Shambhavi Kaul, director of Field of Stone
Asked to visualize a cowboy, most people would picture a rugged white man on a horse, cowboy hat perfectly positioned on his head and gun snuggly secured in his holster. The cowboy is a classic figure of American culture that has changed little from depictions in U.S. history books to John Wayne films to current shows like FX’s Justified. Your mental image of a cowboy likely does not stray from this iconic picture. That is, unless you are Shambhavi Kaul.
Kaul, at the time when she was splitting her life between India and North Carolina, became interested in the universal image of the cowboy figure when she began to spend more time living in the United States. She specifically wanted to find the meaning of the “authentic” cowboy within the exported representation of the “rugged, white male” that she had been exposed to while growing up in South Bombay. The man she found as an entrée into the world of the cowboy was outlaw country music singer David Allan Coe. A man who sports long, colorful braids in place of a cowboy hat and is always attached to a glass of whiskey rather than a revolver.
On Thursday, April 21, Kaul visited Professor Courtney Baker’s Race and Documentary Film class and Professor Dale Wilson’s Ethnomusicology: The Social Science of Music class as part of this semester’s collaboration made possible by the Sherman Fairchild grant. In the afternoon, students were treated to a question and answer session with the filmmaker about her 2007 film about David Allan Coe, titled Field of Stone. Professor Baker’s class explores the positioning of race within the realm of documentary film, while Professor Wilson’s class studies the social and cultural aspects of music. Combining these two interests led to a stimulating conversation with Kaul about her choice of subject and her portrayal of Coe within her film.
Coe became popular on the country music scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with his biggest hit “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” in 1975 reaching a peak of number eight on the Billboard country singles charts. Behind his popular music, however, lies a history of jail time dating back to when Coe was nine years of age. This outlaw nature is most visible in Coe’s X-rated albums of 1978 and 1982, which contain heavily racist and misogynistic lyrics. The Coe we see in Field of Stone is this outlaw representative of the underground country music scene.
In the discussion surrounding her film, Kaul stated that the film depicts the “radical individuality that is self-destructive,” a theme common to American celebrity culture in general. Coe is seen constantly drinking, smoking and swearing both on and offstage.
In fact, this separation between Coe’s “normal” daily life and his onstage persona is more blurred than distinct. Coe’s tales of murdering a man in prison and marrying at least seven different women are most likely fictions created for the stage, but Coe has quite clearly transformed into his onstage character even when he is not performing. As an effect of perpetuating his outlaw myth with each show, Coe has become a mysterious legend that is almost too complicated to fully portray on film.
Kaul’s choices of how to represent Coe onscreen add further complexity to a reading of the film. Historically, the fantastical notion of a white male filmmaker capturing the non-white “Other” has characterized documentary film, which Kaul calls a “gendered and racially defined voice.” Field of Stone reverses this gaze, however, with a non-white female filmmaker recording a white male. Kaul distances herself from the discourse surrounding documentary film by not including herself onscreen in body or voice. This exposes David Allan Coe as a spectacle to be read critically by an audience. No wonder why Coe did not like the final product.
At a screening of Field of Stone later Thursday night, Kaul once again addressed audience questions concerning both the construction of the film and the culture of the music within the text. The cultural aspect of the film is what Kaul emphasizes most often in her discussions, stating that the film should be read culturally rather than biographically. Certainly, viewers are only provided a glimpse of Coe’s life, though it is difficult not to pass judgments on his character after watching him perform derogatory songs to a cheering audience.
Still, perhaps the key is to approach Field of Stone with the same open-mindedness that Kaul possessed throughout the filmmaking process. She explained her journey of self-exploration while filming, trying to find her place both within the film and the culture at large. And surely, we, too, are still negotiating our place in the world. •
