Matthias Hurst publishes essay on aging and age in Western and Post-Western films

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has written an essay for the book Alter(n) in der Populärkultur  (Old Age in Popular Culture) edited by Henriette Herwig and Mara Stuhlfauth-Trabert  (published by Transcript, February 2022). 

His contribution to the new book is an essay called “No Country For Old Men: Alter(n) im Westernfilm als Spiegel individueller und kultureller Transformationsprozesse" ("No Country For Old Men: Old Age in Western Films as Reflection of Individual and Cultural Transformation Processes"). The essay explores the theme of aging and age as recurrent topics of Western and Post-Western films that do not only refer to individual characters (in films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Shootist, Unforgiven and Buffalo Girls) but also to an ideological reading of American history and the myth of the frontier and thus play important parts as symbolic representations in a greater discourse of cultural, social, and political transformations in the modern age. At the same time the phenomenon of aging, used in particular films and novels as a dramatic aspect, can be interpreted as a self-reflective comment on or account of the genre itself, its ideological and revisionist functions, and its development as a part of popular culture in general.

For further information, check the publisher: Transcript Verlag >>

Post Date: 03-06-2022