Dead Man is a funny, nihilistic deconstruction of both the West and the Western. This is the story of a man, William Blake (Johnny Depp) on a journey in several senses of the word. The film opens with a innocuous but telling montage of Blake's train journey from Cleveland to the apocryphally-named town of Machine. He's also on a journey to his emotional interior, reacting to a world seemingly without rules and simultaneously adapting himself to it. He's also traveling inexorably to his own death.
Director Jim Jarmusch doesn't pull any punches on this point. Early in the film Blake has a tryst with a girl who makes paper flowers and they are caught by her jealous lover. The offended shoots the girl and Blake shoots him but catches the first bullet after it exits the girl. Escaping deliriously into the wilderness, Blake wakes and is told by a Native American who calls himself Nobody that he will soon die. The bullet is too close to his heart to remove. Nobody takes it upon himself to bring Blake with him to "the place where sky meets sea," and where presumably, Blake will die. Blake, therefore, is displaced and dying in the west.
So what this mean, to have this experience in Jarmusch's self-described "acid western"? The name "Machine" is the first sign that this film means to represent a deliberately mythicized version of the West. Blake is identified as from Cleveland, but Machine is not located in any particular place ("that's the end of the line!" is all we hear about the place). It's not supposed to exist other than as a generalized representation of the deep, old West.
Dead Man is as much about journeys as it is about borders and transitions - between life and death, decency and indecency - so here it may not be a bad idea to bring in Frederick Jackson Turner's famous essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." The Turner Thesis, as it has come to be known, is largely accountable for a number of basic understandings about the American West. Taught in schools throughout the early twentieth century, it is largely the Turner worldview that characterizes the West and classic cinematic depictions of it.
Turner argues that for all of American history, the continually expanding frontier - "the meeting point between savagery and civilization" - has been the most significant constituent aspect of the development of the American character. He says that the frontier fostered a distinctly American individualism, which in turn has promoted democracy. This proudly individualistic character of the frontier, and particularly the American West came to be a significant influence on cultural representations of frontier society, which were beginning to become popular at the time that Turner's lectures became mainstream.*
Dead Man subverts that quasi-mythical account of the American frontier with its own generalized Western hell. There is Machine itself, or the civilizing frontier, in Turner's conception of things. It's a grim place, reeking of death and desolation. Machine is dominated by Dickinson's metalworks, and Mr. Dickinson (Robert Mitchum, in his last film performance) holds a lot of local sway. Blake's encounter at the factory is a critique both of the faceless, playing-against-the-house insurmountability of fighting for your place in industrial capitalism, and of frontier individualism. Blake has a letter that says he has a job. He gets there, he has no job, and he's spent all his money to get there. Dickinson, meanwhile, points a shotgun at unsuspecting visitors and runs his metalworks with militant senility. This vision of industrialization run amok in the unrestricted frontier neatly characterizes Dead Man's twisted sensibilities about life in the West.
Blake's wilderness retreat with Nobody, escaping the assassins of Dickinson, comprises the bulk of the film, but here we find no charming rugged individualism facing the encroaching advance of institution, except perhaps in the figure of Nobody. But the frontier, whenever it permeates, is savage. Take Iggy Pop's cross-dressing rapist, chatting lazily by the fireside, or the cannibalistic bounty hunter. These are figures borne of the West, but while they are certainly individual, one wonders whether this is really what Turner meant when he stated that frontier independence fostered democracy. Jarmusch consistently presents the civilizing side of the frontier as savage, even inhuman. Rather than fostering the individual as democracy-boosting, Dead Man's frontier provides a world without rules, open season for people to become whatever they prefer, with no repercussions.
This is a surprisingly funny movie. Even in the names like William Blake and Nobody, the film has all sorts of winking silliness about it. But with their names as with most other points in the film, the absurdism of Dead Man generally has underlying significance. Both names, in a sense, serve the film's critique of traditional representations of Native Americans (which I think is an important element of its deconstruction of the Western genre). Blake has no idea that he shares his name with a major poet, but Nobody has heard all about him and believes Blake to be a reincarnation of the poet. Not only does this fit into some plausible Native American beliefs (the film is considered one of the most well-researched with respect to its depictions of Native Americans), but Nobody is far better-read than his white counterpart. Furthermore, the name "Nobody" is a dumbed-down translation of "he who speaks much, saying nothing," a much more complex idea, but Nobody both dumbs it down for ignorant white travelers and gives literal spoken word to the thought at the back of the minds of American frontiersman. The way that Nobody represents himself to this white person he finds is a mirror of how he believes they view him.**
Those elements of the traditional western vernacular are consistently turned on their head, in particular the spirit quest sequence. This is not a journey of enlightening introspection but rather a man's dark commune with himself under frontier and existential extremes. What makes the film so dark is that this isn't some liberating catharsis of late-life violence or hedonism. We could write that off more easily. But Blake, even though he has no experience with violence or frontier brutality (see the opening train ride), casually slips it on like a second skin. Jarmusch suggests, thus, that our savage frontier selves are at least a part of our true selves. All we need is for the shackles to come off.
* See this for the original "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" for the Turner thesis, and this for a discussion of the historical response to the Turner Thesis.
**The film is regarded as being one of the most carefully-researched with regards to Native American depictions, but debates therein rage on. See this for a critique of Dead Man's depiction of Native Americans (which could do with some fleshing out) and this for a Sartre-influenced discussion of the names in the film.
Director Jim Jarmusch doesn't pull any punches on this point. Early in the film Blake has a tryst with a girl who makes paper flowers and they are caught by her jealous lover. The offended shoots the girl and Blake shoots him but catches the first bullet after it exits the girl. Escaping deliriously into the wilderness, Blake wakes and is told by a Native American who calls himself Nobody that he will soon die. The bullet is too close to his heart to remove. Nobody takes it upon himself to bring Blake with him to "the place where sky meets sea," and where presumably, Blake will die. Blake, therefore, is displaced and dying in the west.
So what this mean, to have this experience in Jarmusch's self-described "acid western"? The name "Machine" is the first sign that this film means to represent a deliberately mythicized version of the West. Blake is identified as from Cleveland, but Machine is not located in any particular place ("that's the end of the line!" is all we hear about the place). It's not supposed to exist other than as a generalized representation of the deep, old West.
Dead Man is as much about journeys as it is about borders and transitions - between life and death, decency and indecency - so here it may not be a bad idea to bring in Frederick Jackson Turner's famous essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." The Turner Thesis, as it has come to be known, is largely accountable for a number of basic understandings about the American West. Taught in schools throughout the early twentieth century, it is largely the Turner worldview that characterizes the West and classic cinematic depictions of it.
Turner argues that for all of American history, the continually expanding frontier - "the meeting point between savagery and civilization" - has been the most significant constituent aspect of the development of the American character. He says that the frontier fostered a distinctly American individualism, which in turn has promoted democracy. This proudly individualistic character of the frontier, and particularly the American West came to be a significant influence on cultural representations of frontier society, which were beginning to become popular at the time that Turner's lectures became mainstream.*
Dead Man subverts that quasi-mythical account of the American frontier with its own generalized Western hell. There is Machine itself, or the civilizing frontier, in Turner's conception of things. It's a grim place, reeking of death and desolation. Machine is dominated by Dickinson's metalworks, and Mr. Dickinson (Robert Mitchum, in his last film performance) holds a lot of local sway. Blake's encounter at the factory is a critique both of the faceless, playing-against-the-house insurmountability of fighting for your place in industrial capitalism, and of frontier individualism. Blake has a letter that says he has a job. He gets there, he has no job, and he's spent all his money to get there. Dickinson, meanwhile, points a shotgun at unsuspecting visitors and runs his metalworks with militant senility. This vision of industrialization run amok in the unrestricted frontier neatly characterizes Dead Man's twisted sensibilities about life in the West.
Blake's wilderness retreat with Nobody, escaping the assassins of Dickinson, comprises the bulk of the film, but here we find no charming rugged individualism facing the encroaching advance of institution, except perhaps in the figure of Nobody. But the frontier, whenever it permeates, is savage. Take Iggy Pop's cross-dressing rapist, chatting lazily by the fireside, or the cannibalistic bounty hunter. These are figures borne of the West, but while they are certainly individual, one wonders whether this is really what Turner meant when he stated that frontier independence fostered democracy. Jarmusch consistently presents the civilizing side of the frontier as savage, even inhuman. Rather than fostering the individual as democracy-boosting, Dead Man's frontier provides a world without rules, open season for people to become whatever they prefer, with no repercussions.
This is a surprisingly funny movie. Even in the names like William Blake and Nobody, the film has all sorts of winking silliness about it. But with their names as with most other points in the film, the absurdism of Dead Man generally has underlying significance. Both names, in a sense, serve the film's critique of traditional representations of Native Americans (which I think is an important element of its deconstruction of the Western genre). Blake has no idea that he shares his name with a major poet, but Nobody has heard all about him and believes Blake to be a reincarnation of the poet. Not only does this fit into some plausible Native American beliefs (the film is considered one of the most well-researched with respect to its depictions of Native Americans), but Nobody is far better-read than his white counterpart. Furthermore, the name "Nobody" is a dumbed-down translation of "he who speaks much, saying nothing," a much more complex idea, but Nobody both dumbs it down for ignorant white travelers and gives literal spoken word to the thought at the back of the minds of American frontiersman. The way that Nobody represents himself to this white person he finds is a mirror of how he believes they view him.**
Those elements of the traditional western vernacular are consistently turned on their head, in particular the spirit quest sequence. This is not a journey of enlightening introspection but rather a man's dark commune with himself under frontier and existential extremes. What makes the film so dark is that this isn't some liberating catharsis of late-life violence or hedonism. We could write that off more easily. But Blake, even though he has no experience with violence or frontier brutality (see the opening train ride), casually slips it on like a second skin. Jarmusch suggests, thus, that our savage frontier selves are at least a part of our true selves. All we need is for the shackles to come off.
* See this for the original "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" for the Turner thesis, and this for a discussion of the historical response to the Turner Thesis.
**The film is regarded as being one of the most carefully-researched with regards to Native American depictions, but debates therein rage on. See this for a critique of Dead Man's depiction of Native Americans (which could do with some fleshing out) and this for a Sartre-influenced discussion of the names in the film.
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