Westerns

Westerns PDF Author: Janet Walker
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415924245
Category : West (U.S.)
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Westerns

Westerns PDF Author: Janet Walker
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415924245
Category : West (U.S.)
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Westerns and American Culture, 1930-1955

Westerns and American Culture, 1930-1955 PDF Author: R. Philip Loy
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786410760
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Many people have fond memories of Friday nights and Saturday afternoons spent in theatres watching cowboy stars of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s chase villains across the silver screen or help a heroine out of harm's way. Over 2,600 Westerns were produced between 1930 and 1955 and they became a defining part of American culture. This work focuses on the idea that Westerns were one of the vehicles by which viewers learned the values and norms of a wide range of social relationships and behavior, and thus examines the ways in which Western movies reflected American life and culture during this quarter century. Chapters discuss such topics as the ways that Westerns included current events in film plot and dialogue, reinforced the role of Christianity in American culture, reflected the emergence of a strong central government, and mirrored attitudes toward private enterprise. Also covered is how Westerns represented racial minorities, women, and Indians.

Late Westerns

Late Westerns PDF Author: Lee Clark Mitchell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496210697
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
For more than a century the cinematic Western has been America's most familiar genre, always teetering on the verge of exhaustion and yet regularly revived in new forms. Why does this outmoded vehicle--with the most narrowly based historical setting of any popular genre--maintain its appeal? In Late Westerns Lee Clark Mitchell takes a position against those critics looking to attach "post" to the all-too-familiar genre. For though the frontier disappeared long ago, though men on horseback have become commonplace, and though films of all sorts have always, necessarily, defied generic patterns, the Western continues to enthrall audiences. It does so by engaging narrative expectations stamped on our collective consciousness so firmly as to integrate materials that might not seem obviously "Western" at all. Through plot cues, narrative reminders, and even cinematic frameworks, recent films shape interpretive understanding by triggering a long-standing familiarity audiences have with the genre. Mitchell's critical analysis reveals how these films engage a thematic and cinematic border-crossing in which their formal innovations and odd plots succeed deconstructively, encouraging by allusion, implication, and citation the evocation of generic meaning from ingredients that otherwise might be interpreted quite differently. Applying genre theory with close cinematic readings, Mitchell posits that the Western has essentially been "post" all along.

Westerns and the Trail of Tradition

Westerns and the Trail of Tradition PDF Author: Barrie Hanfling
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786445009
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Over the past century, the western has fluctuated in popularity. By 2010 it has come to stand, to the dismay of many, at one of its lowest points. Beginning with 1929 and the advent of talkies (In Old Arizona), the author discusses the cultural and industry trends, the directors, producers, studios and especially the stars, and looks at the ways in which their personalities (and financial ups and downs) affected the way westerns were shot. The improvements in technology through the years, the trick horses, the fistfight choreography, the evolution of plotlines--these are fascinating indicators of the way Americans themselves were changing.

Reframing Cult Westerns

Reframing Cult Westerns PDF Author: Lee Broughton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501343513
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Once one of the most popular film genres and a key player in the birth of early narrative cinema, the Western has experienced a rebirth in the era of post-classical filmmaking with a small but noteworthy selection of Westerns being produced long after the genre's 1950s heyday. Thanks to regular repertory cinema and television screenings, home video releases and critical reappraisals by cultural gatekeepers such as Quentin Tarantino, an ever-increasing number of these Westerns have become cult films. Be they star-laden, stylish, violent, bizarre or simply little heard-of obscurities, Reframing Cult Westerns offers a multitude of new critical insights into a truly eclectic selection of cult Western films. These twelve essays present a wide-ranging methodological scope, from industrial histories to ecocritical approaches, auteurist analysis to queer and other ideological angles. With a thorough analysis of the genre from international perspectives, Reframing Cult Westerns offers fresh insight on the Western as a global phenomenon.

Post-Westerns

Post-Westerns PDF Author: Neil Campbell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496209621
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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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.

Great Hollywood Westerns

Great Hollywood Westerns PDF Author: Ted Sennett
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN:
Category : Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This volume offers all the timeless images and icons of the movie West, from wagon trains snaking across the prairies to the grizzled face of John Wayne. With 75 color and 200 black-and-white illustrations, many rare and never before published, which range from the traditional shoot-outs, show-downs, and stampedes to documentary photographs of the real West, which provide a fascinating counterpoint to the studio-created version. The entertaining and highly readable text, by noted film writer Ted Sennett, also contrasts the real and fantasy West. Instead of giving a conventional chronological history, he takes the reader deep into the heart of the subject, offering an original and perceptive look at westerns and how they reflect changing times and attitudes.

John Ford Made Westerns

John Ford Made Westerns PDF Author: Gaylyn Studlar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Nine major essays by prominent scholars of Hollywood film cast new light on the sound-era Westerns of John Ford. They place the films within contemporary critical contexts and regard them from fresh perspectives. While giving attention to style and structure, the volume also treats the ways in which these much-loved films engage with notions of masculinity and gender roles, capitalism and community, as well as racial, sexual, and national identity.

The Wild West

The Wild West PDF Author: Will Wright
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761952336
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Will Wright explores the continuing popularity of the myth of the Wild West, demonstrating how, as a cultural icon, it speaks deeply to a desire for individualism and liberty. The author discusses the myth through market and social theory.

Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination

Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination PDF Author: Geoff Mayer
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476643075
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific values embedded in notions of good and evil are determined by the culture, and they shift from nation to nation, region to region, and period to period. This book explores the "populist" westerns of the 1930s, the propaganda films that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the popularity of Sax Rohmer's master villain Fu Manchu. "Melodramas of passion" and film noir also offer a challenge to melodrama with its seemingly alienated protagonists and downbeat endings. Yet, with few exceptions, Hollywood was able to assimilate these genres within its melodramatic imagination.