After receiving my feedback on my last blog post, I wanted to go and research some more into the movie The Left Handed Gun and why Billy was portrayed the way he was. Where I ended wasn’t exactly there but I found a website, http://www.aboutbillythekid.com. This website doesn’t exactly talk about the movie, but a lot of the facts on it show how much Billy’s history was changed for the movie. One of  the interesting facts that I found is that Billy the Kid holds the record for the most motion pictures made on an individual in film making history. Also, Billy the Kid’s original tintype photo is worth $100,000-300,000 making it one of, if not the most, valuable historical photographs of the Old West.

Last week I mentioned how the movie portrayed that Billy the Kid was illiterate. On the website, you are able to access some of the letters that Billy wrote, which proves that Billy wasn’t actually illiterate. Also in the movie, Charlie was portrayed as one of Billy’s close companions and followed Billy and helped him seek revenge after Tunstall’s death. According to an interview Billy did for The Las Vegas Gazette in 1880, Billy and Charlie were just owners of a ranch.

Also in the movie, while Billy is in jail, a reporter comes to visit him. The reporter in the movie supports Billy and brings him chocolates and articles that are saying good things about Billy. According to an interview that Billy did for Mesilla News in 1881, Billy says that the reporter was creating a prejudice against him and “trying to incite a mob to lynch me”. Billy felt like it was taking advantage of him because he was not able to defend himself.

Also in the movie, Billy’s first crime was said to be murder when he was 11 in El Paso. He supposedly stabbed somebody for mocking his mind. Billy’s first crime actually was not committed until he was about 14 or 15. His crime was stealing several pounds of butter from a rancher. Billy did not commit his first murder until he was around 16. It was an act of self defense, but he was still wanted for murder. Another big misconception in the movie was that Billy was left handed. Billy was ambidextrous, but he mainly used his right hand. People assumed  that Billy was left handed because he had his revolver positioned on the left side, but the image was reversed.

This week I watched a movie on Billy the Kid. I actually found The Left Handed Gun on Netflix.

The movie caught my attention in the very beginning with the song. I went on YouTube to try to find the name of the song, but to my surprise, there are many songs about Billy the Kid. The song was the opposite of what I think when I hear Billy. The song describes Billy as being a “gentle” boy that never meant wrong and that he should be treated gently. When I hear Billy the Kid, my first impression is outlaw that killed 21 men. In the beginning, Billy is also portrayed as being quite which is also the opposite of the way that he is portrayed  in many stories. In the sources that I have read, Billy has been made out to be outspoken.

In 05:06 of the movie, Billy’s first crime is introduced. The man said that Billy stabbed a drunk because he said “a word against his mind” and it killed the drunk. The crime was committed while Billy was 11 in El Paso. There is also a part at 00:8:41 where Billy is talking to a man about Spanish and the man asked Billy if he learned Spanish while he was in Kansas City and Billy tells him that he lives in the South. I don’t know if this is suggesting that Billy was from Kansas City or if that was one of the places that he lived, but none of the sources that I have read have mentioned anything about Billy being in Kansas City.

At 9:40, Billy is portrayed as being illeterate. This also goes against many of the sources that I have read about Billy. All of the sources that mentioned Billy’s education said that Billy could read and that he would read often. The movie still showed Billy as having an interest in books, but he was never able to read throughout the movie. Billy’s loyalty is also portrayed very well in this movie. Billy had not been with Tunstall for a while, but he races to his side after he gets shot. He volunteers for the men to put the body on his horse and he promises to seek revenge for his death.

When the movie moves along and we start seeing the more open side of Billy, his character seems very childish. There is a scene at 00:18:50, after Tunstall’s funeral, where Billy starts dancing around and it’s almost like watching a kid dance. When he starts talking to Tom and Charlie about his plan to seek revenge, he turns serious again. His childishness is shown again at 00:41:47 when him and his friends start getting excited over ther party, girls, and getting drunk. While at the party, he encounters Grant and comes close to a draw. After that incident, he leaves the party and he seems to become almost delusional.

I feel like this movie does shows Garrett’s and Billy’s relationship more in depth than any other sources I have seen. They are good friends until Billy shoots Hill at Garrett’s wedding and that is when Billy decides to accept the offer to become the sherriff. At 1:11:10, Billy shows a side that you really don’t see during  the movie, which is a mature side. He lets Tom leave and he offers him more catridges for his gun, advice about when to travel, and helps him unto his horse. However, at 1:13:05, he starts showing his delusional side again when he is talking to himself about Tom leaving him and Charlie.

This movie also shows that Garrett starts doubting his decision about bringing Billy in after the hanging sentence was passed. It aslo shows how Billy is friendly with his guards like many sources mentions. There is a lot of controversy about how Billy actually died, but in this version, Garrett shoots Billy while he is unarmed.

I think Tubman’s Christianity was much different than her admirers and her biographers. According to the book, “Most nineteenth-century Christians believed in the power of prayer. It was a form of talking to God” (pg.137). In the African American Christian culture, God would talk back. Many of the ways that God would talk back was through dreams and visions, and this fact was what many of Tubman’s early white supporters couldn’t wrap their mind around.

Some of Tubman’s biographers downplayed her “mystic” religious abilities that helped her get through her life. Bradford’s religion saw God as being more two sided. One side was “the kind savior who welcomed the good into heaven, and the stern, intimidating judge who who would ultimately punish evildoers” (138). Tubman’s view of God was an approachable unfailing supportable God for those who were righting wrongs. Bradford participated in silencing some of Tubman’s religious abilities when it came to Franklin B. Sanborn’s letter. Bradford thought that Sanborn gave wonderful instances of Harriet’s dreams and visions but she did not include them into her book because she “thought best not to insert anything which, with any, might bring discredit upon the story” (136). Bradford, however, still capitalized on Tubman being a saint and seer for the sake of women suffrage.

Sanborn, in his article for Commonwealth in July 1863, tried to explain Harriet’s seer like abilities. He said that her ability to always escape while operating the Undergroung Railroad was because of her “quick wit” and her “warnings’ from Heaven”. According to Sanborn’s account, Tubman inherited her psychic powers from her dad. He said that her knowledge of the future came to her in dreams and the only thing strange about this is that she remembers the places that she’s gone to and the people she’s met, in reality, from her dreams.

Rosa Bell Holt also wrote about Harriet Tubman’s religious side in an article in the Chautauquan in1896. Holt compared Tubman to Joan of Arc because of the women believed in their visions from God and lead people because of these visions.

Earl Conrad, another major biographer for Tubman, tried to credit Tubman’s visions to her narcolepsy. He felt that the deep sleeps that Tubman fell into were the reason for her visionary dreams. He sought several consults from prominent hospitals and research centers, but did not get back the results that he wanted. He could accept the fact that Tubman suffered from narcolepsy, but he could not accept the suggestions that Tubman had mental disorders. In the end, Conrad did not include the references he got for Tubman’s dreams. He did still include her religion because he knew that black Americans found the religion of Southern folk culture important. He still felt that the religious factor of Tubman “was by no means the important thing” in relation to her achievements.  He felt like if he attributed her deeds to God than she wouldn’t receive the credit that she deserved.

Harriet has been perceived as a Christian, but her early supporters could not begin to fathom her beliefs in Christianity. They believed in the same God, but Tubman’s God performed in very different ways than what they were used to.

I think Tubman I had a small influence over the making of her own legend.Harriet was known to be a story teller and did enjoy telling people about the trips that she made.  The first biography of Harriet Tubman, Scenes, was based off of what stories she told Sarah Bradford. I think at this point, however, is where Harriet’s influence stops and others influences start.

 Tubman was illiterate so she was not able to write an autobiography or to read the things that other people wrote about her. Also when people want to get a point across, they tend to fudge the details a bit. One example is with the differences between Sarah Bradford’s 1869 and 1886 biography of Harriet Tubman. The 1886 version is more about the facts of Harriet Tubman because that book was written with haste since Bradford was leaving the country soon. By Bradford’s 1886 biography, the facts seemed to be a lot bigger than what they were in the beginning biography. For example, the number of trips and people saved increased tremendously. In the 1869 version, it was said that Tubman had made eight trips and saved about 50 people. By the time 1886 came, Tubman was said to have made 19 trips and saved over 300 people. This dramtic increase clearly shows how much the legend of Harriet Tubman grew. Also there were many people who used Harriet Tubman as an example when they gave their speeches. Most of the time in these speeches, the speakers would target the legends of Harriet to be able to get their point across. For example, in the speech that Frances Ellen  Watkins Harper gave, she refers to Harriet as ” a woman who has gone down into the Egypt of slavery and brought out hundreds our people into liberty”.

Also, many  of the abolitonists and helpers of the Underground Railroad would talk about the great things that Harriet did and the stories that she told them. After telling the story so many times, it is sure to be misconstrued.

The way that many of the things about Tubman spread reminds me a lot of telephone. For cheerleading, we would host a cheerleading camp during the summer for younger kids. Of course their attention spans were not long enough to be able to do cheerleading all day so we would have to play games with them. One of the popular games happened to be telephone. You never knew what the end result would be because some of the girls would try to actually remember what was said in the beginning and some of the girls would purposely change what was said.

Because of all these facts, I believe that Tubman only had a small role in her legend. She provided the stories and others took the stories and turned them into legends.

I have finally gotten one of the books that I was interested in, Lucky Billy. It is very interestingly written and it’s not like other historical books that I have read before. I have only read the first chapter, but you can immediately tell the difference after reading the first sentence. I feel like Lucky Billy reads more as a narrative. It reads very simple like a children’s book, but it obviously not meant for kids because it does contain profanity and some graphic content during the death scenes. It is also very hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction in Lucky Billy mainly because it reads as a story. I do think, however, that it would be beneficial to keep reading it because it shows a good example of how Billy the Kid has grown into a legend over the years. I also plan on reading other books so I can get a better idea of what is fact and what is fiction.

There is also another book that I have found in the library that I haven’t checked out yet, but I plan on doing it soon. It is titled Billy the Kid:The Endless Ride. According to one book review, http://route66news.com/2007/03/25/book-review-billy-the-kid-the-endless-ride/, this book should do a better  job of seperating the fact from the fiction.

There is also another interesting book that I have found in the library by the name Billy the Kid: The Best Writings on the Infamous Outlaw. This book is a collage of all things Billy. It has everything from the biographies of Billy, plays, newspaper articles, songs, movies, poems, and short stories. I think this will also give a good idea of what is actually fact about Billy and what has been made up about him throughout the years. I’m also hoping that I will be able to get more information about Billy off of the internet.

Back to the book Lucky Billy, so far it has been talking about the escape of Billy from prison on April 28, 1881. Althouth this part is mainly dialogue and narrative, I have noticed some of the facts that I have been able to find on other pages. Some of these facts are about how secure Billy was kept, playing poker with the guards, and Billy’s escape. There is a lot of dialogue between Billy and the guards that I haven’t heard of before. The description of the death scene is very gruesome and I don’t think I have came across any other source that has described the scene. Billy also seems a little bit off balanced because his train of thought quickly switches and he’s not really sure if he is talking to himself or talking to the crowd of people who had gathered around the prison.

I haven’t started on a book for Billy the Kid yet, but I have found a website that has a good review for one of the books that seperates some of things known about Billy between fact and fiction. The website I found this information on is http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=26215

One of the books that is mentioned on this website that I’m hoping I will be able to find is To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. It is a dual biography of both Billy the Kid and Pat Garret, the person who shot Billy the Kid. Like with many of the other Americans that we have studied, there are many things that Gardner has said that can start a heated debate with other Billy the Kid scholars and “Billy buffs”. I’m really looking forward to being able to read that book and see what differences there are between the book and some of the other things that I have found. There are many books listed in the article that seem interesting, but of course I won’t be able to read them all. I would like to read Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life since I did find parts of that book in Google books and I was able to get information from it.

I also found another book that was mentioned in this website and another website that I stumbled upon. The other website is http://discovere.binghamton.edu/features/acclaimed-novel-traces-life-of-billy-the-kid-1067.html. The name of the book mentioned in both of these websites is Lucky Billy by Houghton Mifflin. According to the reviews, the book is written so that it feels like you are in the story with the characters. He shows all of Billy’s jail breaks, revenge killings, gun fights, lucky get aways, and his not so lucky death. His death is told from Sheriff Pat Garrett’s point of view, which I find to be very interesting. And this book was also made geared towards the goal of seperating fact and fiction so I’m really excited to read this book to see how it is different from the other two books and the things that I have already read.

I really want to be able to get through the readings of all three of these books and see if I can find an critic’s essays on them. It would be really interesting to know why Billy the Kid is still such a big character in history and what made him important to have all these stories made up about him to the point that we have to seperate fact from legend.

I think that nineteenth century poets, illustrators, and biographers of Brown focused on the “kiss” instead of his violent actions to make Brown seem like more of a martyr. If I have ever studied anything about John Brown I can’t remember anything that I have learned about him, so to my knowledge this was the first time I’ve been introduced to him. The first things that I looked out were the poems and the visual images of him. Although I couldn’t get everything about him just from these sources, I immediately started feeling pity for him. It wasn’t until after I start reading sources from the critics that my views for him change. I didn’t necessarily have less pity for him, but at the same time I didn’t have quite as much pity for him as I did before.

I have a feeling that these poets, illustrators, and biographers were playing on the people’s emotions. I believe that the things that they were saying evoked similar feelings to the ones that I had in the beginning. The things that kind of changed my feelings towards him are what lead up to the point of his death. I understand that his raids and all the things that he lead were for a good cause, but I also know that things can’t go unpunished no matter how good some people think they are because it would make it seem like those actions are acceptable. For example, if today somebody decided that they were going to kill all the serial killers in the  world some people might feel that it is a noble cause. But, the bottom line is if that person goes unpunished, it will give other people the incentive to believe that if they went out and killed everybody that they thought was bad, it would be okay. I know John Brown had a noble cause but I also  know that he had to be punished. At the same time, I did feel sympathetic towards him because I didn’t feel like he had to be hanged.

Also while I was reading the poems, I was awed by the way that he handled himself knowing that he was being led to death. I know if I was in a similar situation, I would not have been able to handle myself quite as well. His braveness and his ability to stay stoic in his time of death would have impressed anybody I’m sure. This is one of the points where my opinion of him didn’t change from when I read the poems and looked at the pictures to when I read the historian’s account. There is some evidence where John Brown planned how his death will impact the abolitionist’s move. It seems kind of conniving, but at the same time it was all for a good cause. I think he was more worried about people seeing the dangers of slavery, not necessarily about making sure that he was still talked about in the year 2011.

The last part is the kiss. Reading that part of the poem, I felt really humbled by it. It seemed so noble for him  to still be dedicated towards his cause even on his way to death.  When I read the true story of it my feelings also did not change. The fact that he could get so close to the people who were keeping him imprisoned shows just how strong his character is.

I think focusing on the good things helped push his cause more and helped him to be seen as a martyr more  than if they talked about the good and bad things.

I do think it’s impossible for scientists to get “the facts” of the matterwithout their own perspectives getting in the way.

Before I talk about facts in the book, I really want to talk  about how this ironically goes along with an assignment I had earlier for another class. In one of my classes, we had to read an article about introverts and write an essay responding to it. You can tell the article was clearly written by an introvert especially since the writer came out and said it. Even if the writer didn’t say it you would be able to tell by the things he was saying. He talked mainly about how the world would be better if it were ran by introverts and made extroverts seem like the most annoying people in  the world who don’t know how to be quiet. I actually took offense to this because I feel like I am more of an extrovert and I happened to be roommates with somebody who is an extreme case of an introvert. In my essay I talked about this and about how it seems to be harder on me living with somebody that is a polar opposite to me than it seems to be on her. I realized by the end of my essay  that from my point of view introverts, or at least my roommate, seemed to be more annoying than extroverts. So for my conclusion I stated that an article would be more informative if it was written by somebody who was neutral and was a mix between an introvert and an extrovert. I also feel this same way about history, but there’s one big problem to that philosophy. A person who doesn’t show strong feelings for a subject, whether it’s for that subject or against that subject, they probably wouldn’t take the time out to write a book or an article about it. And if they do it because they are forced to for an assignment, it probably wouldn’t be very enjoyable for the readers.

Back to the book, I believe Trouillot’s theory supports my belief about not being able to get to “the facts”. Trouillot mentions that relationships of power can make a narrative dominant or it can silence a narrative. In the first “moment”, which is fact creation, many potential sources have been eliminated because the creator’s ability to relate to it has been destroyed. The second “moment” is fact assembly. Archives are mainly put together by the government and wealthy people so the narratives of the less powerful rarely made it into the archives or under their own names. The third “moment” is fact retrieval. Many narratives get looked over because they don’t fit into the conventional times. Some get lost in translation when they have to be translated from a foreign language into English. Some mistakes are also due to incomplete research or incautious scholars. Some of the history is also changed when publishers or writers decide not to include facts that they find redundant or offensive, although they may be very important. The fourth “moment” is the delivery of facts. This moment has just as much to do with the consumption of history as its production. Like one of the examples that Trouillot gives is when the facts about Davy Crockett became a big deal in the “de la Pena diary”  , de la Pena himself was silenced.

Due to all these facts I don’t think it’s possible for historians to have “the facts”. As time goes on, facts are left out and opinions are turned into facts.

“Billy the Kid” was still fairly young when he died. This week I wanted to look at his early years, which I guess can be considered the years before he started getting into serious crime. I found a google book http://books.google.com/books?id=h6BuOmP_VuoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=billy+the+kid&hl=en&ei=p-N4TrDQN-SxsAKRjom7DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true. Although the book preview was missing information, I was still able to get plenty of useful information from it. All of my information came from the first chapter, “The Kid.” I was actually pretty surprised by some of the information that I had found in this chapter that I didn’t find in other articles that I have read.

I didn’t realize that Billy was only known as “The Kid” until a few months before he died. This fact is what makes the chapter make sense since it did not actually go into details about Billy as a literal kid. I don’t know if I have read this anywhere else, but I did find in this chapter that his origins are suggestive but rarely conclusive. This makes Billy more legendary to me. Not only is his adulthood mysterious but so is his childhood. He is believed to have spent his first few years in an Irish ghetto of Manhattan or Brooklyn. His name, however, was made in New Mexico.

This part is where a page was missing, but I found a useful sentence towards the beginning of the page and had to draw my own conclusions about what it was talking about. It started off talking about how a class of men, I’m assuming the class that they are referring to are the outlaws, had four influences to lead them to violence. The first influence was that of ambition for quick money and the power that went with it. The second influence was liquor.  Everyone at that time drank heavily and constantly. The third influence was guns. Nearly everyone at that time also carried guns.

There was also a missing page between this time and my next information that I found.  It mentioned “[the code] commanded practitioners to avenge all insult and wrong, real or imagined; never to retreat before an aggressor, and to respond with any degree of violence, even death”. I feel like this goes along perfectly with Billy the Kid based on the information that I have found about him. This also goes along perfectly with a quote they followed which was “I’ll die before I’ll run.”

 Back to Billy, something that really surprised me that I haven’t seen before was Billy’s passion for music. Months after his mother died, he and other boys formed a minstrel troupe that played to appreciative audiences at Morrill’s Opera House. I found other useful information in this chapter, but I will save that information for another blog post. The other information that I found has to do with Billy’s crime life that would not fit with the rest of this blog.

I personally believe that the Davy Crockett “craze” was greatly influenced by the power of television and marketing to manipulate consumer taste.

The first reason I think this actually has nothing to do with the readings but later I will tie my point in with parts of the reading. My first reason is that I know how powerful marketing is today and I can only imagine how powerful it was then, especially since the Crockett “craze” happened right after the coming age of television. There are some crazes that we have had recently that seem extremely crazy now that I think about it, but at that time even I participated in buying the items. One example that I can think of write now is the croc “craze”. That phase was during middle school and of course I wanted to fit in so I begged my mom to buy  me some. Now that I think about the crocs, I realize that there really was no good purpose for them to wear out in public. Especially the ones with the holes in them, which are the ones that I had. Another craze that I can think of is actually a fairly recent craze, which is the snuggie. This craze is a little more reasonable than the croc craze because it actually does come in handy if you’re cold but still need to use your hands. Of course you can just put on extra layers of clothes, but I think one of the biggest reasons that people make such a big deal about them is because they are so diverse that you can find a snuggie with pretty much any theme or color that you want.

Back to the readings, my second point is that the visions of people were  normally determined by what people saw on tv. In “The Recycled Hero”, it mentioned that people became heroes through tv, music, and the record industry. After Disney’s “rewriting” of Davy Crockett, the emphais and interests in Crockett dramatically increased. Crockett went from the “frontier jokester” to being a forceful symbol for the frontier period. “The Recycled Hero” also mentions that the craze help test out the child market since the new class of citizens, the children, knew spending power and how to use it. Also, when the Crockett craze began to die out, it was believed that it was because the older kids began to let it go because they didn’t want to have a connection to younger kids, which is also a reason why some crazes die out today.