Back at the start of the year I spun out an argument about The Wizard of Oz and American magic, which was to say that it was always there, and not here. Pursuing related themes I was thinking this afternoon about American archetypes — as you know, the main traditional ones are the Yankee, the backwoodsman, and the minstrel (also known as the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion).
We also have in Johnny Appleseed a frontier version of the Fisher King (which is to say, the Jessie Weston version of the Fisher King, not the original). Yes, he was a real person, but there is a myth there — like the Fisher King, he is associated with fertility and an obscure hurt; “some absolute misery of the heart.”
And then there is John Henry, the backwoodsman conquered by the machine (the Tin Man shares some of this story).
We have others, like the “super-duper magical negro.” And also, the Star, the Sinner Redeemed, and the Gangster.
One could readily point out that McCain and Giuliani are pretty clearly trying to out-do Bush as the Gangster. Thin Huckabee is the Sinner Redeemed, but that’s not the only Huckabee on display. Obama is of course trying not to be the magic negro. And Hillary is trying hard to get all the boys to quit telling each other “come back to the raft ag’in, honey.”
You can’t look into the issue of American archetypes without finding some marvelous theories about the 1974 SRI report, on which Joseph Campbell was one of the authors, Changing Images of Man. But if you sink too far into that sort of thing, you never come out.
24 comments
January 17, 2008 at 6:48 pm
urbino
I have no response to that.
January 17, 2008 at 6:50 pm
eric
You’re letting me down. Click some of the links, sip some of your bourbon, and try again.
January 17, 2008 at 6:56 pm
matt w
John Henry, the backwoodsman conquered by the machine
Slander! John Henry won, though he didn’t enjoy it much. No pegger he (a much obscurer song). I think in about half the versions of the song Sally Ann says the son is gonna be a steel drivin’ man, and in the other half he says he’ll never be one. I like the second version better. Hasn’t someone claimed to have figured out who John Henry was? (I think he was supposed to be a prison laborer — the “white house” they took him to was the prison morgue.)
Robert Johnson (not that one) was trying to cast Obama as Stagger Lee, but the shoe pretty clearly doesn’t fit.
Very tangentially, I like this webcomic.
January 17, 2008 at 7:01 pm
matt w
Here’s my source for the historical John Henry.
“The standard line is that the John Henry song is about the tenacity and hard work and plight of black men under a white power structure. It’s also a story about where the bodies are buried. It’s a story about murder.”
January 17, 2008 at 7:04 pm
eric
Should I say, “John Henry, the backwoodsman who enjoyed a Pyrrhic victory over the machine”?
January 17, 2008 at 7:08 pm
ac
Isn’t there some Atticus Finch sort of counterpart to the magic negro? The noblesse oblige type. Or a kind of whistleblower figure as a counterpart to the Gangster? The John Dean type.
On the latter, I feel there’s often a John Dean sort of character in films. The Last Honest Man, or similar, who is originally drawn in by some glamorous corrupt dark figure, but resists in the end. Charlie Sheen in Wall Street comes to mind as an example. But I guess the Gordon Gekko figure is the more iconic.
January 17, 2008 at 7:17 pm
matt w
I think it’s important that the backwoodsman wins and departs. “Peg and Awl” is probably a more accurate description of technological change (Harry Smith’s description of it is “Technological Unemployment Hits the Shoe Industry in the Year 18 and Three”), but there’s no archetype there. That newfangled technology wasn’t really stronger than the backwoodsman, it’s just that it was too hard to fight against it.
This leaving aside the racial complications, which are manifold. John Henry seems kind of like the Magical Negro who Died For Our Sins.
January 17, 2008 at 7:19 pm
andrew
Additional potential candidates: The Confidence Man, The Speculator*
Of The Speculator there may be two types: someone always convinced that they’re on the verge of the next big thing who bets more than they have and sinks deeper into a hole; the financiering type, working to profit on others’ work and on the dreams of the other type of speculator.
January 17, 2008 at 7:30 pm
urbino
Haven’t time for link clicking just now, Eric. Later, maybe.
My preferred John Henry lyric is by Gillian Welch and goes thusly:
January 17, 2008 at 8:02 pm
matt w
That’s partly sort of to the tune of “Spike Driver Blues,” one of the songs discussed in the post’s John Henry link.
January 17, 2008 at 8:05 pm
matt w
…though “rings like silver/shines like gold” is in a bunch of other John Henry hammer songs (as opposed to “die with a hammer in my hand” songs, which are a different subgenre), but not “Spike Driver Blues.”
What I’m saying is, if you like Gillian Welch you should definitely check out the Anthology of American Folk Music.
January 17, 2008 at 8:24 pm
eric
Now that you mention it, I remember hearing that guy on NPR.
January 17, 2008 at 8:27 pm
urbino
Yeah, I’ve dipped into it occasionally. I liked the way Welch connected the John Henry tradition with Elvis — the Magical White Negro Who Died for Our Sins, right? — and the way the silver/gold couplet worked with the other couplets in that position (not quoted).
January 17, 2008 at 8:28 pm
urbino
The AAFM, that is. That I’ve dipped in. Or words to that effect.
January 17, 2008 at 8:33 pm
matt w
Spike Driver Blues.
January 17, 2008 at 8:37 pm
urbino
I think you, matt w, are right, btw, about the Confidence Man and the Speculator.
January 17, 2008 at 10:25 pm
John B.
Just a quick thank-you for linking to my post, such as it is, on John Henry. What a pleasant surprise.
January 17, 2008 at 10:27 pm
eric
Hey, John B.! Thanks for coming by. Yours is a neat post.
January 18, 2008 at 5:51 am
Very Interesting Squib About American Archtypes and the Election « Stuff ‘n stuff ‘n more stuff
[…] 18, 2008 Read it, it’s pretty cool, but as the author indicates, it’s pretty easy to lose yourself in […]
January 18, 2008 at 6:02 am
AWC
Of course, you’re talking about the book. In the movie, Dorothy, the witch, and the three companions are actually gay stereotypes, a 1930s version of the Village People. I say this after 400 viewings with my 2 yo daughter.
January 18, 2008 at 6:10 am
eric
I would be shocked if there were not scholarship on the subject already.
January 18, 2008 at 6:20 am
AWC
Oh yeah, I’m guessing there have been mini-conferences on it. It may not be as edifying as the Promise of American Life, but it’s a lot more entertaining. As a former labor historian, I still laugh every time I see the Lollipop Guild.
January 18, 2008 at 7:11 am
andrew
I think you, matt w, are right, btw, about the Confidence Man and the Speculator.
Hmmm.
January 18, 2008 at 12:23 pm
urbino
Oops. Andrew, that is.