"Transnational Post-Westerns: Global Impact of a Regional Myth" (SODERCAN/FEDER, 13.JU21.64661) (2018- 2019)
This project
deals with the analysis of a contemporary subgenre that combines two categories
that are helping us reconceptualize the traditional view about film genres. The
first category, transnational cinema, intimately related to the phenomenon of
globalization, is already well established in academic jargon to make up for
the inadequacies of the concept of national cinemas. The second, the Post-Western,
is used to refer to films revising both the Western genre and the spatial and
ideological implications of the West of the USA in this genre.
The main
objective of this project is then to review these two concepts in order to
propose a new line of research, and to propose and analyze a new generic
category combining both: Transnational Post-Westerns. Based on Neil Campbell's
definition of Post-Westerns as films produced after World War II, "coming
after and going beyond the traditional Western while engaging with and commenting
on its deeply haunting assumptions and values" (Post-Westerns, 131), this project intends to analyze films made
outside the United States which make references to the Western genre and which
establish a dialogue with the original genre in order to achieve two goals.
First, to analyze and question the values and tenets of the original genre from
the point of view or race, politics and gender. And, secondly, to investigate
the identity and national conflicts of the country in which these films are
produced and set. In a preliminary analysis, several examples have already been
studied in Spain and Ireland (in two articles published as Transnational
Post-Westerns in Irish Cinema in The
Journal of Transnational American Studies, and "A genre auteur ?:
Enrique Urbizu's Post-Western films" in Hispanic Research Journal). A corpus of films has been located in
countries such as France, Mexico, Italy, Russia and Turkey, and the objective
will be to analyze these films to define the characteristics of the subgenre.
Along with
this main objective, four secondary objectives have been set to help us
understand better the features of Post-Westerns and the transnational
phenomenon. The first secondary objective is to inquire about the existence of
the Post-Western category in other popular genres such as television,
contrasting "NeoWesterns" (like Deadwood) with specifically
Post-Western products (which make references to the genre but propose a
radically different discourse, away from the time and space of classical
Westerns) like Justified or Westworld. The second goal is to study
the predecessors of the Western genre from a transnational point of view
(Transnational PreWesterns), that is to say, to investigate the relation of the
myth of the West with the foundational myths of European countries and the structures
and characters of Westerns with classic literary archetypes. Thirdly, we intend
to study the importance of translation in the "transnationalization"
of Westerns and, finally, to consider the West of the USA as a "transnational
space" in which, far from the stereotypes of the Western genre, new
identities are developed. The research team of this project is made up of
researchers of the Department of Philology of the University of Cantabria with
specific training in these fields.
NEW WESTS: EL OESTE AMERICANO EN LA LITERATURA, EL CINE Y LA CULTURA DEL SIGLO XXI: UN
ENFOQUE TRANSNACIONAL Y TRANSDISCIPLINAR, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, PGC2018-094659-B-C21
(IP: Amaia Ibarraran Vigalondo)
