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Hang 'Em High
Law and Disorder in Western Films and Literature
by Bob Herzberg
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Book Presentation:
For more than a century the Western film has proven to be an enduring genre. At the dawn of the 20th century, in the same years that The Great Train Robbery begat a film genre, Owen Wister wrote The Virginian, which began a new literary genre. From the beginning, both literature and film would usually perpetuate the myth of the Old West as a place where justice always triumphed and all concerned (except the villains) pursued the Law. The facts, however, reflect abuses of due process: lynch mobs and hired gunslingers rather than lawmen regularly pursued lawbreakers; vengeance rather than justice was often employed; and even in courts of law justice didn’t always prevail. Some films and novels bucked this trend, however. This book discusses the many Western films as well as the novels they are based on, that illustrate distortions of the law in the Old West and the many ways, most of them marked by vengeance, in which its characters pursued justice.
About the Author:
Writer, actor and comedian Bob Herzberg is the author of scholarly books and Western novels. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Press Reviews:
• "Highly recommend[ed]"—True West
• "The author has a witty style, somewhat reminiscent of Mystery Science Theater, so his commentary is enjoyable…the book is fun to read"—The Journal for the Wild West History Association
See the publisher website: McFarland & Co
> From the same author:
Hollywood and the Military Bureaucracy (2021)
Depicting America's Fighting Forces at Their Best and Worst
by Bob Herzberg
The Left Side of the Screen (2011)
Communist and Left-Wing Ideology in Hollywood, 1929–2009
by Bob Herzberg
Subject: Countries > United States
The FBI and the Movies (2006)
A History of the Bureau on Screen and Behind the Scenes in Hollywood
by Bob Herzberg
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> On a related topic:
The Hero's Trail (2022)
Myth and Art in the American Western, 1903–1953
Myth of the Western (2014)
New Perspectives on Hollywood's Frontier Narrative
Hollywood's West (2008)
The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History
by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor
Our Country/Whose Country? (2024)
Early Westerns and Travel Films as Stories of Settler Colonialism
by Richard Abel
Subject: Countries > United States
Transnationalism and Imperialism (2022)
Endurance of the Global Western Film
Dir. Hervé Mayer and David Roche
Subject: Sociology
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