What themes do you think the discourse includes or invokes, and how are they expressed in these films? Do you think the films reframe and disrupt American mythologies or reaffirm them? Or both?

Western Cinema Midterm

Using specific examples from the films and the readings, please describe and explain the ways the films variously present the west as a discourse or series of discourses in the framework of American history. What themes do you think the discourse includes or invokes, and how are they expressed in these films? Do you think the films reframe and disrupt American mythologies or reaffirm them? Or both? How did some of these films, as Neil Campbell describes Sergio Leone’s film, work “with and against genre memory?” Does historical truthfulness matter in these films or to our understanding of them? Does a sense of authenticity strengthen or weaken cultural and historical understanding? Why or why not?

Films: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence(1962), Stage Coach(1939), The Alamo(1960 and 2004 versions), Chato’s Land(1972), Melody Ranch(1940), True Grit(1969 and 2010 versions), Once Upon a Time in the West(1968), and Ballad of Buster Scruggs(2018)

Readings: The Significance of the Frontier in American History (Turner Thesis), The Rhizomatic West, and Forget the Alamo