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Dream West
Politics and Religion in Cowboy Movies
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Book Presentation:
While political liberals celebrated the end of “cowboy politics” with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, political conservatives in the Tea Party and other like-minded groups still vociferously support “cowboy” values such as small government, low taxes, free-market capitalism, and the right to bear arms. Yet, as Douglas Brode argues in this paradigm-shifting book, these supposedly cowboy or “Old West” values hail not so much from the actual American frontier of the nineteenth century as from Hollywood’s portrayal of it in the twentieth century. And a close reading of Western films and TV shows reveals a much more complex picture than the romanticized, simplistic vision espoused by the conservative right.
Examining dozens of Westerns, including Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Red River, 3:10 to Yuma (old and new), The Wild Ones, High Noon, My Darling Clementine, The Alamo, and No Country for Old Men, Brode demonstrates that the genre (with notable exceptions that he fully covers) was the product of Hollywood liberals who used it to project a progressive agenda on issues such as gun control, environmental protection, respect for non-Christian belief systems, and community cohesion versus rugged individualism. Challenging us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the genre, Brode argues that the Western stands for precisely the opposite of what most people today—whether they love it or hate it—believe to be the essential premise of “the only truly, authentically, and uniquely American narrative form.”
About the Author:
Douglas Brode is a novelist, graphic novelist, produced playwright, produced screenwriter, film historian, award-winning working journalist, and award-winning educator. He currently teaches at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Our Lady of the Lake University. His many books include Shooting Stars of the Small Screen: Encyclopedia of TV Western Actors, 1946–Present, From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture, and Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment.
Press Reviews:
Clearly Brode has made an important contribution to the literature on Western motion pictures. On nearly every page readers are confronted with new perspectives and ways of understanding how a film genre over one hundred years old addresses critical issues of American politics and religion.
— Western Historical Quarterly
See the publisher website: University of Texas Press
> From the same author:
Analyzing the Marvel Universe (2024)
Critical Essays on the Comics and Film Adaptations
Dir. Douglas Brode
Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents (2024)
The 100 Greatest Science-fiction Films
Subject: Genre > Science Fiction
Shooting Stars of the Small Screen (2009)
Encyclopedia of TV Western Actors 1946-present
Subject: On Films > Guides and dictionaries
Multiculturalism And The Mouse (2006)
Race And Sex In Disney Entertainment
Subject: Studio > Disney Studios
Shakespeare in the Movies (2000)
From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love
Subject: Technique > Adaptation
> On a related topic:
Hollywood Westerns and American Myth (2012)
The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy
Cowboy Politics (2017)
Myths and Discourses in Popular Westerns from The Virginian to Unforgiven and Deadwood
Unbridling the Western Film Auteur (2017)
Contemporary, Transnational and Intertextual Explorations
Dir. Emma Hamilton and Alistair Rolls
Myth of the Western (2014)
New Perspectives on Hollywood's Frontier Narrative
Hell-Bent for Leather (2025)
Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western
by Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush and Sara L. Spurgeon
Twisting in Air (2024)
The Sensational Rise of a Hollywood Falling Horse
French Westerns (2024)
On the Frontier of Film Genre and French Cinema
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