Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Emma Hughes: “The New Global West: Redefining the Borders of Genre in the Post-Revisionist Western” is a revised version of a longer paper that I wrote for my senior comprehensive exercise at Carleton College in 2016. I fell in love with genre studies and the western genre at the same time, during my first year of college, and I wanted to write an analytical paper that would best represent my specific love for film studies, as well as my skills learned as a Cinema and Media Studies major. This article analyzes recent western genre films, with focus on Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) and The Revenant (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2015), and explores the ways in which this genre–which is a staple of American cinema and American national identity–has changed and been reborn in the past several years. I propose that a new era of the “post-revisionist western” works to shift both classical and revisionist definitions of the genre in its boundaries of time, space, and identity to signal a new, more global and universal identity of both the genre and of society itself.
FM: What research and/or methodologies do you incorporate in your article?
EH: My article is mainly analytical. I define the post-revisionist western genre with four films, and I choose to concentrate my argument on two of them: Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant. While most of the paper is my analysis and argument, I researched general genre theory so that I could structure my argument. I also researched specific western genre studies to define the classical and revisionist eras. Through this research I found David Lusted’s term “post-revisionist” to describe Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) and used it as a jumping-off point for my own definition of a new era of western genre. I also included analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s book Blood Meridian (1985), as it was very influential in the development of my argument regarding the “future-past” that I recognized in some post-revisionist westerns. By combining research in genre theory, western genre studies, and my own analysis of recent films, I was able to create an argument that acknowledged past eras of the genre while creating my own definition of a new era.
FM: Describe the original context for/when writing this article while an undergraduate student.
EH: Every senior at Carleton College spends a term working on a “comprehensive exercise” (“comps”) that culminates their work in their major, and I chose to write a thesis-driven analytical essay. During my first term in college I studied The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) in two different classes at the same time, and as a result I began to associate the film–and westerns in general–with my reason for falling in love with film studies. Before my senior year, as I was thinking of a topic for my comps paper, I could not imagine writing about anything other than genre, and anything other than westerns.
FM: How has your department and/or institution supported your work in film and media?
EH: I chose to be a Cinema and Media Studies major because of the professors and the people in the department, and the amount of support and encouragement that everyone has for each other is incredible. Although I was required to take courses in both film studies and film production, and I have discovered my strengths and weaknesses because of this, I have never felt like my work was less important than any other student’s work. In fact, even my confidence in my creative work has grown significantly because of this support network of students and faculty. The resources are endless as well, as it was equally easy to check out video equipment as it was to find an out-of-print book, or look through microfilm to find Hollywood tabloids over 100 years old.
FM: How have your faculty mentors fostered your advancement as a film scholar?
EH: I was extremely lucky to have incredible faculty mentors on this paper when I developed it as my senior comprehensive exercise. Carol Donelan, my primary adviser, understood my love for the western and genre studies. From the beginning and at every step of the way, she listened to my convoluted thoughts, helped me untangle them, and then arrange them into something that could point toward an argument. Jay Beck came on as a secondary adviser halfway through my process, and his new comments about my argument were crucial to my definition of the post-revisionist western as an expansion of space, time, and identity. I also spoke frequently with Michael Kowalewski, an English professor who taught the class on the American West that was very influential in formulating my argument. Meeting one-on-one with these incredible faculty mentors was the reason that I was able to develop an argument that I am happy with, and their support and expertise still mean the world to me. It is because of them, and every professor I have studied film with at Carleton, that I want to continue to study film in the future.
FM: How has the Film Matters editorial and publication process impacted the development/evolution of your article?
EH: I streamlined my argument significantly for this publication, as I originally included pages of description about Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012) and Slow West (John Maclean, 2015) and their place in the evolution of the post-revisionist western. For space, I removed these sections and found in this revision that my Mad Max: Fury Road section was the bulk of my argument anyway. With these changes, my article is now more concise and accessible to readers due to its length and focus on two films rather than four. Though it is significantly less detailed (the original paper was over thirty pages), the argument in this article is the same, and I believe that it works better for this publication.
FM: What audience do you hope to reach with your Film Matters article and/or what impact do you hope it has on the field of film studies?
EH: I hope that every audience who reads my article will not only enjoy seeing Mad Max: Fury Road as a western, but will also begin to see the western differently, as something that could be more heterogeneous than the story of a white American man in the mid-1800s American West. I also hope that this article prompts film scholars to see the evolution of the genre more clearly, and to continue to recognize post-revisionist patterns in western films as they are released in the next few years. I would love for more film scholars to come together to think about newer western films and what a resurgence of the genre means for society and genre studies.
FM: What are your future plans?
EH: I graduated from college in 2016, and have since worked at film festivals around the country (New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and Newport Beach Film Festival). I just started my MA degree in Cinema and Media Studies at USC, where I’m hoping to dive deeper into genre studies, and eventually I would love to program for a film festival myself.
Author Biography
Emma Hughes graduated from Carleton College in 2016 with a Cinema & Media Studies degree and a concentration in European studies. She is most interested in genre studies and the way that popular storytelling evolves based on current culture. Her fascination with the western will probably never end.
