Real Cowboys

From the Archive - Real Cowboys, Minneapolis, MN
Lake Street USA (1997 - 2000)
by Wing Young Huie

    The photograph is of a man at the corner of Lyndale Avenue and West Lake Street in Minneapolis. The man is from El Paso, Texas, and came to Minneapolis for cancer operations, and he now has an electro-larynx that amplifies his vocal chords. He was a singer, but can't do it with the electro-larynx. He also enjoys horses, and still trains them even if he might not supposed to do so. Most locals just call him Cowboy. The man notes that there must not be many around, at least not real ones. The picture has him in an intersection that has Big Mike's Super Subs, which has since been renamed Milio's Sandwiches. Above the Sign is an advertisement saying "What's your flavor? with a man in a suit and a hat. The man is dressed in southern clothing, including heeled shoes, a serious belt, a patterned shirt, shiny neck think, and a cowboy hat.

This picture has cowboy in the middle of an intersection, which is not the place for pedestrians. It also appears that there aren't actually drawn crosswalks, unless it's those two faint lines behind the cowboy. Either way, if there is a crosswalk, he's not on it. Huie symbolically echos the misplacement of cowboy by placing him on the road, as opposed to on the corner, because the pedestrians aren't supposed to just stand in the road. His placement in the road shows him in a place that isn't really for him. The story of the photograph, seeks to analyze the differences between the surroundings, Minneapolis and the North, and the home of the other, the South. The science and economy of the North is shown by the cowboys movement to the North for surgery. The overcollection of advertisements also criticises the new and Northern economy. The piece also criticizes the North's inauthenticity, by questioning the "realness" of the other cowboys in the North, if there are any. The piece highlights the music in the south, showing it's connection with the South.

Huie and Atwood both use clothing and age to present othering. Huie contrasts the cowboy's clothing with the suave style of the man in the advertisement. This contrast bring attention to how the cowboy doesn't belong in Minneapolis. Atwood also presents othering when Offred is in the bathroom. Offred asks, "did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach?" (Atwood 82). This shows how foreign wearing few clothes around people has been made by Gilead. She also said that her "body seems outdated" (Atwood 82). Huie also touches on age, as the cowboy is fairly old, especially compared to the young model and to the backdrop of a growing city. Atwood uses age and clothing to show how removed the past is from Offred's present. Huie uses them to show how out of place the cowboy is in the Northern city.
Huie representation of otherness doesn't really focus on the extent of difference between the man and his surroundings, but the vast minority that the cowboy is compared to the rest of the city. He is such a minority that there is only one of his kind in the city, so he can be called simply cowboy. Atwood does not show the other as a minority, but as vastly foreign. This can be seen when the liberal clothing resurfaces with actual foreigners (Atwood 38).

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Huie is othering the cowboy by contrasting him with his surroundings to show how he doesn't belong there. Huie highlights the locational difference between where he is from and where he is now, making him foreign from the Minneapolis audience. (The Lake Street USA was an exhibition what was posted along Lake Street in Minneapolis itself.) Huie says that the man is from Texas and has to references to the mans connection to Tennessee with Nashville and Chattanooga.
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