In the next chapter of the book, Tatum follows the Kid’s legend in the time of gangsters and depression and war, from 1925 to 1950. In short, the Kid had a massive spike in popularity due to disillusionment with the times and rapidly changing culture.
The shift in perceptions of the Kid originated with an essay published by Harvey Fergusson in 1925 (85). Fergusson analyzed the Kid’s actions in the frontier society, not in an urban setting as previous writers had. He found that the Kid was not really so bad compared to his time, and almost an angel compared to the people of the present. He portrayed him a positive light, reshaping everything about the Kid’s legend in a positive light. The myth had cooled off in people’s memories by this point, but new social factors made him relevant once again. The corruption scandals of Harding’s administration and the obvious failure of Prohibition shook people’s faith in government (88). This new perspective led people to embrace the Kid as someone who lived in a time of corruption and ambiguity of the law rather than the hard criminal of the past. It also helped that Prohibition made many people “outlaws” in their own rights. This made them more sympathetic towards the Kid, as they understood how it felt to be pushed outside the limits of the law but still be within social boundaries. Tatum also suggests that the Kid became popular again because he wasn’t like the current gangsters (91). The criminals of the time were gunning each other down in ambushes and massacres, and they were behaving without honor. Authors and screenwriters of the time took the inklings of virtue that appeared in the earlier part of the century and whipped them up into a portrait of a brave, honorable man (91). They also had the Kid ridding the land of its evil elements, often by motivating his killings with revenge or desire for justice (101). In the end, the Kid became a tragic figure that the people of the time related to.
Billy the Kid also filled some needs in this time period. He was a manifestation of American’s desire to get back to a simpler time (108). People trapped in the loose morals of the roaring twenties or the economic hardships of the thirties looked back on the time of the Kid with a manufactured nostalgia. He also reaffirmed the American dream. He was a rags to riches story, coming from a poor family, but more importantly, he was killed as a result of his crimes: the justice system prevailed. Finally, as I already discussed, he symbolized people’s distrust of the justice system. This time period showed much more sympathy for the Kid than before; he became a tragic hero, forced outside the law and then brought down by fate.
Authors effected all these transformations by picking and choosing elements of the story that fit their needs. Once they had an image of the Kid in mind, they silenced all the conflicting facts until he became what they intended. It would be interesting to read some of the formative texts: Hough’s articles from ~1903 or Barn’s Saga of Billy the Kid. Written strictly for entertainment and monetary purposes, I think these still count as civic texts because of the way they tried to influence the public’s opinion about the Kid, and by extension, everything the Kid represented.
I hope to finish the book for next week and see how Tatum ties everything together.
Stephen, Tatum. Inventing Billy the Kid. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982. Print.