The Western and Political Thought: A Fistful of Politics

Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: “Thus in the Beginning All the World Was America”
Notes
Foundings, Law, Lawlessness, and John Ford
Virtue, Freedom, and Political Rule in David Milch’s Deadwood
The Low and the High in Deadwood
Heroism and Rule
Tragic Heroism, the Sacred, and the Common Good
Virtue, Freedom, and Political Rule
Conclusion
Notes
Print the Legend: Virtue, Violence, and the Social Contract in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Hang ‘Em High
Introduction: Contending for Virtue and Civilization on the Frontier
The Revisionist Western: Contention and Confusion
Print the Legend: The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance
Two Societies Embodied by Two Men
Caught Between Nature and Civilization
Eating, Schooling, Voting, Killing
Hang ‘Em High: Whose Justice?
The Social Contract: Praying for Someone Between Me and God Almighty
Notes
John Ford’s Legendary Western Ambiguity and White Settler Colonialism
White Western Mythology
Forget Owen Thursday
Beware Nathan Brittles
Notes
“This Is Our Town”: Political Community in High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Notes
The Western as Mirror and Teacher
Simmering Madness: Mob Justice and The Ox-Bow Incident
The Ox-Bow Incident (1940)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Notes
The Loner on the “Frontier of Unfilled Hopes and Threats”: Serling’s Old West in Kennedy’s New Frontier
Aftermath of the Bloodletting
Rootless, Restless, Searching Men
A New Chapter and a New Frontier
Notes
No Man’s Land: Film Cycles, Femininity, and Female Empowerment in the Western
Introduction
The Film Cycle
The 1950s Women’s Western Cycle
The 2010 Women’s Western Cycle
The Working Women as Business Owner
The Professions
Conclusion
Notes
Horse Operas Talk Back: History, Memory, and the Black Cowboy Performing
Introduction
Part 1: Porous Time and Power in Reed’s Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
Part 2: ‘Put My Grief Onstage’ Performance as Archived Embodied Memory
Conclusion
Notes
Aristophanes in Spurs: Blazing Saddles, Attic Comedy, HBO, and the Politics of Democratic Laughter
Attic Comedy (On the Fart as Democratic Discourse)
Comedy and Democracy (Ancient and Modern)
Blazing Parallels
The Western in Black and White
Notes
The Adaptable, International West
Towards Assimilationist Politics on the Filmic Frontier: Mid-Twentieth Century Westerns in Australia
Introduction
Charles Chauvel
Uncivilised
The Assimilationist Myth
Bitter Springs
Conclusion
Notes
Ideological Uses of the Western in Film Depictions of Post-war Polish Borderlands
A Reluctant Hero: The Law and the Fist
Erasure of History: Wolves’ Echoes
Illusions of Sovereignty: Meridian Zero
Conclusion
Notes
Filmography
Magnificent Strangers: Visions, Vibrations, and Violence in a Fistful of Dollars
Opening Shots: Sovereignty and State Violence
Democratic Orientations
Shot for Shot
Conclusion
Notes
Index