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Come Back, Todd: Rehabilitating Shane (George Stevens, 1953) in Soldier (Paul W.S. Anderson 1998)

2023; Taylor & Francis; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10509208.2023.2284628

1543-5326

Elizabeth Abele,

Cinema and Media Studies

Films and theorists throughout the twentieth century noted the dehumanizing required of American men to serve society.Shane (George Stevens 1953) belongs to a group of post-World War II Westerns that addressed the personal sacrifices demanded of the "hero."Despite its bleak message, Shane has resonated in the popular imagination, not only for Shane's single-handed rescue of the Starrett family and their community, but for his subsequent exile -marked by Joey Starrett's plaintive cry.Among the films inspired by Shane is the science-fiction Soldier (Paul W.S. Anderson 1998), a film which presents a significant deepening and revision of the narrative.Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell) belongs to a race of soldiers trained and molded from birth.Unfortunately, he and his kind have been replaced by a new breed of soldiers, who are even closer to manufactured.After being literally discarded, Todd becomes part of a settler family, comparable to the Starrett family's inclusion of the wandering Shane.This retired Soldier faces challenges and limits that parallel the retired gunfighter.Donna Harawa� ys "A Cyborg Manifesto" (2016) provides not only an appropriate lens through which to view Soldier but also to examine the Western's gunman: But basically, machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous.They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it.They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream.