Return of the Western
Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century
1st Edition
Published on 28. February 2025
368 pages
978-1-3995-2475-9 (ISBN)
Description
Transmitting the crisis that Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt feared when the frontier closed, the Western has returned to reveal a cultural watershed at work in twenty-first century America, revitalized with horror, terror and the peccant. Darkened and dystopic, contemporary Westerns point to a national bankruptcy, upending the notion that regenerative, civilizing impulses direct nation-building. Exploring films like Open Range (2003), Yahsi Bati (2010), The Keeping Room (2015), Little Woods (2018), and First Cow (2019), as well as television series like Justified (2010-1015), Longmire (2012-2017), Westworld (2016-2022), and Yellowstone (2020 -), this thought-provoking collection examines re-constituted masculinities, feminine re-fashioning and new directions in Western filmmaking. Covering a wide range of aesthetic and thematic concerns, Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century reminds us how deeply this versatile genre is grounded in the American psyche.
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02/2025
Edinburgh University Press
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Content
- Intro
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: Rethinking the American Frontier-Frederick Jackson Turner, Neurasthenia, and the Contemporary Western
- 1. "Free to be not important:" Variety and Versatility in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
- PART ONE RE-CONSTITUTED-CONTEMPORARY COWBOYS
- 2. "I've grown old:" Star Embodiment and Aging Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century Westerns of Kevin Costner and Jeff Bridges
- 3. Jesse James: Melancholy Aesthetics at the End of Cowboy Politics
- 4. "Next one's comin' faster:" The Vigilante Lawman in FX's Justified (FX, 2010-15)
- 5. "I aim to show that he's a man like any other:" Demythologizing Frontier Masculinity in The Proposition (2005)
- 6. Lords of the Plains: The Contemporary Western and Discourse in Hell or High Water (2016)
- 7. Baking Soda Buddies: Frontier Friendship/Capitalist Critique in Kelly Reichardt's First Cow (2019)
- PART TWO RE-FASHIONED-Twenty-First CENTURY FRONTIERSWOMEN
- 8. Deviations from Type: The Female Gaze in a Frontier Setting in Ron Howard's The Missing (2003)
- 9. Sexual Terrorism, Gender, and Race in The Keeping Room (2014): Revisioning the Revenge Western
- 10. Subverting Classic Western Codes and Women's Empowerment in Meek's Cutoff (2010)
- 11. Doing What Westerns Do: Nia DaCosta's Little Woods (2018) and the Representation of the "New West"
- 12. Screening Women Through the Prism of Women's History in Deadwood (HBO, 2004-6)
- PART THREE RE-FORMED-THE Twenty-First CENTURY FRONTIER
- 13. The (Un)Making of Civilization in the Post-2000 Western
- 14. The Land and its Relationship to Justice in Longmire (A&E, 2012-14
- Netflix, 2015-17)
- 15. A "Safe Place:" The Western "Home" and its Mutation in Logan (2017)
- 16. "We have always been posthuman": Towards a Post-Anthropocentric Reading of Westworld (HBO, 2016-22)
- 17. Revelations in the Old West
- 18. Postcolonial Discourses of "Hobbyism," Cultural Appropriation, and Historical Memory in Global Transnational Westerns
- 19. Westerns in Turkey and the Contemporary Turco-Western: Genre, Gender, and Transnationality in Yahsi Batı (2010)
- 20. The Western Rides into the Twenty-First Century: A Bibliography
- Index
