To further segue, we pass over the bridge between the comics and the West in Rod Bennett's series on the Hudson River Artists, whose grand landscapes of the old West and frontier America yielded their dazzling gold in the hands of the Imaginarium's patient, if somewhat grizzled, old prospector. See yourself the visions of painters like Fredric Edwin Church, Thomas Cole and Jasper Cropsey.

The poetic vision of John Ford has bedazzled several of us old hands for years, and this was the one we shared with our friends at the Imaginarium — though not without encountering a little skepticism from some of these at our choice of theme. And yet, as became clear from the displays of stills depicting space cowboys and the wildernesses of alien worlds, in a certain sense, the Western has been the special preserve of the Imaginarium all along. Watching all those 50s and 60s cowboy show and toy commercials was a reminder how pervasive this American myth was for earlier generations. That, for more recent generations, the Western genre has fallen into disrepute can in part be traced to an uneasy conscience about certain of the motifs of both history and myth. And here's where the real showdown was: between legend and fact.

Who better as a guide to this overlooked genre than a man of solid credentials both as film critic and mainline churchman than James Wall, longtime editor of The Christian Century. We stood with Jim outside the tent as Young Mr. Lincoln played, rhapsodizing over the way Henry Fonda rises from the porch to introduce himself. As Jim noted in his opening lecture (echoing, C.S. Lewis), a film is both ABOUT something, and IS something. In this simple image of the gangling Illinois lawyer may be found a great deal of the fundamental ISness of John Ford.

The fundamental ISness of Bill Romanowski is probably not to use words like "ISness". Bill's a hard boiled critic of Hollywood myth, though he's also a little bit rock & roll (in the mold of fellow New Joysian, Bruce Springsteen, he'd like me to add). Bill blew through the Imaginarium awhile back with a seminar based on his book, Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life, an examination of the mechanisms for setting cultural standards, especially those employed by the church. Bill's new book, Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture calls for a more sophisticated approach to Christian cultural criticism, one that goes beyond the usual itemized listing of cuss words (and to show you how sophisticated we are, we won't apply that method to Bill's talk.)

One difference between Bill's approach to criticism and that of Rod Bennett would be that Bill would feel obligated to remind you that Casablanca was essentially a WWII propaganda film; Rod (following his models Lewis and Chesterton) would say historical context is much less important than the universal values embodied i.e. "the fundamental things apply".

I say to each his own, to everything a season: myth and history, fantasy and realism, universals and particulars, a time for The Bicycle Thief as well as The Thief of Baghdad.

However, when a Native American sits at the other end of the panel on Western movies, it's probably time to step very carefully between legend and fact. The mythic view sees most Western plots as basically interchangeable with science fiction stories: Alien for Indian, both equal opportunity symbols of The Other (recalling Ben Stiller's parody themepark "Oliver Stoneland" with its ride where the mechanical Indian jumps out saying "I'm an Indian, but I also represent death. I'm an Indian, but I also represent death.") Yet this particular Indian was not the Universal Other, but Elmer Yazzie, whose home is the very Navaho reservation on which John Ford made so many of his mythic Western films.

An Imaginarium Magic Moment: Elmer cracking up as he watched our surprise clip of "Winnetou, the Apache Knight", in a film based on a novel by Karl May, who might be described as "the German Zane Grey". Actually, I'd been chasing down Vee-nah-roo since I'd first heard of him from various European friends — including a German who took to referring to me as "my white brother" in the fashion of his country's favorite American Indian and a Czech who finally procured a VHS copy of one of the films for me. Karl May and Winnetou have been big stuff in Europe, especially Germany, since early in the last century. Along with the novels and films, there are Karl May clubs, museums, magazines and festivals. (See the English translations of the books, for sale or online).

Only at the Imaginarium, though, will you get to watch a German movie filmed in Spain about Indians played by Spaniards, overdubbed in Czech, laughing with a Navaho fan of Winnetou as the Apache Knight wrestles a bear. "I would love to be able to take this home to show my father," said Elmer, and, with pleasure, we passed along the tape to him as our gift.

Our shared laughter over Winnetou gave way to a growing awkwardness as Elmer spoke of his own experiences in Germany — meeting a fellow Native American on a plane traveling to a German Pow Wow, being gawked at and photographed by the locals, speculating on the psychology of Germany's rabid Winnetou fandom. Next came the inevitable mention of comparisons of the North American Indian genocide to the near-extermination of European Jews. This, then, was our jumping-off place for a discussion of "Otherness" — the deep human need to love/hate the exotic or the alien, along with the troubling implications of such needs being met in flesh-and-blood human beings.

This most meaningful discussion ran out of its allotted time on both days just as it was really getting good. We were left with a sense that we had further to go in our burrowing into issues of myth vs fact: we barely touched on hot-button topics such as the responsibility (if any?) of the artist to historical fact, or the difference between archetype and stereotype. Nor did we do more than make passing mention that much (or all?) of what passes for "fact" is but somebody else's "legend" — deep questions, to which we will no doubt return in future programs. And we invited Elmer to return to a future Imaginarium program in a role other than the uncomfortable one this discussion necessarily placed him in: anyone who heard Elmer's talks at Art Rageous could tell you he has much more to contribute than Otherness.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

—T.S. Eliot