The majority of Westerns take
place in an arid landscape of the West where irrigation and water rights
provide life to cattle, farmer’s crops, and to settlers, and where “whiskey is
for drinking, and water is for fighting.” The
Ballad of Cable is Hogue (1970) is
no exception as it blatantly illustrates the impact land and water rights
issues had on the environment of the American West. It also showcases well the
effects land acquisition acts had on development and, ultimately, environmental
damage that came from them.
By taking a populist approach
to progress, The Ballad of Cable Hogue
shows what happens in a desert when there’s “water enough for two, not three.”
Instead of arguing for communal use of free water, the film sympathizes with
its lone hero Cable Hogue played by Jason Robards, fresh from his appearance in
Sergio Leone’s epic Once Upon a Time in
the West. He profits off a water hole found on land he was prepared to die
for, land he now claims for his own. Cable may have been searching for gold in
the desert, but he makes his profit from water. Water will work just as well,
perhaps even better, since the waterhole he finds is the only one as far as the
eye can see.
In a film immersed in the
environmental history of the old West, Cable battles a different corporation, a
stagecoach company, as well as his treacherous gold mining partners, and wins.
But that victory comes at a cost. Cable is the “little guy,” the hard and
bitter survivor. He also illustrates populist views of progress as a
working-class miner who uses water rights policies to build himself a small
empire.
The film promotes a broadened
view of access to property and encourages “wise use” of water. But because its consumption
is limited by the price Cable charges, Cable’s property is built on
exploitation of resources and signifies movement into a modern world where, in
the end, technology usurps Cable’s place. In fact, modern technology literally
destroys Cable and appropriates his space in the Western landscape.
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