Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood Diane Cook Abstract
One of the most fascinating aspects of contemporary American television drama is the popularity garnered by various series that have taken latterday moral absolutism to task. Many have raised crucial ethical questions by exploring moral dilemmas, and even posited them as insoluble. Eg The Sopranos, The Shield, Oz, the Law and Order franchise, and Deadwood have utilised the arena of crime and punishment to explore moral issues with candour and sophistication. Within these works, evil is not manifest in external agencies but solely in the human psyche; it cannot be vanquished readily, and moral absolutism offers only a panacea. Such identification of a human locus for the phenomenon of evil has made for numerous engaging ethical perspectives, but Deadwood is an especially interesting case in point because of creator/producer David Milch's stated views on morality, and the thematic points he has intended Deadwood to make. Arguably, the series' most rewarding aspects are the profound humanism beneath Deadwood's viscerally disturbing surface, and Milch's brand of moral relativism - what he offers in Deadwood is a definition of evil partly as a failure to recognise our interdependence.
Key words
Deadwood, David Milch, moral relativism, television, drama. In their essay TV as a Cultural Form, Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch make a celebratory or at least optimistic pronouncement about the function and nature of television [drama]. Building on anthropologist Victor Turner's assertions about the role of art in contemporary societies taking up the role of ritual in traditional societies, and on John Fiske and John Hartley's notion of television drama's bardic function, they state: The skewed democracy of the world of television is not quite so bizarre and repressive once we admit that it is the realm in which we allow our monsters to come out and play, our dreams to be wrought into pictures, our fantasies transformed into plot structures. Cowboys, detectives, bionic men and great green hulks; fatherly physicians,
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________ glamorous female detectives, and tightly knit families living out the pain of the Great Depression; all these become part of the dramatic logic of public thought.1 … The conflicts we see in television drama, embedded in familiar and nonthreatening frames, are conflicts ongoing in American social experience and cultural history. In a few cases we might see strong perspectives that argue for the absolute correctness of one point of view or another. But for the most part the rhetoric of television drama is a rhetoric of discussion.2
In essence, Newcomb and Hirsch see American television in part as a reflection of a vibrant (albeit limited) pluralism. They discourage us from focusing on any specific series when considering the cultural function of television per se; however, this essay does not focus on the broader functions of the medium so much as the impassioned philosophical enquiry evident in writer/producer David Milch's work, which accords precisely with Newcomb and Hirsch's comments. It is in a similarly celebratory attitude this paper turns to Deadwood, Milch's current HBO drama series. At first glance, Deadwood abounds with malevolence and atrocity, consistently assaults us with visceral shock. Named for and set in a late 19th-century settlement in Dakota's Black Hills that was not annexed to the USA until the late 1800s and was consequently lawless at its inception, the program spews a constant stream of aggression, gore, filth and invective. But at its core lies a profound empathy and respect for humanity in all its nobility and reprehensibility. Put simply, Milch offers scenarios rife with distress in order to posit a trenchant humanism, and a measure of moral relativism - or perhaps more correctly pluralism - as the remedy for some of what has historically ailed American culture and society. As Joseph Millichap notes in his essay Robert Penn Warren, David Milch, and the Literary Contexts of Deadwood, in his finest work but especially in Deadwood, Milch delineates "a harshly naturalistic vision of the dark and divided depths within the American national character, an identity simultaneously and paradoxically both innocent and corrupted."3 Deadwood - fictional and actual - emerged primarily from the settlement Little Big Horn survivors and deserters and other hopefuls and opportunists on the hunt for gold and ensuing commerce. As Milch presents it, by dint of origin and circumstance Deadwood embodies a
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unique secular culture, one that has lost touch not only with spiritual/divine wisdom and authority but also with conventional sociopolitical frameworks. For many, this signals precious freedom from the constraints of a stifling moral code, and complements neatly the fact of Deadwood's official non-existence. The result is laissez-faire society in gut-wrenching high relief. Many prospectors take to all-out hedonism with crude gusto, plunging into sexual and other indulgences and shady transactions around the clock, alongside the dream of instant wealth via the goldfields (if they actually get around to working their claims). And because there is no official authority to establish or maintain propriety or order, slights, betrayals and disappointments are avenged however the affected see fit; and the strong prey on the weak with relish and abandon extreme violence is a given. They also prosper heartily. For those who have come to the camp at least nominally in search of enterprise, adventure and progress, all this denotes a cultural/moral nadir they hardly expected; but they are a beleaguered minority. Following from this, the agents of evil in Deadwood are entirely human and their evil/immoral/amoral actions are usually volitional, free of supernatural or metaphysical influence. There is slim connection here, if any, to St Thomas Aquinas' notion of unintentional evil, or St Augustine's notion of an essence of evil. A hint of Kantian reason, arguably; however, this paper is not aimed at exploring definitions of evil per se - suffice to say the actions at play in Deadwood exemplify human behaviour at its most abominable, and it is not unreasonable to label this behaviour "evil." Milch's main points in terms of attributing blame for evil, as such, are that there is no evading individual and collective human responsibility for evil, and that it is essential to seek a solution to evil via will and wisdom. The manifestation of evil in Deadwood begins with its backstory and narrative backdrop - white appropriation of native lands and concomitant slaughter of Native Americans is a terrible, resonating given, predicated on notions of white supremacy and the non- or sub-human status of non-whites/non-Christians (Native Americans are referred to frequently within the program as "dirt worshippers"). So from the start, we are aware of evil on a cultural scale. For individual antagonists, Milch first gives us Al Swearengen, proprietor of the Gem saloon, pimp and casual despot. We are introduced to Swearengen by way of the beating he metes out to Trixie, his lover and "senior" whore,4 when she shoots a man in self-defence after he has fiercely bashed her. Yet this is but a mundane and trivial outburst. Swearengen kills without hesitation or remorse if he deems it beneficial to his interests, which means he (or his henchmen Dan
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________
and Johnny) kill frequently; to add to his savage pragmatism, the dead are fed to the pigs belonging to Wu, his Chinese associate (in a ghoulish recycling, they are inevitably consumed by the township via pork and bacon). But Swearengen's business competitor, Cy Tolliver, easily surpasses Swearengen's transgressions. Tolliver is nothing short of Nietzschean Man made flesh - a mix of hubris, seemingly invincible will and stealthy but extreme malevolence. He describes himself to Wolcott, a corrupt business associate, as a man past surprise, and proves true to this when Wolcott butchers three whores partly for pleasure but also (unsuccessfully) to provoke him.5 Tolliver's response to the sight of the women's bodies is little more than fatigued annoyance. Among other acts, we see Tolliver bash and execute an adolescent huckster in cold blood and then force his madam, Joanie Stubbs, to kill the boy's female partner. We also see him express vehement racism and misogyny as a matter of course: "Don't believe there's no good woman, till you seen one with maggots in her eyes."6 His extreme villainy would be almost comic, vaudevillian, were it not for the deeply sinister charm and eloquence with which he operates. Wolcott's character is best defined by his response when Joanie's business partner, suspicious of the time he's spent with two of her whores, asks him what he's done to her girls (he has cut their throats): "Something very expensive."7 These men along with other lesser antagonists evoke a mood of constant menace and fear. As suggested by these descriptions, violence is frequent and graphic, occasionally proffered in comedic or casual boys-will-be-boys mode but more often rendered as brutal and often downright horrific. Overall, Milch's attitude to violence seems to be much in line with Jonathan Rosenbaum's comments on Jim Jarmusch's western Dead Man: "For me, at least one part of the moral force of Dead Man is tied to … refusal of grace in relation to violence."8 This summation describes almost perfectly the sense Milch conveys of the repugnance and futility of violence, even as he thoroughly acknowledges its presence and the catharsis it offers men, particularly. Many lesser aspects of moral laxity and more insipid malice are also recorded in detail. The leader of this band of brothers is undoubtedly the unctuous, obsequious and far from cunning hotelier and mayor EB Farnum, Swearengen's passive-aggressive lackey. Farnum loathes where and who he is but lacks the wherewithall to change his predicament. In awful semi-comedic scenes we see him abuse his intellectually disabled
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kitchen hand, Richardson, merely because Swearengen or another has just berated him. And we see him fail at every turn to outsmart his enemies. His misadventures make for comic relief, but he does actual harm from time to time, and intends it almost constantly. It is not only concentrated evil or malice alone that disturbs community and individual equilibrium, however. It is also the flaws/weaknesses/wrongful actions of even those who initially appear beyond any serious moral transgression. For example, utilities merchant and reluctant sheriff Seth Bullock wrestles with his propensity if not penchant for violence. As much as he tries to suppress it or at least confine it to the application of justice, there are points at which he loses control, such as when he beats Swearengen nearly to death, not over any actual crime but over a personal affront.9 He also wrestles with his sexual desire and love for the widowed Alma Garret, which contravenes the marriage of honour he's entered into with the widow of his brother, who died in the Civil War. Alma is similarly afflicted - by jealousy of Bullock's wife Martha, which leads her to a range of spiteful and vengeful acts.10 We see another significant failure of will when Calamity Jane, alcoholic and prone to frequent verbal abuse of friend and foe alike, initially fails to defend an orphaned child who is in her care, Sofia, against an intrusion from Swearengen. She knows Swearengen intends to kill the child because Sofia is the only witness to his agents' murder of her family, but Jane falls apart when her aggression is most needed, and Swearengen taunts her over her cowardice. A similar incident occurs when the African American livery keeper, Hostetler, betrays his friend the (self-titled) Nigger General to a mob of drunken white thugs who attempt to tar and feather him (although Jane, now once bitten, rescues him before he is killed). In summary, all characters are conflicted at some point and to some extent by moral dilemma and the triumph of their weaknesses over best intentions and better judgement. And most are well aware of their shortcomings; the self-loathing this can induce is best articulated by Farnum in a fit of pique over his submissiveness to Swearengen: "I don't like being weak, and I know that I am. I yearn to rely on a stronger will. I fear what I'm capable of in its absence."11 The town is surrounded by - albeit at some distance - a dominant culture that purveys moral absolutism in the form of late 19th-century social mores and platitudes, but these have more to do with superficial notions of respectability than any deeply-felt concern for human welfare. We see, for example, the hypocrisies of the well-heeled emissaries from
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________
"civilised" society as Deadwood's annexation becomes imminent. Magistrate Clagget from nearby Yankton blackmails Swearengen into supporting him (foolishly, he does this twice and winds up pig fodder). Later, the newly-appointed Commissioner Jarry is no sooner in Deadwood than he's braying and blubbering like a pubescent boy over one of Tolliver's whores; we soon learn the purpose of his visit is to work with Tolliver on alarmist rumour-mongering aimed at cheating prospectors out of viable gold claims. Jarry's duplicity and hypocrisy are no surprise to anyone, and several times we are witness to derision of the idea of law and government.12 In short, these and other similar events suggest that moral absolutism is a poor means of discouraging or obscuring greed and malevolence, and no reliable vessel for the propriety or moral goodness it purports to advocate. Not surprisingly, the program's aesthetic emphasises darkness, containment, shadow, secrecy, and it effects an especially discomfiting sense of struggle, despair, and regularly, foreboding. Natural light is noticeably limited in interiors, exteriors are few, and panorama almost absent from the screen. This version of the West is not a place where Nature provides any significant compensation for isolation and risk. And few interiors offer nurturance or succour - on the whole they're squalid, dangerous, tense. Bullock's shop and home are the exceptions, along with Alma's rooms, which are merely tawdry, but even then interpersonal tensions often overwhelm any intended refuge. Joanie's brothel, where she intends to forge her independence from Tolliver, is an extreme case in point. Blood-red curtains seal the interiors from outside view but also prevent any sense of an exterior life, and encase the inhabitants in ghastly light and shadow rather than the lushly erotic atmosphere ostensibly intended. All the more so after Wolcott's triple murder, which leaves Joanie in gruesome, terrifying solitude. (The brothel's name, "Le Chez Ami," adds a chilling irony.) Deadwood's first two seasons offer only two wilderness idylls, the first when Calamity Jane takes an orphaned child, Sofia, to the Black Hills to elude a murderous Swearengen, and the two settle in for the night, their wagon surrounded by verdant beauty and calming silence; and the second when a drunken Jane tends to Andy Cramed, who's been left for dead in the forest by Tolliver's henchmen after contracting smallpox. But by then we're well aware such tranquillity is fleeting and fragile - the hinterland has been spoken of generally as a site of unpredictable dangers, and aside from these brief scenes, most footage of it is laced with suspense if not actual violence. Generally, however, the hinterland and the
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landscape beyond remain unseen. And most other exteriors are characterised by crowding, chaos and filth. One of the most disturbing scenes on this score comes when a "shipment" of Chinese whores arrives literally caged in a wagon. We see a mid-shot of the women packed like animals, filthy and dehumanised, then close-ups of their many arms and hands grasping desperately for contact, as Tolliver, their "employer", looks on bemused, and no-one other than the passing Doc Cochran expresses disgust or even mild dismay. (Tolliver goes so far as to excuse his disregard on grounds of racial tolerance.)13 Music, too, contributes to an overall tone of suspense and sinister undercurrents. In both the score and the (mainly traditional blues and folk) songs played over the final credits, minor keys and mournful, melancholic or bittersweet melodies dominate, punctuated only occasionally by more rollicking and upbeat material. Usually, where the music does quicken its pace, it often underscores impending violent conflict, or at least the likelihood of it. Within this aesthetic, Milch refers back to and shifts various cinematic and televisual genre conventions. For example, Deadwood mirrors to some extent the rawness and violence of more "realist" westerns and inverts the conventions of "domestic" television westerns from the heyday of the 1960s, like Bonanza and Big Valley, which offered a largely comforting version of frontier life, marked by affluence and filial pleasures. However, Deadwood arguably has far more in common with Milch and Stephen Bochco's earlier series NYPD Blue and with other contemporary crime drama than with its generic predecessors, particularly in terms of thematic focus. Its true genre companions are arguably programs such as The Sopranos, The Shield, Oz and the Law and Order series, which also foreground issues of complex moral dilemma and notions of justice, and urge audiences to consider multiple facets of any given conflict, despite whatever truths may appear to be self-evident. That these shows have attracted widespread critical and popular acclaim suggests an eagerness to engage with these dilemmas - it certainly indicates pleasure taken in their uncompromising dramatic representations. The act of readership is another issue in itself, but the acclaim does imply favourable public responses to sophisticated dramatic works focused on concepts of and questions around morality, and to a degree of moral relativism. Again, such programs' emphasis on the social and/or psychospiritual efficacy of understanding others' points of view is
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________
at least as important to story as any voyeuristic pleasures, or other pleasures to be derived from action and kinetics. In any case, neither genre nor historical verisimilitude is Milch's primary concern.14 In terms of setting, Milch's choice of an historical setting is at least in part a response to the 9/11 attacks. In an interview earlier this year, Milch said: That was so traumatic to the American psyche that I thought our imagination wouldn't be capable of the suspension of disbelief required for the sort of story I was interested in telling … I began to look for stories set in a different historical moment.15 What Milch sought and found, then, was a setting that would provide for reflection at a distance on current and continuing issues around American values and identity. Again, he is in accord here with Newcomb and Hirsch. Writing about the program Masterpiece Theater, they state: History is used here both to insulate the audience from the immediate impact of these unresolved issues and to demonstrate, at the same time, that the issues are universal, unbounded by history and defined by the fact that we are all human.16 Their statement is an entirely apt description of Milch's thematic and narrative intent in Deadwood, and one which embodies an explanation of its emotional impact. We could say of Deadwood that the most pressing unresolved issues it include a professed absolutism on the part of the current US administration that is at severe odds with its own patently evil (by its own articulated standards) actions in Iraq and many other parts of the world. Bush's recent pronouncements on evil are too numerous to mention, but as summarised by Lance Morrow, President Bush uses the word ["evil"] in an aggressively in-your-face born-again manner that takes its resonance from a long Judeo-Christian tradition of radical evil embodied in heroically diabolical figures: personalized evil of the kind insinuated by the sauntering Tempter in
Diane Cook ____________________________________________________ the first scene of the Book of Job, when God and Satan speculate like racing touts about whether Job can go a mile and a quarter on a muddy track. In Bush's usage, evil has the perverse prestige of John Milton's defiant Lucifer.17
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Bush's absolutism is also at odds with those who believe the existence of "evil" as such cannot be usurped via xenophobic foreign policy and/or military might. It is hardly a challenging exercise to compare the uncomfortable truths of Deadwood's historical culture in the face of sanitised versions of frontier life with the uncomfortable truths of contemporary American culture in the face of sanitised versions of US culture and identity. The horrors of My Lai and Abu Ghraib, along with other revelations of US-perpetrated atrocities, have confronted us with undeniable moral transgressions and obscene hypocrisy that are by any standard the equal of the evils against which the US and its allies are allegedly fighting. This is not to brand the US as intrinsically or wholly immoral, but to acknowledge the profoundly harmful contradictions between rhetoric and deed. The frontier setting and the aspirational aspects of its culture, too, serve to remind us that these issues stem from an early phase in the establishment of American values.18 Deadwood's coverage of morality does not apply solely to "major" issues, however. It applies equally to more personal and mundane concerns - in fact macro- and micro-morality are shown as inextricably connected. Milch's explorations of personal accountability demonstrate how evil and immorality reverberate throughout a community. Swearengen abuses Farnum, who abuses Richardson; he also abuses his sidekicks Dan and Johnny, to the point where they know no other means of communication than aggressive confrontation. He abuses his whores, who live in fear and despair. He abuses - period. Given the corrupted preeminence with which his power has furnished him, this culture of abuse dominates Deadwood, especially when it runs parallel to Tolliver's abuses of his subordinates. Combine this with the minor immoralities of other characters and it is impossible to ignore the mechanisms, or the web, visibly affecting individual and community decision-making and being. So the nature of Deadwood's relevance to contemporary as well as historical moral dilemma is clear, and its attention to manifestations of evil and human error studious and rigorous. But what does Milch offer in terms of counterpoint and resolution
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________
To begin with, he offers extraordinarily vibrant and eloquent dialogue. Milch's facility with dialogue and his writing methods are now well-documented, and there is not room here for a detailed analysis of the series' attention to language. However, it is important to note that the sheer poetic beauty, the eloquence and rhythmic complexity of Deadwood's dialogue explicitly reminds us of the richness of language, thus its capacity for expression and resolution of conflict - if only we would use it as first resort. Milch also offers comic relief aplenty – wry, ironic, mostly grim, and highly affecting. For example, in a rare moment of accord, as Swearengen and Tolliver share frustrations over the trials of dealing with the prospectors ("hoopleheads") upon whom they are financially dependent, the dialogue runs as follows. Swearengen Sometimes I wish we could just hit them over the head, rob them and throw their bodies into the creek. Tolliver (beat) But that would be wrong.19 Later, as Swearengen and Bullock are locked in what appears to be a fight to the death, writhing in the mud of the main street after falling from Swearengen's balcony, the stagecoach bearing Bullock's wife and nephew arrives. Swearengen, knife in hand ready to stab Bullock, looks up at horrified mother and son and says: "Welcome to Deadwood! It can be combative."20 As for resolution, in his depictions of folly, greed, weakness and selfishness amongst Deadwood's more readily likeable characters, Milch offers us astute portraits of common if not universal fallibilities, and implicitly encourages tolerance and empathy for these flaws in ourselves and others. Through the insights he offers into Bullock's intractability, into Alma's jealousy, into Jane's alcoholism and profane verbal abuse, into Trixie's enmeshment with Swearengen, and so on, we are able to revisit many of our own habitual shortcomings and understand their origins. We are able to see how self-defeat as well as pain for others is wrought by misguided emotion and self-interest. Moreover, Milch offers us credible examples of uncommon selflessness, even in oppressive circumstances. One of the most affecting examples of this comes when Tolliver is in bed with Lila, one of his
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whores. He talks about the stupidity of religion and clearly assumes she feels the same; but Lila tells him, sincerely, she prays for his soul nightly. It is interesting to note this unsettles Tolliver more than anything we have yet seen: "All right stupid, time to shut your fucking mouth. You shut your fucking mouth, now, and turn over and close your eyes."21 There is no more unpalatable thought for Tolliver than one of his slaves patronising him by seeking his redemption. And surely this reveals fear of some ultimate judgement - a spark of faith (or superstition) that signals even Tolliver regrets some of his actions or at least fears the consequences, because he acknowledges the actions were indeed immoral. There are many other events in this category - Jane and the already-ill Reverend Smith nursing smallpox victims tirelessly; and Doc Cochran's unfailing regard for all whom he treats, including Swearengen. Doc is Deadwood's ominiscient observer, the character most able to gain an accurate overview of the town's fluctuating fortunes and incessant skirmishes. One of the most significant events occurs when the Nigger General, given the opportunity to harm Steve, the man who began tarring him, grants forgiveness (albeit with wry pleasure in Steve's plight - Steve is tied to Hostetler's anvil, Hostetler bent on killing him after Steve has sexually assaulted Bullock's horse). Nigger General Do you believe that God can act through a nigger ... Do you believe that God would let me feel mercy toward you that tarred me and fucked his horse Steve I do. But I did not fuck the horse. Nigger General Would you go hence in gratitude if you received mercy in this stable Steve I would. Nigger General Would you bless coloured folk and God that's father to us all
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________ Steve I would, and go hence in gratitude. 22
The Nigger General releases Steve soon after this exchange, once he's signed a statement about the assault on the horse, for the Nigger General's and Hostetler's security. There is a comic tone to the scene, but the thematic intent is nevertheless serious. For all the absurdity of the horse issue (although this does of course signal the extent of Steve's depravity), this is a key scene in Milch's rendering of the possibility and desirability of forgiveness. It has taken Hostetler's wrath to instigate the situation, but precisely because the Nigger General is able to conduct himself in this manner in such a moment, the outcome is all the more potent. Just as potent if not moreso is the scene in which Swearengen euthenases Reverend Smith, whose brain lesion has caused his mental and physical health to deteriorate to the point where he is almost completely incapacitated. Much as Swearengen chides Doc Cochran for his pity for Smith, this is a mercy killing that moves Swearengen to (surreptitious) tears. We know by this stage that Swearengen's brother died from a similar ailment; what the act demonstrates is the profound sympathy for human suffering that lies beneath his customary brutality. Here, and later when Swearengen divulges his childhood to one of his whores in the course of a blow-job, we come to know that like most of the women he exploits, his background is one of fear and misery. He was deposited at an orphanage by an uncaring mother and sexually abused throughout his childhood, pimped and assaulted for years on end. And therein lies one Deadwood's main premises - that evil begets evil, despite the humanity that might have resided previously. And that humanity can and often does remain intact, no matter how damaged or suppressed. Milch's obvious suggestion here is that we would do well to consider this and to foster the conditions that might heal such wounds. It is in Reverend Smith, however, that Milch offers his most affecting advocacy for tolerance and humane conduct. Like Doc Cochran, Smith has a rare and objective overview of Deadwood. It is neither as extensive as Doc's nor as suffused with visceral horrors; but like Doc his main passion and concern is the welfare of others, and he has come to Deadwood to heal. Doc is plagued by memories of what experienced in
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the Civil War - the deaths he could have prevented, the carnage he witnessed, so his presence in Deadwood is something of a penance. We could regard Smith as the flipside of this - an innocent who has yet to be traumatised by his own or others' misdeeds. He shows himself willing to minister to all, and impervious to the abuse and degradation he frequently faces. In this alone, he is an exemplar of virtue. It is telling, too, that Deadwood has no house of worship, no house of God. Whether this is attributable to historical reality or Milch's purpose is a moot point; what is important is that it implies spirituality is most effective when manifest in attitude and action, when it becomes an inherent part of the individual psyche and the fabric of community rather than a matter of lip-service, mere respectability and passionless ritual. Smith encapsulates the core theme of Deadwood in the sermon he gives at Wild Bill Hickok's funeral. Basing the sermon on Chapter 12 of St Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, he says: Mr Hickok will lie between two brothers. One he likely killed, the other he killed for certain. And he's been killed now, in turn. So much blood. And on the battlefields of the brothers' wars, I saw more blood than this. And asked then after the purpose, and did not know. And don't know the purpose now. But know now to testify that, not knowing, I believe. St Paul tells us "By one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jew or Gentile, bond or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member but many." He tells us: "The eye cannot say unto the hand, 'I have no need of thee.', nor the head to the feet, 'I have no need of thee.' Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble, and those members of the body which we think of as less honourable - all are necessary." He says that there should be no schism in the body but the members should have the same care, one to another. And whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it. I believe in God's purpose, not knowing it.23 Here is Milch's call for us to recognise interconnectedness as the key to the resolution of our dissatisfactions and sufferings, as well as to our flaws, misdemeanours and crimes. Significantly, Bullock does not understand, or want to understand, Smith's words (the camera stays close on his reaction, which suggests irritation, frustration, disdain). He hears
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________
only riddles in the sermon (later, he comments to this effect) - or perhaps he grasps perfectly their meaning, but finds it sentimental, utopian. Can we really enact the principles of this epistle in the face of evil Milch suggests it is imperative that we do; and in showing us the inner lives of "evil" characters, he makes a plea for tolerance. If we understood others and our intrinsic connections to them, we would be less likely to react in anger and hostility. If we renounced concepts of morality founded in identification of "self" and "other" and absolute right and wrong, we would be free from the cycle of action and reaction that perpetuates harm and destruction. This is the heart of Milch's work in Deadwood - his push for moral relativism or perhaps more accurately pluralism. Its impact is strong precisely because Deadwood is so rife with evil and Milch strives to avoid sentimentality and platitude. As Susan Sontag notes in Regarding the Pain of Others: Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting on the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.24 Interestingly, Milch's analysis aligns neatly with Buddhist ethical precepts and concepts of morality. Deadwood is all too fully representative of Samsara - a compelling cycle of illusion, desire, anger and frustration that can only be surmounted effectively by awareness of and detachment from extreme emotional responses and the exercise of forgiveness and compassion - by spiritual practice. A Buddhist reading of Deadwood is another exercise in itself, of course, but the relevance of Buddhist philosophy here is well worth noting. Ultimately, what Milch implies is that evil is not so much an essence as a behavioural contagion, passed from one individual to another and hence whole communities and cultures either via intention or simply failure to override virtuous (read selfless) impulses. He is not bent on identifying a root cause so much as emphasising that in most if not all cases evil is the outcome of oppression and abuse, and that no matter what the cause, our primary concern should be the ways in which we might foster connectedness and therein find genuine joy and spiritual fulfilment. At this point one could also engage in a feminist reading of Deadwood, but that too is another exercise (as is the analysis of representations of women in the program). It is interesting to note, though, that Milch
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acknowledges the reality of women's oppression and patriarchal attitudes in clear and appalling detail. He simply doesn't identify "the feminine" as a remedy for evil; rather, he prescribes the qualities traditionally associated with the feminine - unconditional love, selfless nurturing, tenderness etc. However, Milch does not offer pat answers - rather, he pleads forcefully for understanding in the hope that it might lead to action, all the while acknowledging the immense difficulty of truly selfless action on an ongoing basis, free from self-interest and vested in sincere compassion. (Again, parallels with Buddhism arise - intellectual understanding of human suffering must be coupled with compassionate action or it remains ineffectual, and vice versa; and because this is difficult, a spiritual practice is necessary.) He does not offer the promise of redemption, but certainly the possibility and necessity of it. He suggests that absolutism offers only punitive and fleeting remedies for evil and human failing, and these are part of the cycle of entrapment in base emotion and action. They are about retribution rather than justice or rehabilitation. Human nature being what it is - historically if not essentially - the exercise of absolutism precludes any real understanding of the machinations of evil, and thus perpetuates it. The experiment we have not tried with any diligence is moral pluralism based on applied compassion. Compassion, arguably, could break the cycle. There is another crucial consideration in this analysis, finally. There is much debate within the cultural and television studies arena about the reading of televisual texts - who makes meaning from texts and how and why. The writer tends to agree with Eagleton25 and Tester26 that too much of the disciplines' attention now goes to inane posturing and wordplay at the expense of the examination of truly pressing moral and sociopolitical issues. However, the issue of readership does pose the ultimate question: whether Milch's intended reading of Deadwood becomes the dominant reading - whether Milch's we absorb his humanism and enact it, or simply relish the vigour and perceived truths of his storytelling, or at worst, only revel in the visceral and voyeuristic "pleasures" of Deadwood's excesses. The answer, like that of Deadwood's many dilemmas, lies in the exercise of free will. In the light of this, it is probably most appropriate here to finish by quoting Milch on the perceived bleakness of his work: You know, people say that my writing is dark. And for me it's quite the opposite. It sees light in darkness and
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Moral relativism in David Milch's Deadwood ____________________________________________________ doesn't try to distort darkness. The essential thing is that the seeing itself is joyful.27
Notes
1. Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch, "TV as a Cultural Form" in Television: The Critical View, ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1987), 459. 2. Ibid. p.461. 3 Joseph Millichap, "Robert Penn Warren, David Milch, and the Literary Contexts of Deadwood," The South Carolina Review 38/2 (Spring 2006): 186. 4. The word "whore" is used in this essay not as a pejorative, but in keeping with the characters' names/titles within the program. 5. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording), episode 6. 6. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording), episode 1. 7. Ibid, episode 6. 8. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dead Man. (London: British Film Institute, 2000), 39. 9. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording), episode 1. 10. In series 2, episode 3, Alma determines to buy Farnum's hotel simply to degrade him; in episode 8 (pregnant with Bullock's child), she cruelly belittles Martha for visiting her without notice. These and other such acts are clearly predicated on her anger over the impossibility of a sanctioned relationship with Bullock. 11. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording), episode 4. 12. A good example comes from Tolliver addressing disgruntled prospectors about the encroachment of government: "Wasn't half our purpose coming to get shed of the cocksucker And here it catches up to us again to do what's in its nature – to lie to us, and confuse us, and steal what we come to by toil. … Are we going to be surprised by that … Will we be next shocked by rivers running, or trees casting fucking shade " Ibid. episode 5. 13. Ibid. episode 8.
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14. Milch's initial idea for a new series about the emergence of order from lawlessness was for a story set in Rome. See: Reuters. "'Deadwood' creator: Media dumbing down news," 26 April 2006, (5 May 2006). . 15. Ibid. 16. Newcomb, 626. 17. Morrow, Lance. Evil: an investigation, (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 15. 18. For further discussion, see: Allen, Walter. The Urgent West: an introduction to the idea of the United States (London: John Baker, 1969); and: Kitses, Jim and Rickman, Gregg, eds. The Western Reader (New York: Limelight Editions, 1998). 19. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete First Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2004, DVD recording), episode 5. 20. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording), episode 1. 21. Ibid. episode 3. 22. Ibid. episode 6. 23. David Milch, Deadwood: The Complete First Series. (Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2004, DVD recording), episode 5. 24. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 114. 25. See: Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2003. 26. See: Tester, Keith. Media, Culture and Morality. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. 27. Singer, Mark. "The Misfit: How David Milch got from 'NYPD Blue' to 'Deadwood' by way of an Epistle of St. Paul," The New Yorker, 14 February 2005, (10 May 2006). .
Bibliography
Allen, Walter. The Urgent West: an introduction to the idea of the United States. London: John Baker, 1969. Audi, Robert, General Editor. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Baker, Wayne. America's Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005. Barra, Allen. "The Man Who Made 'Deadwood': An Interview With David Milch by Allen Barra," American Heritage Magazine, 57/3, June/July
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2006, Boles, David. "David Milch's Active Imagination," Go inside. 17 May 2002. (9 June 2006) Carroll, Nol. A Philosophy of Mass Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Esslin, Martin. Anatomy of Drama. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Fenin, George N. and Everson, William K. The Western: From Silents to the Seventies. Revised edition. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1977. Franklin, Nancy. "Dead On: David Milch explores the Dakota Territory," The New Yorker, 5 June 2006. (24 June 2006). French, Philip. Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre. London: Secker & Warburg in association with the British Film Institute, 1973. Furry, Dwight. Ethics: Key Concepts in Philosophy. New York and London: Continuum, 2005 Gaita, Raimond. Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception. Second edition. Abingdon, Oxon, 2004. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. New York: Cornell University Press, 1981. Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good for You. London: Allen Lane, 2005. Kitses, Jim and Rickman, Gregg, eds. The Western Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998. Lambert, Alix. "Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell," LA Weekly. 3 March 2005. (5 June 2006) Litch, Mary M. Philosophy Through Film. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Milch, David and Bochco, Stephen. NYPD Blue: The First Series. Los Angeles, Calif: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, DVD recording, 2003. Milch, David. Deadwood: The Complete First Series. Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2004, DVD recording. Milch, David. Deadwood: The Complete Second Series. Los Angeles, Calif: HBO, 2005, DVD recording. Millichap, Joseph. "Robert Penn Warren, David Milch, and the Literary Contexts of Deadwood." The South Carolina Review 38/2 (Spring 2006) . (23 August 2006). Morrow, Lance. Evil: an investigation. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
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Newcomb, Horace, ed. Television: The Critical View. Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1987. Reuters. "'Deadwood' creator: media dumbing down news," 26 April 2006. . (5 May 2006). Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Dead Man. London: British Film Institute, 2000. Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2004. Saunders, John. The Western Genre: from Lordsburg to Big Whiskey. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2001. Singer, Mark. "The Misfit: How David Milch got from 'NYPD Blue' to 'Deadwood' by way of an Epistle of St. Paul," The New Yorker. 14 February 2005, . (10 May 2006). Slocum, J.David. Violence and American Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2001. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Tester, Keith. Media, Culture and Morality. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Watson, Don. "The Nation Reviewed: Comment," The Monthly, August 2006. Weber, Cynthia. Imagining America at War: Morality, politics and film. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Diane Cook lectures in screenwriting and television studies at RMIT University. She also works as a freelance script editor and assessor.