“Say I'm Driving This Buggy”: The Cowboy, American Expansion and Cultural Imperialism in Mullholland Drive

• In Event: David Lynch and American Empire

Abstract

The Cowboy is perhaps one of the most enigmatic and menacing figures of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), and despite occupying under five minutes of total screen time, his scene plays a crucial role in the film’s narrative development. Although his presence may initially seem a simple nod to the Old Hollywood Westerns of the 1920s-50s, and the optimistic, glamorous façade of the period which Lynch’s work so frequently interrogates, this paper suggests that through the figure of The Cowboy, Lynch offers a multifaceted critique of American expansion, empire and colonialism.

Whilst the cowboy was historically instrumental in Westward expansion, and thus in American nation building, the traditional pop-culture depiction of the cowboy as synonymous with the white, racist agenda of ‘Manifest Destiny’ has ensured the erasure of the many Black, Native and Mexican cowboys who were also integral to the formation of the USA. American Empire was built on the backs of these ethnically diverse workers, yet proceeded to abjectify and marginalize the very groups from whence they came. Similarly, Old Hollywood, a significant American cultural export, was an industry rife with the exploitation of the starlets it relied upon – Rita Hayworth, a pervasive presence in Mulholland Drive, was encouraged to adjust her ‘exotic’ appearance to appear more ‘American,’ and change her name from Margarita to Rita, effectively erasing her Spanish heritage. Lynch’s engagement with the relationship between American cultural and colonial expansion is further emphasised by the lingering shot of a poster for Hayworth’s 1946 movie Gilda, which provided the nickname for the fourth atomic bomb to ever be exploded by the US military.

Through depicting The Cowboy as the one “driving the buggy,” Lynch presents him as a figure of insidious, white, male American domination, positioning him as adjacent to the sinister movie executive Mr Roque, and the “man in the back of this place…the one who’s doing it.” The Cowboy thereby comes to represent not only the violent historical colonization of the West and the enduring cultural erasure of People of Colour but, through his control of the Hollywood film industry, the contemporary cultural imperialism of American mass media. In doing so, Lynch identifies and implicates the inextricable relationship between these two seemingly disparate strands of the imperialist agenda.

Author

• Hanna Miles