‘Last stand for macho

Urban Cowboy starring John
Travolta, Debra Winger, Scott
Glen. Directed by James Bridges.
A Paramount picture. Adult enter-
tainment.

Urban Cowboy could have
been an interesting film. The
music is good, the acting is good,
but the opportunity to make a
more substantial film was missed.

Most of the action in the flick
takes place in Gilley’s Place, a
huge honky-tonk in Pasadena,
Texas. Billed as the ‘‘largest
nightclub in the world’’, it is in
fact a macho fantasy-land, the
centrepiece of which is a mechan-
ical bucking bull. By mastering
this mechanical bull, the men who
hang out at Gilley’s attempt to
prove that they are ‘‘real’’ cow-
boys. They’re not cowboys, of
course, but mostly workers from
a local petro-chemical plant.

What is never really made clear
is why these ‘“‘drugstore’’ cow-
boys have this obsessive need to
prove their manhood. A few cur-
sory glimpses of their lives at
work gives us a hint. At the plant,
the men’s lives are completely
controlled by the company. Bud
(John Travolta), the movie’s
‘‘hero’’, full of pride and bravado
in Gilley’s, is docile and sub-

BBE

Sissy (Debra Winger). . . all part of
the entertainment.

servient when told by the person-
nel manager that he is merely a
“‘go-fer’’ and no better than an
animal. Bud accepts it when he is
let go from the plant because he
broke his arm. When one of the
workers (Bud's uncle) is killed by
an explosion at the plant while
working overtime during an elec-
trical storm, there is no anger ex-
pressed, only. sadness.

rai mM

The workers seen resigned to
this lack of control over their
lives. It is only at Gilley’s that
they can gain some sense of pride;
some sense of worth.

This theme is never developed
in Urban Cowboy. Instead, the

movie focuses on the relationship ©

between Bud and Sissy (Debra
Winger), the woman he meets and
marries at Gilley’s. This highly
charged relationship breaks up
when Sissy threatens Bud’s male
ego by riding the mechanical bull
herself. Sissy then becomes in-
volved in a destructive and de-
grading relationship with Wes
(Scott Glen) the movie’s ‘‘bad
guy” and Bud’s arch-rival, in an
attempt to make Bud jealous. Bud
meanwhile gets hooked up with a
rich oilman’s daughter who has a
fascination with cowboys.

Debra Winger’s performance
as Sissy is excellent — the in-
evitable comparison will be with
Sally Fields portrayal of Norma
Rae — and she and Trovolta
manage to create the right amount
of sexual and emotional tension,in
their relationship as Bud and Sis-
sy:

The ending of the movie (Bud
beats Wes at the mechanical bull
riding rodeo, gets back with Sissy
and proceeds to beat up on Wes,
fortuitously preventing him from
robbing Gilley’s) is slightly ab-
surd. It is a Hollywood formula

ending that just doesn’t jive with
the rest of the movie.

Urban Cowboy is, the con-
temporary western. All the ingre-
dients of a western are present —
the lone hero; the worship of
physical prowess; the
romanticization of violence; and
the eventual triumph (by our lone
hero) of good over evil.

The western made it as a popu-
lar and important film genre as a
cultural expression of individual-
ism, one of the main historical
underpinnings of American
bourgeois ideology. After ap-
pearing to be parodying and to
some extent de-bunking the myth
of the cowboy, this movie ends up
simply reaffirming it. The
**American way’’ gets confirmed.

— Alan Tate

Red Scare lesson

A three-hour documentary film
on the famous Alger Hiss frameup
case is now showing in some U.S.
cities. The Trials of Alger Hiss
probes the facts and personalities
involved and the Daily World
calls it a ‘‘fine lesson on Red
Scare tactics’.

Bud (John Travolta) strikes cowboy pose at bar of Gilley’s Place.

History hewn out of rock

The Shaping of Sudbury — A
Labor view by Jim Tester.

This 40-page pamphlet is pub-
lished by Sudbury Local 598,
Mine, ‘Mill & Smelter Workers
Union. Emile Prudhomme, presi-
dent of the local, refers to it in his
brief foreword as ‘*a short history
of Sudbury from a labor point-
of-view’’ and calls on every per-
son in Sudbury, particularly
young workers in the nickel in-
dustry, to read it. I second that,
but, go further and recommend it
to every person in Canada inter-
ested in learning the truth about
labor history and labor’s role in
our capitalist society.

Jim Tester is now gathering

material fora book on the Mine-
Mill Union in Sudbury. Having
lived half a century in and around
mining communities — one half of
that time as an employee of the
Falconbridge Nickel Mines in

BOOKS

Sudbury and now a retired presi-
dent of Local 598 — Tester is well
qualified to prduce such a book. I,
for one, am looking forward to his
book and have enjoyed reading
the pamphlet as an appetizer.

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Tune in
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* Till Sept. 6 All times Eastern Daylight Savings Time
** from Sept. 7 This schedule in operation until Oct. 1980
** till July 31

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 25, 1980 — Page 6

The booklet consists of an ad-
dress delivered by Tester to a
public meeting of the Sudbury
and District . Historical Society.
The text in questions and answers
brings out the heartless and cruel
exploitation of the giant mining
companies, ~ including
murderous terror released by
Inco in February of. 1942 as an
effort to defeat a union organizing
drive.

This was after the defeat of a
bitter miners strike in Kirkland
Lake in 1941-42 — a defeat, how-
ever, which turned into a short
victory for the mining companies.
Despite this and the promotion by
Inco of a company union known
as ‘‘Nickel Rash”’ in Sudbury, the
union broke through and won the
right to recognition and collective

-_ bargaining in the mining industry.

Tester brings out the strong
tradition of labor politics in

Northern Ontario. He deals with
‘the question of social equality,

where employers seek to divide
workers on the basis of sex, race,

color, nationally, ancestry, place -

of birth and political opinions.
Here is how he sums it all up:

“If the union movement had
done nothing more than provide
the practical means for realizing
social equality — racial, ethnic,
religious and political — it would
have made a big contribution to
the lives of the people in Sudbury.
The word is golden but the deed is
priceless.”’

At this point I would like to add
a comment. The struggle to win
social equality must embrace
both economic and political forms
and methods of struggle. This has
to be much broader than the trade
union or economic struggle, a
frame-work which is much too
narrow for the struggle to abolish
the system of capitalist exploita-
tion and win through to socialism.

If the pamphlet suffers from

any shortcoming, it is that it could

have been more specific about the
necessary road ahead for the
working class and all working
people of our country. >

— B.M.

the