The Magic Curtain

This text looks at the border in fiction, film and song. Borderlands - especially the United States-Mexico borderland - have long served as backgrounds for depicting social instability. And borders, or magic curtains, have readily been fashioned into exotic backdrops for films, novels, ballads, and tales in which characters shift easily from one culture to another. Film epitomizes the escape across the magic curtain. For example ""The Getaway"" shows two characters, Carol and Doc, not only manage the great escape with a satchel full of stolen money, they do it after fleeing the border after a near brush with death. Numerous ballads celebrate incidents befalling those running afoul of the law - from bandits to smugglers, large landholders and Texas rangers.