Genre and the geographies of violence: Cormac McCarthy and the contemporary western.

Really interesting paper from Susan Kollin



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If we take seriously Robinson's observations about the self-subversion of traditional Westerns, the ways even classic Westerns contain elements that overturn their dominant themes, then the generic distinctions defining Western texts as traditional or revisionist ultimately fail us, as the concept of a purely faithful or fully critical text loses its explanatory power.(FN2) If classic Westerns contain moments of resistance and self-reflection, carrying with them their own critique, to what extent might anti-Westerns preserve moments of desire, moments of connection and identification with elements of the classic Western? Perhaps the genre might better be understood as a continuum, its critique operating along a spectrum. On the one end may be found the classic Western, which upholds--with varying degrees of success--the codes and conventions of the form, its Anglo male protagonist, and the national project, but which contains resistant elements that undermine its cultural logic and status as a discrete, coherent entity. On the other end may be found the anti-Western, itself an unstable and shifting form that engages in a critical dialogue with the genre but that is also shaped by a certain desire for and attraction to the classic features of the Western. By understanding the Western as a genre structured by competing and contradictory impulses, audiences may make better sense of McCarthy's--and by extension McMurtry's--shifting treatment of the form.