventurous mecca. However, after all, there are differences and contradictions between the picture of the West woven by media culture and the real West, and finding the real West is the common dream of native-born Americans like Shepard.
Since the early days of his work, Shepard has tirelessly spoken about the inseparable West complex in his theatrical productions, portraying cowboys in cowboy hats, tattered jeans, and long leather boots in accordance with the ideal masculine identity in media culture.
His father in the western family drama, Travis in the film "Paris, Texas" and the old cowboy in "Black Thorn" starring him all love the uninhabited desert and walk alone in the desert, showing a broad western artistic conception and arrogant masculinity.
Shepard's depiction of the West not only appears in the depiction of his father's life in the wasteland, but also compares the brothers' vision of the West in The Real West. The script conceived by his brother Lee, who claims to be from the Western Desert and knows the "real West", is a frequent feature in Hollywood Western films.
Two cowboys gallop in the desert on horseback, become mortal enemies because of a girl, and cherish each other in chasing and avoiding each other... This western imagery has long been rooted in people's minds through the accumulation of mass culture and the visual dissemination of media technology.
Whether in Western film and television or cigarette commercials like Marlboro, the West constructed by media culture forms the context of Western mythology. However, as the younger brother Austen was confused,
The urban culture centered around Los Angeles contrasts with the image of the West created by Hollywood DreamWorks. For Austin, the real West exists in everyday reality, not only is it not mysterious, it does not have the dreams created by Western pioneers, it is even like a toaster working in the kitchen at the same time, with the absurdity of modern society.
In the play, the absurdity of opposition and dislocation between the real West and the fictional West is highlighted at all times. On one side is the modern civilization such as small western-style buildings, cars, TVs, telephones, and toasters in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and on the other hand, the imaginary endless western deserts, horses, cowboys, and pistols... Shepard also uses a combination of sight and hearing to highlight this paradoxical effect.
At night, the stage is decorated with the interior of a Western-style building in a middle-class residential community, while the howl of wild wolves is heard outside. The West in Shepard's play is represented as the opposition and fusion of desert/city, ancient west/contemporary west, illusion/reality, and the viewer is also lost in the distinction between real and false.
Western culture
In fact, in the later capitalist society, cultural products are spread in a faster and more diverse way, and the role of film and television culture is particularly obvious, because it can make things from the past and present, present and future, domestic and foreign, and make them a flat kaleidoscope of reality in the form of visual narrative.
More importantly, this visual communication can generalize culture into mass culture for everyday consumption and become an ideology that audiences identify with. In this consciousness, fiction and reality combine into "simulations" in which "the celebration of the self that looks at a surface structure as a commodity, and it is possible to reduce everything to an image reproduction/simulation of a phantom."
As a result, the distinction between "subject" and "image" is blurred. Western imagery has a mysterious charm in American culture, and exploring the sacred and quiet desert of the West and experiencing the spirit of freedom and courage of the West are also important parts of the American dream.
Shepard gave countless hints to the "True West" through the use of media imagery in "The True West", from American movie star Kirk Douglas-style western cowboy films to smoky Los Angeles to the uninhabited Mojave Desert in Southern California, but Shepard never gave a definite answer. Obviously, the mass cultural imagery created by multimedia technology is only a mirror image, and the reality it reflects is only superficial, not the real world.
When mass culture is integrated into the daily life of Americans, people have become accustomed to abandoning the real reality they face and immersing themselves in a virtual world created by virtual reality, multimedia hyperreality, and various simulation systems created by film and television screens, databases, hypertext, computer games, information superhighways, cameras, etc.
This virtual reality "places people in an alternative world," and it enriches existing society along with the real world. Under the combined effect of popular culture and media technology, the western imagery in Shepard's plays is often dismantled into figurative symbolic illusions or momentary representations.
The West in his work is merely a surreal parody of what he calls "authority, source, and authenticity," as Austin hit the nail on the head: "Nothing is real here, Lee, or even ourselves".
Therefore, the imagery of the cowboy and the wilderness of the West, which carries male identity and American spiritual beliefs, is only a simulation of the transformed West, and the logical error of the West in the media context has become a cycle, which can only be geographical and ontological uncertainty.
epilogue
Since the 70s of the 20th century, Shepard has paid more attention to dynamic non-literary forms and characteristics, such as emphasizing the aesthetic significance and emotional intensity of performance art in the creative process, and the improvisation and roaming nature of rock music and cartoon art.
Pay attention to the interaction and correlation between the virtual world in TV shows and the real world outside TV programs, and pay attention to the impact of cultural symbols created by Hollywood DreamWorks and imagery symbols of the American fast food industry on daily life.
In Western-themed plays, collages of various popular culture imagery "transform Shepard's stage into a vast colorful gallery." In Shepard's view, the old cowboy myth of the West is gone, and today's myth is mass culture spread through electronic media.
Post also pointed out: "The way of information has contributed to the complete reconstruction of language, and in various mass culture electronic cultures, language is no longer a neutral tool for representing reality, language itself has become a reconstructed reality." There is no doubt that Shepard's discussion of the "true West" is also contained in the western imagery in the context of the media, and through cropping, collage and hybridization, it reconstructs a defamiliarized American "west" on stage
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