NL "Red River"

The 1948 film Red River features two different alpha male cowboys. Both Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) and Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift) play strikingly similar roles as the film's two alpha male cowboys. In fact, at one point in the film, Tess (Joanne Dru) even mentions this fact that they are basically the same. Matt, upon the teachings of Tom, has become what is considered the Western's alpha male cowboy. After all, Matt did learn the ropes from the alpha male cowboy of Texas.

Eventually, both of the alpha male cowboys lead into exactly what Matheson describes an alpha male cowboy to be. According to Matheson, alpha male cowboys are "[d]estabilized, alienated figures, socially marginalized men caught in double binds" (897). The reason why I think that this quote so accurately describes both Matt and Tom is the clear double-bind both were in throughout the second half of the film. Matt, who had somewhat of a duty and personalized moral obligation to protecting the men from Tom's tyranny, had to take over the drive from the man he most clearly loved. Tom, who most clearly loved Matt in return, was in the obligation to kill him for the usurpation of power; Matt rebelled against Tom and basically stole all of what Tom had worked for the past fourteen years (the cattle). The demonstration of Tom's bind however, comes when he confesses to Tess how he really did view Matt as his son, only ever wanted a son, and thought it was evident that when he passed, Matt would inherit everything from Tom.

Tom's assumption itself is yet more evidence of Tom's alpha-male-cowboyness: he just assumed that Matt knew that, he never spoke with him about it. Tompkins makes this a point of the alpha male cowboy. "'[I]t is by talking', he writes, 'that one opens up to another person and becomes vulnerable.'... The male, by remaining 'hermetic', 'closed up', maintains the integrity of the boundary that divides him from the world" (56). And it is not just Tom who falls victim to the refusal to talk. Matt, in the scene in the fog with Tess, is lectured that he should "talk, talk, talk", that's what Tess, the woman, does to make herself feel better. This further leads to the gender disparity between men and women in the Western.

Both Tom and Matt's refusal to fall victim to the allures of the women that they love is another main concept that they demonstrate as the alpha male cowboy. As Tomkins states, "[W]esterns either push women out of the picture completely or assign them roles in which they exist only to serve the needs of men" (39-40). This actually comes by physical act in Red River; the alpha male cowboys, Tom and Matt, physically push their women away when their women beg to come with the men. Furthermore, the film did, as Tompkins puts it, "[c]oncentrate on male-male relationships, downplaying or omitting altogether those areas and times of life when women are important in men's lives" (40). This was clearly the case between the love between the TWO alpha male cowboys of the film, Tom and Matt.