Skip to main content

BIG VALLEY, THE ANTI-WESTERN



I'm not a big Western fan, they tend to be too conservative for a big liberal like me. The strong, silent good guy is the best shot, so he kills the bad guy, saves civilization and marries the schoolmarm (My Darling Clementine, Gunsmoke). I tend to prefer the "adult" Westerns of the 50s like Man of the West, The Unforgiven, 3:10 To Yuma, Johnny Guitar and Warlock that acknowledge that there was sex, racial tension and moral ambiguity on the lonesome prairie. Another interesting variation was Western family drama, like Broken Lance, Duel in the Sun, or Giant, where a powerful paterfamilias was respected throughout the county but had trouble with his own family (Bonanza is a watered-down version).
The Big Valley is the closest TV came to the adult Western. Of course it was constrained by censorship compared to the movies, but it was daring at the time to have a main character be an illegitimate son of late paterfamilias who is accepted by the family as one of their own (after some conflict, of course). Also, the prostitutes were actually whores, not the fresh-scrubbed "dance hall hostesses" of Bonanza.

Unlike the usual powerful ranching families in movies and TV, the Barkleys were headed by the strong-willed Victoria as played by the great Barbara Stanwyck, who after the first few episodes took to wearing an all-black cowgirl-dominatrix outfit reminiscent of Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar. Instead of ruling the valley with an iron fist and fearing change, the Barkleys were the 19th-century equivalent of "limousine liberals", always helping the less fortunate, whether they are poor farmers, black ex-cons, prostitutes, Mexican revolutionaries or inmates of a women's prison (Victoria goes undercover and endures beatings in order to expose its inhumane conditions). Unlike the many movie Western heroes who are embittered ex-Confederate soldiers, like John Wayne in The Searchers and the many versions of Jesse James, son Jarrod was the captain of a black Union regiment. Still, they are often resented and even kidnapped due to their wealth. Poor Audra, the daughter of the family, was always being threatened with rape, most memorably by a psychopathic Civil War vet played by Adam West.

The Big Valley has something for everything with its three brothers: smart, sophisticated lawyer Jarrod; hot-headed diamond-in-the-rough Nick; and quiet, brooding friend-of-the-underdog Heath (Lee Major looks and sounds a great deal like Elvis Presley at this point, which I assume was intentional). Not to mention the uncannily lovely Audra and the intriguingly butch Victoria. There are many great guest stars: having only seen the first DVD of the first season, I've already enjoyed Andrew Duggan as a charismatic-but-warped Civil War general who tries to get the ranch hands to turn to crime, and Jeanne Cooper as the murderous Lady MacBeth of a dying Gold Rush town.

My other favorite TV Westerns, The High Chaparral and Maverick, are sadly not on DVD, but the 10 discs of The Big Valley, Season 1 should get me through summer reality-show hell.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TOP TEN LIPSYNCH FOR YOUR LIFE SONGS FOR A DRAG KING EQUIVALENT OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

 The Advocate has suggested that the greatest (i.e. only good) reality show ever, Rupaul's Drag Race , have a drag king contestant.  That's fine, but it would be much more entertaining to have a whole drag king competition. One of the best parts of Drag Race is seeing all the different types of queens compete: beauty queens, funny queens, conceptual queens, androgynous queens, scary queens, singing and dancing queens.  I want to see punk kings, gangsta rap kings, cock-rocking metal kings, panty-dropping R & B kings, country kings, baggy-pants burlesque comic kings, and of course, Elvis. I picked out some songs that make me think of different aspects of masculinity:  swaggering men, heartbroken men, lustful men, romantic men, philosophical men, and suicidally depressed men (interesting fact: I can think of dozens of songs by men about suicide, but only one female one: "Gloomy Sunday". What's up with that?) "That's Life" - Frank Sinatra

STILL HATING ON MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS

Jason had an insightful post on newspapers in the Internet Age on his blog wherein he suggested we donate to keep the watchdogs of the press going. In an aside, he mentioned subscriptions for music: To be honest, it's the same thing with music downloads. I've been screaming for monthly subscriptions for years now, and they're still not here. (At least not on the scale of an iTunes or Amazon.) Of course, I had to respond. Jason: I'm sorry to hear you've been screaming for years--you must be very hoarse. I believe the service you're looking for is called Rhapsody . I don't know what counts as "the same scale", but they have ads on TV. I don't know why anyone would pay $12.99/month to rent music, though. I want to own my music, I don't want some company to be able to take my access away or jack up the price at a whim. Rhapsody's main market must be people who don't own much music, have a lot of electronic devices but no interest in l

TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME

So I guess cyberpunk is hot again. I don't play those newfangled video games, but all this fanfare made me remember my old Cyberpunk 2020 days, when I was Jael Furoshiki, Japanese/Jewish survivor of of a destroyed South China Sea pirate pack trying to make a living in the Minneapolis Red Zone as a bodyguard/food delivery technician (yes, both a pirate and an ninja).  Later she got ported to Interface Zero , which got rid of some of the anachronisms and C2020's crazy-high fatality rate (there used to be a page dedicated to players' favorite deceased characters, sadly now lost to even the Wayback Machine). Anyway, one time I made up musical genres my character would listen to--can't find my old character sheets, but this gives you the idea... TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME: Cambo-Punk Robo-Funk Post-post-post-post-post Punk Really New Wave Black Klezmetal Danish RaiZulu Techno-Jive Country & Western & Gabber Lo-NRG Goan Garage Garage