Backdrop Addresses Cowboy

The unrhymed poem uses short lines and enjambments to create a staccato jagged rhythm that suits its bleak subject. On the onset, the poem seems like a fanciful conversation between a backdrop addressing its central figure. As the poem proceeds, it becomes clear that it is actually a critical examination of the relationship between nature and capitalism, women and men, and land and colonizers. The very subject of the poem, the cowboy, lends himself to this examination. In Hollywood movies, art and narratives of the western front, as well as American cultural tradition, the cowboy is depicted as a heroic figure symbolizing adventure, masculinity, and the relentless need to conquer. The cowboy explores frontiers and advances the western front. He is portrayed as a man with swagger, speaking little and shooting a lot.

The poem takes this popular image and deconstructs it with biting satire. The cowboy is described as “starspangled” (Line 1), a description which establishes the theatricality and artificiality of the cowboy of movies. “Starspangled” is also a reference to the American flag, indicating that the cowboy is a nationalist icon. The backdrop goes on to describe the cowboy as a construct: his smile is porcelain, perfect and artificial, and the cactus he drags behind is made of papier-mâché. Nothing about him is real; he is a performance.

In the second stanza, which is two-lines long, the speaker takes a pause to introduce the strange image of a bathtub filled with bullets. The speaker uses the metaphor to describe the cowboy’s innocence. This is an example of irony, since bullets are hardly associated with innocence. Yet, in another sense, a bathtub filled with bullets is innocent in the manner of all inanimate objects.

As the poem progresses, the poet piles up juxtapositions and paradoxes, heightening the tension between the cowboy and the backdrop. The third stanza begins with an image that contradicts the cowboy’s purported innocence. He is now described as having “righteous eyes” (Line 9), that is, he is filled with a sense of purpose and fully aware of what he has to do. The cowboy is sure of the rightfulness of his actions. “Laconic” (Line 9) usually refers to a person or narrative style which uses very few words; oddly enough, here is it is used for the cowboy’s fingers. On the surface of it, the phrase “laconic/ trigger-fingers” (Lines 9-10) should mean the cowboy’s fingers seldom speak their language of pulling the trigger or shooting a gun. In the poem’s context, this description becomes deeply ironic: its opposite is actually true, the cowboy’s trigger-happy fingers are actually very voluble. The irony becomes apparent when the speaker goes onto note the cowboy’s fingers fill the street with villains. Thus, the fingers are not laconic after all, but highly expressive. They love to create and find targets, leaving behind a “heroic/ trail of desolation” (Lines 14-15). The speaker satirizes the pop-culture trope of the cowboy as a man of few words. Further, the image of the cowboy miming pulling the trigger amplifies the idea of his empty theatrics. The poem continues to employ words ironically in the third and fourth stanzas. For instance, the air in front of the cowboy “blossoms” (Line 13) with targets. “Blossoms” (Line 13) is a word associated with nature, flowering and blooming, yet here it describes a wild, destructive shootout. In Line 14, the speaker describes the cowboy’s trail of carnage as “heroic” (Line 14), while the description suggests otherwise. Lines 16-19 further undo the myth of the cowboy’s heroism. His slain targets are not actual villains, but they are “slaughtered” (Line 17) beer bottles and massacred birds. The landscape now resembles a surrealistic wasteland, littered with meaningless trash and small acts of cruelty. By introducing these images, much like the bathtub filled with bullets, the poet emphasizes the ideas of empty materialism, greed, and corruption of the land. In this sense, Atwood paints the cowboy to represent the spirit of material acquisition, which goes on polluting the landscape in its quest for expansion.

In the seventh stanza, there is a change in the poem’s narration in that the backdrop refers to itself for the first time. This implies that the backdrop is not, in fact, passive but self-aware. Of course, the very fact the backdrop is the poem’s speaker implicitly suggests this self-awareness. Now the backdrop asserts itself as “I” (Line 20), thus setting up a binary with the “you” of the cowboy. The backdrop makes it clear that it is not only separate from the cowboy but also in opposition to the cowboy. It should be a spectator to the cowboy’s shooting, like a cliff or a storefront in the movies, but it emphatically states it is “elsewhere.” The image of the backdrop standing with “hands clasped/ in admiration” (Lines 22-23) evokes the figure of a woman in a cowboy movie, standing in the sidelines. While the heroic male shoots at enemies, the woman has little role to play but gaze at him in worship and wait for him to come home. Thus, the backdrop aligns itself with women, who are portrayed as damsels in distress, but are much more than that. Like nature, the backdrop is personified as and aligned with the feminine.

In another layer of interpretation, the “I” (Line 20) can be Canada or the Canadian national consciousness. Canada, the more pacifist neighbor of the United States, is often characterized as the passive neighbor and admirer of the US, but it still has a distinct, unique identity. Canada is witness to the excesses of the US, much like the backdrop witnesses the violence of the cowboy.

The backdrop is also “elsewhere” because it symbolizes the horizon and the land. The cowboy as a land-conquering pioneer is always chasing land, but he can never own all of it. The land always stretches in front of him, causing him restlessness and unease. The backdrop uses a series of metaphors to evoke North American history and politics: it is the “border” the cowboy is always trying to cross, perhaps referring to the border with Canada. It is the “horizon” he perpetually seeks, an object he can never lasso, mirroring the imagery often used to describe the pioneer colonization of North America.

In the final two stanzas, the backdrop assesses the paradox of its condition. It has agency, in that it “surrounds” (Line 31) the cowboy. “Surrounds” (Line 31) with its rounded, echoing assonance suggests the backdrop engulfs the cowboy. If there was no backdrop, no land, no natural bounty, and no women, what would the cowboy chase? Yet, this does not mean the landscape is unaffected by the cowboy’s actions. Its very “brain” or fiber has been corrupted by environmental damage – “the litter of your invasions” (Line 35). It is space that surrounds and engulfs, but it is also space the cowboy does “desecrate” (Line 36) as he passes through it. The last stanza, comprising of two lines, brings home the poem’s message: the land and the environment is irreparably damaged by the greed and violence the cowboy represents.