Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 2010
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:3 (Spring 2010).
Abstract
Leigh Clemons identifies Texas cultural identity as composed of "a complex set of performances" reinforcing ideas about the state's distinctiveness and its inhabitants' lives and values. She examines a number of cultural and historical depictions of Texas people and events, not surprisingly finding that the privileged cultural identity is that born of the Texas Revolution, with forceful Anglo males at center stage and other, less powerful groups on the periphery challenging the dominant narrative.
Clemons begins with "archival spaces of Texan cultural memory," including the Alamo and other Revolutionary battlefields. Here she examines how the old triumphalist narratives of Anglo-centered history continue to be manifest. She then moves on to ways in which dramas, pageants, and films about the Revolution have promoted a Texan identity, especially in keeping Texans of Mexican descent excluded and in keeping women peripheral. There is scant recognition in Clemons's analysis of effective changes in the social and cultural climate over time. For example, the work states that "young schoolchildren learn" Anglo-centered ideas from the 1936 pageant Texas Was Mine, raising the question of whether such a terribly dated drama would be used in Texas schools today. However, the author convincingly shows the long shelf life in popular culture of a myth that privileges one group over others.
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.