Backdrop Addresses Cowboy

In popular culture, such as Hollywood movies and novels in the Western genre, the cowboy is often presented as heroic, masculine, and noble. The poem deconstructs this presentation to show that the cowboy in popular imagination actually represents thoughtless violence and materialism. It is important to note that Atwood doesn’t satirize the actual historic cowboy but the cowboy as he is romanticized in popular imagination. Further, she goes on to depict that the cowboy’s perceived onscreen heroism is actually meaningless and artificial. Since the cowboy is associated with the myth of nation-building in the United States, the speaker of the poem addresses him as “starspangled” (Line 1), as if he were draped in the American flag. Yet, from the very onset this depiction appears phony, because the speaker describes the West from which the cowboy emerges as “almost-silly” (Lines 3-4). The somber majesty of the western landscape, so often lionized in movies, is undone by the speaker’s use of the adjective “almost silly”. The romanticization of the West’s reality is built on a false understanding and idealization. This superficial romanticization is reflected in the fact that the cowboy’s smile is “porcelain” (Line 4). “Porcelain” invites comparisons to a stony, frozen, doll-like figure.