Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Approaches 21st century Westerns with a specific focus on genre and gender This volume examines the following: how the frontier ideal is redefined in contemporary Westerns; how American masculinity is re-constituted in contemporary Westerns; how American femininity is refashioned in contemporary Westerns the significance of popular Neo-Westerns and mash-ups in the twenty-first century paradigm shifts in international Western Transmitting the crisis that Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt feared when the frontier closed, the Western has returned to reveal a cultural watershed at work in twenty-first century America, revitalized with horror, terror and the peccant. Darkened and dystopic, contemporary Westerns point to a national bankruptcy, upending the notion that regenerative, civilizing impulses direct nation-building. Exploring films like Open Range (2003), Yahşi Batı (2010), The Keeping Room (2015), Little Woods (2018), and First Cow (2019), as well as television series like Justified (2010-1015), Longmire (2012-2017), Westworld (2016-2022), and Yellowstone (2020 –), this thought-provoking collection examines re-constituted masculinities, feminine re-fashioning and new directions in Western filmmaking. Covering a wide range of aesthetic and thematic concerns, Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century reminds us how deeply this versatile genre is grounded in the American psyche.