Matthew Carter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748685585
- eISBN:
- 9780748697038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685585.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Introduction outlines the book in terms of contemporary film scholarship on the Western. The broader aim here is to set the book in the present before outlining the history of the two main ...
More
The Introduction outlines the book in terms of contemporary film scholarship on the Western. The broader aim here is to set the book in the present before outlining the history of the two main evolutionary approaches taken to the genre, describing how, despite influential critical responses to this approach having been advanced in recent decades, more film scholars still adhere to these approaches than do question them. The Introduction also describes how the version of frontier mythology most closely associated with the Western, in both of the genre's so-call classical and revisionist phases, was deliberately constructed on the cusp of the twentieth century by a handful of interconnected historians, politicians and producers of popular culture; namely, William Cody, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Theodore Roosevelt. But what is the nature of the Western's relationship to the myth? The Introduction ends by considering this question before outlining the films and defining of the terms of analysis that the book will use.Less
The Introduction outlines the book in terms of contemporary film scholarship on the Western. The broader aim here is to set the book in the present before outlining the history of the two main evolutionary approaches taken to the genre, describing how, despite influential critical responses to this approach having been advanced in recent decades, more film scholars still adhere to these approaches than do question them. The Introduction also describes how the version of frontier mythology most closely associated with the Western, in both of the genre's so-call classical and revisionist phases, was deliberately constructed on the cusp of the twentieth century by a handful of interconnected historians, politicians and producers of popular culture; namely, William Cody, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Theodore Roosevelt. But what is the nature of the Western's relationship to the myth? The Introduction ends by considering this question before outlining the films and defining of the terms of analysis that the book will use.
Matthew Carter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748685585
- eISBN:
- 9780748697038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685585.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Conclusion summarises the book's central argument that the Western cannot simply be described as heroic, redemptive or honourable. Furthermore, as often as it celebrated the myth of the West, it ...
More
The Conclusion summarises the book's central argument that the Western cannot simply be described as heroic, redemptive or honourable. Furthermore, as often as it celebrated the myth of the West, it also betrayed the more inglorious, atavistic and disturbing elements of frontier settlement and of national identity. Such ambiguities often merged into the forms and themes of the same film-text, helping to create a genre composed of varied narratives that reflect not only different times, but also different attitudes existing within any given time. It argued, therefore, that the formal and thematic impact of the Western does not so much come from the themes of the myth of the West, but from the complexities by which the genre deals with those themes. Above all else it sought to repudiate the belief in a pattern of consistent development within the genre as defined within terms of popular evolution theories that categorise groups of film-texts rather bluntly in classical, revisionist or post phases. Overall, this book has argued that whilst the Western genre metamorphoses according to the exigencies of a given time and the visions of individual artists, as a whole, it has refused any defined pattern of continuous development.Less
The Conclusion summarises the book's central argument that the Western cannot simply be described as heroic, redemptive or honourable. Furthermore, as often as it celebrated the myth of the West, it also betrayed the more inglorious, atavistic and disturbing elements of frontier settlement and of national identity. Such ambiguities often merged into the forms and themes of the same film-text, helping to create a genre composed of varied narratives that reflect not only different times, but also different attitudes existing within any given time. It argued, therefore, that the formal and thematic impact of the Western does not so much come from the themes of the myth of the West, but from the complexities by which the genre deals with those themes. Above all else it sought to repudiate the belief in a pattern of consistent development within the genre as defined within terms of popular evolution theories that categorise groups of film-texts rather bluntly in classical, revisionist or post phases. Overall, this book has argued that whilst the Western genre metamorphoses according to the exigencies of a given time and the visions of individual artists, as a whole, it has refused any defined pattern of continuous development.
