URBAN COWBOY

by Kevin Koehler

’Winning’ was always a peculiarly prominent aspect of the American masculine quest… But men had generally been expected to win within a social context: they strived and wrangled to wrest a community out of wilderness; they “won the West” to build a nation… The American Century, on the other hand, elevated winning to the very apex of manhood while at the same time disconnecting it from meaningful social purpose. Being first seemed to be all that mattered.

- Susan Faludi, feminist

I’m so proud of you, Bud. You looked so great up on that mechanical bull.

- Sissy (Debra Winger), Urban Cowboy

Great films are often unrecognized at the time of their release, or even decades later. It happens for a myriad of reasons: perhaps audiences aren't ready for cinema that challenges them, or maybe group-think critics weren't expecting such intelligent craftsmanship from a picture and thus didn't put in the effort to look for it. There are even those films we discard out of hand simply because John Travolta stars in them.

Urban Cowboy is the rare film that combines all these, but we'll get to that in a moment; first, some gender theory:

There a crisis of masculinity in this country.

Susan Faludi, in her novel Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, the Pultizer Prize-winning author and noted feminist argues that consumer and "ornamental" (ie: style) culture, along with a soulless assembly line capitalism that has removed the worker from the product of his labor, have emasculated men. Corporate downsizing has wreaked havoc on the innate male desire to provide while the paper-pushing nature of these jobs made him wonder what exactly he was providing in the first place. What we have now is a competitive society "drained of context, saturated with a competitive individualism that has been robbed of craft or utility, and ruled by commercial values that revolve around who has the most, the best, the biggest, the fastest...an enslavement to glamour"

Bud (John Travolta), protagonist of James Bridges' deeply subversive Urban Cowboy is one such man in crisis (the title of the film in and of itself is somewhat of an oxymoron, a phrase at war with itself). After leading a seemingly idyllic existence in rural Texas, Bud relocates to Pasadena in the Houston metro area to work with his uncle at an oil refinery. He meets with his new employer in an appropriately tacky faux-wood office. "They call me Bud because of my initials, B.U.D., Buford Uan Davis, it spells Bud." "I can spell, boy," replies his boss. Bud is not just acronym, but a major brand of beer as well as a developing flower. He gets the job, but he will have to start at the bottom ("Do you know what a gopher is, boy?") and shave his caveman beard. It's a new world - Bud's castrating introduction to mass production is complete.

If the check-earning of this town is centered around the oil refinery, then the check-spending is centered around Gilley's, the famed Texas honky tonk ("a concrete prairie" is how Bud's uncle describes it). The first time we see a clean-shaven Bud is here, panning up from his feet towards his face in icon-making metrosexual profile. A thumb tucked behind his belt buckle, he grips a (phallic) beer and stares off towards the dance floor – you’ve come a long way, baby (our reintroduction to Bud also recalls Travolta’s earlier foray into the competition of emasculated males, Saturday Night Fever). It's not long after that he meets Sissy (Debra Winger), whose name further echoes the film’s central themes. "You a real cowboy?" she asks. Bud doesn't know quite how to respond - perhaps he's not so sure anymore (it’s not the last time he’ll be asked, either). "Depends on what you think a real cowboy is." She teases him about his new appearance. "I liked (the beard). You shouldn't have shaved it." It's unclear whether she means it or is probing for a reaction - probably a little of both. She likes, even seeks out, the caveman (the very word “cowboy” suggests something that is part man, part beast), bearded or not (Faludi would call these incarnations “the violent and the perfurmed”).

Sissy thinks she finds it in Bud (indeed, she accepts his marriage proposal minutes after he slaps her), but another caveman lurks in ex-con rodeo star Wes (Scott Glenn). Bud and Wes compete for Sissy's affection the only ways they know how - fistfights in the parking lot and, in Pasadena's version of "the most, the best, the biggest, the fastest,” on Gilley's mechanical bull. Unbeknownst to Bud, his wife has designs on the mechanical bull as well and takes lessons from his romantic rival. It's more than his fragile male ego can take (Bud wears his figurative cuckolding as a literal cast on his arm) - another violent argument ensues and Bud throws her out of their cramped trailer home. Their relationship is put to the proverbial test as each seeks to make their spouse jealous from inside the arms of another.

Clearly, the centerpieces of Urban Cowboy are those scenes involving the mechanical bull - the picture’s central metaphor for consumer masculinity in the industrial age (watch as Bud is reminded to pay his two dollars and sign the release form before he can ride it for the first time). Bud is too paternalistic to accept that Sissy (or any woman for that matter) could be his peer, especially on something so essentially masculine as the bull - the very mentioning of the idea is enough to enrage him. Sure, Sissy is making a case for her own equality/liberation, but it’s the hollow kind, echoed in drunk women pulling up their shirts in Girls Gone Wild videos. In riding the bull, she wants to provoke an animal response from Bud, and further, all men (driving the point home, the mechanical bull is surrounded on all sides by dirty mattresses). She uses it as a showcase for her sexual self to which the reaction of men isn't incidental but central to the experience. When she cuckolds Bud, it is for the only man more caveman than he.

Of course, they do reunite (after Bud reasserts himself over Wes atop the bull, wearing a number on his back), and they do it in the ultimate symbol of the assembly line - the Ford automobile - as Bud retrieves Sissy's personalized license plate and places it back in the rear window. It's a romantic gesture, but a deeply ironic one, even as we fade off of their kiss to the tune of "Looking for Love (In All the Wrong Places)." Order has been restored until another Wes comes along to bring out the “real cowboy,” deep down in our emasculated selves.

Interesting footnote: Gilley's held the Guinness World Record for the largest nightclub at the time of the film's production. It has since been closed down and a 1989 fire destroyed much of the interior. What was left of Gilley’s was ultimately torn down in 2006 to make room for a public school.

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