Book Review: Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television since 1990, edited by Andrew Patrick Nelson

Abstract

Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television since 1990. Andrew Patrick Nelson, ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 200 pp. $75.00 hbk.A photo of Clint Eastwood adorns the cover of Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television Since 1990-as it should. Having starred in Westerns during the 1960s (A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; Good, the Bad and the Ugly; and Hang 'Em High), the 1970s (Two Mules for Sister Sara, Joe Kidd, High Plains Drifter, and Outlaw Josey Wales), the 1980s (Pale Rider), and the (Unforgiven), Eastwood is a master of the genre.More importantly, Eastwood and his most recent Western, Unforgiven, represent the central thesis of the collection of eleven essays by popular culture aficionados. film is, in fact, evidence of the the critique, and the remythification of the American Western, themes that lie at the heart of the study.An assistant professor of film history and critical studies at Montana State University, editor Andrew Patrick Nelson suggests,Indeed, if one overarching theme emerges from the essays collected herein, it is the degree to which the contemporary Western evidences a tension, or negotiation, between a revisionist impulse inherited from the 1960s and 1970s and broader classical conventions that continue to shape the genre.In a three-page foreword, Edward Buscombe, former head of publishing at the British Film Institute, highlights the thematic conflict at the center of the book and provides several insightful observations that merit further development. Describing Eastwood's Oscar-winning Unforgiven, Buscombe writes,The protagonist, William Munny, played by Eastwood himself, offers both a radical critique of the old-style Western hero, fully aware of the consequences of a lifetime's killing (It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have), and at the same time as Munny finds justification for one last bout of heroic slaughter.In short, the Western in American film and television is both a historical construct and a fictional repurposing, both a critique and a remythification, both what Buscombe describes as a part of the American past and a reflection on the present-day West and its function within the American imaginary.The foreword could and should be longer, allowing Buscombe to elaborate on his celebration of True (2010) for its fresh vision of women in the American Western, Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert (2007) for its dissection of the culture of celebrity, No Country for Men (2007) for its nihilistic vision, and Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) and Lone Star (1996) for their exploration of the symbiotic and increasingly complex relationship between the United States and its neighbor to the south.The American Western was for decades one of the most popular genres in film and television, losing its prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, it had ridden into the sunset on screens both big and small, according to the text on the back cover of Contemporary Westerns. However, from traditional Westerns to significant revisionist texts-some of which are unfortunately omitted from the collection-the Western has undergone regeneration and a limited renaissance.Contemporary Westerns encompasses films and television programs from 1990 to 2010-it was in press when Django Unchained (2012) and Lone Ranger (2013) were released or in production, respectively. Part 1: Old West, New Stories includes Dances with Wolves: Romantic Reconstruction, Historical Reality, or Both? (Michael T. Marsden); Revisionism 2.0? Unforgiven and the Hollywood Western of the 1990s (Andrew Patrick Nelson); Tomorrow the Green Grass: Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil (Adrian Danks); One Way or Other, There's Going to be Justice: Rethinking HBO, Deadwood, and the Westerns, 1984-2010 (Gareth James); Murder Ballad: Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Stephen Gaunson); and The Professional Western Revived: Southern Diaspora, Frontier Heteroglossia, and Audience Nostalgia in True Grit (Sue Matheson). …