Bravehearts: Bravery and the Wild Wild West
| With the frequency of violence and death there is no room for cowards in the Wild Wild West. Consequently, bravery is a staple of Western heroes. In Dustin Hoffman's 1970 film, Little Big Man, the hero, Jack Crabb (played by Hoffman) narrates a bloody war scene as follows: |
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Not that the human being wasn't brave--no warrior ever walked the earth more brave than a human being. Old Lodge Skin's [the Chief] idea of war and the white's idea of war were kinda different. Half our party didn't even use weapons. What they done was take cool. Take a stick. Hit the enemy with a lil' stick. Humiliate 'em...that was how human beings taught a coward a lesson and won a war. Puttin' rifle against bow and arrow. I never could understand how the white world could be proud of winning with them kinda odds. |
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| At the very beginning of this passage, Jack Crabb equates bravery with fighting and war, which by definition means that bravery is equated with violence. Later in the passage, Jack Crabb speaks of teaching "a coward a lesson" and of winning wars. According to Crabb's logic, cowards do not win. And, if Westerns are about survival and bravery is a factor, one can infer that heroes are brave and violence is necessary to overcome conflict. | ||
In keeping with that line of reasoning, in his 1989 classic, "Wild Wild West," Kool Moe Dee declares, "We fight with our hands and nobody's a punk! At the…Wild Wild West." Kool Moe Dee equates fighting with bravery by contrasting it with the word "punk," much like Crabb's definition of bravery in contrast to the word, "coward." |
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| watch the Little Big Man clip and compare it to "Wild Wild West". clip | ||