Defending Home, Defending Homeland: Jane Got a Gun (2016)

Abstract

In Jane Got a Gun (2016) the home, both as the embodiment of dominant American values and as an image for the homeland, is a place under threat and in need of resolute defence post-9/11. This film operates as a post-9/11 expression of that traditional Western trope of the need to defend the home and all it stands for in American national mythology. However, there is an ambivalence over how the central character should be presented. To some extent she is the girl-power female who is able to defend her own home, but at the same time as a woman she has to be shown to be in need of male protection. As with both Open Range and True Grit there is a need for an army veteran who knows how to deploy extreme violence when the home/homeland is under intense threat.