Streets of Deadwood: "The City Is as it Walks"

Gait as identity

This is the third in a series about the main street of the TV series, “Deadwood.” The entire series is available with a paid subscription.

Free content:

The Streets of Deadwood: A Series about a Series

The Language of Housing

More Motorized Traffic Is Bad; Congestion Is Good

“The City Is as it Walks”

Swearengen pays attention to who is walking in what direction, with whom they are walking, and how they were walking. “The city is as it walks.”¹ For example, Bullock and Swearengen are standing in the street and talking, but both turn to gaze at Aunt Lou. Hearst’s corpulent cook trundles down the main thoroughfare while hiking up her skirt to prevent it from dragging in the muddy street. Swearengen comments, “Not quick, but she seems full of purpose” (Season Three, Episode 6).

Conversely, characters in Deadwood are self-conscious about their gaits and attempt to obfuscate any public behavior which might reveal pain or weakness. For example, after Hearst batters Swearengen with a rock hammer and chops off a finger, a host of characters sense Swearengen’s pain when they see his wobbly gait as he enters the street from the Grand Central Hotel (Season 3, Episode 2). Bullock sees him from street level; Dority, Adams, and Johnny see him from the Gem’s veranda; and Tolliver, Stapleton, and Leon see him from the Bella Union’s veranda. Bullock is the first to rush to Swearengen’s aid. Tolliver sheds crocodile tears, “That man appears worse hurt then I am. Bless his heart.” Hearst steps onto his veranda to catch of a glimpse of whom he supposes is a broken man. Swearengen is determined to deny this satisfaction to his rivals:

Bullock: What happened?

Swearengen: We watched the speeches together. Yours was especially swell. (Quietly) I need to lean on you, but don’t you f___in’ look up. (Swearengen has his damaged left hand tucked under the right side of his vest. He uses his right hand for leverage on Bullock’s left shoulder.)

Bullock: Shall I go up?

Swearengen (calling out to Adams, Dority, and Johnny, who are now approaching): Hey boys! What’d ya think of the speeches, huh?

Bullock: I’ll go get the c________ers now.

Swearengen: Stay the f____ away from them, hmm? I’m having mine served cold. (Pats Bullock on the shoulder and walks away from him.)

Swearengen (to Adams, Dority, and Johnny): First one to touch me I kill!

We can know characters by their gaits. Sepinwall and Zoller Seitz say of Bullock’s gait, “his ramrod posture and machine like stride suggest he really does have steel in his spine.”² Merrick (Jeffrey Jones), the local newspaper publisher, likes to walk and talk with a slow, casual gait. In season one, he proposes a peripatetic club to Bullock and Star: get-togethers for discussing topics while walking on the boardwalk. On one occasion he reads a draft for a newspaper article to Blazanov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff) while they stroll. Twice Merrick stumbles on the uneven surfaces of the boardwalk as he struggles to read and walk at the same time. He likes to hash out his ideas on covered boardwalks, which are the rustic western version of the classical colonnades.³  However, unlike the solitary wanderer of Copenhagen, Soren Kierkegaard, Merrick prefers social engagement.⁴ Unlike the patrons strolling in the Forum and issuing advice to clients, Merrick seeks meetings among equals.⁵ While listening to Merrick, Blazanov appears at times to hold his hands together behind his back, but puts his hands in action to steady Merrick when he wobbles or stumbles.

1. Timothy M. O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 55. Compare this to Kathleen Graber, “In-Dwelling: Stephen Dunn in Deadwood,” The Georgia Review 65, No. 2 (2011): 67, “I began to see how many shots of Deadwood participate in a similar understanding of the importance of how one walks.”

2. Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, TV: (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), 71.

3. Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 14–5.

4. Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 14–5.

5. O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture, 69–70, citing Cicero, De Oratore 3.133.