Placing man in the New West: Masculinities of The Last Picture Show |
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| Authors: | Grayson Holmes Leo Zonn Altha J Cravey |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27599-3220, U.S.A.;(2) Department of Geography, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712-1098, U.S.A. |
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| Abstract: | The Last Picture Show does not fall within the genre of the Western, yet the cinematic narrative mourns the loss of the iconic Westerner — a man
— and the passing of his home places that constitute the Old West. This paper is concerned with the ways in which this man
and his places are transformed along with the embryonic but inexorable emergence of the New West — and its attendant demand
for recognition of hitherto unheard voices (e.g., women, Latinos) — that accompanied significant social, cultural and political
shifts that were beginning to emerge within the country as a whole in the represented early 1950s. His represented sites of
contestation are found within the frame of the small west Texas town of Anarene, created by Larry McMurtry's novel of the
same name as the film, both of which reflect contexts of the era in which they were constructed — the mid 1960s to early 1970s.
We suggest that the film shows a great sensitivity to the ways in which particular masculinities are constituted in specific
places, to the tensions that arise from the changing nature and definitions of masculinity as they are linked to these places,
and with his sense of nostalgia and loss that accompanies his inevitable decline. But there is no clear and empowered place
for women in these new places, only a recontextualized form of a patriarchal order which is not relational and which still
maintains essentialist assumptions of gender. The Old West has taken new shape, much to the chagrin of man, but it is hardly
a New West, with its emerging and representative voices.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
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| Keywords: | cinematic geographies gender masculinities places of contestation Old West-New West |
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