[Later this
month, the sixth
and final season of my favorite current TV show (and one of my all
time-favs as well), Longmire, drops on
Netflix. So this week, after a repeat of my first post on the show, I wanted to
AmericanStudy a handful of Longmire’s
many fascinating characters. Leading up to a special weekend post on Native
American popular culture!]
On the scene
that embodies a character’s—and perhaps the show’s—contradictions.
As I wrote in
Monday’s post, and as most of my posts this week have likewise highlighted,
what I particularly love about Longmire
is its ability to combine the pleasures of genre storytelling (in both the
mystery and Western genres) with a multi-layered and thoughtful representation
of community, culture, and identity (especially for, though not at all limited
to, the Cheyenne). Although sometimes those latter elements work as background
or environment for the genre storytelling, enriching but not central to an
episode’s main plotlines, more and more as the seasons have progressed the
mysteries and action have become intertwined with the cultural aspects. A
significant portion of Season 4, for example, focused on a serial storyline and
mystery about a young Native American girl named Gab; while Season 5 focused at
length on one of my topics from yesterday’s post, Cady Longmire’s move onto the
reservation and a number of related stories she encounters there. I’m excited
to see how the sixth and final season continues to weave these disparate
storytelling threads together.
There’s one
potential problem with that emerging pattern, though, and that’s the character
of Jacob Nighthorse
(A Martinez). For genre purposes, Jacob has consistently been positioned as
Walt’s nemesis: as a criminal mastermind a la Professor Moriarity for its
mystery side; and as the black hat against whom the protagonist continually
battles for its Western side. Yet from the cultural perspective Jacob looks
quite different: even before he hires Cady to open a legal aid office on the reservation
in Seasons 4 and 5, we see him working to use his planned (and then completed)
reservation casino to change the lives and fortunes of the Cheyenne community. In
one Season 1 episode, we also see Jacob as the Dog Soldier, a Cheyenne avenging
angel who delivers justice outside of the legal system (and thus, in genre
terms, in opposition to Walt). Even supporting characters connected to Jacob
can have multiple distinct sides in this same way: such as Sam Poteet, a
Cheyenne plumber and member of the tribe’s White Warrior spiritual community
who from a genre perspective seems to be the villain’s henchman but from a
cultural perspective is a potent and complex member of the Native American
community (even before we find out he is the father of Season 4 main character
Gab).
It’s of course entirely
possible for any character, and certainly a central one like Jacob, to occupy
multiple roles. Yet some scenes ask us to choose where we place our allegiance,
and there these questions become trickier still. I’m thinking in particular
about the closing scene of Season 4’s first episode, “Down by the River,” where
Jacob and a group of allies visit Walt at his cabin to order him to stop his
investigations into Jacob. In genre terms, this is the mastermind or villain
using his henchmen/goons to threaten our hero, and our sympathies are clear.
But in cultural terms, Jacob’s dialogue in the scene—as he describes what is
possible when native peoples come and work together to express communal
solidarity and resist those who would destroy them—has significant historical
meaning, and it’s difficult for this AmericanStudier not to understand and even
sympathize with him. Again, Jacob’s evolving connection to Cady suggests that
such audience sympathies might not be misplaced—but that’s not at all what our
protagonist, our mystery detective and Western hero, believes. While I’m sure
the show’s final season won’t resolve all of its many threads, it seems clear
that there will some form of closure for Jacob and Walt, and I’ll be anxiously
watching to see whether it’s more on the genre or the cultural side of the
story.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Takes on Longmire, or other
shows, you’d share?
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