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Our Country/Whose Country?
Early Westerns and Travel Films as Stories of Settler Colonialism
by Richard Abel
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Book Presentation:
• Examines colonialism through the lens of little-known early westerns and travel pictures
• Utilizes extensive research from film prints, trade press, and newspapers
• Richly illustrated with screen stills from early Westerns and travel pictures
The concept of settler colonialism offers an invaluable lens to reframe early westerns and travel pictures as re-enactments of the United States' repressed past. Westerns in particular propose a remarkable vision of white settlers' westward expansion that reveals a transformation in what "American Progress" came to mean.
Initially, these films tracked settlers moving westward across the Appalachians, Great Plains, and Rockies. Their seizure of "empty land" provoked continual resistance from Indigenous peoples and Mexicans; "pioneers" suffered extreme hardships, but heroic male figures usually scattered or wiped out those "aliens." Some films indulged in nostalgic empathy for the Indian as a "Vanishing American." In the early 1910s, westerns became increasingly popular. In Indian pictures, Native Americans ranged from devious savages, victims of white violence, and "Noble Savages" to "in-between" figures caught between cultures and "mixed-descent peoples" partnered for security or advantage. Mexicans took positions across a similar spectrum. In cowboy and cowgirl films, "ordinary" whites became heroes and heroines fighting outlaws; and bandits like Broncho Billy underwent transformation into "good badmen."
The mid to late 1910s saw a shift, as Indian pictures and cowgirl films faded and male figures, embodied by movie stars, dominated popular series. In different ways, William S. Hart and Harry Carey reinvented the "good badman" as a stoic, if troubled, figure of white masculinity. In cowboy films of comic romance, Tom Mix engaged in dangerous stunts and donned costumes that made him a fashionable icon. In parodies, Douglas Fairbanks subverted the myth of "American Progress," sporting a nonchalant grin of effortless self-confidence. Nearly all of their films assumed firmly settled white communities, rarely threatened by Indians or Mexicans. Masked as "Manifest Destiny," the expropriation of the West seemed settled once and for all.
Our Country/Whose Country? offers a rich and expansive examination of the significance of early westerns and travel pictures in the ideological foundations of "our country."
About the Author:
Richard Abel, Emeritus Professor of International Cinema and Media, University of Michigan Richard Abel is Emeritus Professor of International Cinema and Media at the University of Michigan. The most recent of his dozen books is Movie Mavens: US Newspaper Women Take on the Movies, 1914-1923 (2021). His essays have appeared in scores of journals and been translated into five languages. He received the 2014 SCMS Distinguished Career Achievement Award and the 2017 Jean Mitry Award.
Press Reviews:
""Settler colonialism is the elephant in the room of American film history. In this meticulously researched book, Richard Abel breathes new life into many cowboy and cowgirl films, 'Indian pictures,' and travel films that no longer exist. Most importantly, Abel rereads these films as settler colonial texts whose white supremacy, both overt and repressed, was naturalized by generic narratives, stars, and imagery that justified the actually occurring violence of Indigenous erasure to film audiences worldwide."" - Jennifer Lynn Peterson, author of Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> From the same author:
Movie Mavens (2021)
US Newspaper Women Take on the Movies, 1914-1923
Dir. Richard Abel
Subject: On Films > Movie magazines
Menus for Movieland (2015)
Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture 1913-1916
by Richard Abel
Subject: Silent Cinema
Early Cinema and the National (2008)
Dir. Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King
Subject: Silent Cinema
Americanizing the Movies and Movie-Mad Audiences (2006)
1910-1914
by Richard Abel
Subject: Silent Cinema
French Film Theory and Criticism 1907-1939 (1988)
vol.1: 1907-1929 - vol. 2: 1929-1939
by Richard Abel
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