NEVER-AGING STORIES: AGE, MASCULINITY AND THE WESTERN MYTH IN SYDNEY POLLACK’S THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN

Abstract

According to Gabriela Spector-Mersel there are no cultural models for old men, in comparison to the easily available scripts in early and middle adulthood. As such, this is a considerably unsettling phase of negotiation for men as they need to (re)define their identity and their sense of masculinity particularly when aging. The masculinity embodied by the cowboy prototype certainly fits this model that sees masculinities as a “temporal script”. In the 1979 movie The Electric Horseman, directed by Sydney Pollack, the factor of age runs as a subtext that not only informs masculine identity but also takes on a broader significance to express an important cultural transformation. Instead of simply focusing on the effects of the passing of time for an individual man, the film explores the changes in US society through one of its most celebrated cultural icons, the cowboy. To analyze Sony Steele’s distinctiveness within hegemonic ageless narratives in The Electric Horseman, this article will set him alongside two archetypal figures of the genre of the Western: the cowboy and the horse, which serves as a key vehicle of the character’s own exalted masculinity. This critical approach shows how the prevailing model of youthful or ageless masculinity in cowboy stories can thus be challenged.