THE AMERICAN WESTS ISSUES…. FILM & HISTORY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF FILM AND TELEVISION www.filmandhistory.org Table of Contents (with abstracts) for next issue: 33.1 (2003). The American West(s), Part 1 Note: The forthcoming issue of Film & History will be the first of two issues devoted to the American West in Film. These papers are juried submissions culled from the fall, 2002 meeting of the Film and History League in Kansas City, Gateway to the West. Questions about Film & History? Check the web site www.filmandhistory.org Subscription forms are on the site and PAYPAL enthusiasts can subscribe electronically. Other questions to Editor-in-Chief, Peter C. Rollins [log in to unmask] ______________________________________ Genial Introduction by Peter C. Rollins Introduction to the Issue by Deborah Carmichael "_Cimarron_: The New Western History in 1931" J. E. Smyth, Yale University Although honored upon its release as a landmark of American historical cinema, _Cimarron_ (RKO, 1931) was dismissed by ensuing scholarship as a classical Hollywood frontier myth. A closer examination of the film's production history reveals both its complex historical structure and active engagement with contemporary Western historiography and criticism. The result of this analysis calls for a fundamental revision of much scholarly writing on classical Hollywood cinema, one which recognizes certain films' nuanced and deliberately constructed historiographic vision. "The 'Ache for Home' in Anthony Mann's _Devil's Doorway_ (1950)" Joanna Hearne, University of Arizona-Tucson _Devil's Doorway_ functions as a drama of re-integration and disintegration, in which a Native American Civil War veteran disrupts the balance of power in his home community. The film combines Western, film noir and "social problem" genres to narrate the destabilization of post-war civic identities and to condemn the U.S. reservation and treaty system. The conflicts faced by the cinematic Shoshones resonate with those of Native Americans after World War II, and tap the assimilationist stance of federal Indian policy in the Termination era. "Rewriting _High Noon_: Transformations of American Popular Culture During the Cold War." Matthew J. Costello, Saint Xavier University This paper explores how western films reveal the changing American popular political culture of the Cold War. Long seen as Cold War commentaries, westerns were the most popular film genre of the 1950s. _High Noon_ (1952) spawned a sub-genre of western commonly called the law-and-order film. Focusing on the role of women, youth, commerce, and the individual in the American community, this paper analyzes three of these films, _The Tin Star _(1957), _Warlock _(1959), and _Firecreek (1968)_ , to reveal a trajectory of growing unease with the consensus of the "vital center" so lauded in 1950s ideologies. "Dead Men Walking: Consumption and Agency in the Western" Loren Quiring, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh "Dead Men Walking" explains how Western male icons in films during the late Sixties and early Seventies embodied contemporary feminist critiques of consumerism, masculinity, and agency and yet simultaneously offered viewers a fantasy of male power free of the consumerist culture that--in works such as _Once Upon a Time in the West_, _Little Big Man_, and _Westworld_--erases the very identity of the masculine "agent" engendered to serve that culture. "American Identity In Westerns Since the Reagan Administration." Alexandra Keller, Smith College Through an examination of _Dances with Wolves_, _Walker_, and _Tombstone_, this essay charts the range of historical and historiographic stances taken by Westerns since their resurgence in the 1990s (after a near-total disappearance during the Reagan-Bush years). These stances range from conservative in liberal guise (Dances) to radical left (Walker), to a seemingly apolitical interest in simple (if accurate) entertainment (Tombstone). Under postmodern conditions, none of these categories is what it used to be. _______________________________ BOOK REVIEWS Robert J. Fyne, Ed. Kean University of New Jersey FILM REVIEWS. Robert Sickels, Ed. Whitman College, Walla Walla Washington ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html