Camera And Action, page 24
Discursively, Mrs. Miller represents the popular argument at the time that intercourse outside of marriage is an important part of women's liberation. A Cosmopolitan type of assertion, sexual freedom was a way for women to challenge patriarchy's dependence on the conventional marriage model. Mrs. Miller, like Helen Gurley Brown, offers to reshape women's social identity. They both walk into virgin territory and begin the process of reconstruction. A half-built town allows Mrs. Miller a fair chance to create an additional business that will help determine the town's social structure. Rather than the sheriff's office as the central location of action in McCabe, it will be the saloon and bordello. Sexuality with dignity establishes the "house's" "civic" importance.
With new freedoms of sexuality in popular culture, however, a more complex issue concerned feminists. How discrimination based on sexual difference explained women's oppression was clear enough. Yet, as advocates argued, sexual promiscuity as the liberating feature of women's lives seemed to be another way to recycle the "dominant-submissive relationship." Sex outside of marriage looked surprisingly like the "sex class system" which kept women as receivers and men as actors. Assumptions about women's sexuality were still stuck in the belief that women had an obligation to satisfy men rather than the freedom to find sex "an expression of her general humanity."27
Mrs. Miller's job-training session raises Ida's consciousness to these false assumptions. Obligatory sex in or outside marriage was just legalized prostitution. At least Constance made it possible for women to be paid for their labor. Thus, visualizing prostitution with a new frankness allowed the narrative to comment on the politics of the bedroom to a certain point. As countless manifestoes claimed by the time of the film's release, opening the bedroom for public debate took women's liberation beyond equal opportunity of the 1960s and exposed points of incongruity in the feminist movement and a Cosmopolitan-style liberation in general. Both popular and intellectual culture needed to address an incongruity. As one manifesto argued, if "love and sex" were the "emotional cement" for "dominant-submissive relationships," then the bedroom also functioned as a space of "control" rather than for "the growth of another."28 With the sexual revolution looking like a step toward women's equality, the inhibiting features of sex as a forum for liberation surfaced. Where some women found newly-claimed rights to sexual pleasure a revolutionizing proof of independence, others pointed to its exploitative aspects. Between the joy and rage over what constituted liberation, feminists insisted that women beware of a new subjugation.
In the context of feminist caution, the question of commodification arises in McCabe and Mrs. Miller's use of prostitution as the film's way to imagine female freedom from convention. The complex issues of power had to be addressed. Like the early stages of women's liberation, Altman's film gives women access to men's language and signals a common assumption about female emancipation - that the standard of freedom is masculinity. Altman offers Mrs. Miller a way in by relaxing the taboos against women's speech. The argument claims that a gap between men's and women's speech directly related to women's lack of power in the public sphere. Expecting proper forms of speaking from women and allowing strong expression to men pointed to a form of "linguistic sexism" that "submerge[d] a woman's personal identity" while predetermining her social value and limiting her choices. To address this "lexical disparity," popular culture portrayed women speaking men's language. If speaking the language of the dominant group changed deeply embedded values that prevented women from political and entrepreneurial success and could equalize vanity as the same mark of distinction for women as men, then why not start with cursing?"
Mrs. Miller negotiates new terms of condition with John McCabe by intruding into the men's saloon. She symbolizes the moment in history when the implications of men's public control and dominance surfaced as gender discrimination. In the larger society, it became increasingly clear that neither inserting women's voices into history nor making demands of sexual freedom would automatically lead to social equality or personal empowerment.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller questions traditional and gendered spheres by awarding Mrs. Miller a pragmatic resourcefulness typically reserved for men. The film creates a capable woman for its central character in a genre about men and in her construction as a woman. This film's negotiation of that narrative space reveals the challenge for women. Constance's leadership gives her the chance to speak confidently for equal treatment. She is an agent in this narrative. It is her business to protect and manage women. Ultimately, however, while being their advocate on the one hand, Mrs. Miller is their captor on the other.
For all of Constance Miller's independence, prostitution as a form of women's (especially Ida's) security and therefore the means to liberation ironically reinforces typical male/female division. A means to independence, prostitution is at the same time a form of dependence. The narrative mirrors the early stage of the feminist movement, just as feminists realized the connection between sexual liberation and the reproduction of sex-centered representations of gender. Had women really gotten very far cinematically when they still appeared in very limited roles, some were asking?30
The film accomplished its task of deconstructing the paradigm of marriage in similar ways as The Graduate and Alice's Restaurant by representing the church, once a sacred stronghold, as inoperable. Typically, many Westerns respected the place of the church in the frontier town. In McCabe, the town minister, Mr. Elliott (Corey Fischer), literally has no voice throughout the story. The scene with Ida and the half-built church shows a building without people or pulpit and a preacher who roams without direction and purpose, in and out of the saloon and along the muddy streets. The townspeople, not the reverend, conducted funeral ceremonies at the gravesite for Ida's husband.
Taking up the task of feminism would be limited in this film to Constance Miller's portrayal as a smart businesswoman. From there, the narrative turns to a traditional love story. In the logic of romance, an independent woman and a mediocre businessman find their magnetic pull when financiers from Harrison-Shaugnessy offer to buy the town businesses. Pulling their resources together, they come up with their own wagers, but McCabe holds out for more money. Eager to share the story with Constance, he surprises her with a bouquet of flowers. Proud of his courage to up the ante and assuming the role of typical hero, McCabe struts in front of Constance, but she quickly trumps his glory. "Well, you just better hope they come back; [they'd] as soon put a bullet in your back as look at you," she warns him, but she is high on opium and so smiles seductively at McCabe. They engage in the most romantic moment of the film. "You're a funny little thing," he smiles at her. "I'm tellin' ya you're just as sweet ..." but lest he gets too secure, she smiles mischievously and playfully reminds him he has to pay before he gets into bed. He counts out the money and they make love. This scene confirms that he will stay with Constance at his expense.
In Mrs. Miller's space, he defers to her in exchange for intimacy and romance. As one critic put it, "McCabe needs Mrs. Miller to do more than balance his books, for he comes to love her deeply."31 McCabe's terms of endearment, however, redirect Mrs. Miller's purpose, and from this point on change her from an independent entrepreneur to a fretting lover, overprotective of McCabe. Following their night of intimacy, she storms into the saloon, interrupts McCabe's poker game, and reprimands him. "Now I'm your partner and you gotta listen to me. What're ya plannin' to do about them boys up there?" she questions. McCabe is curt with her and offhandedly remarks, "I'm gonna make a deal with them.... If they won't make a deal ... I'll just have a drink," he condescends. Casting aside her concerns, McCabe continues, "I appreciate your worrying about me; I appreciate that protection; but there's nothin' to be scared of." He then turns on his charm and proudly explains, "Tell you the truth ... I feel sorry for 'em. They old guffers been workin' the company twenty years ... hell, when they come up side a mule like me, I feel sorry for 'em ... tell you the truth I do ... I know what I'm doing." Irritated with his naivete, Constance recognizes her loss and is heartbroken. She looks pleadingly toward McCabe, hoping to convince him of his gamble. "They get paid for killin,' nothing else," she adamantly warns him about the Harrison-Shaugnessy bounty hunters. McCabe departs and the camera zooms to an extreme close-up of Mrs. Miller's cheerless desperation.
In the privacy of his quarters, McCabe stands in front of a mirror, straightens his top hat, pours a drink, and adjusts his image. He engages in a monologue proclaiming his love for Constance: "God, I hate when the bastards put their hands on ya. Sometimes when I take a look at you; I just keep a lookin' and a lookin'; see your little body up against me so bad I think I'm a gonna bust." Complaining about her insensitivity, he says, "I keep tryin' to tell ya in a lot of different ways just one time you could be sweet without no money around." He is the romantic one. "Well, I tell ya something," he proclaims, "I got poetry in me. I do. I got poetry in me but I ain't gonna put it down on paper." He prefers his rational, pragmatic, and intelligent side to the poetic, despite the fact that he "ain't no educated man." Her determination is his infirmity. "I got sense in me.... If there's just one time, let me run the show I - you're just freezin' my soul, that's what you're Join,' freezin my soul." Regaining his poise, he admonishes, "Well, shit, enjoy yourself girl; just go ahead and have a time; what the hell." McCabe's romantic declaration of love ends by depersonalizing Constance. "It's just my luckthe only woman that's ever been one to me ain't nothin' but a whore, but what the hell; I never was a percentage man. I suppose a whore is the only kind of woman I know." McCabe rationalizes his ineptness and projects it onto the woman who freezes souls and "ain't nothin' but a whore."
Determined to declare if not restore his masculinity, McCabe visits Mrs. Miller and lets her in on his wisdom, "Comes a time in every man's life when he just got to stick his hand in the fire and see what he's made of." Annoyed with this romantic notion of himself, Constance berates him, "What're you talkin' about?" True to McCabean idealism, he reminds her of his heroic wager and informs her, "I'm talkin' about bustin' up these trusts of monopoly, that's what I'm talkin about. Somebody's got to protect the small businessman from these big companies and I'm gonna be the man.... I know it don't mean nothin' to ya' but I got a reputation in this town." She cries back, "They'll get you, McCabe. They'll get you and they'll do something to you" and sobs quietly in front of him. He is touched by her emotional flareup and runs to her side. "Now, now little lady, ain't nothing gonna happen to me," but Constance is not a fool nor does she accept the bait of McCabe's self-image as a tough operative. She enjoys the spar. "Don't you give me any of that little lady shit. I don't care about you. Just give me my $1500.... If you're not gonna make a deal with them, then I'll make a deal with 'em."
Yet, her assertion is an act of desperation more than conviction. The two exchange words in Mrs. Miller's kitchen while she is cooking for and serving McCabe. "Eat your meal," she tells him and sets the food down. He partakes of his final dinner. This scene reverses the original saloon sequence where she downs the eggs, makes McCabe the offer, and walks away as an equal in a potentially lucrative business. This scene thwarts her competence and function as a partner for profit. She no longer has a voice in the partnership.
The film encourages viewer identification with an intelligent and independent female until the narrative makes her McCabe's helpmate and returns to a critique of the Western through the bounty hunters. Three assassins infiltrate the town to murder McCabe. The powerful mining company sends Dog Butler (Hugh Millais), a six-foot-six-inch Englishman; Breed (Alexander Diakun), a Russian-Canadian; and seventeen-year-old Kid (Manfred Shultz) to take over the bordello and saloon." Dog and Breed are classic figures of the Western - handsome, tall, strong, quiet, steely-eyed, and professionals at their job. They serve to comment on the logical conclusion of conventional violence portrayed in countless Westerns. Through them, the film challenges the accepted association of firearms with masculinity.
Altman critiques both the ideal and the irony in social form of masculine violence via the film's most macabre scene. The seventeen-year-old Kid eagerly practices quick-draw heroism by staging a shootout. He challenges an endearing visitor, Shorty (Keith Carradine), who stops by the town for a night of fun. After having become one of the women's favorites, Shorty leaves the bordello and the women bid him come back soon. "Goodbye, cowboy," they wave, and Shorty steps onto the bridge where Kid fires several shots at a whiskey jug. "Hold up on your target practice a minute," Shorty yells in a friendly manner. The blond Kid, eager to test his competence as a novice gunman, walks toward Shorty in standoff style. After several words, Shorty realizes the danger and retreats, but Kid is hell-bent on continuing this game: "What're you wearin' that gun for?" His "Colt," Shorty explains, is for show because he "just can't shoot good."
The all-American Kid bullies him into pulling the gun out of the holster and, as Shorty reaches to show it off, Kid shoots him in cold blood. Shorty dies, falls into the icy river below, and Kid walks away, proud of his skill as a straight shooter. Kid has contrived a standoff with an innocent traveler and serves as the narrative's critique of the source of violence in American society. The gruesome act critiques Hollywood's complicity in the discursive circulation of shootouts and assumptions about a man's privilege to display his prowess as a gunfighter. The film stays consistent with its task of deflating icons of the Western, for Kid's action astounds even the professional assassins.
In its deconstruction of the Western's brand of violence, the narrative now switches to the charming lover, McCabe. The film argues that the real violence in American society is still the destructive forces of international corporations. "I'm talking about bustin' up these trusts and monopolies," McCabe promises Constance and so begins a shootout of his own. "Man is fool enough to go into business with a woman," he complains, she ain't gonna think much of him." He chastises himself and validates gun power over verbal negotiation. Turning to the real business ahead, he confronts the three Harrison-Shaugnessy hit men. McCabe kills Kid first; then Breed. Dog, the toughest and most cunning assassin - the out-of-date icon of violence - chases and shoots McCabe in the back. Tracking his victim to make sure he is dead, Dog gets it in the head when McCabe musters his last bit of strength and shoots him dead center.
Pudgy McCabe is convincingly portrayed as an attractive, charming lover and now a skilled and calculating straight shot in this classic standoff. McCabe kills all three assassins and dies in this fight, but he leaves a legacy of skill after he proclaims his love for Mrs. Miller. As one critic aptly recognized, "What he defends, at bottom, is the purity of his own image ... to state what he is." McCabe, therefore, is "a genuine candidate for the role of traditional hero."33 John McCabe shoulders no burden as protector of the town like Sheriff Wills in Zin- nemann's High Noon, but he does defend his personal investment. All three bad guys are dead. The gunfight gains audience sympathy because of the romantic connection to his role as protector of the little guy, even if McCabe lies outside, frozen like a marble statue in several feet of snow. His image fades against the sound of the same howling winds as brought him into the picture in the first place.
Mrs. Miller refuses to watch her lover die. Consequently, she accepts his fate and seeks the Chinese opium den for shelter. McCabe leaves the Western icon-less and suggests that women best carry on the narrative and the tradition. The ending seems to empower women since it refuses to move a traditionally masculine genre forward. The camera zooms into an extreme close-up of her face where she lies inside the opium den. In controlled zoom toward her eye, the camera forces itself inside and ends on magnified, jittery blood vessels and finally shows only the white of her eye, used as a background for the rolling, black lettered credits. Her behavior betrays her words that all she wanted was to protect her profits. She is left painfully alone at the end of the film, having lost her security and authority. The film has moved through her into a blank silence, the point of mirage. She is voiceless and isolated from both lover and community of women. She is confined to the interior space of her emotions and divested of agency.
The film's revisionist intent slips by the end into ambiguity except that the film actually confirms the moral center of frontier order, the central part of classic Western formula.34 The insistent hostility toward progress and mining conglomerates coupled with the townspeople as victims substantiates old-type Westerns.35 This stylized genre picture, sold as a Western, became its own burden. If men were to make sense of and even embrace feminism, addressing the Hollywood stronghold was a place to begin, but Altman's film relinquished its position as a voice for female oppression because power and authority were still defined through men in battle.
McCabe softened the burden of the individualist hero cowboy as a representative of America and quashed the use of the West as the ethical space in American narratives. Through its "counter-aesthetics" of landscape and real people, the narrative parodies the over-used image of masculinity in classic Westerns. This strategy worked as what Laura Mulvey calls "a motor force," a boost to push a more serious issue forward.36 If this film is about the power of the female and her skill as a resourceful businesswoman, it is as much about coming to terms with the changing images of masculinity. The "little-guy" standoff displaces Mrs. Miller and brings McCabe into the center. The ending reinforces the tie between men and physical power. He saves and is saved .17
The ending erases McCabe's earlier image as victimizer of women but also presents the film's ambiguity. If he is a genuine helper of the victim despite his tent row, then Mrs. Miller's plea to him to accept the mining company's bargain redefines her as his opposite. Certainly, his winter shootout saves Mrs. Miller from the henchmen but not the town from HarrisonShaugnessy. The Western as a site for questioning gender relations ends in paradox. It was easy enough to stylize the setting and let women curse on screen, but opening the space wider for gender disputes once again proved more challenging, even to the iconoclast Altman. Placing men and women together, in partnership in a man's genre, only to lay the latter quietly aside, denies subversion its full power.
