Retro-Writings: An Essay From College
Retro-writings is a presentation of essays written at some point in the past. These essays are presented without editing, exactly as they were turned in. This is an essay from 2001 concerning the film Brazil and the novel Neuromancer.
The Cowboy in the Web:
Images of the Renegade in Two Characters
An example of one of the most well known endings that a movie could possibly have is easy to pick out. The scene is late in the day and our hero has just triumphed. He goes over to his horse and helps the girl get on. He jumps up with almost no effort and turns his horse to face the sun. He starts off at a light trot, but soon he is galloping away into the sunset. The cowboy, for that is what he is, has gotten the girl and saved the day. This image seems to be an important one to our modern culture, yet there are two cases in which the image has been skewed. In both William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil the main character gets his identity in part from the idea of the cowboy. In some ways Gibson’s Case and Gilliam’s Sam Lowry each pull similar things from the cowboy and in some aspects each of them fails. One of them handles being the cowboy better than the other, but each of their identities is drawn from the same source.
In Gibson’s novel, Case is a net cowboy who gets his excitement from “jacking in” to the net. Although he works as a thief the identity that he chooses to go by is that of the cowboy. Outside of the net he is nothing close to a cowboy, but once he is jacked in, he becomes skilled, smooth and cool. Outside of the net he can’t go a week without some kind of a drug. In the net he can take on anyone or anything and never need a drug. The cowboy image is partly drawn from the idea of the gunslinger who is above or beyond the law. With Case, when he is jacked in the law has no way to touch him. He can do anything he wants, commit any crime, but the law can’t catch him because of his expertise.
The same idea of being above the law appears with the character of Sam Lowry in Brazil. The difference between the way in which Sam and Case are above the law, however, is significant. In Sam’s case, he believes himself to be a cowboy renegade who won’t be troubled with the law. In reality Sam is merely a slight blemish to the law. He can’t escape from the law, and is never really out of their sight. Sam draws much of his identity from the renegade aspect of the cowboy, yet he never really does anything to rebel. The only times that he does attempt to rebel, he is only doing what he thinks renegades should do and not what they really do. He is not smooth, quick, or smart, and he doesn’t get the girl.
Sam’s character does show an interesting contrast to Case’s jacking in. While Case can rule the world of the net as a cowboy, Sam can rule his dream world in which he is always the hero, always smooth, always quick on his feet, and always getting the girl. The only difference between the two worlds is that Case can bring aspects of the net into his real life effectively, while Sam only fails and makes stupid decisions when his worlds collide. The one time that Sam tries to do something heroic he ends up being knocked unconscious by the very authorities that he is trying to rebel against. That is not to say that the typical cowboy is completely heroic and never gets into trouble.
The typical cowboy will inevitably run up against trouble. He finds himself in an abandoned mine with a case of dynamite about to explode, or in the jail of an evil Sheriff with only a few minutes to save the girl. Both Sam and Case have found themselves in similar situations, unable to do anything about it. Case seems to find himself in that very situation more than once. At the beginning of the novel he is already in that situation. The problem he faces is that he is on a straight course to having himself killed and he recognizes the fact. He is the person that he has to save, but Case can’t do anything about it because he is trapped in his own body, unable to jack in because of neural damage to his system. As Gibson puts it, he “fell into the prison of his own flesh” (Gibson 6). Of course he eventually finds a way out through other character in the novel, but he must have this problem again closer to the climax if he is to be a true cowboy. The second situation that Case falls into which echoes the cowboy persona involves his pseudo-boss, Armitage. Near the climax of the novel, Case is supposed to be helping the “girl,” Molly. Armitage begins to lose his mind and won’t allow Case to do anything while Molly is in great danger. We can see that so far Case seems to be the ideal cowboy, although a little bit updated.
Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to quite live up to the standards of the cowboy. While he is supposed to be the one in control, the one who never panics, he is the very one who puts himself in bad situations. When Sam gets kicked out of his apartment by central services, it actually seems to be because of something that he did. After he tells the repairmen who come to fix his heating that they need the right form, they return with it, which allows them to kick him out. When Sam is captured by foot soldiers it is because he doesn’t know how to defend himself. In the cowboy’s case, the only way he would be knocked unconscious would be due to being greatly outnumbered by the bad guy.
There is one more aspect of the cowboy, which has already been mentioned. Every cowboy gets to ride off into the sunset with the girl, even if he isn’t going to marry her. The choice is his, but he gets her at least through the end of the movie. In both Case and Sam’s situation, they fail at this. In fact Sam fails much more than Case does, but neither of them really ends up with the girl. Case does manage to get the girl for most of the novel, but he doesn’t keep her. From very early on, in fact, it is Molly’s choice to be with Case in the first place, and it is her choice again when she leaves. So although Case does get the girl, he doesn’t help her up on the horse. In fact, it seems as though she is the one doing the helping, as she saves his life a number of times. Case also doesn’t get to ride into the sunset with her in any sense. It seems that he is content to ride into the sunset with the net and jacking in as his girl instead.
With Sam, his situation seems a little bit more akin to that of the cowboy. Sam doesn’t get the girl at first, and in fact it takes his valiance and romance to get her. When he finally does get her after having saved her, he is put into even more trouble and must be saved by the girl. Here, the dream world comes in, and Sam fantasizes about the situation where they actually do ride off into the sunset together. Unfortunately for him, that is only a fantasy. As it turns out he doesn’t get the girl, and he didn’t even necessarily save her from anything at all. He will continue to live in his fantasy world where he is the valiant cowboy and has the girl, while real life moves on around him. Sam’s idea of himself as a cowboy is completely false, and because of who he really is that image of himself can never be true.
The image of the cowboy is huge in our culture. It has been perpetuated by the epic proportions that actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have attained. People no longer view those actors as actors playing cowboys. Instead they view them as actual cowboys. The character of Sam and Case have both tried to attain that level of cowboy. They each believe themselves to be cowboys in certain ways, yet neither of them are able to completely transform into the figure. They fail by not getting the girl and by not bringing the cowboy out of their unreal world. In the end, it would be very difficult to actually live up to the standards of the cowboy. The world in which we live does not allow for someone who tries to work outside of the law. In reality, even a famous “cowboy” like Batman would not be able to exist in this society.
Works Cited
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984
Gilliam, Terry, Dir. Brazil. Universal. 1985.