The host network for the television Western, Hell on Wheels, has provided a launch date for the show’s second season. AMC has announced that Hell on Wheels will premiere its second season on Sunday, August 12th. The second season will run for 10 episodes.
The show portrays the building of the US transcontinental railroad in a post-Civil War West. The lead character, a former Confederate soldier named Cullen Bohannon, initially arrives at the mobile construction town named “Hell on Wheels” to seek revenge for the death of his wife and son by Union soldiers during the Civil War. Bohannon (played by Anson Mount) will gain the position of foreman and interacts at various levels with a number of characters either involved in or reacting to the building of railroad westward.
Anson Mount as Cullen Bohannon
The complete first season of AMC’s Hell on Wheels was released on Blu-ray on May 15th and is rated TV-14.
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
The AMC television series Hell on Wheels – first launched in November of 2011 – is now into production for its second season. The start of this May saw cast and crew filming in a new Alberta location – cinematography for the first season was focused southwest of metropolitan Calgary on the territory of the Tsuu T’ina Nation. Current shooting is underway at a location along the Bow River southeast of Calgary.
The show – set in the immediate years after the end of the US Civil War – follows a number of complex characters that are involved in and affected by the process of constructing the transcontinental railroad westward. Cullen Bohannon (played by Anson Mount) is the central figure of this Western drama – Bohannon is a former Confederate soldier who becomes foreman for the Union Pacific as it lays its track toward the west in 1865. His foreman duties provides him with a base by which to track down the gang of Union soldiers that during the war had murdered his wife and son.
AMC has done well to create a number of video materials to support and contextualize Hell on Wheels during its first season. This short segment – supporting the final episode of the first season – provides some background toward the potential paths that the show may take in its second season.
The air date for the launch of the second season is still to be announced by AMC.
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
This writer considers a contemporary Western to generally be a film set after the start of World War One in 1914. The majority of Western films are set in what can be viewed as the “Old West” period – the years of US westward expansion between the close of the US Civil War in 1865 and the start of WWI. A contemporary Western remains based in the western region of North America and carries many of the Western character-types and ethics into a present-time with greater technological focus and reliance. The Electric Horseman (1979) is one such contemporary Western – westernsreboot has previously discussed this film and its richness invites a further look.
Set in 1979 (the year of its production), Robert Redford plays a former rodeo star named Sonny Steele. Steele has become a spokesperson for a corporation that uses his image to sell breakfast cereal. That image is literally “highlighted” at personal appearances with gaudy dress and an electric string of lights on both he and a horse that he rides. Prior to a promotional appearance in Las Vegas, Steele realizes that the horse he is slated to ride at that event– a champion thoroughbred named Rising Star – is being drugged to make him passive and that the drug is causing injury to the horse.
Robert Redford – Sonny Steele in The Electric Horseman (1979)
Steele connects to the plight of a champion horse being so demeaned for corporate profit – he has allowed himself to slide into alcohol abuse and to be dressed and used as seen fit by a multinational business. In a moment of resolve, he rides Rising Star away from the Las Vegas show with the eventual goal of releasing him to live in a canyon that is home to wild horses.
This film presents a number of important critiques of both corporations and modern media. The corporation – the amorphously-named Ampco – fears that the loss of Rising Star and their handling of the issue could have a negative effect upon both a looming business merger and the value of their stock particularly if it becomes known that they had drugged the horse.
Jane Fonda plays Eastern-based television reporter, Hallie Martin, who locates Steele in hopes of an exclusive story. When she uses Steele’s friends to find him in the western countryside, Steele declares that she is just another typical reporter trying to use him and Rising Star to sell a story. There is a parallel between the corporation using his and the horse’s image to sell product and the media using Steele and Rising Star to sell a story, gain viewers and thus please their own advertisers.
In powerful exchange with Fonda’s character, Steele argues that “….you just want a story….any story…why don’t you make one up? That’s what y’all do anyway….” When Steele claims that he has retired from “public life”, Martin responds that he indeed is a story for having rode down the Las Vegas strip with someone else’s $12 million horse. Steele closes that conversation with the statement that “I’m nobody’s story but my own now.” Steele is seeking freedom from any manipulation of his personhood for monetary ends. This opens the larger question for all of us – to what degree will we compromise for money?
Martin and Steele will form a relationship as she doggedly follows him toward an eventual video report that will in turn create great public sympathy for his cause. Along that process there are moments that map out the very different lifestyles that each character leads – Steele cares not for the consumer shopping meccas and lifestyle of the East and he pokes fun at Martin’s knowledge of the West. Here is one such scene:
Sydney Pollack directed The Electric Horseman – the film was made on location in Nevada, Utah and Zion National Park (near Springdale, Utah). The film’s soundtrack included several songs by Willie Nelson – who made his acting debut in the movie – that become major hits, including “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”, “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and Nelson’s cover of the Allman Brothers track, “Midnight Rider”.
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
Having viewed the documentary, Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison by filmmaker Doug-Hawes Davis, the question I am left with is can North American society make a space for the bison in our lives? It may seem naïve and rhetorical to pose but attempting to answer that question – try it – maps out much of the 21st century relationship with the natural environment in North America. The PBS series Independent Lens has been screening the film both online and over its TV network the past two weeks.
One of the telling statements contained in this 2011 film is that the American Bison – or buffalo – is the one wild animal on this continent that we do not allow to simply be wild and free. The documentary traces the history of bison from its origins some 800,000 years ago in North America to the present-day and presents one startling fact – the current bison is actually a dwarf version of a much larger bison that once existed on this continent. With that continent now criss-crossed by asphalt, it is worth considering that the bison’s original range stretched from northern Mexico to Alaska.
As the previous posts on westernsreboot have shared, the 19th century saw unprecedented and premeditated destruction of the bison on the Great Plains – by 1890 they were gone from that region. The film shares that an emerging conservation movement at the time sought to preserve the bison but with an important caveat – they should be protected and not left to roam wild. A wild herd was concurrently discovered living in Yellowstone National Park (Montana). This clip from the film discusses the late 19th century awareness of a need to protect the bison:
Facing the Storm explores how present-day bison in Yellowstone face a threat when they cross that arbitrary and artificial park boundary and typically move north into Montana during winter months. The state government of Montana currently does not provide any protection for bison that cross into their jurisdiction – they are treated as livestock and can be hunted or gathered for slaughter. The underlying argument presented for this approach is that doing so protects cattle ranches – the bison compete with cattle for grasslands. It is worth noting that those grasslands were the original habitat of bison until their wholesale slaughter in the 19th century – thus creating a vacuum filled by cattle. How a respectful relationship can be maintained between advocates for the bison and the multi-generational ranchers remains to be seen.
The documentary shares how a number of Indigenous nations in the Great Plains region have been reintroducing bison to their traditional lands. The Inter Tribal Buffalo Council is working to restore bison and to do so in a way that complements their traditional spiritual beliefs and cultural practices. The council – composed of 56 different tribes – currently has a collective herd of over 15,000 bison.
There is also a movement among non-Indigenous citizens in the Great Plains to create a “buffalo commons” – a designated preserve of up to 139,000 square miles across 10 states in which to re-establish the bison.
Can we make a place for the bison in our North American society and perhaps more importantly, in our hearts? The words of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux holy man, had this to say in The Sacred Pipe (published in 1953):
“The buffalo represents the people and the universe and should always be treated with respect. For was he not here before the two-legged peoples, and is he not generous in that he gives us our homes and our food? The buffalo is wise in many things, and thus we should always be as a relative with him” - Black Elk
The bison have traditionally been called “Faces the Storm” because when a winter storm hits a herd, they turn and face into the storm and move toward it – they know that doing so will take them out of the storm sooner. They are wise….will we be?
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
PBS SERIES TO HIGHLIGHT STORY OF THE AMERICAN BISON
As a follow-up to the previous post exploring the American bison and the Western, westernsreboot.com is sharing that the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens will broadcast Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison this Thursday, April 26th (at 10 pm).
Filmmaker Doug-Hawes Davis explores the history of the largest land mammal in North America and its relationship with human beings in this 2011 documentary. There were an estimated 25 to 30 million bison – or buffalo – at the time of European contact in the 1500s and the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains have maintained a sacred relationship with the bison. This film describes how commercial harvesting of the animal and a US government-sanctioned extermination of the mammal in the 1800s – to eliminate the food source for Plains tribes and pressure those peoples onto reservations – led to just a few thousand bison at the beginning of the 20th century.
This film also examines the place of the American bison today as it faces continued pressure from cattle ranching and expanding urban centers. Sport hunting also takes a toll – the film notes that more bison are killed for sport now than at any other time since the 19th century. Despite these challenges, the film relates how many conservationists believe that the bison can – and should – be restored to the Great Plains in wild herds as part of a sustainable North America. Here is the trailer for Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison:
More info about the film can be found at this link: film.html
Independent Lens airs Thursday nights – typically at 10pm – check your local listings.
Here is a link to the general PBS schedule : tv-schedule
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
BUFFALO – THE AMERICAN BISON & THE WEST
The buffalo – the common name for the American bison – is both a symbol of the Old West and the North American continent and has been a living component in some Western films. The bison has been traditionally respected by Plains Indigenous cultures and in the 19th century was central to both Plains tribal culture and sustenance. The Indigenous peoples of that region would draw upon the animal for everything from food to leather and ceremoniously honored the buffalo for having given its life to their people.
By the 1870s, as US nation-state expansion continued westward, many US federal officials had begun to encourage white hunters to kill the buffalo be it for sport, meat or hides. The slaughter of the buffalo accelerated when eastern US tanneries – where skins are made into leather – began to buy buffalo hides. In addition to using the skins for clothing and rugs, the skins were also turned into industrial machine belts for the steam-driven pulley system in factories of the time. Buffalo hides were also part of a large export market to Europe.
Commercial hunting outfits took far more bison than Plains tribes or individual hunters. It has been argued that for-profit buffalo hunting operations in the 1870s took from 2,000 up to 100,000 animals per day on the Plains. In contrast to the Plains tribes use of the entire animal, the non-Indigenous hunters would typically just take the buffalo skins and leave the remainder of the animal to decay where it lay.
1870s photo of buffalo skulls to be ground into fertilizer.
Conservative estimates speculate the American bison to number 25 to 30 million at the time of European arrival. In the mid-1870s more than 10 million buffalo were killed with just around 2000 left by end of the century. The US Army approved of the slaughter of the bison as it knew that would weaken the resistance of the Plains tribes against moving onto reservations. Railroad companies also wanted the buffalo reduced as herds could damage trains in a collision.
In terms of portrayals in Westerns, the buffalo are part of the first communications in Dances with Wolves (1990) between Lieutenant Dunbar (Kevin Costner) and the Lakota. In this this well-known scene (with actors Graham Greene and Rodney Grant) the image of the buffalo is part of their first verbal exchanges.
Dunbar will be drawn into the life of the Lakota group after he locates a herd of bison and takes part in the hunt – this next scene gives a sense of the power of the buffalo (and demonstrates a number of impressive riders on horseback).
Buffalo Bill – who helped to create a framework for both the rodeo and Western films with his Wild West shows – gained his name for his skill in hunting buffalo for the army and railroads. By the end of the 19th century he called for them to be saved.
Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison is a 2011 documentary film that explores the history of the bison on this continent – here is a trailer for that film:
(Copyright – Chad Beharriell)
While some in the 21st century find train travel antiquated, it is worth reflecting upon the impact that the transcontinental railroad had upon the North American continent in the 19th century. AMC’s Western series Hell on Wheels is framed by that very project – the creation of a railway link between East and West in the immediate post-Civil War period.
The eventual railway link – the continent was first joined on May 10, 1869 with the driving of the “last spike” in Utah – would reduce land travel from the US Atlantic coast to the Pacific from approximately six months to one week. This new infrastructure would increase the pace of US expansion and settlement westward.
That accelerated expansion would bring into collision a predominantly Christian Euro-American society with Indigenous peoples, territories and traditional ways of living. The United States would seek to claim that Indigenous territory through treaty and/or armed force and the cultural assumption that framed much of that acquisition was the notion that the United States had a “destiny” to spread from coast-to-coast. Within this assumption – drawing on an exclusionary interpretation of both faith and Darwinian science – was a biased dismissal of Indigenous land rights, traditional Indigenous spiritual practices and connection to the land.
The actual work to build the railway itself also saw former opposing groups collide. Racial and social class tensions underlined the work gangs that included former African-American slaves and Irish immigrants. Former Union and Confederate soldiers who had so recently fought one another were now brought together for reasons of employment and forced to work together within the resonating resentment of the US Civil War.
A number of these ideas are explored in the video material that AMC created to support and contextualize Hell on Wheels as it launched its first season in 2011; specifically a short segment entitled The Meaning of the Railroad: Inside Hell on Wheels. While acknowledging the technical achievement and human effort to construct the railroad, this short video also recognizes a number of human costs to its creation.
AMC has renewed Hell on Wheels for a second season – the first season will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD on May 22.
(Copyright: Chad Beharriell)
