Page 11 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

LET US GO BACK A LITTLE, to a time a few years before the Chicago Columbian
Exposition, and take a closer look at the tremendous Wild West Show. What
force of attraction can bring forty thousand people a day to see this spectacle?
Down what incline in their fleeting lives do they slide to reach the great arena

where yelling horsemen gallop through cardboard scenery? It was ten years
before the Great Exposition that Buffalo Bill set up his show; the thing was
nonetheless put together gradually, incorporating new acts, piecemeal fashion,
one after the other. The early version was most likely nothing more than a
tedious succession of rodeos, but Buffalo Bill didn’t stop there. When the
former scout took to the stage, he was determined to revolutionize the art of
entertainment and make it into something different. So Buffalo Bill dragged

his circus from town to town, improving the acts and recruiting new stars; but
as it developed, the Wild West Show acquired a new form of success; it was
no longer just a circus, no longer a troupe of acrobats performing on stage.
No, it was something quite new. And yet, when you looked carefully, it was
all rather ramshackle, just a string of little numbers; and there was nothing
very extraordinary about it, no monsters, no hideous creatures; so what was it,

then?
Movement and action. Reality itself. Yes, just galloping horses, re-enacted
battles, suspense, people falling down dead and getting up again. It had
everything. And the audiences grew all the time, clapping, laughing, shouting,
enthralled, completely spellbound; as if the world had been created in a drum
roll.
However, the real spark was elsewhere. The central idea of the Wild West

Show lay somewhere else. The aim was to astound the public with an
intimation of suffering and death which would never lose its grip on them.
They had to be drawn out of themselves, like little silver fish in a landing net.
They had to be presented with human figures who shriek and collapse in a
pool of blood. There had to be consternation and terror, hope, and a sort of

clarity, an extreme truth cast across the whole of life. Yes, people had
to shudder—a spectacle must send a shiver through everything we know, it
must catapult us ahead of ourselves, it must strip us of our certainties and sear
us. Yes, a spectacle sears us, despite what its detractors say. A spectacle steals
from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every