The great raced and gendered outdoors: white male spatiality in Alexander Payne's Nebraska and David Lynch's The Straight Story

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study uses two U.S. films – Nebraska (2013) and The Straight Story (1999) – to examine the centrality and framing power of hegemonic white masculinity for common conceptions in the United States of the outdoors. While both white male filmmakers portray white men rendered vulnerable to outdoor extremes by advanced age, they also depict common white American male perspectives on geographical space, and on one's own supposedly appropriate role as a central actor in it, a phenomenon labelled ‘white male spatiality’. While Nebraska's central character remains ensnared in a damaging conception of land, himself and his relation to others, The Straight Story's protagonist demonstrates an approach to the outdoors that breaks free of self-serving appropriation, thereby promoting apprehension of others, land and the universe on something more like their own terms, as well as outdoor leisure practices that are more inclusive and reparative.