Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century

by Sue Matheson (Editor)

Overview

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), Yahşi Batı (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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399524728
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2025
Pages:	363
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Sue Matheson is Full Professor of English at the UniversityCollege of the North in Manitoba, Canada. Her interests in film, culture, and literature may be found in more than sixty articles published in a wide range of books and scholarly journals. She is the editor of Love in Western Film and Television: Happy Hearts and Lonely Trails, A Fistful of Icons: Essays on Frontier Fixtures of the American Western, Women in the Western and The Good, the Bad and the Ancient: Essays on the Greco-Roman Influence in Westerns. She is the author of The Westerns and War Films of John Ford and The John Ford Encyclopedia.

Table of Contents

Figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Rethinking the American frontier—Frederick Jackson Turner, Neurasthenia, and the Contemporary Western
Sue Matheson

1. “Free to be not important:” Variety and Versatility in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Stella Hockenhull

PART ONE RE-CONSTITUTED—CONTEMPORARY COWBOYS

2. “I’ve Grown Old:” Star Embodiment and Aging Masculinity in the Westerns of Kevin Costner and Jeff Bridges
Gaylyn Studlar

3. Jesse James: Melancholy Aesthetics at the End of Cowboy Politics
Christopher Minz

4. “Next one’s comin’ faster:” The Vigilante Lawman in FX’s Justified (FX, 2010-15)
Brian Brems

5. “I aim to show that he’s a man like any other:” Demythologizing Frontier Masculinity in The Proposition (2005)
Christopher J. Olson

6. Lords of the Plains: The Conemporary Western and Discourse in Hell or High Water (2016)
Kelly MacPhail

7. Baking Soda Buddies: Frontier Friendship/Capitalist Critique in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow
Sue Matheson

PART TWO RE-FASHIONED—21ST-CENTURY FRONTIERSWOMEN

8. Deviations from type: the female gaze in a Frontier setting in Ron Howard’s The Missing (2003)
Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris

9. Sexual Terrorism, Gender, and Race in The Keeping Room (2014): Revisioning the Revenge Western
Fran Pheasant-Kelly

10. Subverting Classic Western Codes and Women’s Empowerment in Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
Gilles Menegaldo

11. Doing What Westerns Do: Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods (2018) and the Representation of the “New West”
Erin Lee Mock

12. Screening Femininities in Deadwood (HBO, 2004-6)
Claire Dutriaux

PART III. RE-FORMED— THE 21ST-CENTURY FRONTIER

13. The (Un)Making of Civilization in the post-2000 Western
Martin Holtz

14. The Land and its Relationship to Justice in Longmire (A&E, 2012-14; Netflix, 2015 – 17)
Andrew Howe

15. A “Safe Place”: The Western “Home” and its Mutation in Logan (2017)
J. Paul Johnson

16. “We have always been posthuman:” Towards Post-Anthropocentric Perspectives in Westworld (HBO, 2016-22)
Katarzyna Nowak-McNiece

17. Revelations in the Old West
Cynthia J. Miller

18. Postcolonial Discourses of “Hobbyism,” Cultural Appropriation, and Historical Memory in Global Transnational Westerns
Khani Begum

19. Westerns in Turkey and the Contemporary Turco-Western: Genre, Gender, and Transnationality in Yahşi Batı (2010)
Ilya Denis Cinar

20. The Western Rides into the Twenty-First Century: A Bibliography
Camille McCutcheon

Index

Editorial Reviews

Interpreting a range of recent Western and Western-adjacent media, Matheson and her contributors see a dark mirror of contemporary America—where old myths are swept away to reveal moral decay and cultural instability. These bold and often provocative essays are sure to spark debate about what the Western means today.

Chief Curator of Western Spirit: Scottsdale Andrew Patrick Nelson