| Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film Contributor(s): Mitchell, Lee Clark (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0226532356 ISBN-13: 9780226532356 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $32.67 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 1998 Annotation: Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell shows how Westerns helped assuage a series of crises in American culture. This landmark study shows that the Western owes its perennial appeal not to unchanging conventions but to the deftness with which it responds to the obsessions and fears of its audience. And no obsession, Lee Mitchell argues, has figured more prominently in the Western than what it means to be a man. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Social Science | Men's Studies |
| Dewey: 813.087 |
| Physical Information: 0.94" H x 6.09" W x 9.05" (1.25 lbs) 348 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Sex & Gender - Masculine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Ranging from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Louis L'Amour, and from classic films like Stagecoach to spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, Mitchell shows how Westerns helped assuage a series of crises in American culture. This landmark study shows that the Western owes its perennial appeal not to unchanging conventions but to the deftness with which it responds to the obsessions and fears of its audience. And no obsession, Lee Mitchell argues, has figured more prominently in the Western than what it means to be a man. Elegantly written. . . . provocative . . . characterized by Mitchell's] own tendency to shoot from the hip.--J. Hoberman, London Review of Books Mitchell's] book would be worth reading just for the way he relates Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child to the postwar Western.--The Observer Integrating a careful handling of historical context with a keen eye for textual nuances, Mitchell reconstructs the Western's aesthetic tradition of the 19th century.--Aaron M. Wehner, San Francisco Review |