The articles in this section focus on the West as an iconic genre of filmmaking, as well as other aspects of writing that contribute to the Western's uniqueness.
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Fred Remington
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Rising from the Plains
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Industry Competition
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C Cowboys
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Vagabondage
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Edward Buscombe. "Painting the Legend: Frederic Remington and the Western." Cinema Journal 23, No. 4 (Summer 1984): 12-27.
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Kenneth Millard. "Textual Authenticity and the Contemporary West: John McPhee's 'Rising from the Plains'." Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 47, No. 3 (September 2014): 35-51.
Abstract from Project Muse: A critical study of John McPhee’s Rising from the Plains in the context of recent debates about the status of regional studies in a postmodern culture, this essay asks what it means to be authentically Western in a late-twentieth-century culture comprising simulacra. |
Robert Anderson. "The Role of the Western Genre in Industry Competition, 1907-1911." Journal of the University Film Association Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring 1979): 19-27.
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Edward Buscombe. "C Cowboys." Sight and Sound 6, No. 8 (August 1996): 32-35.
Abstract from Ebsco Host: Focuses on cowboys in American motion pictures. Eight characteristics of cowboys; Historical development of cowboy films; Synopsis of cowboy films including `North of '96,' `Lonesome Cowboys,' `Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' and `Lonesome Dove.' |
Robert Doak. "Vagabondage in the Land of Nod: The Cain and Abel Myth in Western Fiction and Film." Studies in Popular Culture 24, No. 2 (October 2001): 17-28.
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True West
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Western Themes
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Death of the Western
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Movie Story Magazines
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Screen Franchising
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David H. Evans. "True West and Lying Marks: 'The Englishman's Boy,' 'Blood Meridian,' and the Paradox of the Revisionist Western." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 55, No. 4 (Winter 2013): 406-433.
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James K. Folsom. "'Western' Themes and Western Films." Western American Literature 2, No. 3 (Fall 1967): 195-203.
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William McClain. "Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the 'Death of the Western' in American Film Criticism." Journal of Film and Video 62, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 52-66.
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Adrienne L. McLean. "'New Films in Story Form': Movie Story Magazines and Spectatorship." Cinema Journal Vol. 42, No. 3 (Spring 2003): 3-26.
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Albert Moran. "Understanding Screen Franchising." Media International Australia Vol. 156, No. 1: 50-59.
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Early Disney Westerns
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Psychoanalysis
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Film Noir
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Classical Mythology
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Steampunk
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J. G. O'Boyle. "'Be Sure You're Right, Then Go Ahead': The Early Disney Westerns." Journal of Popular Film and Television Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer 1996): 69-81.
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Ben Parker. "The Western Film and Psychoanalysis." Film Quarterly (Winter 2014): 22-30.
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Edward Recchia. "Film Noir and the Western." The Centennial Review 40, No. 3 (Fall 1996): 601-614.
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Martin M. Winkler. "Classical Mythology and the Western Film." Comparative Literature Studies 22, No. 4 (Winter 1985): 516-540.
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Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, "Blending Genres, Bending Time: Steampunk on the Western Frontier," Journal of Popular Film and Television 39, No. 2 (2011): 84-92.
Abstract from Taylor & Francis Online: Western steampunk uses fantastic images of technology-out-of-time to create critical commentary on the notion of progress and the inherent tension between “civilization” and nature. As a hybrid subgenre it uses the steampunk aesthetic to introduce technology-as-spectacle—breathtaking, larger than life, focus rather than backdrop—and traffics in fetishism, making technology the stuff of fantasy and obsession. Through the steampunk Western, we see the working out of the tension between popular fascination and fear in relation to technology and the machine age—a commentary on the loss of the wildness, independence, and freedom of the frontier West. |