American Cowboys Think Different
The events of 11 September changed the way that we understand the world.
Everyone says it. You can see it in the eyes of New Yorkers interviewed on the Today Show. Yet, in national discourse, in the language that our leaders explain the events, it seems to be business as usual. 
The events of 11 September changed the way that we understand the world. Everyone says it. You can see it in the eyes of New Yorkers interviewed on the Today Show. Yet, in national discourse, in the language that our leaders explain the events, it seems to be business as usual.
I have a theory about this.
US national leaders are scared little boys (and girls, I suppose, but let’s not kid ourselves) and they are using metaphors that make them feel powerful. For men in their fifties the metaphors are easily cowboys – remember Gunsmoke? For my generation – having grown up in the seventies – the metaphor is often superheroes, ranging from the staple of Superman and Spiderman to the flashier figures from Star Wars, Rambo films, etc, etc. (see my explication of this through qeer theory and the X-Men in the theory section of the site.) My hope is that the next generation, with the obsession on medical and law dramas, will idolize doctors and attorneys, but that’s another national crisis in the making….
It’s national obsession, this need to feel powerful, to feel larger than we really are. It should be no surprise. Americans are intent on amassing power and safety. It’s part of the American dream, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all that. We insulate ourselves from nature, from the spirit, from the world, while sucking down global resources and exporting our epistemology. We think that global commerce is about amassing wealth – sending our culture to be consumed by others, resulting in more profits. It’s only partly that. Every broadcast, every exported bit of culture is a way of insulating ourselves from the things we really fear. It’s a way of cheating death. And, that’s what this crisis is really about.
Death is the last mystery. Death can not be controlled.
Cataclysmic tragedy reminds us of our impotence against nature. It reminds us that "Fortress America" is no refuge from the realities of creation. It reminds us that we can not escape from the world. American Cowboys Think Different, though, and in the face of the phenomenological realities of existence our leaders maintain the charade that we are different from the rest of the world.
These images are meant to be jarring. The framing title – American Cowboys Think Different – can be read in two ways, depending on its juxtaposition. This is intentional. It reminds me that there are different ways to view every statement.
The images are also intentional. They draw from American mass culture – movies, cowboy mythology – and they utilize the language of fashion advertising. The images are potent and sexual – a bit of resonant post-modern irony, although I am well aware that we’re no longer, in this moment of national tragedy, allowed to be post-modern. Somehow, I feel the need to hold onto this bit of cultural ephemera. After all, our leaders are reaching back to the mythologies of modernism – its heroes, its sense of mastery and control, its idea of American genius. Until we develop the next language, perhaps one that’s synthetic of and not oppositional to the past, it’s the best tool that I can find; the best way that I can broadcast my meager voice in the cacophony of our world.
Peter Hocking
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