The Legend of Bagger Vance and the Myth of the Pristine Golf Course

In The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), audiences can empathize with characters from the 1920s because the filmmakers take such great care to recreate the era, even on a budget—all but the grass, but it seems acceptable in Redford’s film, since the film highlights a mythical war hero and his guardian angel. Golf becomes metaphorical in Redford’s film, and grass and greens serve as a spiritual space where Junuh finds his authentic self with Bagger’s help.

The film uses Bagger’s wisdom as its theme: “Inside each and every one of us is our one true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that ours and ours alone. Something that can’t be learned…. Something that got to be remembered.” So golf becomes metaphorical rather than historicized in the film. In fact, Junuh’s relationship with Bagger takes on mythic dimensions. According to Redford, the film is “the classic journey of a hero who falls into darkness through some disconnect with his soul, and then of his coming into the light with the help of a spiritual guide. It also had a very strong love story, which is the best way to show a hero’s coming back to life. Lastly, it had a challenge, a great contest: In the mythological sense, there finally has to come a time that ‘slaying of the dragon’ scene, and in this case it’s an extraordinary golf match.”

Since Redford’s goal in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) is to use a story (a legend) to teach a universal lesson, the golf course takes on a dream-like quality, void of imperfection. It would seem, then, that historical accuracy would be unimportant to the filmmakers. Yet Redford and his team sought to recreate the Savannah of 1916-1931 as historically accurately as possible. The film’s cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, “applied an evolving color palette to reflect visually the passage of time. The early years of 1916 are seen in a monochromatic tone that has the haze of memories. There is a brief glimpse of the ‘20s with its art deco, ‘anything goes’ motif that then gives way to the muted, washed out colors of the Great Depression.” (“Just a Moment Ago”). Yet here, too, golf courses are an exception, “where the primary color used was, naturally, green.”

Production designer Stuart Craig and costume designer Judianna Makovsky also sought to recreate the period as accurately as possible. Makovsky “had to design clothing that reflected the broad range of social and economic standings of the times” (“Just a Moment Ago”). According to Makovsky, “We made about half [young Hardy Greaves’s] wardrobe, but a lot were actual clothes of the period.” Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, two golfers of the period, did appear in the film, so Makovsky designed the costumes for the actors playing their roles by replicating clothing in photographs of the golf stars. She and her team also dressed extras on the golf course, “recreat[ing] dozens of vintage outfits, complete with knickers, golf caps, sweaters and even socks.” Junuh’s wardrobe was meant to reflect his lost spiritual state, so he dressed in fashions from the 1920s unless he was on the golf course, where he wore golf clothes from around 1916, prior to his stint in World War I. Stuart Craig had the same details in mind when designing sets for the film.

One set that caused some problems were the golf courses for the film. According to Craig, “Finding golf courses that evoked the architecture of the period proved more daunting than the filmmakers originally thought. ‘There are thousands of golf courses,’ Craig admits, ‘but few that are credible as a course in 1931. Today, everything is so controlled and manicured, completely unlike the ‘30s.’” Craig felt he combated this problem by turning to Peter Dye’s courses, golf courses “created with a respect for the indigenous nature of the region and would look much like the courses of the 30s” (“Just a Moment Ago”). Yet, the grasses and cutting technology reflect 2000 innovations rather than those of the 1920s.

Redford discusses differences between the courses and the golf game from the 1920s and 30s till today: “Golf was a different game in the ‘20s and ‘30s. People played in knickers and tweeds and ties and vests. Greens were the same length as fairways today, and the fairways were really rough. They used wooden clubs and the golf balls were not made with high velocity capacity, so a lot more had to be learned naturally” (production notes). But he chooses to address only costuming and golf clubs when providing historical accuracy for the film.

And even though the Craig, the production designer, constructed a new 18^th hole for the film, they built it using 2000 turf and cut as closely as possible now—not in the 1930s. Craig and his team constructed this hole “on the grounds of the Ocean Course, building it in its entirety, from tee to green, as a par five with a 220 yard carry off the tee. They also designed a fairway, which has a shape more like a bowl than a tabletop, so the fairway collects the ball and brings it down into play. The end of the green functions as an amphitheatre, with the crowd high and encircling the arena where the climax of the contest is played out” (“Just a Moment Ago”). This constructed 18^th hole serves as an aesthetic tool to move along the film’s narrative rather than a space where authentic grass and cutting techniques can be integrated into the film.   

Range War Movies: The Case of Tumbleweeds

Range War Movies: The Case of Tumbleweeds

Many films tackling the evolution of free-range ranching seem to neglect the negative impact ranching had on the land, instead focusing not only on the changes homesteaders brought to the western economy and, as Osage Indian writer John Joseph Matthews describes it in Wah’ Kou-Tah: The Osage and the White Man’s Road, the changes brought by a colonizing Amer-European culture, but also suggesting that homestead farmers would destroy the land and the life it provided, all in the name of civilization. The cowboy way was held up as an ideal in these films, as wild and free as the land that was depicted as untouched before farmers plowed it.

Tumbleweeds, for example, valorizes the cowboy myth, even as it illustrates the Westward movement caused by the Land Rush of 1893. The film begins with a shot of a cowboy in a wild landscape and a title card that reads, “Man and beast, both blissfully unaware that their reign is over” and then demonstrates the interconnected relationship cowboys share with the natural environment through Carver’s (William S. Hart) actions. Carver—a cowboy and hence a tumbleweed—first spares a snake’s life. Then after a card that reads “the most fertile spot in a fertile land—their ranch,” he adopts wolf pups, willing to raise them after poisoning their mother—“it’s our turn to take care of them.”

These images of nature appear between verses of a song idealizing the cowboy life as a “rollin’ rambler, a tumblin’ tumbleweed” and set off the revelation that “the Strip’s been opened to homesteaders…. this here Cherokee Strip we’re standin’ on right now.” Although Molly, a love interest, interferes (Barbara Bedford) with the cowboy’s desire for freedom, the film highlights the sacrifices he and others must make to accommodate these new settlers. A title card explains a scene in which cowboys herd hundreds of cattle off the land: “Clearing all the cattle from the rich grazing land by government order.” The title cards even illustrate the cowboy roles during the herding: “The Pointer.” “The Wheeler.” As the cowboys watch, Carver exclaims, “Boys that’s the last of the West.”

A dichotomy between wild cowboy ways that tie them to the land and its creatures and homesteaders bent on destroying both the cowboy and the land has been established here, but the film takes an ambivalent stance on the opposition, advocating homestead farming but only in the context of the fertile ranch Carver seems to have left behind: “It’s called the Box K Ranch and controls the waterways. There’s a million in it, and I’m going to get it,” Carver declares. This control of waterways sets up a conflict between Carver and Molly’s brother, Noll (J. Gordon Russell), but the real conflict here is between ranching and homesteading. Although Carver’s sidekick, Bill (Richard R. Neill), argues that it’s “no disgrace to be a homesteader when a woman like her is one,” the film also shows ominous images of wagon trains on the horizon, bringing in hordes of homesteaders. The film seems to rest on its claim, “Ain’t nothin’ like ownin’ land, no sir.” It also promotes ideals like honor and family that the film suggests the homesteaders might bring to the country and combats corruption from land grabbers. But it also highlights consequences of empire building in this rush for the land. A title card clarifies the purpose behind this rush for land on the Cherokee Strip and beyond: “100,000 empire builders racing across the great barriers of the last frontier,” building an empire that rests on land ownership and linear views of progress.

The film ends, however, with a more moderate view of land ownership, one that disqualifies the corruption embodied by Noll, a corruption that would lead to riches only by exploiting natural resources (water) for economic gain. Noll is defeated, then, and Carver gets Molly and the Box K Ranch. Carver reclaims the ranch he had left behind but merges ranching with homestead farming in both staking a claim and embracing Molly.The last scene of the film is said to illustrate this marriage between two ways of life in the West: We see barbed wire with tumbleweed rolling into it as Carver and Molly embrace, seemingly signifying a union not only between a man and a woman but between two ways of life—ranching and homestead farming. But the ending is bittersweet. Carver and Molly watch the tumbleweed together, but Carver still holds the reins of his horse. When Molly rejected him in an earlier scene, Carver declared, “Women ain’t reliable. Cows are—that’s why I’m headin’ for South America where there’s millions of them.” Juxtaposing Carver’s words with the final tumbleweed scene reinforces the film’s ambivalent stance toward the end of the cowboy life. In spite of Carver’s turn to homesteading, it is his life as a cowboy that is valorized by the film. Although Tumbleweeds mourns the demise of the cowboy and the West he represents, implications for the environment are addressed primarily with references to water rights that make clear that this is dry land, not fit for farming.

A Response to *What's the Matter with Kansas?*

What’s the Matter with Kansas?

1

In the movie,

half a mega-church

follows its preacher

to Wild West World,

investing savings

in theme park ministry.

Bankrupted, swindled

they remain loyal,

listening,

to tirades

against baby killers

in a Best Western lobby.

2

A hawk flees crows

in Lawrence, Kansas.

Flying low over a museum,

it almost drops its prey,

a black fledgling

scrapes the ground.

Silenced by warning caws,

outnumbered by resolve,

the hawk veers out of sight,

its hunger unsatisfied.

3

In the museum,

Custer’s horse Comanche stands

a stuffed reminder of Little Big Horn,

where Sitting Bull’s warriors

defended their Holy Hills,

crows fighting hawks for gold.

Dumbo and Animal Rights

Many Disney films from the 1930s through the 1950s foreground nonhuman nature and either espouse animal rights, sometimes at the expense of human nature, or assert a unified animal-environmental ethic that illustrates how the environmental movement can serve human and nonhuman nature most effectively. Dumbo, for example, foregrounds animal rights rather than environmentalism. According to David Whitley, the film is one of only two from the Walt Disney period that “manage[s] to resist the allure of wild nature” (7). In a circus setting that intertwines human with nonhuman animals, Dumbohighlights an animal rights-driven narrative that follows an ideological pattern similar to that of Bambi. Animals and humans live separate lives and, whenever humans connect with animals, animals suffer. The intensity of the violence associated with humans differs in the two films, however, and the burlesque representation of humans in Dumbo further validates the animal world, suggesting that animals are more human than their human exploiters.

Dumbo also adds conflicts within species as a source of suffering but, once differences between animals are either erased or compensated for, that conflict is resolved. Humans, on the other hand, exploit, ridicule, and mistreat animals in the circus throughout the film. And, even though the film ends happily, Dumbo’s success is featured without any reference to humans. Only human cultural artifacts illustrate their presence. Articles in human newspapers announce Dumbo’s exploits, and the circus train’s best and most modern car transports Timothy Q. Mouse, Dumbo, and his mother; yet, any active human involvement in Dumbo’s popularity once he can fly is completely erased. In Dumbo, animal rights take center stage, with animals gaining equal or even superior status in a narrative in which animal abuse is critiqued and resolved by animal behavior. As Bosley Crowther of the New York Times asserts, “The ringmaster and the clowns are the only suggestions of real people in the picture, and they are highly burlesqued. From first to last it is an animal story, and the animals are the miraculous Disney types” (“Walt Disney’s Cartoon, ‘Dumbo’…” 27).

           

Dumboconstructs its circus setting as a world controlled by animals from the opening credits forward, but humans take on an exploitative role when the circus opens after a parade. White men sell tickets, and white boys with buckteeth tease Dumbo. A redheaded boy flutters his coat like Dumbo’s ears, and Dumbo flutters his ears because he does not know he is being mocked. Dumbo’s mother reacts to this ridicule and protects her son when a boy grabs him, so she is locked in a caged wagon that reads, “Danger, Mad Elephant.” Humans again are constructed as the source of suffering for animals in this setting as they take Mrs. Jumbo to a locked cell, but the other elephants, too, react negatively, gossiping about her and ostracizing Dumbo.

But the elephants do not represent the entire animal world. Timothy, a uniformed mouse with powerful human qualities, disdains their gossip and sticks up for Dumbo. The elephants say, “It’s all the fault of that little f.r.e.a.k.,” and pretend they do not see Dumbo when he walks in. Timothy scares them away and tells Dumbo, they are “giving him the cold shoulder.” Timothy comforts Dumbo, suggesting he might get his mother “out of the clink.” Timothy and Dumbo form a friendship that illustrates animals’ similarity to idealized humanity and, in the context of the film, their superiority to the boys who ridiculed Dumbo, the circus ringmaster and his men who cage Dumbo’s mother, and even the other elephants who give Dumbo the cold shoulder. Ultimately, Timothy proposes a plan that eventually makes Dumbo the star of the circus. Dumbo’s first attempts to raise a flag fail, so he is demoted to “clown,” but Dumbo’s eventual show-stopping triumph helps him overcome the torture he faces from the humans who seem to control his well-being.

Dumbo’s failure leads the ringmaster and his men to further exploit and mistreat Dumbo. Dumbo is disgraced, and the setting illustrates his embarrassment. The train plows through a rainstorm when the circus leaves. The other elephants suffer injuries and complain about Dumbo. One tells the others, “They’ve gone and made him a clown.” This is the last straw for the elephants: “The shame of it,” they say. “From now on he is no longer an elephant.” As a clown, Dumbo is further humiliated. He is dressed as a baby in a fire-filled window of a burning house, jumps onto a trampoline, and falls through to a bucket of bubbles. The clowns cheer this exploitation, but later Timothy tries to cheer him up as he scrubs him with a toothbrush. Dumbo realizes he has been humiliated but gains strength from Timothy and his mother, reactions that again highlight his similarity to an idealized view of humanity. Dumbo cries until Timothy takes him to her prison wagon where Mrs. Jumbo is chained and, when she sees Dumbo’s trunk, she strokes and then hugs him with her trunk, turning it into a swing for him. In a montage sequence, other mothers hug their babies, highlighting, again, their similarity to humans before Dumbo and Timothy must leave, returning to find the clowns discussing Dumbo’s success and promoting an even higher fall.

Dumbo’s successful flight provides the Disney-like ending of the film, but it also facilitates his further connection with the human world, in this case, a world of media. After some practice on a cliff, Dumbo does fly, casting his shadow on a grassland below them. Now with a magic feather from Timothy, he is ready to fly in the show with the clowns. At the moment when he must dive out of a very tall “burning” building, Dumbo flies, even after dropping the feather, in a wild loop-de-loop and peanut shooting show. Newspaper headlines declare his success, and the film ends with mother in a “star’s” private train car, and Dumbo flying in to hug her. The “When I See an Elephant Fly” song ends the film with a view of the train’s last car that closes like an eye.

But in these last scenes, humans play only peripheral roles. Animals, constructed as equal or superior to humans, build a safe world for themselves in a circus environment, perhaps in spite of the humans with whom they periodically interact. The conflict between animals has been resolved with Dumbo’s success, but that between humans and animals continues. The continuing conflict between West and East Coast styles parallels this conflict, with animals clearly gaining an upper hand over their comic human exploiters. Although Langer asserts that the West Coast style ultimately dominated the film, the East Coast style’s mark on the film remains, perhaps, as in Dumbo, illustrating the irrevocable differences between the two coasts.