Captivating Westerns: The Middle East in the American West
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jaw252
ISSN1945-2314
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
ResumoSusan Kollin's study of the presence of the Middle East in works of popular culture that are ostensibly about the U.S. West and that are definitionally connected to generic “westerns,” is an intriguing intervention in the field. She shows us the various degrees of reference to the terrain of North Africa and western Asia, including in works in a range of media—films, novels, plays, live performances—starting with works by Mark Twain and Owen Wister, and ending with what she calls “global westerns” of the era after the September 11, 2001, attacks. She includes an extensive discussion of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma (1943), and, to a lesser degree, its 1955 film adaptation. She also cites the role of the generic western in structuring post-9/11 U.S. films set in Iraq, such as In the Valley of Elah (2007) and The Hurt Locker (2008), and in such Iran-based texts as the novel Censoring anIranian Love Story by Shariar Mandipour (2009), and Asghar Farhadi's film, A Separation (2011).
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