Abstract
This short introductory reflection focuses on the image of Morgan Freeman’s dead body in the 1992 Western remake of the movie Unforgiven. The performance is part eulogy, effigy, and epitaph for the raced body (of color) in Westerns.
I have always had a fascination with Westerns, particularly the way in which “colored” bodies are approached and reproached in these movies.
“Colored bodies,” in that way in which the process of racialization uses color terminology with White and Whiteness cast as a primary color, as well as a sanctioned performance—against:
Red for Native Americans, Brown for Mexicans, Yellow for Chinese, Black for African Americans. And the ways in which these bodies are unforgiven in Western movies; maybe unforgiven for their otherness, maybe unforgiven because of their struggled engagement for their unalienable rights of being, particular, maybe unforgiven for a legally mandated redistribution of land, of nature, of humanity? Such colored bodies are cast as sidekicks and servants, as roustabouts, cooks, and villains, as untouchables, comic relief, or the markers of an unassailable and criminalized difference.
Or they are constructed as trusted yet unincorporated companions—like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson dancing with Shirley Temple in other film genre representations of racial encounter and conciliation.
For now I am interested in the body and/of work by Morgan Freeman.
Among the many films that he has made he has often been cast as a sidekick, as the sage senior Black man offering mentorship to a young White upstart or a White character struggling to individuate, to define themselves or negotiate their final passing. Morgan Freeman as sidekick to Tim Robins in the movie, “Shawshank Redemption.” Morgan Freeman as sidekick to Brad Pitt in the movie, “Seven.” Morgan Freeman as sidekick to Ashley Judge in the movie, “Kiss the Girls.” Morgan Freeman as sidekick to Jack Nickelson in the movie, “The Bucket List.” And of course, Morgan Freeman as sidekick to Jessica Tandy in the movie, “Driving Ms. Daisy.”
But the images that stand firmly in my head is Morgan Freeman as Tanto to Clint Eastwood’s Lone Ranger in the 1992 Western remake of the movie, “Unforgiven.”
Cast as the Character Ned Logan, a retired gangster—partnered to a native American woman named Sally Two-Trees. Ned is lured back into service by his longtime friend Bill Munny played by Clint Eastwood for one last job; working a bounty to revenge White femininity, which in the film is both characterized as sacrosanct and suspect considering that the woman in question is a prostitute and the bounty is placed by other women in the same profession.
As Jay Baglia might describe in his article in this issue, as much more representative in the title of the conference presentation “Women in the Western: The Wife, The Cowgrrl, The Saloon Sweetie, & The Hooker With Heart of Gold” at QI 2012—the White woman being revenged in this movie is “a hooker with a heart of gold,” who had her face slashed by a client.
In the film, the character played by Morgan Freeman is a reluctant participant—yet his body becomes the historical sight of White male revenge, in the Western or otherwise.
The Black male body of Morgan Freeman becomes an object lesson on which the character played by Gene Hackman, the sheriff of the town, a former gunfighter himself, who enforces the authority of his particular brand of White Western masculine law/authority.
Freeman’s Black male body becomes the site of revenge, the site of rage projected in very familiar ways; the Black male body ➔ shirt off and horse-whipped, the Black male body ➔ framed by metal jail bars, the Black male body as proxy ➔ petrified, penalized, and putrefied; as a practice of power.
Just replace any other colored body in these scenes in many Western movies; same narrative, same outcome.
And while the death of the character that Freeman plays is mourned and revenged—by Clinton Eastwood as the White antihero of the film, who in the closing scene of the film, as threat, demands for a proper burial for his friend, for me, the image of Morgan Freeman’s dead Black male body is not fully rescued; it leaves a phantom residue long after the closing credits at the end of the film.
The image of his dead Black male body lingers as effigy, as elegy, as eulogy for all the other colored bodies that preceded his fate; countless— Red Bodies Brown Bodies, Yellow Bodies and Black Bodies, forever unnamed and unmourned.
The image of Freeman’s dead Black male body lingers as always and already unforgiven—in the West/ern.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.