Vaya con Dios, Kemosabe: the multilingual space of westerns from 1945 to 1976

Abstract

Since the mythic space of the Western helped shape how Americans view themselves, as well as how the world has viewed them, the characterization of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo interaction warrants closer scrutiny. For a corpus with substantial diachrony, every Western in the National Registry of Films produced between the end of the Second World War and the American Bicentennial (1945-1976), i.e. the cultural apex of the genre, was assessed for the presence of foreign language and interpretation, the relationship between English and social power, and change over time. The analysis showed that although English was universally the language of power, and that the social status of characters could be measured by their fluency, there was a significant presence of foreign language, principally Spanish (63% of the films), with some form of interpretation occurring in half the films. Questions of cultural identity were associated with multilingualism and, although no diachronic pattern could be found in the distribution of foreign language, protagonism for Hispanics and Native Americans did grow over time. A spectrum of narrative/cinematic approaches to foreign language was determined that could be useful for further research on the presentation of foreigners and their language in the dramatic arts.