Using theatre as a tool to expose and reform the mythology of a culture is a perilous enterprise, but the task becomes more dangerous when an artist challenges the mythology of his own culture. Playwright Sam Shepard has built his career around such an endeavor. In his plays, Shepard seeks to illustrate the downfall of accepted American mythology by revealing characters born out of western myth. Their existence within myth often leads to utter destruction. Their struggle is the basis of Shepard's criticism. Shepard's plays challenge accepted and deeply rooted notions of the American family, iconography, and religion.

Author Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth defines mythology as that which sets boundaries for a culture. These boundaries determine what is acceptable and what is not. The "demythologized" culture is forced to constantly search for a set of boundaries (Campbell 9). The myths of the American dream, Protestant work ethic, and western expansionism have now reached their limits. People are growing increasingly cynical towards established mores and norms. Modern American culture is struggling to reinvent its mythology. Critic John Orr writes that Shepard is part of this search for a new mythology in the American theatre (109). He seeks to distort American myth in an attempt to discover a new mythology.

In his 1976 play, Curse of the Starving Class, Shepard tackles the accepted image of the American family. With one son and one daughter, Wesley and Emma, born to married parents, Weston and Ella, the playwright draws on the audience's preconceived notions of family. To further develop the normal domestic image, the bulk of the play's action takes place in the family's kitchen. In the opening moments of the play, Wesley cleans up the front door that Weston demolished the night before in a drunken rage. There is no need for discussion as to why Weston kicked in the door. He was drunk, and Ella locked him out. It is accepted as fact, as an event. The characters make no apologies for the situation. Throughout the play, the anticipated unity between family members dissolves into self-reliance and self-indulgence. Furthermore, Shepard distorts the crystalline image of "Mother" when Ella strikes a deal with a lawyer to sell the family's land. Finally, The characters speak often about the curse found in their blood. Shepard underscores this with the slow evolution of Wesley into the image and being of his father by the end of the play.

The playwright continues his criticism of the iconic American family in Buried Child. Here again, we see a family that appears at first glance to be a picture of American normalcy. The beginning of the play uses clichés from American pop culture to instill the initial image. The opening sequence between Halie and Dodge is like something out of The Honeymooners. Shepard uses these popular references as a way of connecting the audience with his characters. The audience recognizes them and is therefore able to buy into the play immediately. Once he has the audience's attention, the playwright is able to toy, once again, with their expectations. The image of family begins to quickly spiral downward into a darker form. Dodge's grandson, Vince, returns home to a family who does not recognize him. The minister enters with Halie, and their adulterous relationship becomes obvious. Dodge has no concept of the past. He has no memory of the child he killed and buried in the backyard. The final image of the play with Tilden starring down at the baby's corpse secures this play as one of Shepard's darkest. John Orr writes that Shepard's plays exist in "a paranoid world where the self fears the other, the inner soul fears the outer persona, and where, amidst total chaos, the 'unseen hand' is at the back of everything" (110).

Icons permeate American culture so much that popular culture and "true" American culture are inseparable. While devoting many of his plays to the investigation of American popular iconography, Shepard remains critical. In a 1996 interview for American Theatre he said:

"The commercial aspect of what's going on deadens everything. It's very hard to get to something that has heart anymore, because everything's for sale, and it's for sale real cheap. You end up with a lot of what my Granddad used to call poppycock." (Coen 28)

It is this distaste for the commercialized American culture that fuels many of his plays. Though he peppers all of his plays with such imagery, the clearest example of Shepard's preoccupation with American iconography is Cowboy Mouth, his 1976 collaboration with musician Patti Smith.

The play opens with the stage littered by an array of distinctly American icons: hubcaps, an old tire, pictures of Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers, License plates from "southern states," rum, beer, a bottle of Nescafé, etc. Cavale becomes obsessed with acquiring things; the things she covets are the icons of a well-placed American woman. She tells Slim:

"I don't have any housewife shit. I want some stuff ladies have. I wanna dishwasher. I wanna stovepipe and a scrambled-egg maker. Here, Slim, we can get it all in the catalogue." (154)

All through the play, Shepard makes purposeful stabs, at American commercialism and the ingrained need to acquire things as a means for securing existence. Cowboy Mouth is clearly Shepard's most unabashedly mythological piece for the theatre. In the play, Shepard takes a stab at redefining modern religious myths. The key moment in the play comes about when Cavale states:

"Well, in the old days people had Jesus and those guys to embrace...they created a god with all their belief energies...and when they didn't dig themselves they could lose themselves in the Lord. But it's too hard now. We're earthy people, and the old saints just don't make it, and the old God is just too far away." (156)

This play is about the search for and designation of a new American religious mythology. In his book, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, Joseph Campbell lists the connecting of God to Man and Man to God as a key function of western myth (4). Cavale and Slim wish to create a new messiah. Cavale suggests:

"People want a street angel. They want a saint but with a cowboy mouth. Somebody to get off on when they can't get off on themselves...a sort of god in our image." (156)

In her search, Cavale wants to create Slim into the new savior. She tells him, "You gotta be like a rock-and-roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth" (157). In this play, Shepard illustrates the widespread view of modern humanists that truth lies within the individual and within society.

In western mythology man and God are at odds. Campbell writes, "Where two such contradictory final terms as God and Man stand against each other, the individual cannot attach his allegiance wholly to both" (4). Shepard's characters seek a new connection to a higher power from within popular culture and within themselves. In their search, Slim and Cavale role-play as crow and coyote, echoing Native American folklore and questioning their position and function in nature. In the end, Cavale and Slim find their rock-and-roll savior in the mute "Lobster Man."

The messages of Shepard's plays are difficult to pin down precisely. He purposely allows a certain amount of ambiguity to cloud even the most assured scholar. As John Orr puts it, "Shepard's technique is to shock, to stun, to overturn convention" (110). He is preoccupied with the designation of a new American mythology. In every one of his plays, he seeks to disrupt the accepted American institutions of family, iconography, and religion. He asks more questions that he answers. His purpose is not to dictate the boundaries of the evolving new mythology. Shepard merely points out where the established cultural boundaries have begun to wear thin.

Works Cited:

• Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking Press, 1964.
• Campbell, Joseph., and Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. Ed. Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1991.
• Coen, Stephanie. "Things at Stake Here." American Theatre. 13.7 (1996): 28.
• Orr, John. Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture: Play and Performance from Beckett to Shepard. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1991.
• Shepard, Sam. Buried Child. Seven Plays. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. 60- 132.
• Shepard, Sam. Cowboy Mouth. Fool For Love and Other Plays. New York. Bantam Books, 1984. 145-165.
• Shepard, Sam. Curse of the Starving Class. Fool For Love and Other Plays. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. 133-200.