The Western is widely seen as a cinematic means of embodying the American culture in which it was produced. The canonical dividing line between ‘classic’ and ‘revisionist’ Westerns coincides with the end of the Hays Code, when the Western genre, and American culture as a whole, underwent their most significant tonal shift. This article is primarily an analysis of a 1958 allegorical, classic and pacifist Western, The Big Country . This film promotes a revised attitude towards previously accepted moral conventions of violence within the genre and should thereby be understood as a revisionist work. Furthermore, The Big Country ’s pacifistic revisionism creates a stark contrast with canonical revisionist Westerns and thereby calls into question the criteria for classifying films as ‘classic’ or ‘revisionist’. Ultimately, I argue that the drastic shift in tone and theme in New Hollywood Westerns has obscured the revisionism inherent to the genre and perpetuated a reductive view of the variations, shifts and nuances of the thematic arguments of Westerns from Classical Hollywood.
{"title":"‘What did we prove?’: William Wyler’s The Big Country (1958) and the revisionism of Westerns","authors":"Andrew Kinsella","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00101_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00101_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Western is widely seen as a cinematic means of embodying the American culture in which it was produced. The canonical dividing line between ‘classic’ and ‘revisionist’ Westerns coincides with the end of the Hays Code, when the Western genre, and American culture as a whole, underwent their most significant tonal shift. This article is primarily an analysis of a 1958 allegorical, classic and pacifist Western, The Big Country . This film promotes a revised attitude towards previously accepted moral conventions of violence within the genre and should thereby be understood as a revisionist work. Furthermore, The Big Country ’s pacifistic revisionism creates a stark contrast with canonical revisionist Westerns and thereby calls into question the criteria for classifying films as ‘classic’ or ‘revisionist’. Ultimately, I argue that the drastic shift in tone and theme in New Hollywood Westerns has obscured the revisionism inherent to the genre and perpetuated a reductive view of the variations, shifts and nuances of the thematic arguments of Westerns from Classical Hollywood.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the silent and early sound era, the Western became one of the most popular genres, making stars of actors like William S. Hart and Tom Mix. The genre ranged from epic Westerns such as The Covered Wagon (1923) and The Iron Horse (1924) through to quickly made B-movies, and even on to short parodies. The Western emerged from the silent era with a maturity not present in other genres, and its appeal only grew during the pre-code talkie era. At the same time, American film was exploring male sexuality and gender norms in a way that it would not be able to do again for several decades. This article traces the relationship between images of male queerness and intimacy within the Western during the first four decades of American filmmaking, from the early short films of 1894 through to the introduction of the Production Code in 1934.
{"title":"Sissies and lost pardners: Issues of masculinity and male queerness in the early Western","authors":"Shane Brown","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00102_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00102_1","url":null,"abstract":"During the silent and early sound era, the Western became one of the most popular genres, making stars of actors like William S. Hart and Tom Mix. The genre ranged from epic Westerns such as The Covered Wagon (1923) and The Iron Horse (1924) through to quickly made B-movies, and even on to short parodies. The Western emerged from the silent era with a maturity not present in other genres, and its appeal only grew during the pre-code talkie era. At the same time, American film was exploring male sexuality and gender norms in a way that it would not be able to do again for several decades. This article traces the relationship between images of male queerness and intimacy within the Western during the first four decades of American filmmaking, from the early short films of 1894 through to the introduction of the Production Code in 1934.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the video game Western and its relationship with ideas of temporality surrounding the American West. The fledgling video game industry first put ‘Cowboys and Indians’ on arcade screens in the 1970s, creating a playable digital West for gamers. Content and aesthetics proved decidedly simple, with game worlds reliant on prior filmic presentations. By the 2000s, thanks largely to technological advances, video game Westerns began to offer quantifiable depth and complexity, with Rockstar Games’s Red Dead Redemption series (2004–18) being a leading example. Video game Westerns represent the next technological as well as cultural representation of the ‘Wild West’ in all its complexities. In this article, I explore how both old and new video game Westerns have toyed with notions of ‘time’ and how we experience ‘the frontier’ a century on from the lived historic period. I argue that games not only invite players to (re)visit a distinctive ‘frontier time’, but also, by their coding and mechanics, actively encourage players to subvert the temporal flow of Western history on-screen and even disrupt the West’s larger cultural meaning.
本文将探讨电子游戏《西部》及其与美国西部的暂时性观念之间的关系。20世纪70年代,刚刚起步的电子游戏行业首次将《牛仔与印第安人》(Cowboys and Indians)搬上街机屏幕,为游戏玩家创造了一个可玩的数字西部。内容和美学非常简单,游戏世界依赖于之前的电影呈现。到了2000年代,多亏了技术的进步,电子游戏西片开始提供可量化的深度和复杂性,Rockstar Games的《荒野大镖客:救赎》系列(2004-18)就是一个典型的例子。电子游戏西部片代表了“狂野西部”所有复杂性的下一个技术和文化代表。在本文中,我将探讨新旧电子游戏西部片是如何玩弄“时间”概念的,以及我们是如何体验一个世纪后的“边疆”。我认为,游戏不仅邀请玩家(重新)访问一个独特的“前沿时间”,而且通过它们的编码和机制,积极鼓励玩家颠覆屏幕上西方历史的时间流,甚至破坏西方更大的文化意义。
{"title":"Mechanisms of time in video game Westerns from Gun Fight to Red Dead Redemption 2","authors":"John Wills","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00105_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00105_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the video game Western and its relationship with ideas of temporality surrounding the American West. The fledgling video game industry first put ‘Cowboys and Indians’ on arcade screens in the 1970s, creating a playable digital West for gamers. Content and aesthetics proved decidedly simple, with game worlds reliant on prior filmic presentations. By the 2000s, thanks largely to technological advances, video game Westerns began to offer quantifiable depth and complexity, with Rockstar Games’s Red Dead Redemption series (2004–18) being a leading example. Video game Westerns represent the next technological as well as cultural representation of the ‘Wild West’ in all its complexities. In this article, I explore how both old and new video game Westerns have toyed with notions of ‘time’ and how we experience ‘the frontier’ a century on from the lived historic period. I argue that games not only invite players to (re)visit a distinctive ‘frontier time’, but also, by their coding and mechanics, actively encourage players to subvert the temporal flow of Western history on-screen and even disrupt the West’s larger cultural meaning.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"2014 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
James film, Logan , offers up a future world in which the X-Men are no more. All that remains are a few old and ravaged mutants, including Logan and Xavier whose worsening dementia is having a catastrophic impact on his psychic abilities that is becoming increasingly dangerous for others. Both of these former X-Men become roped into assisting a group of synthetic mutant children as they run from those who attempt to subdue and destroy them. Principal among these children is X-23, Laura, who has been created from Logan’s DNA. By staging this potential daughter along with a suggested queerness of the other mutant children the film seemingly offers up a critique of patriarchal ideologies often at the heart of the superhero genre. However, this article is concerned with the way the film intertextually references the 1953 Western film Shane , which creates an ambivalence in Logan’s meaning. The presence of Shane , the article argues, disturbs the surface gender critical storyline offering up instead the sense of a redemptive heroic masculinity that wrangles patriarchal ideology in through the backdoor.
{"title":"Logan (2017) and the lost object of masculinity, or the trouble with Shane","authors":"Jon Mitchell","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00103_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00103_1","url":null,"abstract":"James film, Logan , offers up a future world in which the X-Men are no more. All that remains are a few old and ravaged mutants, including Logan and Xavier whose worsening dementia is having a catastrophic impact on his psychic abilities that is becoming increasingly dangerous for others. Both of these former X-Men become roped into assisting a group of synthetic mutant children as they run from those who attempt to subdue and destroy them. Principal among these children is X-23, Laura, who has been created from Logan’s DNA. By staging this potential daughter along with a suggested queerness of the other mutant children the film seemingly offers up a critique of patriarchal ideologies often at the heart of the superhero genre. However, this article is concerned with the way the film intertextually references the 1953 Western film Shane , which creates an ambivalence in Logan’s meaning. The presence of Shane , the article argues, disturbs the surface gender critical storyline offering up instead the sense of a redemptive heroic masculinity that wrangles patriarchal ideology in through the backdoor.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Western’s central theme of historical progression, the transition from the old to the new, is often symbolically paralleled in the relationship between ageing and youthful characters. This contribution offers a cursory overview of Westerns that illustrate the range of relationships between young and old at a time in American history which was characterized by generational clashes over the Vietnam War and wider (counter-)cultural movements. The focus will be on three films in particular. The Cowboys (1972) is in many ways the culmination of John Wayne Westerns in which the star takes over the role of a tough but benevolent grandfather figure teaching the youngest generation the ways of violence so as to defeat a wayward middle generation (standing in for a radical counter-culture), thus signifying a conservative ideal. In Bad Company (1972), the youth is abandoned by their parent generation, victimized by their elders, and the ways of violence forced upon them to ensure their survival, thus signifying liberal disillusionment. In The Shootist (1976), finally, disillusionment and nostalgia are fused in a complex portrayal of the ageing protagonist’s simultaneous doggedness and recognition of his own outmodedness and the youth’s simultaneous rejection and veneration of his mythic status.
{"title":"Between reverence and rejection: Age and youth in the Vietnam era Western","authors":"Martin Holtz","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00104_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00104_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Western’s central theme of historical progression, the transition from the old to the new, is often symbolically paralleled in the relationship between ageing and youthful characters. This contribution offers a cursory overview of Westerns that illustrate the range of relationships between young and old at a time in American history which was characterized by generational clashes over the Vietnam War and wider (counter-)cultural movements. The focus will be on three films in particular. The Cowboys (1972) is in many ways the culmination of John Wayne Westerns in which the star takes over the role of a tough but benevolent grandfather figure teaching the youngest generation the ways of violence so as to defeat a wayward middle generation (standing in for a radical counter-culture), thus signifying a conservative ideal. In Bad Company (1972), the youth is abandoned by their parent generation, victimized by their elders, and the ways of violence forced upon them to ensure their survival, thus signifying liberal disillusionment. In The Shootist (1976), finally, disillusionment and nostalgia are fused in a complex portrayal of the ageing protagonist’s simultaneous doggedness and recognition of his own outmodedness and the youth’s simultaneous rejection and veneration of his mythic status.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores queer and non-heteronormative subtexts in connection with representations of rurality in the Disney family sitcom Hannah Montana (2006-2011). The multi-layered world, which the protagonist Hannah Montana/Miley Stewart inhabits, is shaped by sexual undercurrents closely linked to an imagined rural space. This space is constructed as the ‘sexual other’ in relation to the gender and body politics of the show’s main setting: Mailbu, California. In particular, the protagonist’s original home state of Tennessee forms a cultural repertoire in which dominant norms of gender performativity are ignored or subverted. Certain hints at queer codes and practices become identifiable when the rural space is invoked and contrasted with the perceived, sanitized ‘sexual normativity’ of Southern California. Projecting the non-normative onto the rural allows Disney to protect the show’s image as so-called wholesome family entertainment. The resulting play with queer practices, such as gender-bending and cross-dressing, is shown to connect with Disney’s attempts to queercode characters and spaces in order to facilitate the effective marketing of the show across multiple segments in an increasingly multi-sexual teen market. The role of the extratextual personae of Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus complement this strategy, through their functioning as instructive models for ongoing negotiations of sexuality and gender among multi-generational audiences in the early twenty-first century.
{"title":"Between banjos, beaches and bending gender: Negotiating the queer rural space in Hannah Montana","authors":"Ilias Ben Mna","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00093_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00093_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores queer and non-heteronormative subtexts in connection with representations of rurality in the Disney family sitcom Hannah Montana (2006-2011). The multi-layered world, which the protagonist Hannah Montana/Miley Stewart inhabits, is shaped by sexual undercurrents closely linked to an imagined rural space. This space is constructed as the ‘sexual other’ in relation to the gender and body politics of the show’s main setting: Mailbu, California. In particular, the protagonist’s original home state of Tennessee forms a cultural repertoire in which dominant norms of gender performativity are ignored or subverted. Certain hints at queer codes and practices become identifiable when the rural space is invoked and contrasted with the perceived, sanitized ‘sexual normativity’ of Southern California. Projecting the non-normative onto the rural allows Disney to protect the show’s image as so-called wholesome family entertainment. The resulting play with queer practices, such as gender-bending and cross-dressing, is shown to connect with Disney’s attempts to queercode characters and spaces in order to facilitate the effective marketing of the show across multiple segments in an increasingly multi-sexual teen market. The role of the extratextual personae of Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus complement this strategy, through their functioning as instructive models for ongoing negotiations of sexuality and gender among multi-generational audiences in the early twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editors’ Introduction","authors":"John Wills, Christopher Lloyd, Harriet Stilley","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00097_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00097_2","url":null,"abstract":"Preview this article: Editors’ Introduction, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ejac/42/2-3/ejac.42.2-3.97_Wills-1.gif","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender , Marquis Bey (2022) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 138 pp., ISBN 978-1-47801-844-5, 138 p/bk, $24.95
{"title":"Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender, Marquis Bey (2022)","authors":"Venus Fultz","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00092_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00092_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender , Marquis Bey (2022) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 138 pp., ISBN 978-1-47801-844-5, 138 p/bk, $24.95","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines Kenneth Lonergan’s film Margaret (2011), which can be viewed, I suggest, as an essential post-9/11 text. As I argue, the events of 9/11 serve within the film as the backdrop against which broader (geo)political questions of grievability are negotiated, as we see through the sprawling and pseudo-allegorical melodrama of the narrative, following a young woman who accidentally causes the death of a pedestrian by distracting a bus driver. In the first section of this article, I read the film’s geopolitical engagements alongside Judith Butler’s writing on grievability as well as Akira Mizuta Lippit’s writing on allegory. I suggest that the film’s uneasy allegorical imbrications gesture to a nexus of ethical and political questions regarding allegory and its rhetorical uses. In the second section, I examine the ways in which the film’s form and aesthetics bespeak a Derridean engagement with mourning and spectrality, ultimately gesturing to the United States’ grappling with the atrocities of the War on Terror and the attendant ontological instabilities arising in the haunted urban spaces of a post-9/11 New York City.
{"title":"Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret and the politics of grievability: 9/11, allegory, mourning","authors":"Karim Townsend","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00096_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00096_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Kenneth Lonergan’s film Margaret (2011), which can be viewed, I suggest, as an essential post-9/11 text. As I argue, the events of 9/11 serve within the film as the backdrop against which broader (geo)political questions of grievability are negotiated, as we see through the sprawling and pseudo-allegorical melodrama of the narrative, following a young woman who accidentally causes the death of a pedestrian by distracting a bus driver. In the first section of this article, I read the film’s geopolitical engagements alongside Judith Butler’s writing on grievability as well as Akira Mizuta Lippit’s writing on allegory. I suggest that the film’s uneasy allegorical imbrications gesture to a nexus of ethical and political questions regarding allegory and its rhetorical uses. In the second section, I examine the ways in which the film’s form and aesthetics bespeak a Derridean engagement with mourning and spectrality, ultimately gesturing to the United States’ grappling with the atrocities of the War on Terror and the attendant ontological instabilities arising in the haunted urban spaces of a post-9/11 New York City.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Western has been seen as a key genre for understanding both the American national character and the particulars of Hollywood, but there are now very few contemporary studies of this once foundational genre. The articles in this Special Issue, coming out of the Lonely Are the Brave conference of 2021, aim to revisit the Western, and the post-war Western specifically, in order to revive scholarship surrounding these texts, to interrogate existing models of understanding the history of the genre, and to examine how the genre treats ideas connected to time and its passing as attached to the American west and its depictions on-screen.
{"title":"Special Issue: ‘Lonely Are the Brave’","authors":"Helena Bacon, Mark Jancovich","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00098_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00098_2","url":null,"abstract":"The Western has been seen as a key genre for understanding both the American national character and the particulars of Hollywood, but there are now very few contemporary studies of this once foundational genre. The articles in this Special Issue, coming out of the Lonely Are the Brave conference of 2021, aim to revisit the Western, and the post-war Western specifically, in order to revive scholarship surrounding these texts, to interrogate existing models of understanding the history of the genre, and to examine how the genre treats ideas connected to time and its passing as attached to the American west and its depictions on-screen.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}