'A whole new world that is nothing but frontier...': Richard Langley in the narration to his excellent short film, embedded above, American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters
The inspiration for today's Film Studies For Free entry -- on the (transnational) myth of the frontier in cinema and related culture -- was Richard Langley's excellent, highly persuasive, short documentary embedded above. That video also has a vivid, post hoc connection to this blog's popular list of "Links of Doom and Disaster! Apocalyptic Film and Moving Image Studies" posted but a few short weeks ago.This film concerns recent apocalyptic Hollywood blockbusters, which have utilised notions of the ‘frontier’ to develop ideas of American hegemony in the uni-polar era, even as they postulate a universal erasure of national boundaries. Largely, the non-human agents of apocalypse in such films are responsible for erasing boundaries, but in so doing they simultaneously establish the conditions of American renewal. Indeed, the frontier must be continually renewed; it is drawn in order to be effaced, redrawn and effaced again.
However, at the moment of effacement, when the boundaries between nations are broken down and a sense of universality seems triumphant, the dawning of a new world re-inscribes the frontier - the new world that is constructed is still American led; the mooted universality is both particular and parochial. Such films, which appear to posit un-American (or at least post-national) frontiers, actually achieve the inverse; the universal equality offered by apocalypse offers an American un-frontier, a site seemingly without boundaries, but which is simultaneously nothing but frontier, a re-dramatisation of America’s founding mythology.
Like cinematic apocalypses, filmic frontier mythology turned out to be an incredibly rich vein of web scholarship. So, many thanks to Richard and all the below named scholars for making sure their very valuable work was openly accessible online.
Open Access is, after all, the real 'final [e-]frontier'.
And hopefully it won't turn out to be a myth...
- Catherine Lynn Adams, 'Africanizing the Territory: The History, Memory and Contemporary Imagination of Black Frontier Settlements in the Oklahoma Territory', PhD Thesis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2010
- Tyler Lorey Adams, 'The Geography of Frontier', Reconstruction, 7.3, 2007
- Jon Baldwin, 'Other Bother: The Alien in Science Fiction Cinema; Sardar and Cubitt's Aliens R Us' , Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 20, August 2003
- Ann Barrow, 'The Cutting Garden: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis and ReceptionTheories of Audiences or Fans', Cultural Studies Conference Proceedings, 2004
- Deborah Bird Rose and Richard Davis (eds), Dislocating the Frontier: essaying the mystique of the outback (ANU E-Press, 2006)
- Maria Beatrice Bittarello, 'Another Time, Another Space: Virtual Worlds, Myths and Imagination', Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Vol. 1. No. 1, July 2008
- Henrik Bødker, 'The Mercy Seat as Inescapable Heat - The Proposition and Ideas of Justice in the Australian Outback', P.O.V. No.24 - The Western, December 2007
- Barbara Buchenau, 'Comparativist Interpretations of the Frontier in Early American Fiction and Literary Historiography', CLCWeb Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2001
- Angus Cameron, 'The Metaverse Frontier', PSA 2008
- Cynthia-Lou Coleman, 'Framing Cinematic Indians within the Social Construction of Place', American Studies, 46:3/4 (Fall-Winter 2005): 275-293 Indigenous Studies Today, 1 (Fall 2005/Spring 2006)
- Felicity Collins, 'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 276–286
- Chris Cowan, 'Reflections on The Blair Witch Project', 49th Parallel, Issue 11, Autumn 2003
- Melissa Daniels, '"History Is a Funny Thing": African Americans in the West, American Studies, and the Screen', Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Fall 2010, Volume 9, Issue 2, Fall 2010
- Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki, 'Memory and Myth at the Buffalo Bill Museum', Western Journal of Communication Vol. 69, No. 2, April 2005, pp. 85–108
- Klaus Dodds, 'Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror', Third World Quarterly 2008
- Dan Edwards, 'Australian Western: Fear on the frontier [on The Proposition]', RealTime Arts Magazine, 70, December-January 2005
- Thomas Elsaesser, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
- Thomas S. Engeman, 'Why The American "Frontier" Will Always Be Populated By Democratic, Christian Knights', The Claremont Institute, September 2002
- Theo Finigan, '"To the Stables, Robin!": Regenerating the Frontier in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns', Image Text, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2010
- Austin Fisher, 'A Marxist's Gotta Do What a Marxist's Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier', Scope, 'Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation' e-book, 2009
- Austin Fisher, 'Out West, down south: Gazing at America in reverse shot through Damiano Damiani’s "Quien sabe?"', The Italianist, 30:2, 2010
- Peter Flynn, 'The Silent Western as Mythmaker', Images Journal, Issue 6, February 2004
- Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos,' Reviewing Remakes: An Introduction', in Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (SUNY, 2001)
- Martin Fradley, '“Why Doesn’t Your Compass Work?”: Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantasy Blockbusters and Contemporary Queer Theory', originally published in Karen Ross (ed.), "The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media" (Blackwell, 2011), pp.294-312
- Martin Fradley, '[Review of] Gary Needham, "Brokeback Mountain" (Edinburgh University Press, 2010)', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 19:2 (Fall 2010), pp.143-146
- Christiane Gerblinger, ‘"Fiery the Angels Fell": America, Regeneration and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner', Australasian Journal of American Studies, 21.1, July 2002
- Barry Keith Grant, 'Genre Films and Cultural Myth', Film International, April 20, 2011
- Barry Keith Grant, 'Introduction: Spokes in the Wheels', John Ford's Stagecoach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
- Michael Grimshaw, 'Preacher, or the Death of God in Pictures', JCRT 3.2
- David Gunkel and Ann Hetzel Gunkel, 'Terra Nova 2.0—The New Worlds of MMORPGs', Critical Studies in Media Communication 26(2), June 2009, pp. 104-127
- Alia Haddad, 'An American Take on Mythic Mexico and its Revolution in The Wild Bunch', Volume VII, Number 2, Fall 2011
- Rowena Harper, 'Frontier Mythology in the American Teen Film', PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide December 2008
- Christina Judith Hein, 'Battleground Masculinity: Gendertroublers and Gatekeepers in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986)', COPAS, Issue 8, 2007
- David Ingram, ‘"Go to the forest and move": 1960s American Rock Music as Electronic Pastoral', 49th Parallel, Vol. 20, Winter 2006-2007
- Nicholas Jelley, The Potential for Rewriting Myth: Finding 'Kindness' on the Frontier, MA Thesis, University of Florida, 2005
- Kathleen Kennedy, 'Bodily Pain and Nation Making: Catholics and Indians in the Protestant Historical Imagination', Queen: A Journal of Rhetoric and Power, September 2003
- Geoff King, 'Spectacular Narratives: Twister, Independence Day, and frontier mythology in contemporary Hollywood', originally published in SPECTACULAR NARRATIVESHollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London: IB Tauris, 2000)
- Katherine Kinney, 'Cold Wars: Black Soldiers in Liberal Hollywood', WLA Spring/Summer 2000
- Stephen Koetzing, 'The Trespassing Cyborg: Technology, Nature, and the Nation in Wild Wild West', AS Peers 4, 2011
- Marie Claire Kolbenschlag, 'Film and the American experience', from Jump Cut, no. 6, 1975, pp. 16-21
- Sam Kula, 'National Image, National Dream', Cinema Canada, February 1976
- Emma Lambert, '[De]Constructing John F. Kennedy?: Herschensohn's Years of Lightning, Days of Drums', 49th Parallel, Issue 4, Winter 2000
- Richard Langley, 'American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters',Vimeo, November 17, 2011 (originally screened at the American Frontiers conference, University of Birmingham, 12 November 2011)
- Helen Laville, 'What kind of Man are you? - Masculinity in Oliver Stone JFK', 49th Parallel, Issue 5, Spring 2000
- Christopher Le Coney and Zoe Trodd, 'John Wayne and the Queer Frontier: Deconstructions of the Classic Cowboy Narrative during the Vietnam War, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2005
- Julia Leyda, 'Black-Audience Westerns and the Politics of Cultural Identification In the 1930s', Cinema Journal, 42, No. 1, Fall 2002
- Julia Leyda, 'Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility In John Ford's The Searchers', The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 13, 2002 [click on PDF]
- Stephen McVeigh, '[Review of] The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory, By Will Wright (London: Sage Publications, 2001)', Scope, November 2003
- Mark Mordue, 'Dead Men Walking', Frieze Magazine, Issue 114, April 2008
- Gabrielle Murray, 'Fact and Fiction: The Iraq War Film in Absence', Screening the Past, 29, 2010
- Robin Murray and Joe Heumann, 'Oil drilling and the search for the “golden shrimp”: the myth of interdependence in oil drilling film', Jump Cut, No. 53, summer 2011
- Dianne Newell and Victoria Lamont, 'Daughter of Earth: Judith Merril and the Intersections of Gender, Science Fiction, and Frontier Mythology', Science Fiction Studies, 107, Volume 36, Part 1, March 2009
- Gregory H. Nobles, 'Beyond Myth and Master Narrative: Toward a New History of the American Frontier', Quaderno, 6, 2004
- Lauren Rabinovitz, 'More Than Meets the Eye: Movies in American Studies', MAASA Presidential Symposium 2005
- Rod Romesburg, 'Regeneration through Vampirism: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s New Frontier', Slayage 5.3 [19], February 2006
- Christina Rowley, ‘The Disappearance and Re-emergence of the Western in Vietnam War Films’, PSA 2010
- Christian Seidl, '"Regeneration through Creativity" – The Frontier in Paul Auster's Moon Palace', PhiN 31, 2005
- Ron Smith, 'Mistaken Images in Serge: Cecil B. DeMille’s Northwest Mounted Police (1940)', 49th Parallel, Vol. 24, 2010
- Saralyn Smith, '"Come see a fat old man sometime!" Masculinity and Aging in True Grit (1969) and Unforgiven', MA Thesis, Claremont Graduate University, December 2010
- Barry Stephenson, 'Swaggering Savagery and the New Frontier', Journal of Religion and Popula Culture, Vol. 16, Summer 2007
- John Streamas, '"Patriotic Drunk": To be Yellow, Brave, and Disappeared in Bad Day at Black Rock', New Voices Conference, American Studies, 44:1-2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 99-119
- András Tarnóc, 'Narratives of Confinement: Revisiting the Founding Myths of American Culture', Americana, Volume VII, Number 1, Spring 2011
- Nann Verhoeff, The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning (Amsterdam University Press, 2006 [on the emergence of the Western])
- Edvin Vestergaard Kau, 'The Western Experience: Reflections on the Phenomenology of the Western', P.O.V. No. 24, December 2007
- Geoffrey Walker, 'Deconstructing an American Myth: Hollywood and The Last of the Mohicans', 10th Cooper Seminar, James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, July, 1995
- Jerry White, 'POSSUM, film noir, and the past/future of New Zealand', P:O.V. No.7, March 1999
- Gioia Woods, 'Cowboys, Indians, and Iraq: Jessica Lynch, Lori Piestewa, and the Great American Makeover', Studies in Popular Culture, 29.1 October 2006
- Ray Bourgeois Zimmerman, 'Gruntspeak: Masculinity, Monstrosity and Discourse in Hasford's The Short-Timers', American Studies, 40:1 (Spring 1999): 65-93