#cowboy culture

[pwlanier]

Elegant 1900s Mexican Saddle by Lozano

Intricately detailed light brown 1900s Mexican Saddle with long saddle bags artfully designed with a scalloped border and adorned with a combination of deep floral carving; lavish two-tone pitiado (yucca fiber) with a Greek Key border design framing an embroidered grape-vine pattern with grape clusters cleverly fabricated from fine silver threads. Silver mountings include a figural repousse flat horn, maker stamped “E ROMAN / MEXICO”, repousse adornments on the fork, swell and gullet, plus heavy gauge slotted silver conchos and lavish stirrups. Highly detailed silver repousse stirrups. The cowhide seat cover was added many years ago but is not original to the rawhide seat and should be removable. Excellent overall condition including original cinch.

Old West Events

[fuckyeahnewmexico]

The desert can make you feel so alone

[braveexhibitions]

Country and Folk Legend Townes Van Zandt

[boybasher]

[sayobeth]

Should’ve been born a cowboy

[wilder-and-lighter]

I think after reading a lot of Fellow Travelers fanfiction and watching OFMD, I would really like a show that's an accurate depiction of how queer and colorful cowboy culture was. Brokeback Mountain but less......white.

Less heartache, more living together on a ranch like Ellie and Dina. Give me that. I'm a consumer, and I am asking for that.

[realhankmccoy]

fuckin cracks me up that Americans think of Blood Meridian as postmodernist.... ahahahahaha... this stupid fucking country. there's a lot of them who think it is, too. I guess they didn't notice the Bible literally materialising in it. I guess they never read a Cormac McCarthy interview? I guess they don't know what a western crossed with Stephen King written in a flat modernist style that -- oh how it would displease Harold Bloom, perhaps, to hear it -- clearly has Hemingway in it?

Who reads that book and thinks 'PoMo?'

anyhow at least that idiot who got it wrong tonight -- as he always gets everything wrong -- wrote a few good lines creepin on me before devolving into the standard issue conservative cucked stuff implausible seams showing about pussy (drag is only magical if you're convincing, hunty, and so is straight drag) and trying to use too many big words like Elon does in order to 'sound more intelligent' which obviously doesn't work when these people don't know the reason big words exist and how to use them... like saying you're 'aspirationally Jewish' which is still driving me up the wall... Elon says so much stupid shit.

so yes if that idiot had his shit together and realised he's an idiot and what to fix, i mean 3/8ths of that post was solid and probably his best writing in years, notwithstanding the massive glaring error about Cormac McCarthy, he who is quite comfortable with good vs evil, he who probably votes Republican -- being pomo. I mean what the fuck is Republican pomo anyhow? What would that even be? The whole Republican thing is an infantile longing for order, not the postmodernist project of sewing disorder.

Notwithstanding how it annoys me that I'm an influence on the idiot, for it has never been about control and narcissism with me (the idiot only projected this upon me because that's how Trump is and that's how he, as Trump's cuck, is) I actually don't like influencing anybody, probably because I don't like myself very much and don't need to be seeing any more of myself in the world. It actually just grosses me out and depresses me to see anything inspired by me. 100% of the time I think art inspired by me sucks, and why wouldn't I? I don't even like any of my art. That's not a posture, kids. I can't think of a single thing I've ever written that I'd feel comfortable handing to anybody like it's any good. This isn't some noble thing, either. I just don't like it. I don't like the sound of anything I have made, pretty much. And why would I? Why would I when I was programmed by the parents and the community to know my total insignificance and still am despite occasional moments where they try to make me feel like I have some? The overwhelming --

But whatever, it doesn't really matter as I believe in the Sagan stuff about our insignificance anyhow, at the same time believing in the signficance of everyone and all the small things, which I then have to apply to myself, because leaving yourself out is not objective, and then when I extend that to myself, the whole thing blows up because the forces that drive me don't compute.

Now, there is a sewing of disorder in the Republican as it generates chaos trying to get what it wants -- 'divide and conquer' and i know some awful liberal-ish money conquest women who also think that way.

That's not the same thing tho. That's like, Papa Hemingway with a John Wayne streak.

I really will never quite understand why Harold Bloom hates Stephen King but wets himself for Blood Meridian. It's like a boring Stephen King novel. Sure, I guess it's more formally literary but also you know, more formally boring. The Judge -- I feel like Mike Judge would do better in a Beavis & Butthead film. But Mr. Bloom didn't really watch MTV.

Nope, kids, I just didn't get it. Usually Harold Bloom is somebody I agree with almost across the board, but I just don't get it. Perhaps it's a HETERONORMATIVE THING, much like Tarantino fanboys are.

anyhow i kinda feel bad for that idiot cuck having to find every sticker on the sticker sheet and apply it to itself because it's so typically american these days.

it's so... 'i'm every woman' only it's not succinct, it's just embarrassing, like these americans always trying to elbow on top of each other in their rat race in which they're always a tool, always a derivative, never truly the Boss that they want to be, for their is always a bigger boss, and the biggest boss is Trump.

rather than dabble and wander between the whole sticker set of crowns and swords and cups and pussy and cock, why not just grow a pair of balls and commit to something outré

i mean look at it this way: even somebody who committed wholeheartedly to the entire Princess sticker sheet is more of a man than some idiot who can't figure out which Lucky Charm he feels like today. oh, i remember that age well... sometimes i felt like blue diamons, other times green clovers... and always like green trees, limited.

and there's always man of them to eat again and again

but when i see like a Canadian trans woman commit wholeheartedly to being a 5-yr-old girl, now that takes balls. that takes courage.

you either want to muddy the waters to seem deep, like Nietzsche says, or you want to clarify something or choose a course.

nothing this idiot cuck ever does smacks of courage. it is courage free. they have some good ability to pay attention to television at times, for whatever that's worth. maybe they are best suited for television analysis for geeks into the details of television shows. it's very American, caring a lot about your shows and the details.

hey, credit where due, it's American but i sure don't have the patience to figure out every detail and quote about some crap on tv.

so, yes, there's a toddler with a sticker sheet who wants to be a princess, but a real princess would jump in all the way if she had some balls:

and let us not think this is about emasculation, it's about people who are trying to be a sticker sheet generalist and paste them all onto themselves willy nilly in ways that i only find tragicomic, camp and kitsch

for example why not choose this sticker sheet? the reason is because the idiot cuck has no balls

as a channel-surfer of nuclear suburbia, it's too much sustained focus for the cuck, who is used to using the clicker to go through all the shows... a masculinity crippled by tv, much like Rabbit Angstrom ended up at in middle age

being that i am FUCKING BORED with systemic cucks maybe they can work on that but i doubt they're capable of it any more than they're capable of buying me a steak because

what's a toddler in front of a tv gonna be capable of?

seriously tho who thinks this guy is PoMo at heart?

he's such a conservative western christcuck who is terrified by the pomo world he finds himself in. that's what The Road was all about, kiddos. That's what everything he writes seems to be about. I don't share his terror... I'm liberal and we're not as big of cowards. OH IS AMERICA GOING TO COLLAPSE I'M SO SCARED

"a comedown of revolving doors"

either you're a chickenshit male or you're a female with far more guts, apparently. Cormac was a chickenshit. Emily Haines was not.

yes, you know, the American conservative is correct here, more correct than Harold Bloom I think.

'conservative pessimism' is what Cormac is i suppose Harold could be described as a conservative pessimist

too -- even as Harold's politics were with the Democrats, certainly he was trying to conserve literature in a sort of you know, different form of conservation -- there's a big difference between a 'conservative' and a 'conservationist', kids.

slip in a little Jesus

i dunno kids, i think there's something that neurotically went wrong with Harold Bloom, maybe frustration with feminism and identity politics and anarchists and deviance, that made his brain glom on to McCarthy a bit too aggressively is my theory cuz it truly has long been probably the main thing about Bloom that i can't get on the same page with... McCarthy enthusiasm

but i was spoiled by all that Stephen King at a young age, you see, and Stephen is far more imaginative and dreamlike than some writer of a fuckin' dark western.

but even... i mean i'm sorry, where's the Literature in McCarthy? Bloom never really seems to explain it. he just goes on and on about the character the Judge and the foreboding and the collapse of western civ... i mean, whatever dude ya never seen those themes before? Themes and ideas aren't discussing the LITTY RAT TURD or whatever ghost in the machine where did it go, where's Cormac LITTY RAT TURD if that's what this is all about? I just did not quite pick up on it, mmkay?

As for that cuck who is incapable of being exactly what i say its incapable of

it should find a sticker set that isn't just the generic all-encompassing one the parents always hand to the kids

and have the balls to go for it

David Bowie committed to different ways of life -- different personas -- for long periods of time -- it wasn't a costume party you flip in and out of like Lady Gaga who didn't understand it, you know?

like, read a book on method acting

i've been through a lot of looks and places and focuses and lifestyles in a lightweight curious fashion, more of a discovery zone than a statement

do you really want to look back on how you played king or bro every other day for years i mean zzzzz what are you a conservative? are you Elvis? Because he played the king as often as you do, princess and he was a Republican.

Bowie played the Goblin King briefly and it was explictly an evil role, portraying royalism as the establishment to be defeated.

Meanwhile there's Gaga in a crown with her Bad Romance posse and fake druggy fake decadence (the counter of albums sold and the ensuing profits is the most honestly thing about that video and what it's all about) which is just pathetic, the garishness of proudly capitalistic -- as proudly capitalistic as Trump

establishmentarian re-enforcement of daddies who owned 24 hotels or whatever thanks Gaga blech

anyhow, any deviance would be a good idea rather than copping from my page and being YET ANOTHER AMERICAN THINKING IF THEY SHOULD DON THAT COWBOY HAT FOR POWER.

how many times on this blog now have i talked about how much this video pissed me off when 'Greater Albania' Bugs Bunny here gets her rodeo on

Dua Lipa is just more of this push for Warner Brothers to turn music into a Barbie product in the kids' bop aisle at Wal-Mart. Her lyrics don't even gel in this dumb song or her stuck up tone wrecks it... it comes across as totally fake and there being no real 'love' at all which is probably the truth, ain't it? But she sings the lie.

That White Town song she samples is better than her song, and i doubt Bugs Barbie or Lola Bunny Lips or whatever she goes by is capable of gender-bending.

This is what good music used to be, kids. Chaka Khan gets what adulthood is about -- it's not about rabbit tricks (which are rooted in retaliatory fear of being eradicated and then turn into aggro, which is a pervasive mentally unhealthy and effectually sociopathic and repetitively abusive cowardice and sickness in most americans, from Trump to Swift) and it's not about Trumpian conquest and taking.

[writhing-in-red-clay]

There’s a theme here

[queermediastudies]

A "Gay Cowboy Films that Challenge the Political narrative - Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 movie directed by Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee, which is based on the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx. The film takes place in the American West from 1963 to 1983 and tells the complex love story of two male cowboys.

During a summer of sheep herding in Wyoming's Brokeback Mountain, young cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and poor, struggling Ennis Delmar (Heath Ledger) meet and fall in love as they are hired by a rancher. At the end of this summer's work, they each marry and have children. Ennis remains poor, while Jack becomes rich. They meet irregularly for secret "fishing trips" and motel dates. Ennis thought it impossible for Jack to keep them away from society and start a life together. Ennis's fear and inability to believe - or even try to believe - in a shared future, combined with Jack's relentless pursuit, drove a rift between them. Jack eventually dies. Ennis travels to Jack's hometown to take Jack's ashes, but is refused by his father, who can only take two of Jack's shirts.

The film Brokeback Mountain was chosen for the American Film Institute's AFI 100 Years... series (AFI, 2007). It is a classic example of queer cinema in America. In this movie review, I argue that Brokeback Mountain, as a queer film, challenges the mainstream political narrative of the American Western cowboy by giving the "cowboy" a queer identity, but it is not strong enough as a representation of a queer story because the discussion of the story's historical context is too obscure.

In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis and Jack's love for each other occurs during their careers as cowboys. Giving cowboys a gay identity violates the "sacred" character of the cowboy in the cultural and political narrative. In a country where much of the national territory was acquired geographically through the clearing of the West, the “cowboy” as a representative identity has served to solidify and value deeply ingrained values throughout American history (Nelson, 2018) .It is an identity that has become more synonymous with good qualities, such as truthfulness, integrity, discipline, and justice, rather than just a profession (Shugart, 2008). And although heterosexual orientation is not an excellent quality, with heteronormativity as the dominant ideology in society, cowboys are considered masculine heterosexuals by default. And the cowboy as a cultural symbol has also been used in political narratives. For example, in his message on 9/11, George W. Bush referred to the cowboy spirit that the people of the country should have in the face of this tragedy: unity, fearlessness. He was clearly using 'cowboy' culture as a political tool to connect citizens with an identity that is deeply rooted in mainstream American culture as a representation of good qualities (Renshon, 2005).

Brokeback Mountain breaks with this default by setting two cowboys as gay, repeatedly emphasizing their cowboy identities while the story revolves around their same-sex love affair. This breaks down the gender constructs in the cowboy political narrative.

       Schoonover & Galt argues that “Queer cinematic affect can emerge in the political jouissance of capturing how nonnormative sex feels but it can equally harness the life worlds of queer feelings whose relationship to the body and its acts travel along other pathways (Schoonover & Galt, 2016, p.14)”. The emergence of desire for homosexuality in unconventional roles resembles a political renaissance that strips away the political discourse given to the identity of the cowboy and returns to what might have happened to it as a profession for people - the cowboys in the political narrative are not gay, but the cowboys in reality may well have been. This is a recalibration of the cowboy myth.

The Schoonover & Galt article also mentions that “queer abstraction in art cinema and advant-grade history... insists on the limits of the politics of representation" and that "cinema interrupts the radical meaning of humanity itself" (p.10). Director Ang Lee figure out the way to break through political limitations in Brokeback Mountain by choosing to use scenes of gay male sexuality for this calibration.

 Although the sex scene is not considered explicit or erotic due to the style of the film and the director, it is well integrated into the atmosphere of the film and the buildup to the emotions of the two men beforehand makes the sex happen in a way that makes it more acceptable to the audience for a gay sex scene. What appears to be a mild representation manages to be radical in terms of viewing and acceptance.

However, Brokeback Mountain as a queer movie is not strong enough for queer representation. The film ignores the political history and context of queer oppression and struggle, as well as lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, and instead focuses on aligning with great heterosexual love stories. In the film, the morning after Ennis and Jack have sex for the first time, the two simultaneously express their disdain for the relationship and their rejection of their queer status.

“This here was a one shot thing, ya know I ain’t queer!”

“Me either!” 

In fact, in the film, the only word Ennis and Jack use to describe their sexual identity is "queer", and they use it to deny it.

Not only that, but in the film, both men marry women in succession to form conventional heterosexual families. Of course, this is an understandable plot considering the discrimination against homosexuality in the context of the times, and their disbelief and fear of admitting their homosexuality as a result. Indeed, framed in a historical context, such a story unfolds in a way that is more realistic. However, the weakness of the representation is that there is no detailed or direct discussion of the historical context or the social environment in the film. Instead, director Ang Lee chooses to hide the context in some minor points, leaving the audience to experience it for themselves.

For example, the film's depiction of the murder of two elderly men witnessed by Ennis when he was nine years old implies that they were homosexuals and that the eager murders were carried out in the most gruesome manner, most likely by his father. His disdain for his homosexuality and desire for a heterosexual family were most likely influenced by his father's teachings and his father's strong dislike of homosexuality. Again, the film implies that Jack's death was a premeditated murder of a gay man disguised as an unintentional tire explosion. The plot and the ambiguity suggest that the social context in which the story takes place is extremely unfriendly to homosexuality, and in this context the protagonists' disgust with their own identity and their inability to help themselves at the same time can be well explained. However, it is not a direct discussion, but rather a rather subtle hint, which many viewers may not at first associate with the brief description of the social context.

In addition, the makers of Brokeback Mountain prefer to see the film as a romantic story film about love, rather than a queer movie. Director Ang Lee is Taiwanese-American, and his casting gave all the important roles to white people. Although it is a bit biased to censure a film from 2005 by today's standards, we might guess that this is Ang Lee projecting his own image of the American cowboy of the West, as well as choosing characters that fit the image e had in mind in order to create a beautiful and heartbreaking love story. In fact, in many interviews, he often talks about how he, as a straight man going to direct a queer film, prioritizing the love between two people over their gender.  

So some of the questions about whether the characters are 'really' gay, bisexual or, for that matter, just two heterosexual men who happen to fall in love (Tinkcom , 2018) are, I think, quite justified.

Brokeback Mountain was released to critical acclaim and has become one of the classics of queer cinema. In addition to the U.S., its influence has spread worldwide, including countries and regions where it was not released, such as China. Because of its failure to pass censorship, the film was widely distributed in mainland China through pirated DVDs and Internet sources, and was integrated into Chinese gay culture. Because of it, the word "Brokeback" (断背) became a Chinese word to refer to gay men. Brokeback Mountain was also the first Western gay film I was exposed to. Perhaps because the director and I share a very similar Chinese cultural background, I can understand his choice to tell the complex love between two men in a very ambiguous way, because in the culture we grew up in, love doesn't necessarily have to be heartbreaking or have a fixed answer, keeping it ambiguous is also a common option. So, despite Brokeback Mountain's representational shortcomings, it's still a very good film for me.

References:

Hodgson, J. (2018). Queer theory and Brokeback Mountain. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 7(1), 277–282. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2018.211

Matthey Tinkcom, Queer Theory and Brokeback Mountain. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2017. x + 125 pp. ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-1882-5

Renshon, S. A. (2005). Presidential Address: George W. Bush’s Cowboy Politics: An Inquiry. Political Psychology, 26(4), 585–614.

Schoonover, K., & Galt, R. (2016). Queer Cinema in the world. Duke University Press.

Shugart, H. A. (2011). Consuming passions: "educating desire" in brokeback mountain. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(3), 173-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2010.514932

AFI (2017) AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies https://www.afi.com/afi-lists/

[pwlanier]

Tom Mix's Personal Cowboy Boots.

Bob Baldwin Canon City Spurs made for Tom Mix.

Tom Mix's Personal Batwing Chaps.

Old West Events

[xxfr13nd1ygh0stxx]

one blue eye

[piizunn]

On the theme of yt people and cowboy aesthetic. I live in Idaho which is a Cowboy state and its everywhere. It's all 'native American inspired' this and that and 'southwestern' style stuff. It makes my eyes twitch. Theres like zero awareness of the fact that it was all appropriated and it takes years off my life.

I mean I walk around in cowboy boots, cowboy hat and beadwork but like we are not the same.

i live in alberta and let me tell you it’s disturbingly similar!!! cops wear cowboy hats as part of their uniform in my city (not to out where i live in AB because this makes it glaringly obvious LMAO) don’t even get me started on the summer festival called the “stampede” where bars open at 8 am and i have to deal with drunk urban cowboys on my way to work.

the difference here is they’re trying to be aware while also not changing the way they treat ndns. in the land acknowledgments they literally thank us for being able to “live, work, and play” on our land. my favourite thing i’ve ever seen in this city is a family of 4 all dressed as cowboys riding electric scooters along the river pathways it was truly so funny i couldn’t even be mad.

[spacecowboycunt]

2023.APR.14 — Emery County, Utah

[abwwia]

WATCH: HOUSTON FILMMAKER’S NEW SHORT FILM CELEBRATING BLACK WOMEN IN COWBOY CULTURE

[oldwestmedia]

Cowboy Culture: Capturing the Spirit of the Old West in the Sierra Nevada (Hardcover) by Sandy Powell

A Photographic Look at the Old West That Is Alive and Well in California Available Here: https://amzn.to/3Dq5RII