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Geography of a Lost Artist: Myth of the Artist in Sam Shepard's Geography of a

Horse Dreamer

Shima Shahbazi, Hossein Pirnajmuddin, Helen Ouliaei Nia

1 Abstract--- Sam Shepard’s drama has a

distinctive historiographic and mythic quality. Most of his plays portray characters (artists, cowboys, family men, etc.) in search of their identities in their past. “Myth of the artist” figures prominently in many of his "art" plays. Among these plays is Geography of a Horse Dreamer in which the protagonist is a parodic romantic artist whose imagination is corrupted by and whose art is commodified by the capitalist system. The protagonist represents the alienated artist in the postmodern era. This paper is an attempt to probe the parodic-mythic features of the play in the context of Shepard’s arguably historiographic approach. Index Terms: Sam Shepard, historiography, the

postmodern, parody, myth of the artist “The mind ain't nothing without the old body tagging along to follow things through.”

Sam Shepard, La Turista I. INTRODUCTION

Geography of a Horse Dreamer 2 , as a good instance of Sam Shepard's myth of the artist, is said to be related to Shepard’s experience of the movie Zabrisky Point [5]. The subject, as expected, is the artist’s imagination, and the danger of “messing with it” by selling it to a capitalist enterprise that seeks to

Shima Shahbazi is instructor of English language and literature at Sheikhbahaee University, Iran. Email: [email protected] Hossein pirnajmuddin is assistant professor of English literature at the university of Isfahan, Iran. Email: [email protected] Helen Ouliaei Nia is assistant professor of English literature at the university of Isfahan, Iran. Email: [email protected] 2 Published in 1974

commodify the artist by turning him into an instrument for producing a profitable product. The play gesturing strongly toward Harold Pinter’s

absurdist classic, The Dumb Waiter [10] and is about the relationship of the actual and virtual [9], the imaginary and the real. Sometimes it is called a stage allegory [5] or an allegorical morality play [9]. Martin Tucker writes that Geography of a Horse Dreamer presents a very dark representation of the suffering of artists in contemporary America, suggesting that perhaps “the only way out for the contemporary artist, once he has entered the world of public attention/performance, is a lobotomy of his dreams” [12]. The play is a revisioning and revisiting of the

history of art, the American popular culture, and the quality of art, hence the significance of historiography. Historiography, generally speaking, is the study of the history and methodology of the discipline of history. La Capra defines it as a “reconceptualization of culture in terms of collective discourses” [6]. Linda Hutcheon uses the term historiography in defining postmodern literature and culture. She maintains that history is a hallmark of postmodernism. According to her, postmodernism suggests a “re-evaluation of and a dialogue with the past” in the light of the present [6]. She declares that in postmodernism, the past can no more be denied than unproblematically returned to; it is always “placed critically and not nostalgically in relation with the present” [6]. Therefore, she views the past in postmodernism as a critical revisiting. Unlike Baudrillard who believes in the nostalgic

aspect of postmodernism, Hutcheon tries to disprove this nostalgic aspect and does not approve of the theory that calls postmodern representations meaningless and centerless simulacra [6]. Instead, she focuses on “parody” which brings about this “reviewing” and “critical” characteristic of postmodernism. Parody, as she argues, calls our attention to the history of the images and icons or,

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better to say, the representations we meet in today’s culture. The paradoxical nature of postmodernism is generated by “parody,” for it “paradoxically incorporates and challenges that which it parodies” [6]. Parody seems to offer a perspective on the present and the past which “allows an artist to speak to a discourse from within it but without being totally recuperated by it.” Therefore, parody brings about a critical distance which makes possible a roughly objective reading of the past. It offers a sense of “the presence of the past,” a past that can be known from its documents [6]. Using “parody” as a technique, postmodern historiography raises questions regarding the nature of identity and subjectivity, reference and representation and the ideological implications of writing about history [6]. Parody contests the assumptions about artistic

originality and uniqueness and the notions of ownership and property. With parody – as with any form of reproduction – the notion of the original as rare, single, and valuable (in aesthetic or commercial terms) is called into question. This does not mean that art has lost its meaning and purpose, but that it will inevitably have a new and different significance. In other words, parody works to “foreground the politics of representation” [7], to “enshrine the past and to question it” [6]. It is worth mentioning that Hutcheon has mostly

focused on historiographic metafiction because postmodernism in literature has been mostly defined for fiction; but her definitions and theories are also applicable to literature including drama. In historiographic literature, the historical and literary inscriptions merge and make up intertextuality [6]. Postmodern drama or generally speaking

postmodern art and literature are self-reflexive and simultaneously historically grounded and they bear a history of themselves within their textuality. As we will discuss, Sam Shepard’s postmodernist plays (Geography in focus here) are self-reflexive since they are concerned with art, artists and the history of the formation of art. In this study, myth, as a “mode of representation”

chosen by history [2], is considered a sort of historiography. Sam Shepard’s myths can be classified as Barthesian “modern myths”: Pop culture heroes (who turn out to be parodic anti-heroes) like musicians, actors and actresses, showbiz men, movie producers, rock and rock singers and etc. Shepard produces these mythic figures to review the history of American culture, including the myth of capitalism and the myth of origin.

II. DISCUSSION

The major character of the play is a dreamer who has been captured and is being kept prisoner by a syndicate boss. He is supposed to dream the name of the winners of horse racing and after a while is expected to be able to turn his horse dreaming talents to the dog circuits. What is historiographical about this play is that

Cody is supposed to predict the future using his accumulated experience of the past. In a way, he is a Romantic artist since his art originates from, as Wordsworth confirmed, “emotion recollected in tranquility” and may be preceded and followed by reflection [1]. Cody is a good artist since he has deep roots in nature and culture of his native land. His art is the Wordsworthian “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” [1] which arises from his past experiences. Therefore, Cody represents the artist-hero of the American frontier who fights for his deep roots. Since Cody is a postmodern-Romantic artist, his art

turns into a 'parody of art'. Unlike the Romantics who were mostly engaged with poetry, Cody deals with horses and later, dog racing. Horse racing is one of the instances of American popular culture; it is not only an amusement but also a business for those who bet on it. Therefore, Cody's art, like many other postmodern arts, is affected by the myth of capitalism. In the early days of his job, he mentions: “It [his art] just sort of came to me outa’ the blue . . . At first it’s all instinct. Now it’s work” [11] 3. When art turns into a business, he can no more communicate with it. He is “dried up now,” he says [11]4. Cody later confesses that there has been a source of

improvisation for him: “all of 'em came from the music. It's a source of inspiration...” [11]5. Again, this is a parody of the historical Romantic Movement. The artist in this play is inspired by music but instead of creating a transcendental art, he carries out business. The very contrast is the result of the postmodern juxtaposition of high and low art in the setting of popular culture. Cody's dreams are images projected into the future

[9]. He is imprisoned in the world of images; in other words, the world of the parodic hyperreal. For Baudrillard, the parodic aspect of the hyperreal is the result of the total reconstruction of reality as aesthetic spectacle. Such parody constitutes a kind of empty mockery because it marks the “impossibility of returning to the real” [4]. When Cody finds it impossible to come back to reality, he becomes

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obsessed with the hyperreal images in his mind and finally loses track of everything. Myth of capitalism is one of the hallmarks of

Geography of a Horse Dreamer. The motif of the exploitation of the artist and the commodification of his art runs throughout the play. Fingers is the boss who exploits Cody's dreams to win at the races. Cody is called “Mr. Artistic Cowboy,” the Shepardesque stereotypical character who is supposed to be the hero/artist of the play, but turns out to be the anti-hero/anti-artist. DeRose [5] argues that Cody represents Shepard, the artistic cowboy genius who wishes to return to his old home and old ways, but has been kidnapped by commercial entrepreneurship and forced into creative slavery. In this respect, he is yet another incarnation of the captive artist of Melodrama Play. Cody says:

...It's been years. I been blindfolded and shuffled from one hotel to another for as long as I can remember. I ain't seen Great Nature for years now. The sun would probably blind me. 6

His alienation from the Mother Nature and his native land has resulted in his disconnection from the world of imagination. He complains that, by locking him in a room, Fingers has “blocked up my senses. Everything forces itself on the space I need. There’s too much chaos now” 7. Locking him up in a room has led to blocking of his imagination. Apart from that, they move him to another place other than his hometown; there, he is unable to dream and predict: “He [Fingers] don’t understand the area I have to dream in . . . the inside one. The space inside where the dream comes. It’s gotta be created”8 . Cody refers to the Romantic notion of internal and external nature. He believes that the inner nature of an artist is built in accordance with the external nature he is in commune with. For him it is impossible to create while his inner nature is neglected. However, Fingers believes that dreams are a gift from God, no matter where you dream9. The external nature, that is, one's native land and historical and geographical roots, does not mean anything to Fingers. He desires nothing out of art but money. Shepard is said to have “Anglicized” his work through the character of Fingers whose English sounds British (He uses British-English words such as “Good God”, “carry on”, “bloody” while his references are American in nature like pop culture figures such as “Fort

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Knox”)10. Fingers typifies the playwright's blending of the American traits with those of British [5]. Cody says: “I'm from the Great Plains not the city. He [Fingers] has poisoned my dreams with these cities” 11 . He argues that his imagination has been poisoned by the modern city life while as a dreamer he should be living in the lap of nature to get inspiration for his art. Some scholars believe that the sense of dislocation

in the play refers to Shepard's moving to England for a period of time [5]. It is there in the play, but it goes deeper than the geographic dislocation from the US to the UK. Shepard is also writing out of the more fundamental dislocation he had recently felt as a writer for the movies, where he and his creative powers had been treated as salable commodities in Hollywood [10]. Not only that, but it is also proposed that Shepard's new fascination with dog racing paralleled “a resurgence of interest in his work by a new audience (Suddenly, as in the play, he dreamed ‘winners’ again).” The play is an extended metaphor for the personal dilemma of the artist himself. Cody's fear of losing his art increases but Fingers

does not care about Cody's sense of displacement and has new plans for him. He decides that Cody should be assigned to dreaming dogs now. Beaujo, one of Cody’s guards, objects: “he can’t suddenly change his whole style a’ dreaming like that. It might kill him”12. But the other guard, Santee, explains: “The pressure’s there. It comes from the outside. Somewhere out there . . . That’s how it is. You got the genius, somebody else got the power. That’s how it always is, Beethoven. The most we can hope for is a little room service and a color TV” 13. Here, Shepard's historiographical view of art is

more critical than nostalgic. The matter of commodification of art is one of the main issues that he has been concerned with and to which has referred in many of his plays. As with Angel City, Cowboy Mouth, Melodrama Play, Suicide in B-Flat, True West, etc., art is treated as capital traded in the capitalist society of the 20th century America. Fingers, like wheeler in Angel City, is indifferent to the artist and quality of art. What he wants is more money and reputation. In Act 2, “The Hump,” the team has moved to a

fancy hotel room, and all the characters have new clothes. Cody has acquired an Irish accent and now dreams and talks of nothing but dogs. Beaujo suggests that he has “some kind a’ weird mental disorder. I told ya’ he was a genius. There’s a very

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fine line between madness and genius ya’ know” 14. Santee is unimpressed: “He’s gone bananas and that’s all there is to it. It just happens to coincide with our needs” 15. As the second act goes on, Cody literally turns into a dog, at first dreaming and talking from the dog’s point of view, and then behaving like a dog, leaping around the room and crashing into things, squealing and squirming. Cutting him from his past roots has not only distorted his imagination but also his sense of self. He is drowned in hallucinations and imagines himself to be a dog. The inner space of the world of images within which he dreams has faded because he has been removed from all sources of fresh images and gradually he loses his personal equilibrium; seemingly insane, he is possessed by the spirit of “the local dream frequency” [5]. His consciousness has been affected by the disruptive force of displacement. Shepard once wrote: “I have a feeling that the

cultural environment one is raised in predetermines a rhythmical relationship to the use of words” [5]. Cody could dream as long as he was in Wyoming; every shift of place caused a deterioration of his imagination for his gift of dreaming winning horses “springs from an attachment to his natural roots”. Cody's natural talent as a dreamer has faded because his native roots, what he calls his “geography,” have been destroyed by isolation and relocation. In short, he is an exile (the parody of the artist as an eternal exile). He explains:

CODY: He don't understand the area I have to dream in... the inside one. The space inside where the dream comes. It's gotta be created. That's what Fingers don't understand. He thinks it's just like it was when I started... he's blocked up my senses. Everything forces itself on the space I need. There's too much chaos now. He'll never get a winner out of me. Till the space comes back.16

Cody is unable to dream and link the past to the future. He has lost his power of prophecy and is no more needed in Fingers' system. Beaujo explains how the space and geography have been effective on his dreaming. They remember Wyoming, where they found Cody and the climax of the play is structured out of the memory of Cody's birthplace and its sacred values, against the exploitative and violent outburst of the doctor who proposes to kill Cody for economic gain. The Doctor prepares to cut the “dreamer’s bone” out of Cody’s neck, in hopes of making use of

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his power for a while longer. Fingers' recollections go back through historic into mythic time:

FINGERS: Yes! I remember that! I remember thinking this is the west! This is really the West! Then we got to that town where Buffalo Bill lived . I forgot the name of it. Oh what a town! Saloons with Winchester rifles tacked up on the walls. Real Cowboys in leather chaps.Indians shuffling through the dusty streets. Buffalo Bill's name was plastered on everything. And at night. At night it was magical. Like praying.... I felt that God was with me then. The earth held me in its arms. 17

Fingers remembers a West like that presented in the western movies, a kind of fictional world of images, a Disneyland, which still arouses inner sensations of a mythic past. He recalls the real cowboys, Indians and Buffalo Bill who is one of most famous American Old West heroes. Buffalo Bill authorizes the myth of the frontier and western hero in the play. The protagonist, Cody, shares his name with Buffalo Bill whose complete name was “William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody.” Buffalo Bill became famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes, which he toured in Great Britain and Europe as well as the United States. Being a great bison or American buffalo hunter gave him the name “Buffalo Bill.” Cody in Geography of a Horse Dreamer figures the postmodern myth of hero. In other words, he is the 'myth of Buffalo Bill lost' which could be counted as one of Barthes's “Myths Today” in American pop culture. Shepard has utilized this iconic figure in his critique of capitalism in the form of pastiche, a “parody that has lost its sense of humor” (as Jameson defines it) [4]. Shepard here continues to work out the themes of desacralization and the death of the west which he had explored in some of the ‘rock plays’. These translate into a kind of “modern Fall myth,” a Fall (from the Edenic paradise he was born in) from which there is no redemption [3]. Cody's visions create a “totemic image” from the

mythic past of the West [9]: CODY: The white buffalo. Approach him in

a sacred manner. He is Wakan. The ground he walks is Wakan. This day has sent a spirit gift. You must take it. Clean your heart of evil thoughts. Take him in a sacred way. If one bad thought is creeping in you it will mean your

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death. You will crumble to the earth. You will vanish from this time. 18

“The white buffalo” is one of the old American Indian myths. It is said to be the symbol of provision, gratitude, strength and blessing. It is holy, usually a sign of promise in visions and dreams [8]. Here in this context, the white buffalo refers to the artist's imagination that is the holiest thing s/he possesses. As Murphy puts it [10], the danger of violating the

artist’s imagination is set out in its most primal terms, which are also major themes of the dark Romantics – the destruction of the artist through madness and death. Through the image of the sacred white buffalo at the end of the play, Shepard conveys the reverential spirit with which the artistic imagination must be approached: “Take him in a sacred way. If one bad thought is creeping in you it will mean your death. You will crumble to the earth. You will vanish from this time” 19. This play certainly is dark, but how dark it is

depends on how the image of its ending is dramatized on stage, and how the particular spectator reads that image. Shepard’s stage directions say that “Cody sits on the bed with the back of his neck bleeding. He doesn’t know where he is”20, which might suggest that the “dreamer’s bone” has been removed from his neck. Cody's brothers appear in a deus ex machina manner and there is a sort of denouement here. He is being taken back to Wyoming, the original geography of his horse dreaming, and the play ends with the music that he has called his “source of inspiration” 21. Shepard leaves open whether or not there is hope for the artist to break free of the profit-making machine and go back to the sources of his creativity.

III. CONCLUSION

Geography of a Horse Dreamer portrays the dreams which are the remnants of the betrayed American dream. The play exemplifies Shepard’s historiographic approach to writing in an attempt to question the past representations. It delves into the decadence of the mythic artist and the way contemporary global capitalism conditions art.

REFERENCES

[1] Abrams et.al. Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: Norton,1987. [2] Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Noonday press, 1957.

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[3] Bottoms, Stephen J. The Theater of Sam Shepard, States of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. [4] Constable, Cathrine. “Science Fiction,” in The Baudrillard Dictionary. Richard Smith, Ed. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2010. [5] DeRose, David J. Sam Shepard. New York: Macmillan, 1992. [6] Hutcheon, Linda. .A Poetics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1988. [7] ---The Politics of Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1989. [8] Lynch, Patricia Ann, and Jeremy Roberts. Native American Mythology A to Z. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. [9] McCarthy, Gerry. “Memory and Mind: Sam Shepard’s Geography of a Horse Dreamer,” in Rereading Shepard, Leonard Wilcox, Ed. New York: Palgrave, 1993, pp.58-76. [10] Murphy, Brenda. “Shepard Writes about Writing,” in Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard, Matthew Roudané, Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 123-138. [11] Shepard, Sam. “Geography of a Horse Dreamer,” in Fool for Love and Other Plays. New York: Dial Press, 2006. [12] Tucker, Martin. Sam Shepard. New York: Continuum, 1992.

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