The Contemporary Western: An American Genre Post-9/11 by John White
2021; Volume: 41; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/gpq.2021.0027
ISSN2333-5092
Autores Tópico(s)Contemporary Literature and Criticism
ResumoReviewed by: The Contemporary Western: An American Genre Post-9/11 by John White Mike Kugler The Contemporary Western: An American Genre Post-9/11. By John White. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. vi + 194 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $100.00, cloth. When vicious bushwhackers take over the town, a lone vigilante fights back. Challenged by an evil "shadow" version of himself, the vigilante must measure the possible suffering of townspeople and his loved ones. This describes the most popular mainstream post-9/11 movie, Christopher Nolan's 2008 Dark Knight. Or is it George Stevens's 1953 Shane? Such a powerful, mythic story is immediately recognizable. It is flexible, adaptable. In eight brief chapters White (senior lecturer in film and media, East Anglia Ruskin University) follows recent revisionist scholarship on the Western (especially Mathew Carter's Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood's Frontier Narrative [2014] and Scott Frederick Stoddart's The New Western: Critical Essays on the Genre Since 9/11 [2016]). Describing a cultural landscape in the wake of the War on Terror, he begins with Kevin Costner's retro Open Range (2003) and includes the Coen brother's 2010 remake of True Grit, Quentin Tarantino's "postmodern" Django Unchained (2012), and Tommie Lee Jones's redemptive fable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006). These "War on Terror Westerns" (8) testify to a distinctively American genre's continuing relevance, especially in an age of patriotic responses to dangerously unpredictable enemies we struggle to understand. Gore Verbinski's odd The Lone Ranger (2013) or Gavin O'Connor's 2015 Jane Got a Gun do not have to intentionally comment on the War on Terror. White argues that an era's ideological obsessions give movies their shape, and interestingly, American media encourages conservative affirmations of the nation's liberal myth. The post-9/11 Western reinforces its audience's fear that someone terrible "out there" plans our destruction. Recycling the genre's legacy, these movies weave plot and production into deeply held American domestic and international fears and aspirations. The Western—which White largely defines as a genre concentrating on the space between self and Other (9)—sifts distinctions between good and evil. Natalie Portman's Jane, Brad Pitt's Jesse James, and Barry Pepper's murdering Border Patrol officer suggest redemptive paths through a frightening modern world lacking clear moral guidance. White's discussion of religious and theological themes in two chapters is especially thoughtful, encouraging a more careful viewing of these movies and others. Westerns, White suggests, largely enable the ideological and moral self-deception of the viewer, who understand the villains little more than Osama bin Laden or suicide bombers. A better argument might be that these movies, like post-Vietnam combat films, emphasize the trauma of violence. His claim seems little different than what scholars claim about the great Westerns of the Cold War era. Still, for students of that other complex region, the "Great Plains," White's interest in the boundaries furnishing our imaginations and hearts might seem familiar. White's discussion, his notes and bibliography, guide readers through the distinctive scholarship on the historical film since 9/11. [End Page 314] Mike Kugler Department of History Northwestern College (Iowa) Copyright © 2022 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
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