Rodeo Women: Behind the Scenes will not be the first film ever made about Canadians in the sport. In 1972, Josef Reeve’s Hard Rider (National Film Board of Canada) followed the rodeo circuit from BC to Texas with Kenny McLean and his family.
The film is about Western stereotypes and their relationship to the reality of western life. It gets that across by offering viewers footage of Kenny McLean being ejected from bucking horses, Western attire craftsmen at work, and Wild West trick shooter artists demonstrating their skills. In between, we see more unsettling western scenes: a raw look at the unsentimental work of roping and branding free-roaming horses; children witnessing the euthanasia by gun shot of a horse with a smashed leg; a behind-the-scenes look at a Marlboro cigarette advertisement shoot wherein a grizzled cowboy-model, cigarette on lip, poses for a professional photographer who barks orders at the him and the crew.
To this end, the filmmakers made a point of revealing rodeo family life as it occurred in the rodeo arena parking-lot campsites and ranch-house living rooms. There, we see women discussing itineraries and household management, changing diapers, preparing meals, driving the family camper, and supporting the social life of married but itinerant competitors.
A mystery persists since at no point in the film does a title appear to name the women on the screen. First we see Kenny McLean’s wife, Joyce McLean, and his son Guy on the road in Texas and North Dakota. Later in the film, another woman appears to be Kenny’s partner but the change in casting is not explained.
Who is she? How can we find that out? And what does a search for the name of the second woman in the film tell us about the decisions the filmmakers made, and that the rodeo community made, to leave women in the shadows even when they were in plain view?
