True Grit Research Articles

Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television since 1990AndrewPatrick Nelson, Editor. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013.

Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television since 1990 Andrew Patrick Nelson, Editor. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013.It has been nearly a quarter century since Dances with Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992) renewed Hollywood's interest in the Western. The genre's current revival has, in fact, now lasted longer than its prematurely reported death in the 1970s and 1980s. Contemporary Hollywood Westerns sets out to map the contours of the ongoing Western revival but ultimately fails to capture either the conceptual breadth or the thematic depth that has sustained it.Eight of the book's eleven essays focus on a single film or television series, two deal with paired films, and one with two films and a television series. The essays' narrow focus and limited numbers mean that, even within its narrow chronological range (1990- 2010), the book omits more than it covers. Dances with Wolves (1990), No Country for Old Men (2007), and True Grit (2010) get full essays, but Tombstone (1993), Lone Star (1996), and 3:10 to Yuma (2007) receive a sentence or less. Neo-traditionalist telefilms like Conagher (1991) and Appaloosa (2008); high-concept, stardriven Westerns like Maverick (1994) and Shanghai Noon (2000); and mainstream television series like The Young Riders (1989-1992) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998) are absent, save for brief mentions in the introduction. Shaping any book requires choices, but no guiding concept seems to lie behind the choices that shaped Contemporary Westerns. It offers neither a comprehensive survey of the post-1990 Western, nor a framing of the era's canonical classics, nor a championing of hitherto-neglected works. Only chronology and genre link the articles.The lack of cohesion is exacerbated by the contributors' collective unwillingness to relate their films to other Westerns, whether pre- or post-1990. William C. Siska's essay on There Will be Blood and No Country for Old Men (both 2007) is a particular case in point. Its central theme-the rupture of traditional Western values by modern capitalism-cries out for genre context. Josh Brolin's cocky antihero Llewellyn Moss exists in dialogue with Warren Beatty's doomed frontier entrepreneur from McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and Daniel Day-Lewis's ruthless oilman Daniel Plainview stands in the shadow not only of Michael Corleone and Gordon Gekko (as Siska notes), but also cattle baron Thomas Dunson in Red River (1948). Those resonances go unacknowledged, however, as does the Western's view of frontier capitalism as both blessing and curse. …

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in True Grit : The Lovelorn Character of Mattie Ross

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in True Grit : The Lovelorn Character of Mattie Ross

“Why Do You Think I am Paying You if Not to Have My Way?” Genre Complications in the Free-Market Critiques of Fictional and Filmed Versions ofTrue Grit

The Journal of Popular CultureVolume 48, Issue 2 p. 355-370 Article “Why Do You Think I am Paying You if Not to Have My Way?” Genre Complications in the Free-Market Critiques of Fictional and Filmed Versions of True Grit Ralph Lamar Turner, Ralph Lamar TurnerSearch for more papers by this author Ralph Lamar Turner, Ralph Lamar TurnerSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 April 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12262Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume48, Issue2April 2015Pages 355-370 RelatedInformation

Dismantling the Western: Film Noir's Defiance of Genre in No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men (2005), like Ethan Coen and Joel Coen's film adaptation (2007), poses two genres against one another, drawing on film noir techniques to defy what their Western materials seem to solicit. Fleeting gestures at wide-open landscape offer a teasing prospect soon abandoned; plush narrative embellishments and wide-angle shots (characteristic of the Western) are forsaken for clipped dialogue, spare descriptions, and intense close-ups, locking characters within themselves (characteristic of noir); and to intensify that effect, the film plays with an unusual series of overhead shots that immure figures in an unbreachable present that matches McCarthy's narrative configurations. As much as both the novelistic and the cinematic versions of No Country for Old Men initially might begin by encouraging a conventional Western reading, we soon find expectations sorely rebuffed. A tradition that had led to cumulative revisions of the classic Western now perversely has come to rest on sheer accident and senseless violence. The triumph of the Coens' adaptation lies in their having grasped how fully McCarthy's novel subverts Western conventions and in revealing via film noir techniques how much our desire for generic platitudes is at once misdirected and unavailing. While the Western refuses to remain dead, as the Coens' own version of True Grit (2010) reminds us, their earlier version of No Country confirms McCarthy's brilliant exposure of the skeletal twitchings in such traditional throwbacks.

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

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). …

True grit: New York achieves full practice authority.

True grit: New York achieves full practice authority.

Bridging community and prison for older adults: invoking human rights and elder and intergenerational family justice.

Older adults in prison present a significant health and human rights challenge for the criminal justice system. To date, there is no known study that provides a comprehensive examination or portrait of older persons in prison. The purpose of this paper is to understand individual, family, system, and community vulnerabilities that can complicate successful community reintegration for these individuals. This study provides a cross-sectional, descriptive analysis of biopsychosocial, spiritual, and prison use characteristics associated with a sample of 677 older prisoners, aged 50+, in a state-wide prison system. Results indicate the extent of diversity within this population based on demographic, clinical, social, legal profiles, prison service use patterns, and professional and personal contacts. Due to the diversity within this population, an interdisciplinary approach is needed to address the complex social and health care needs of an aging prison population and to plan for their reentry. Practical implications - These findings suggest the need for holistic prevention, assessment, and interventions to interrupt the social-structural disparities that foster and support pathways to incarceration and recidivism. The human rights implications for the current treatment of older adults in prison include providing in-prison treatment that promotes safety, well-being, reconciliation, and seamless bridges between prison and community for older adults and their families. The True Grit Program is presented as an example of a humanistic and holistic approach of such an approach.

The Catabasis of Mattie Ross in the Coens’ True Grit

This paper argues that the Coen Brothers’ 2010 version of True Grit makes innovations to the original novel by Charles Portis that evoke the Greek myth of the descent to the underworld, or catabasis . Mattie Ross, a fourteen-year-old girl on mission to find her father’s murderer, embarks on a quest that ends with her falling into a snake pit after she kills the culprit. The experience can be likened to a heroic quest, especially in the context of coming-of-age myth and ritual. I submit that this mytheme is combined with echoes of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, a very particular version of the catabatic mythology that is frequently associated with girls’ puberty and marriage.

True Grit: Trait-Level Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals Predicts Effectiveness and Retention among Novice Teachers

Background/Context Surprisingly little progress has been made in linking teacher effectiveness and retention to factors observable at the time of hire. The rigors of teaching, particularly in low-income school districts, suggest the importance of personal qualities that have so far been difficult to measure objectively. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this study, we examine the predictive validity of personal qualities not typically collected by school districts during the hiring process. Specifically, we use a psychological framework to explore how biographical data on grit, a disposition toward perseverance and passion for long-term goals, explains variance in novice teachers’ effectiveness and retention. Research Design In two prospective, longitudinal samples of novice teachers assigned to schools in low-income districts (N = 154 and N = 307, respectively), raters blind to outcomes followed a 7-point rubric to rate grit from information on college activities and work experience extracted from teachers’ résumés. We used independent-samples, t-tests, and binary logistic regression models to predict teacher effectiveness and retention from these grit ratings as well as from other information (e.g., SAT scores, college GPA, and interview ratings of leadership potential) available at the time of hire. Conclusions/Recommendations Grittier teachers outperformed their less gritty colleagues and were less likely to leave their classrooms midyear. Notably, no other variables in our analysis predicted either effectiveness or retention. These findings contribute to a better understanding of what leads some novice teachers to outperform others and remain committed to the profession. In addition to informing policy decisions surrounding teacher recruitment and development, this investigation highlights the potential of a psychological framework to explain why some individuals are more successful than others in meeting the rigorous demands of teaching.

True Grit: Programmed Necrosis in Antiviral Host Defense, Inflammation, and Immunogenicity

Programmed necrosis mediated by receptor interacting protein kinase (RIP)3 (also called RIPK3) has emerged as an alternate death pathway triggered by TNF family death receptors, pathogen sensors, IFNRs, Ag-specific TCR activation, and genotoxic stress. Necrosis leads to cell leakage and acts as a "trap door," eliminating cells that cannot die by apoptosis because of the elaboration of pathogen-encoded caspase inhibitors. Necrotic signaling requires RIP3 binding to one of three partners-RIP1, DAI, or TRIF-via a common RIP homotypic interaction motif. Once activated, RIP3 kinase targets the pseudokinase mixed lineage kinase domain-like to drive cell lysis. Although necrotic and apoptotic death can enhance T cell cross-priming during infection, mice that lack these extrinsic programmed cell death pathways are able to produce Ag-specific T cells and control viral infection. The entwined relationship of apoptosis and necrosis evolved in response to pathogen-encoded suppressors to support host defense and contribute to inflammation.

True grit: effective removal through management

Grit causes abrasive wear in mechanical equipment such as pumps and dewatering screws, and components like bearings, chain links and seals. Reduced performance or even failure may lead to expensive shutdowns and early equipment replacement. Marcia Sherony, national sales manager for Hydro International's US Wastewater Division, explains how science is advancing our understanding of a gritty problem.

Higher education: On the lookout for true grit

With the right mix of persistence and support structures, scholars from minority groups can thrive as they pursue their PhDs.

The Law and Order Theme in Political and Popular Culture

Law and Order became a political rallying cry in the 1960s, as conservative candidates like Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon criticized courts for putting the constitutional rights of criminals ahead of the need for effective police work and public safety. As the nation’s president after his victory in the 1968 presidential race, Nixon continued to emphasize the law and order theme. Meanwhile, a series of Westerns and cop movies, such as John Wayne’s True Grit and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, began to echo Nixon’s claims about criminals, courts, and law. Concerns about crime and the impotency of the legal system soon produced a set of remarkably popular movies about vigilante justice, including Walking Tall and Death Wish. Even when law and order faded as a national political issue, Hollywood continued to dwell on the idea that courts are too lax, turning the idea that criminals routinely escape justice because of legal technicalities into one of television’s and movies’ most familiar cliches. Crime rates have been plummeting for two decades now, and a series of re-makes of significant films from the Nixon era suggests that law and order’s grip on popular entertainment and the public imagination may finally be breaking.

Abraham Lincoln, Management Guru! Lessons for Library Leadership on Resilience, True Grit, and Bouncing Forward

This has been a big year for Abraham Lincoln. Museums, libraries, and re-enactors all over the nation continued to celebrate the Civil War sesquicentennial. Stephen Spielberg made a movie simply entitled Lincoln, Daniel Day Lewis won the Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Lincoln in that movie, and a recent article by Nancy Koehn in the New York Times entitled “Lincoln’s School of Management,” discussed his leadership qualities and drew a Twitter of comments hailing Lincoln as a prototype management guru. 1 As Koehn’s article points out, many CEOs and Presidents have drawn inspiration from President Lincoln. But what are the lessons we lesser mortals might gain from studying him? Very few of us are destined to be challenged by the larger issues of the country as Lincoln was – slavery, property rights, homesteading, and of course, the Civil War. Koehn’s article and other Lincoln-inspired writings offer a slew of reasons why Lincoln’s life and work offer meaningful lessons for today’s leaders and managers. Take a look at Spielberg’s Lincoln for instance – a movie tells a story. It is not offered to the public as a factual record of events. Artistic license is a given. And yet, some of the most stirring parts of the movie come from hearing Lincoln’s own words – his speeches, diaries, letters (and those of others), ably documented by Doris Kearns Goodwin and other prominent historians. It makes us long – not for a demagogue (we have seen and continue to see, plenty of those) – but a true leader who passionately articulates her

Veterans aging in place behind bars: a structured living program that works.

Although the absolute proportion of veterans compared with nonveterans in state and federal prison continues to decline, the number of older adult veterans who are imprisoned is rising. A multifaceted structured living program for geriatric prisoners in Nevada provides for the psychological, physical, and spiritual needs of aging incarcerated veterans. We hypothesized that the older adult veterans group would show more evidence of psychological and physical dysfunction, poor adjustment, and more life dissatisfaction than nonveterans because of high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression among this subgroup. Our second hypothesis was that both the veteran and nonveteran older adult prisoner groups would report that they benefited from the True Grit treatment program. Finally, because substantial components of True Grit program were designed to treat combat-related issues, we hypothesized that the older adult veteran group would be more satisfied with the True Grit program than the nonveteran group. Evaluation results from 111 inmates indicated high life satisfaction and daily physical functioning, low psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and somatization), moderate prison context stress, and extremely high satisfaction with this program. The True Grit program provides a supportive environment fostering more adaptive coping, thereby ameliorating a certain amount of prison stress, while promoting a healthier aging in place experience for the elder inmates.

Unseating the Myth of a Girl and Her Horse, Now That’s True Grit

Like many other experiences that have the potentiality of empowerment for girls, the physical, intellectual, and emotional strength required in working with horses gets reduced to a facile anthropomorphized Disneyesque romance. In reality, it is a nuanced negotiation of muscle and sway. As a girl, Westerns offered me an empowering image of women and horses. This article seeks to track the complexity of some of those connections.

Bravura Indômita: entre a fábula e a trama

In this research, it is analyzed the novel True Grit , written by Charles Portis and published in 1968, and its film adaptations, made in 1969 and 2010. It is started from the fabula and trama concepts – also known as fabula and enredo, narracao and mostracao, estoria and discurso – that indicate several narratives can be created from an only one. It is used the studies developed by Seymour Chatman, Umberto Eco, Helio Guimaraes, Linda Hutcheon, Linda Seger, Ismail Xavier, Andre Gaudreault and Francois Jost to understand how these concepts work in the literature and cinema relationship. For reflection about the two films, it is resorted to the reviews published by Isabela Boscov, Yuri Celico, Thiago M. Correia, Marcelo Hessel, Andre Sollito and Rubens Ewald Filho. It is perceived the adaptation is a process of textual reconstruction in which the individual inserts his/ her personal and social experiences. So, the two film versions of True Grit are characterized as interpretations of different readers – in this case, the filmmakers Henry Hathaway and Joel and Ethan Coen.

True Grit: Gheorghiu-Dej and Romanian Exceptionalism in 1956

Soon after Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev exposed Joseph Stalin’s crimes in February 1956, several Stalinist dictators in Eastern Europe similar in outlook to Romanian general secretary Gheorghiu-Dej were discredited and toppled by rivals: Hungary (Mátyás Rákosi), Poland (Edward Ochab), and Bulgaria (Vulko Velev Chervenkov), as were Stalinist leaders in western communist parties, such as in Greece (Nikolaos Zachariadis). Gheorghiu-Dej, however, managed to keep his post until his death from lung cancer in 1965. Romania, the only country other than Albania to maintain a tight clamp over its citizens, also became the only Warsaw Pact country from which both Soviet troops (1958) and KGB advisors (1964) were actually withdrawn during the Cold War. This article will show that that Gheorghiu-Dej, too, faced a threat to his power in 1956. Two Politburo members, Miron Constantinescu and losif Chif inevschi, had risked criticizing the Romanian leader, to some extent at the March Plenum, but mostly at the Politburo meetings of 3, 4, 6 and 12 April 1956. Drawing on the minutes of these meetings, never before published in English translation, as well as other Romanian archival documents and recent scholarship, this article will argue that the factional challenge of Dej failed primarily because offour factors that both discredited the oppositionists and mobilized the Bucharest leaders - especially the disgraced politicians - to act in concert to contain the spread of the Hungarian revolution into Romania. These are: the oppositionists ' lack of support from Moscow; the lack of living martyrs and recognition of mutual guilt for spreading the personality cult; collective memories of their underground days with the concomitant fear offactionalism; and aversion to "petty bourgeois intellectualism. "

The Neuroscience of True Grit

The Neuroscience of True Grit

True grit (or the ice factor)

True grit (or the ice factor)