Love in Western Film and Television : Lonely Hearts and Happy Trails

This collection of ground-breaking articles examines problems romance presents in the American Western. Looking a range of films, this book offers readers important and challenging insights into the complicated nature of love and the versatile frontier narrative that address key social, political, and ethical components of the Western genre. This collection of ground-breaking articles examines problems romance presents in the American Western. Looking at cinematic masterpieces and cult classics, this book offers readers important and challenging insights into the complicated (and often conflicted) nature of love and the versatile frontier narrative that address key social, political, and ethical components of the Western genre Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-5 Virgins, Widows, and Whores: The Bride Pool of the John Wayne Westerns....Pages 7-17 Only a Woman After All? Gender Dynamics in the Westerns of Barbara Stanwyck....Pages 19-33 Violence, Vixens, and Virgins: Noir-like Women in the Stewart/Mann Westerns....Pages 35-51 From Whore to Hero: Reassessing Jill in Once Upon a Time in the West ....Pages 53-69 “Wild” Women: Interracial Romance on the Western Frontier....Pages 71-89 Paladin Plays the Field: 1950s Television, Masculinity, and the New Episodic Sexualization of the Private Sphere....Pages 91-109 Reverse Transvestism and the Classic Hero: The Ballad of Little Jo and the Archetypal Western (Fe)male....Pages 111-124 The Melancholy Couple in Winchester ’73....Pages 125-139 Outlaws, Buddies, and Lovers: The Sexual Politics of Calamity Jane and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ....Pages 141-160 Horse Power: Equine Alliances in the Western....Pages 161-177 A French Unsettlement of the Frontier: Love and the Threatened American Dream in Heaven’s Gate (1980)....Pages 179-196 Midnight Cowboy: A Love Story....Pages 197-208 German Saddle Pals and the Absence of Love in the Karl May Westerns....Pages 209-224 “When you side with a man, you stay with him!”—philia and the Military Mind in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969)....Pages 225-237 Back Matter....Pages 239-248