The Authenticity Paradox and the Western
- Submitting institution
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Canterbury Christ Church University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- U34.023
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Authenticity in North America: Place, Tourism, Heritage, Culture and the Popular Imagination
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781138341319
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This chapter contributes to the edited collection Authenticity in North America: Place, Tourism, Heritage, Culture and the Popular Imagination which explores debates about authenticity in North America from an interdisciplinary perspective. Fox’s research examined authenticity and the Western offering an original approach by employing the Keatsian idea of “negative capability” to elucidate how the Western appears to exist in a creative/imaginative zone where the fake and the real co-mingle. Rather than making an implausible judgment about how authentic a certain representation is, the analysis focuses on how authenticity is employed by filmmakers to embrace and resist the overlapping states of fake and true West.
The research involved close textual analysis of Hostiles (Cooper, 2017) and The Lone Ranger (Verbinski, 2013), and explores how the Western’s negative capability is channelled through the cinematographic representation of the natural landscape drawing upon the discourse of the American sublime. The films were chosen for their marketing material, stylistic approach to the genre, representation of Native Americans and their critical reception. Hostiles cloaks itself in the mantle of authenticity while The Lone Ranger appears to revel in its embrace of the fake. In both films the invocation of the American sublime appropriates Native American indigenous cultures and histories to represent the appearance of a more authentic connection to the land.
The analysis found that the Western’s authenticity paradox puts the genre and the country in lockstep, each in a state of contradiction with itself.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
