Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained

by Lee Broughton

Overview

For decades, the Western film has been considered a dying breed of cinema, yet filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to Ethan and Joel Coen find new ways to reinvigorate the genre. As Westerns continue to be produced for contemporary audiences, scholars have taken a renewed interest in the relevance of this enduring genre.

In Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained, Lee Broughton has compiled a wide-ranging collection of essays that look at various forms of the genre, on both the large and small screen. Contributors to this volume consider themes and subgenres, celebrities and authors, recent idiosyncratic engagements with the genre, and the international Western. These essays also explore issues of race and gender in the various films discussed as well as within the film genre as a whole.

Among the films and television programs discussed in this volume are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford; Django Kill; Justified; Meek’s Cutoff; Tears of the Black Tiger; Appaloosa; The Frozen Limits; and Red Harvest.Featuring a diverse selection of chapters that represent current thinking on the Western. Critical Perspectives on the Western will appeal to fans of the genre, film students, and scholars alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442272422
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/19/2016
Series:	Film and History
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Lee Broughton is a freelance writer, critic, film programmer, and lecturer in film and cultural studies. He is the author of The Euro-Western: Reframing Gender, Race and the ‘Other’ in Film (2016).

In addition to Broughton, the volume’s contributors are Jenny Barrett, Pete Falconer, Christopher Frayling, Jesus Angel Gonzalez, Mark Goodall, Timothy Hughes, Thomas Klein, Geoff Mann, Cynthia J. Miller, Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris, A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Ivo Ritzer, and John White.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction ix

Part I Thematic Groupings, Overlooked Clusters, and Hybrid Collectivities xvii

1 Zapata Spaghetti: Reflections on the Italian Western and the Mexican Revolution Christopher Frayling 1

2 The Fantastic Frontier: Sixguns and Spectacle in the Hybrid Western Cynthia J. Miller A. Bowdoin Van Riper 27

3 Gunfigbt at the Transvaal Highveld: Locating the Boerewors Western in Southern Africa Ivo Ritzer 41

4 Rethinking the Representation of Race and Gender in American Exploitation Westerns from the 1960s Lee Broughton 57

Part II Historical Celebrities, Western Stars, and Hard-Boiled Authors 73

5 Contemporary Obsession with the Inexplicable Nature of Evil as Expressed in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford John White 75

6 A Cop in a Cowboy Hat: Timothy Olyphant, a Postmodern Eastwood in Justified Jenny Barrett 89

7 "Going Blood Simple": Red Harvest in Film Jesús Ángel Gonzalez 103

Part III Twenty-First-Century Westerns 119

8 A Solitary Theme Song from a Twenty-First-Century Western Pete Falconer 121

9 "The Unheightened Moment": Work, Duration, and Women's Point of View in Meek's Cutoff Timothy Hughes 137

10 Glorious Basterds in Tarantino's Django Unchained: When the West Crosses the South Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris 153

Part IV International Westerns 167

11 Cross-Cultural Hybridity and the Western: Tears of the Black Tiger Thomas Klein 169

12 Thawing Out The Frozen Limits Geoff Mann 185

13 "Spaghetti Savages": Cinematic Perversions of Django Kill Mark Goodall 199

Index 213

About the Editor and Contributors 227