In the last decade there has been a proliferation of films which are reflexive; that is which examine the medium in terms of film making itself or the impact of film on society. Some do it directly, like Francois Truffaut's Day for Night, while others do it indirectly, as in Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up and Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (both of which deal with visual media other than film, but do so on film). These three directors, as well as several others, display an increasingly apparent and important McLuhanesque sensitivity to and intelligence about the medium with which they work.

So too do a group of directors responsible for films which are reflexive about a particular film genre, The Western. Arthur Penn's Little Big Man, for example, is one of the most successful attempts at deflating, sometimes humorously and sometimes grotesquely, the many myths engendered by the very film genre of which it is a type. Others not only expose (and sometimes ridicule) the myths generated by The Western, but actually seek to redress the historical inaccuracies perpetuated by them, as in Ralph Nelson's Soldier Blue. As a group these films are concerned with the political consequences of an intrinsic phenomenon of The Western most clearly articulated at the end of John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: when a myth becomes a reality through the impact of the media, or as a journalist in the film succinctly expresses it, "when a legend becomes a fact, you print the legend." No single aspect of American history has been more influenced (and distorted) by media than Western history, and no medium has been more influential with regard to popular concepts of Western history than film. These reflexive films are thus significant because they represent a new direction in film making, the self-portrait in celluloid, the picture not only about a given subject matter but also about the very form by which that subject matter is communicated.

The most ambitious self-portrait in celluloid is Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, a film which is concurrently reflexive about 1) the film medium, 2) The Western and 3) the creation of a super-star (in this case Buffalo Bill) serving both the medium and history. In this film the subjects are merged in the word "show," which represents both The Wild West Show of Buffalo Bill and the movie show about Buffalo Bill. What makes this film so difficult to comprehend, yet so brilliant, is that Altman focuses on all three subjects simultaneously where other directors (like those mentioned above) focus on but one or two. Moreover, Altman does so, outrageously at the very time when Americans are so willing to commemorate and glorify those many myths which he seeks to reveal as distortions of history. For lest we forget, 1976 was also the Centennial of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, probably the one episode most symbolic of all that The Western has come to stand for in the popular mind.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson not only examines The Western and Western history, but it develops by a historical dialectic. The "or" in the title, though quaintly reminiscent of the late nineteenth century period which the film depicts, more importantly serves to suggest the opposition between the white man's history and the red man's, as represented by heroes from each culture. The alternative views of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull confront us not only with two versions of the same historical phenomena—as in the humorous but troubling exchange between Buffalo Bill on the one hand, and dime novelist Prentiss Ingraham and Indian spokesman Halsey on the other—but also with two interpretations of what actually constitutes history.

In this respect, the film is not unlike John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; in both we are teased out of thought by a silent historian, in the former Sitting Bull himself (who never speaks a word throughout the film) and in the latter the urn (the original "silent historian"). Like the speaker of the poem, Buffalo Bill (as well as all white men) seeks to reenact history and in doing so grossly distorts it, turning history into entertainment, both verbal and visual, which makes full use of dramatic license and has but a dubious claim to authenticity. For Sitting Bull, on the other hand, this kind of history is a sham dishonoring the dead, and so he offers instead a silent protest against the theatricality of the Wild West Show. The differences between Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull result in what might be called an aesthetics of history since the former seeks to commemorate and glorify history at a special time and/or place while the latter reveres and lives it every day, everywhere. These antithetical views give rise only to the tension in the film when, for example, Sitting Bull makes his only appearance in the Wild West Show. Emcee Nate Salsbury introduces him as "the wicked warrior of the western plains, the cold-blooded killer of Custer … the untamed scavenger whose chilling and cowardly deeds created nightmares through the West, and made him the most feared, the most murderous, the most colorful redskin alive … the battling chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux … Sitting Bull." Then, Sitting Bull, attired only in a plain cloth garment and simple beads, rides quietly around the ring to the derisive calls of the audience, calls which rather abruptly change into a thunderous ovation for a man obviously too full of pride and dignity to participate in such a grossly distorted fraud. Like the Grecian urn Sitting Bull's silence speaks a history more convincingly than Buffalo Bill's inflamed words, yet as we shall see, like the urn it too raises many troubling questions.

In a sense Sitting Bull exposes Buffalo Bill as an imposter of what he was, and in a similar sense the film exposes the distortions and untruths perpetrated by other movies about the wild west, as did Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. (So too, incidentally, does M.A.S.H. parody other war movies, and Thieves Like Us other gangster movies.) Yet at the very same time this film is uncovering certain myths and fallacies about the West, it is perpetuating, if not creating others. If Buffalo Bill was too good to be true before the film, Sitting Bull is after it. This may be a brilliant touch of irony by Altman or it may be part of the swing from thesis to antithesis, or it may be a flaw in the film, depending upon your interpretation. In any case, both alternatives are oversimplified: where Buffalo Bill comes across as selfish, vain, pompous and inane, Sitting Bull is equally selfless, altruistic, simple and profound. While neither portrait is convincing, together they offer parameters within which we can struggle with our own sense of history. The film itself attempts to synthesize the two extremes: on the one hand it tries to be as entertaining as Buffalo Bill would have it, and on the other it is as serious and important as Sitting Bull would desire. (So too does Keats' poem synthesize between the hot passion of the speaker and the cool indifference of the urn.)

Were Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show to limit themselves to entertaining, though, the film would lack the symmetry which provides its very raison d'etre. Not content to entertain, producer and emcee Nate Salsbury, star Buffalo Bill and press agent John Burke steadfastly maintain that they are faithfully recounting history, despite their consuming lust for profits and publicity. "We're trying to show things as they really were beyond the Missouri," claims Salsbury near the beginning of the film, "so you can't have anything that isn't authentic, genuine and real. There will be nothing fake about us," he insists.

But the very structure of the film almost defies us to identify the authentic and the real since we are looking at a film about a show: at times characters are playing parts in the Wild West Show, at other times they are playing parts in the movie show. In the end it is impossible to segregate the role from the person. We begin to appreciate more acutely Plato's concern with artistic imitation as a double remove from reality. In the opening sequence, for example, a weary settler and his son trek home only to be attacked and killed by raiding Indians who also kill his wife and carry off his daughter. While the film audience first assumes that this is simply the film itself, they soon realize that this sequence is merely a rehearsal for the show as Salsbury yells "cut," reinforcing the tie between the Wild West Show and the movie show. What we have witnessed is a rehearsal of a reenactment through the film medium.

In addition to this triple remove from reality—the scene in the show being the first, the rehearsal being the second, and the film the third—the last two are also historical events in and of themselves. This point is driven home by the violence attending upon the rehearsal when one of the raiding Indians is accidentally clotheslined off his horse and trampled to death by another. Neither is such a death historical nor is it an act; it is for real. So too is the painful wound suffered by Annie Oakley's husband, dapper Frank Butler, while she is performing increasingly gimmicky trick shots to titillate the audience. Both the Show and the film are recording one history even as they are making another. But as the Show and the film progress, which of course they do concurrently, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern historical fiction and historical reality, which may be precisely the point, as we shall see.

This difficulty does not result from a lack of clarity in the movement of the Show/film, however, which is structured around three major confrontations between the white men and red (much as Keats' poem revolves around three major scenes on the urn). The raid on the homestead is the first such sequence, and represents a fairly "realistic" portrayal of what undoubtedly happened to settlers, though probably not so often as we are wont to think it did. This cannot be said of the second sequence, which takes place near the middle of the show, a reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. This scene is full of deliberate distortions concocted by none other than Buffalo Bill himself. When Prentiss Ingraham informs him that the battle took place at the Greasy Grass River, not the Little Big Horn, Bill retorts, "I already got the programs printed." And when Prentiss corrects him again by pointing out that the Cavalry ambushed the Sioux, not the other way around as the Wild West Show records it, Buffalo Bill ignores him altogether. Dramatic license even permits Bill to add a cannon to Custer's arsenal, as well as a face-to-face confrontation between the General and Sitting Bull in which the latter kills and scalps the former. All this is rather amusing and serves an important function in the structure of the show, for while Buffalo Bill envies Custer his hair and wears a wig just like it, he will also avenge Custer in the final sequence of the show by fighting Sitting Bull head-to-head, killing and scalping him. But more important is the fact that these details represent deliberate distortions by Buffalo Bill, who at one point claims that "It's about time history took a lesson from us!"

Although the protests of Ingraham against the dramatic liberties are futile, those of Sitting Bull's spokesman, Halsey, are not. He points out that Sitting Bull was not present at the Battle of the Little Big Horn; that instead he was dreaming and making medicine. Thus if the Sioux Chief is to have a part in the reenactment, he will act out his dream rather than participate in the battle. This is but one of the situations in which Sitting Bull defies and humiliates Buffalo Bill, just as his version of history defies and ridicules Bill's. From the very first time they meet, this dialectical opposition is clearly established. As a group of Indians come riding to the village where the Show is housed, all eyes (including those of the film audience) rivet on the biggest, fiercest looking Indian, assuming that he is the Chief. To the stunned surprise of those greeting the party, and especially Buffalo Bill, who has made a gala appearance and has begun a grandiose welcoming speech addressed to the big Indian, we find that he is but the spokesman for Sitting Bull. The Chief, in fact, very small and frail looking, is simply attired in a cloth and some beads.

This scene establishes not only the fatuity of Buffalo Bill and his entourage, all of whom judge things by appearances, but also their defensive posture in dealing with Sitting Bull. When, for instance, they inform the Chief that he is to be housed with the other Indians in the camp, Halsey informs them that Sitting Bull will establish his own camp across the river on a bluff overlooking the Wild West community. This spatial relation becomes, in effect, a metaphor for Sitting Bull's continual dominance over Buffalo Bill. In addition, even as the entourage are laughing at the thought of the old Chief (and the women and children accompanying him) fording the river which has already claimed the lives of six horses and three Blackfoot braves. Sitting Bull's tepees are going up on the other side of it. Amidst the astonishment and incredulity of the men, Buffalo Bill coolly explains, "Boys, on the bluff is exactly where I want him. Then I can keep an eye on him, real easy, from this chair, here." (Whatever else he is not, Bill certainly is an accomplished counter-puncher.) But Sitting Bull continues to control Buffalo Bill and retains complete autonomy over his own actions despite the efforts of those who would dictate to him.

On the literal level, then, Sitting Bull's history lesson is composed of two things: setting historical facts such as those about the Battle of the Little Big Horn straight, and setting forth an altogether different interpretation of what constitutes history, namely, a past which lives in the present rather than being reenacted in the present. Annie Oakley is one of the few whites who appreciates these truths, and who understands the precarious position Sitting Bull is in, for if returned to Standing Rock both she and he know that he will be murdered despite his non-violent ways. She quits the show when Buffalo Bill fires the Chief, and protests: "But he wants to show people the truth. You can't allow that just once?" "No," Bill replies, "I got a better sense of history than that." It is this sense of history which makes a travesty of Salsbury's claim that "we're the first people to ever show the red and white without taking sides."

But even more important than the literal lesson is the figurative one taught by Sitting Bull. His silence and simplicity make a sham of everything his counterpart, Buffalo Bill, attempts to do so as to assure his legendary status in history. Where Buffalo Bill wears incredibly garish jackets, Sitting Bull appears in basic cloth; Buffalo Bill rides a strapping mare, Sitting Bull a small pinto; Buffalo Bill carries elaborate guns (which are loaded with buckshot to enhance his marksmanship as one quick, but deft camera shot reveals), Sitting Bull carries only holy beads. In short, Buffalo Bill, constantly primping himself in mirrors and admiring himself in portraits, is so totally caught up in his image that there is no real person beneath the surface, whereas the reality of Buffalo Bill only begins below the surface image in his dreams and visions, all of which come to pass. His sense of history is making the present live up to the future, not, as for Buffalo Bill, the present up to the past. Even when Buffalo Bill has a dream, in which he speaks to Sitting Bull in a Browning-like dramatic monologue, he fails to comprehend what is happening. This contrasts sharply with the dreams of Sitting Bull in which he envisions the President of the U.S.A. visiting the Wild West Show and a massacre of Indian women and children (Wounded Knee?), both of which establish a continuity between present and future.

In the film Buffalo Bill fails to live up to his past and his legendary greatness because they are so hyperbolic. Nowhere during the course of the film do we see him do those things for which he is renowned, except within the Wild West Show, which is more entertainment than history. Much of the film's humor derives from his failure to track down Sitting Bull and his entourage when they abruptly break camp one day and go up into the mountains, his failure to seduce the opera singer Nina Cavalini (who visits the Show with President and Mrs. Cleveland), and perhaps most humorously, his failure to shoot Mrs. Ducharmes' pet canary after returning empty-handed from the search for Sitting Bull.

The canary is another of the overdetermined metaphors in the film, as is the spatial relationship between Sitting Bull's tents and Buffalo Bill's village. Like both opera singing mistresses who own one, the bird symbolizes the alien world in which both it and its owner are caged. But increasingly as the film progresses and in direct proportion to the erosion of Buffalo Bill's legendary status, the birds come to symbolize Bill himself, for he is figuratively trapped in a legend from which he cannot escape. Like the bird he is caged, not by bars but by grand portraits of himself and huge mirrors which hang all about the Mayflower—a name itself rich with historical connotations—constantly entrapping William Cody in the image of Buffalo Bill, superstar. Thus, Cody's inability to shoot Ducharmes' frantic canary despite his close range to it seems to symbolize his growing impotence as man and as legend: he is seen to be as much a failure in the sexual saddle as he has just been in the literal one when tracking Sitting Bull. Understandably, then, he despises the canary that represents both those women with whom he is inadequate and that legendary reputation against which he is equally inadequate.

While it is Annie Oakley who empathizes most closely with Sitting Bull, it is the legend-maker Ned Buntline who seems to best understand what is happening to Buffalo Bill. And after all he should, for Buntline created the legend. "I only brought attention to the man," Ned explains. "He supplied the talent. No ordinary man would have had the foresight to take credit for acts of bravery and heroism that he couldn't a done. And no ordinary man'd realize what tremendous profit could be had by presentin' the truth as if it was just a pack o' lies with witnesses." Comparing him to other directors of the Wild West Show, Ned concludes: "No, Bill Cody can only trust himself and what he picks up with his own senses. And when they fail, he might just see things the way they really are." The humility should not fool us; these are the words of a man who is busy exculpating himself from the monster he has created, much as Victor Frankenstein flees his own creation. And, having established an uneasy truce between his legendary creation and himself, Ned Buntline rides off into the night bound for California; no doubt he is heading for Hollywood!

Buntline's departure for California reinforces the connection between the Wild West Show and the film industry, as does the emphasis on the word show. But an even more vital and explicit link between the two is the way in which the cast of characters is introduced at the beginning of the film not by name, but by function—they are not real people but players, actors. Paul Newman is the star, as he is in so many other Hollywood films, and his ineptitude parodies William Cody before he entered "the show business." Similarly, Joel Grey, playing the producer and emcee, parodies his most well-known Hollywood role, the emcee in Cabaret. So too does Burt Lancaster, as the legend-maker, parody his roles as the Rainmaker and Elmer Gantry.

But the biggest parody, and the most perplexing, is that of Halsey, played by Will Sampson. Known to audiences as the "Chief" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a role in which he did not speak for nearly two-thirds of the film, he is easily mistaken at first for Sitting Bull because of his massive size, a mistake made not only by those in the Wild West show but by the film audience as well. But contrary to his role in Cuckoo's Nest, Sampson is neither the chief, nor is he silent; in both instances he parodies his earlier role, and he indicts the viewing audience as well. We are almost as culpable as Buffalo Bill and the others of judging the man by the image. The difference is that the showman creates the image, we simply retain and perpetuate it.

In a sense, then, it is altogether fitting that in the final sequence of the show, Halsey is playing the part of Sitting Bull, since "Halsey looks more like Sitting Bull than Sitting Bull." This sequence represents the third major confrontation between white man and red. Unlike the first, which was a realistic reenactment of something which actually took place in which the Indians triumphed, and unlike the second, which was a deliberate distortion of something which actually took place in which the white man triumphed as slain heroes, the third sequence is a complete fabrication of something which never happened in which the white man is totally triumphant. This completes the structure of the show and reaffirms our sense of history, but though Buffalo Bill wins the battle—a face-to-face struggle with Sitting Bull in which Bill kills the chief, avenging Custer—Sitting Bull wins the war. Because the sequences have regressed from reenactment to distortion to fabrication, the film audience can no longer abide what is happening, though the Show audience is ecstatic. So too is Buffalo Bill, whose senses have not yet failed him, and who therefore does not yet, see things as they really are. The last action shot in the film is a zoom-in on Buffalo Bill in a triumphant posture, intoxicated by both the roar of the crowd and the booze at which he was nipping before the scene began. His is a total triumph of shorts: the show, the fiction, has first altered and now successfully fabricated history altogether.

As the Show and the film end, the cast of characters is superimposed on a still photograph of the Wild West Show Company. A silent shot, it too is eloquent without words. In this photo Sitting Bull and Halsey are standing next to Annie Oakley. Buffalo Bill had not wanted it this way when the group was posing for the photo, but again Sitting Bull prevailed. Despite Bill's casual rationalization that he will change the picture to suit himself, we now see that he has failed once again, just as in the end, the historical picture he has arranged via the Show has failed. One is tempted to conclude, then, that Buffalo Bill's failure is Sitting Bull's success since the film is structured along a dialectical confrontation. But this will not do.

In the end the film is deliberately ambiguous. A surrogate Sitting Bull has replaced the real one in the arena and is being scalped as news of the real Sitting Bull's assassination arrives over the telegraph. Can we trust Halsey, who throughout has been spokesman for the chief, but has now sold out to the blandishments of "the show business" rather than remaining faithful to the proud vision of his leader? We must not only question Halsey, who first speaks for Sitting Bull and then acts for him in the Show but the film itself as well. As oversimplified as it is in presenting the extremes of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, it does succeed in destroying one myth about the past, even if at the cost of possibly creating another. What are we to make of histories that seek not only to inform, but to entertain as well, histories such as the Wild West Show and this movies show? Where are we to draw the line with dramatic license?

Questions haunt about this film as they do Keats's Grecian urn, and in the end resolution of them escapes us. The film audience, unlike the Show audience, now sides with Sitting Bull, but Buffalo Bill's dream of legendary immortality has triumphed over reality through his creation, the Wild West Show, while Sitting Bull's life has ended ignominiously by savage assassination. The division between show and film audience raises yet another question, this time about the influence of the audience on the historian's work: what kind of audience can he assume he will reach? how will they react? can he tell them things they may not want to hear, as I believe is the case with this film? Finally, what possibility is there that a self-portrait born out of reflexive examination—whether it be William Cody's picture of himself as Buffalo Bill, Robert Altman's depiction (and parody) of the Western, or the historians look at his own history—can "set the record straight?" Perhaps the greatest achievement of Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson is that it acknowledges what other recorders of history can loathe to admit, that the record can never be set straight, it can only be added to by new portraits of ourselves.