Page 22 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

SO WHO WAS BUFFALO BILL, the creator and star presenter of the Wild West
Show? It’s said that he had the build of a lumberjack and the hands of an
artist, very delicate hands that were almost too fine, which—as we are
informed by the mysteries of science—indicates a predisposition to insanity.

And indeed, throughout his life Buffalo Bill would have moments of deep
despair, bouts of serious depression. Although he raked in potloads of dollars
and salvos of applause, as soon as the curtain fell he would find himself alone
once more. And no sooner had he removed his make-up in his old
entertainer’s lair, than he felt a horrible anguish. In front of the mirror, while
he mechanically combed his hair after removing his Stetson for the thousandth
time, he would feel a terrible pang in the chest—as if his entire being was a

void.
At that time, Buffalo Bill’s body was already a pure product of marketing,
a sort of sham. Nobody knows what lay behind the orgy of publicity. And it’s
even harder to know what the showbiz entrepreneur, the superstar he had
become actually thought about. Yet he wasn’t one of those people who leave
no trace; but excess is a different kind of problem from insufficiency, and if

archaeology is the science of remains, there exists no branch of research
devoted to things that have been exposed too much to sight. The strangest part
of the whole business is the most banal. Buffalo Bill performed the same
meaningless scenes over and over again, sticking to the same routines, with
the same gusto. Success is a form of vertigo. Repetition must have some
reassuring property, some power of hypnosis or truth. As the hero of
numerous fanzines, whose existence he was initially unaware of, his life was

fashioned by others. He decided neither his name nor his story. Around 1867,
when he was working for the railways, the labourers gave him the nickname
of Buffalo Bill. Then, by pure chance, between two shots of liquor, he told the
tale of his adventures to Ned Buntline who made a dime novel out of them.
And the hoodlum’s yarn, all blarney, asseveration and fabrication designed to

earn him another drink, had become the stuff of serialized fiction. And as one
episode followed another, the character of Buffalo Bill, a mix of a night’s
bragging and the numerous extensions, suffixes and increments added by
Buntline with every page, had acquired a sort of celebrity. Later on, Buffalo
Bill would learn that an actor, Jason Ward, was playing the part of himself on