The film western as one of the most "classic" Hollywood genres is often said to epitomically represent the American Myth, centred around what Frederick Jackson Turner had identified as the experience of the frontier. But these all-too-typical stories, with their valiant cowboys, daredevil gunfighters, ladies in distress, vengeful Indians and Mexican bandits, also lent themselves to various decentrings and revisions as the genre was successfully transformed in other parts of the world. It is therefore inviting to rewrite the history of the western from the margins and understand the western as a trans- and international genre in a world cinema framework.
This course will depart from giving an overview of the golden era of the classic Hollywood western, and then trace its transformations across the globe. While considering various (feminist, postmodern, queer) revisions, a special focal point will be on postcolonial rewritings of the genre, which will specifically take into account films from the Global South (for example, India and Latin America).
- Kursleiter:in: Harald Pittel