Justified: Transitioning the Old TV Western Lawman into a New Television Protagonist

Autor: Karen Stewart
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Canadian Review of American Studies. 51:276-289
ISSN: 1710-114X
0007-7720
Popis: The western has long been a staple genre of American television. Starting in the late 1960s, however, the genre began falling out of favour as its stock content—the relatively simple moral exploration of right and wrong—shifted to detective shows and police procedurals. The “new television” trend, however, brought about a revival of the western. Central to this revival is the TV series Justified, which demonstrates that old western tropes and storylines can be made popular again if the tropes receive socially aware updates and moral questions about right and wrong are not presented with easy or obvious answers. This article provides a rhetorical analysis of the first season of Justified and identifies the specific strategies used to modernize the American western genre: (1) shifting from episodic to serial narrative structure; (2) presenting male characters struggling with identity roles within the context of contemporary identity/masculinity politics; (3) presenting female characters with more narrative complexity and agency; and (4) updating the setting to better engage cultural themes. It concludes by arguing that these strategies allowed the series to successfully revive the best elements of the old western and return the television western to a culturally relevant position.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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