True West | Historical Context

True West Historical Context

The Persistence of Frontier Ideals in American Culture

The title of Shepard's play, True West, is significant in many ways but one clear reference is to the American frontier West as an ideal of masculine forcefulness and independence. Though cowboys and gunshngers have disappeared, the ideal of rough and ready men continues to persist in America. The characters of Austin and Lee are defined by their relation to the myth of the old West. Austin is a sophisticated city boy, an Ivy League egghead with little apparent aptitude for survival skills or physical force. Lee, on the other hand, is someone who can survive in the desert—who knows the land and can make things happen with his instinct and physical prowess He, for instance, knows the difference between urban and rural coyotes—"they don't yap like that on the desert. They howl. These are city coyotes here"—and his movie idea is for a true-to-life, contemporary Western. When Austin has his identity crisis, he wants to leave his wife and children and live on the desert to get in touch with a more elemental self, and when Lee rejects the temptations of civilization it is to the desert (which serves as the closest thing to the unsettled frontier of the old West) he will return.

All through 1980, the year that Shepard introduced his play, the U.S. was engaged in a hostage crisis in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Parts of that situation illustrate the persistence of masculine, frontier ideals in American culture. In November of 1979, anti-American demonstrators goaded by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeim had marched on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized control, and taken sixty diplomats as hostages. Khomeini eventually threatened to put these hostages on trial and execute them as spies. They would not be freed until January of 1981, 444 days later. Throughout 1980, this unprecedented takeover of a U.S. Embassy brought howls of protest from the American public and contributed significantly to President Jimmy Carter's loss in the 1980 election. The American public demanded action, reprisals, or a rescue, and the government's inability to immediately answer this direct challenge to American sovereignty was perceived as an. insult to American honor.