Something I’ve always thought was interesting. The ‘peaceful cows’ postcard.
It’s a really straightforward and predictable format. Group of cows, body of water, trees, occasionally a barn, and a town name. Having traveled fairly extensively in the US myself, I was amazed to see those cows had beaten me there nearly every time.
I’ve never quite understood why it’s so popular. My head-canon is it’s a family of cows who, way back in the 40s, planned to visit at least one lake in every state in the US, like people who instagram their visits to all the National Parks. Or one of those travelog writing projects from the WPA during The Great Depression.
Must be why there's so few single-cow shots, getting the shot just right is always easier with help. I wonder how many tries this guy had before just not caring if he was centered or not anymore.
And they must have been elated to be able to find an identical glen for both these shots, since Iowa and W. Virginia are nowhere near each other. Trying to match up the pose must have looked like all those people trying to stand properly to look like they’re holding up the leaning tower of Piza.
I wonder if they’ll fly to Hawaii, or go by boat...
It’s an image so iconic and ubiquitous it’s been satirized. That’s when you know you’re an influencer: you’ve got your own sub-genres!
But that’s the thing, anyone who knows anything about cows knows for the most part they’re a pretty boring and predictable animal. They’re easily surprised and don’t like interruptions to their routine. They also have to be fairly well tended and maintained for things like lice and fleas. The restful farmstead is a myth.
I always found it a little funny because in most places in the US, cows aren’t thought in the same way bison are. Bison are “untamed”, a symbol of the wild west in all its powerful glory. None of that "greetings from" or a grove of happy trees nonsense here:
Which is what always confused me about the cowboy. How is the image of the cowboy so completely divorced from ‘the cow’?
Incidentally, did you know Marlboro was originally marketed as a women’s cigarette? There’s a handy piece of semiotics trivia for ya to throw out at parties if there's a lull in the convo.
The US has such a singular interpretation of ‘cows’ as both highly dependent domesticates requiring multi-acre semi-cultivated range land, signaling entirely artificial “farm country”...
Yet the cowboy is rugged individualism out in “the wild”, an entirely uncultivated nebulous location filled with danger and strong men and women surviving by their wits. I mean... fences?? We don't need no stinkin' fences! We got six-shooters, or something, that's why the only fences we have double as garden trellis and wouldn't hold a cow for ten minutes. Those Spaghetti Westerns are a trip y'all.
Of course, this myth was exactly that, a myth. It's entirely untrue. Not only are farms incredibly labor intensive, but research for the last several decades proved Indigenous populations used controlled burns to select for types of grass preferred by bison to direct their migration, or to favor specific breeds of wood. Which had the handy knock-on effect of preventing larger out of control fires from occurring, while using the existing ecosystem in a sustainable way.
That way they could maintain the herds with little effort, while clearing the way for large-scale communal agriculture if they wanted. "The rugged plains" were actually covered in cities and roads, even mega-sites like Cahokia in Missouri and Etzanoa in Kansas, with populations of +20,000 people. A proof of concept, if you will:
Even the so-called Chisholm Trail was one of dozens of north-south trade routes only much later introduced to white settlers who promptly named them after themselves. The trails having been established hundreds if not thousands of years before.
But facts are boring, I guess.
Have a look at Russians and Germans who play-act as entirely stereotyped “Native Americans” some time to see how absurd the construct can run away from the realities.
Le Sigh
Some US sources also bowed to the truth once in a while. Arents Cigarette Cards in the early 1900s vaguely hand-waved in the direction of acknowledging the vast majority of ‘cowboys’ weren’t white. But even then, the bulk of their cards favored pale skin.
Overall, they perpetuated rather than challenged the racist myth of the ‘pale rider heroically going it alone’. Copying and therefore compounding the white cowboy as a tragic hero risking his life against overwhelming odds.
When, in reality, most were piecemeal contract labor slowly marching fairly manageable herds of cows up well-established paths while eating metric tons of canned food and whatever they could forage along the way. Also, most of them were Black and Mexican. Hell, the story of the masked heroic traveling gunslinger that eventually became "The Lone Ranger" was actually a Black guy named Bass Reeves who was fluent in Muscogee. Weird how those dudes never made it into a Marlboro ad.
The myth of “The Native” being equally disingenuous to the reality of highly refined and significantly more sustainable centuries old civic and agricultural practices. Which were all but wiped out by settler encroachment, specifically cows.
Ever heard of terra preta? It's a self-fertilizing soil which utilizes cultivated microbes, avoiding the nutrient leaching effect of European farm and ranch methods. It was invented in the Amazon several thousand years ago. It also uses the burn-cultivation technique utilized in the North, probably because those same trade routes settlers later claimed were in steady use not just for trade but also information.
Now, there’s been whole libraries written about men, masculinity, toxic masculinity, the cowboy, the myth of the cowboy, the myth of the plains, the various myths of the ‘wild savages’. I’m Well Aware. If I wanted to make any contribution of substance to goodness knows how many think-pieces and scholarly articles that already exist. No thanks.
On the other hand, I don't see much of anyone really discussing cow postcards. They really should. The fact it’s all sitting there the whole time in plain sight without most of the participants seeing any inherent contradiction will never cease to baffle me. You can't have a myth without imagery. While also highlighting what 'branding' is, literally the application of a red-hot metal brand to the skin of an animal so that it imprints a scar to mark them as property.
So, gentle reader, in your travels, spare a thought for that simple cow family, chewing their cud under a tree, oblivious to the bizarre picture of some random white man on the billboard just out of frame, awkwardly holding a lariat while smoking a women’s cigarette.
