Author: Carter Matthew Carter
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474402836
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West?Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.
Myth of the Western
Author: Carter Matthew Carter
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474402836
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West?Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474402836
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West?Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.
Hollywood Westerns and American Myth
Author: Robert B. Pippin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300145780
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ Red River and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers.Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected.Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300145780
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ Red River and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers.Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected.Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy.
Whiskey When We're Dry
Author: John Larison
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220468
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
Named a Best Book by Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, Goodreads, Southern Living, Outside Magazine, Oprah.com, HelloGiggles, Parade, Fodor’s Travel, Sioux City Journal, Read it Forward, Medium.com, and NPR’s All Things Considered. "A thunderclap of originality, here is a fresh voice and fresh take on one of the oldest stories we tell about ourselves as Americans and Westerners. It's riveting in all the right ways -- a damn good read that stayed with me long after closing the covers." - Timothy Egan, New York Times bestselling author of The Worst Hard Time From a blazing new voice in fiction, a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah--dead or alive. Wrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right. Told in Jess's wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself--and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220468
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
Named a Best Book by Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, Goodreads, Southern Living, Outside Magazine, Oprah.com, HelloGiggles, Parade, Fodor’s Travel, Sioux City Journal, Read it Forward, Medium.com, and NPR’s All Things Considered. "A thunderclap of originality, here is a fresh voice and fresh take on one of the oldest stories we tell about ourselves as Americans and Westerners. It's riveting in all the right ways -- a damn good read that stayed with me long after closing the covers." - Timothy Egan, New York Times bestselling author of The Worst Hard Time From a blazing new voice in fiction, a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family's homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess's quest lands her in the employ of the territory's violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah--dead or alive. Wrestling with her brother's outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right. Told in Jess's wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We're Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself--and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.
Invisible Natives
Author: Armando José Prats
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501729535
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
This incisive, provocative, and wide-ranging book casts a critical eye on the representation of Native Americans in the Western film since the genre's beginnings. Armando José Prats shows the ways in which film reflects cultural transformations in the course of America's historical encounter with "the Indian." He also explores the relation between the myth of conquest and American history. Among the films he discusses at length are Northwest Passage, Stagecoach, The Searchers, Hombre, Hondo, Ulzana's Raid, The Last of the Mohicans, and Dances With Wolves.Throughout, Prats emphasizes the irony that the Western seems to be able to represent Native Americans only by rendering them absent. In addition, he points out that Native Americans who appear in Westerns are almost always male; Native women rarely figure into the plot, and are often portrayed by white women rendered "Indian" by narrative necessity. Invisible Natives offers an intriguing view of the possibilities and consequences—as well as the historical sources and cultural origins—of the Western's strategies for evading the actual portrayal of Native Americans.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501729535
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
This incisive, provocative, and wide-ranging book casts a critical eye on the representation of Native Americans in the Western film since the genre's beginnings. Armando José Prats shows the ways in which film reflects cultural transformations in the course of America's historical encounter with "the Indian." He also explores the relation between the myth of conquest and American history. Among the films he discusses at length are Northwest Passage, Stagecoach, The Searchers, Hombre, Hondo, Ulzana's Raid, The Last of the Mohicans, and Dances With Wolves.Throughout, Prats emphasizes the irony that the Western seems to be able to represent Native Americans only by rendering them absent. In addition, he points out that Native Americans who appear in Westerns are almost always male; Native women rarely figure into the plot, and are often portrayed by white women rendered "Indian" by narrative necessity. Invisible Natives offers an intriguing view of the possibilities and consequences—as well as the historical sources and cultural origins—of the Western's strategies for evading the actual portrayal of Native Americans.
Outlawed
Author: Anna North
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635575435
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK * INDIE NEXT SELECTION * LIBRARY READS SELECTION * AMAZON EDITORS' CHOICE * WASHINGTON POST BEST OF THE YEAR The "terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling" (R.O. Kwon) adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635575435
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK * INDIE NEXT SELECTION * LIBRARY READS SELECTION * AMAZON EDITORS' CHOICE * WASHINGTON POST BEST OF THE YEAR The "terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling" (R.O. Kwon) adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.
The Myth of Western Civilization
Author: Enrico Ferri
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781536188684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"The Myth of Western Civilization: The West as an Ideological Category and a Political Myth has set for itself two different but complementary targets. The first is to show that what is commonly taken as a historical given, "Western Civilization", is actually an ideological construction that has come to absorb the most disparate of contents. It is a common acceptance to intend Western Civilization as the liberal-democratic way of life and capitalist economy that apply in Euro-America. Many among those who believe in the existence and paramountcy of Western Civilization at the same time sustain that Western Civilization can be traced back at the very dawn of Europe and that, depending on who makes the claim, it can be linked to the birth of Greece and Rome and, successively, to Christianity and democracy, often establishing relationships between these varying cultures. While showing the difficulty of considering them instances of the same historical event, The Myth of the West highlights the essential contribution by civilizations like the Phoenician and the Arab to the development of the classical world and modern Europe"--
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781536188684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"The Myth of Western Civilization: The West as an Ideological Category and a Political Myth has set for itself two different but complementary targets. The first is to show that what is commonly taken as a historical given, "Western Civilization", is actually an ideological construction that has come to absorb the most disparate of contents. It is a common acceptance to intend Western Civilization as the liberal-democratic way of life and capitalist economy that apply in Euro-America. Many among those who believe in the existence and paramountcy of Western Civilization at the same time sustain that Western Civilization can be traced back at the very dawn of Europe and that, depending on who makes the claim, it can be linked to the birth of Greece and Rome and, successively, to Christianity and democracy, often establishing relationships between these varying cultures. While showing the difficulty of considering them instances of the same historical event, The Myth of the West highlights the essential contribution by civilizations like the Phoenician and the Arab to the development of the classical world and modern Europe"--
Greek Myth and Western Art
Author: Karl Kilinski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013321
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
This richly illustrated book examines the legacy of Greek mythology in Western art from the classical era to the present. Tracing the emergence, survival, and transformation of key mythological figures and motifs from ancient Greece through the modern era, it explores the enduring importance of such myths for artists and viewers in their own time and over the millennia that followed.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013321
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
This richly illustrated book examines the legacy of Greek mythology in Western art from the classical era to the present. Tracing the emergence, survival, and transformation of key mythological figures and motifs from ancient Greece through the modern era, it explores the enduring importance of such myths for artists and viewers in their own time and over the millennia that followed.
Babylon Under Western Eyes
Author: Andrew Scheil
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442625139
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Babylon under Western Eyes examines the mythic legacy of ancient Babylon, the Near Eastern city which has served western culture as a metaphor for power, luxury, and exotic magnificence for more than two thousand years. Sifting through the many references to Babylon in biblical, classical, medieval, and modern texts, Andrew Scheil uses Babylon’s remarkable literary ubiquity as the foundation for a thorough analysis of the dynamics of adaptation and allusion in western literature. Touching on everything from Old English poetry to the contemporary apocalyptic fiction of the “Left Behind” series, Scheil outlines how medieval Christian society and its cultural successors have adopted Babylon as a political metaphor, a degenerate archetype, and a place associated with the sublime. Combining remarkable erudition with a clear and accessible style, Babylon under Western Eyes is the first comprehensive examination of Babylon’s significance within the pantheon of western literature and a testimonial to the continuing influence of biblical, classical, and medieval paradigms in modern culture.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442625139
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Babylon under Western Eyes examines the mythic legacy of ancient Babylon, the Near Eastern city which has served western culture as a metaphor for power, luxury, and exotic magnificence for more than two thousand years. Sifting through the many references to Babylon in biblical, classical, medieval, and modern texts, Andrew Scheil uses Babylon’s remarkable literary ubiquity as the foundation for a thorough analysis of the dynamics of adaptation and allusion in western literature. Touching on everything from Old English poetry to the contemporary apocalyptic fiction of the “Left Behind” series, Scheil outlines how medieval Christian society and its cultural successors have adopted Babylon as a political metaphor, a degenerate archetype, and a place associated with the sublime. Combining remarkable erudition with a clear and accessible style, Babylon under Western Eyes is the first comprehensive examination of Babylon’s significance within the pantheon of western literature and a testimonial to the continuing influence of biblical, classical, and medieval paradigms in modern culture.
Post-Westerns
Author: Neil Campbell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496209621
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 479
Book Description
During the post-World War II period, the Western, like America's other great film genres, appeared to collapse as a result of revisionism and the emergence of new forms. Perhaps, however, as theorists like Gilles Deleuze suggest, it remains, simply "maintaining its empty frame." Yet this frame is far from empty, as Post-Westerns shows us: rather than collapse, the Western instead found a new form through which to scrutinize and question the very assumptions on which the genre was based. Employing the ideas of critics such as Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière, Neil Campbell examines the haunted inheritance of the Western in contemporary U.S. culture. His book reveals how close examination of certain postwar films--including Bad Day at Black Rock, The Misfits, Lone Star, Easy Rider, Gas Food Lodging, Down in the Valley, and No Country for Old Men--reconfigures our notions of region and nation, the Western, and indeed the West itself. Campbell suggests that post-Westerns are in fact "ghost-Westerns," haunted by the earlier form's devices and styles in ways that at once acknowledge and call into question the West, both as such and in its persistent ideological framing of the national identity and values.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496209621
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 479
Book Description
During the post-World War II period, the Western, like America's other great film genres, appeared to collapse as a result of revisionism and the emergence of new forms. Perhaps, however, as theorists like Gilles Deleuze suggest, it remains, simply "maintaining its empty frame." Yet this frame is far from empty, as Post-Westerns shows us: rather than collapse, the Western instead found a new form through which to scrutinize and question the very assumptions on which the genre was based. Employing the ideas of critics such as Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière, Neil Campbell examines the haunted inheritance of the Western in contemporary U.S. culture. His book reveals how close examination of certain postwar films--including Bad Day at Black Rock, The Misfits, Lone Star, Easy Rider, Gas Food Lodging, Down in the Valley, and No Country for Old Men--reconfigures our notions of region and nation, the Western, and indeed the West itself. Campbell suggests that post-Westerns are in fact "ghost-Westerns," haunted by the earlier form's devices and styles in ways that at once acknowledge and call into question the West, both as such and in its persistent ideological framing of the national identity and values.
Sixguns and Society
Author: Will Wright
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520340787
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
From the Preface: The purpose of this book is to explain the Western's popularity. While the Western itself may seem simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot be; for the Western, like any myth, stands between individual human consciousness and society. If a myth is popular, it must somehow appeal to or reinforce the individuals who view it by communicating a symbolic meaning to them. This meaning must, in turn, reflect the particular social institutions and attitudes that have created and continue to nourish the myth. Thus, a myth must tell its viewers about themselves and their society. This study, which takes up the question of the Western as an American myth, will lead us into abstract structural theory as well as economic and political history. Mostly, however, it will take us into the movies, the spectacular and not-so-spectacular sagebrush of the cinema. Unlike most works of social science, the data on which my analysis is based is available to all of my readers, either at the local theater or, more likely, on the late, late show. I hope you will take the opportunity, whenever it is offered, to check my findings and test my interpretations; the effort is small and the rewards are many. And if your wife, husband, mother, or child asks you why you are wasting your time staring at Westerns on TV in the middle of the night, tell them firmly—as I often did—that you are doing research in social science. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977. From the Preface: The purpose of this book is to explain the Western's popularity. While the Western itself may seem simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot be; for the Western, like any myth, stands between individual human consc
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520340787
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
From the Preface: The purpose of this book is to explain the Western's popularity. While the Western itself may seem simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot be; for the Western, like any myth, stands between individual human consciousness and society. If a myth is popular, it must somehow appeal to or reinforce the individuals who view it by communicating a symbolic meaning to them. This meaning must, in turn, reflect the particular social institutions and attitudes that have created and continue to nourish the myth. Thus, a myth must tell its viewers about themselves and their society. This study, which takes up the question of the Western as an American myth, will lead us into abstract structural theory as well as economic and political history. Mostly, however, it will take us into the movies, the spectacular and not-so-spectacular sagebrush of the cinema. Unlike most works of social science, the data on which my analysis is based is available to all of my readers, either at the local theater or, more likely, on the late, late show. I hope you will take the opportunity, whenever it is offered, to check my findings and test my interpretations; the effort is small and the rewards are many. And if your wife, husband, mother, or child asks you why you are wasting your time staring at Westerns on TV in the middle of the night, tell them firmly—as I often did—that you are doing research in social science. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977. From the Preface: The purpose of this book is to explain the Western's popularity. While the Western itself may seem simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot be; for the Western, like any myth, stands between individual human consc