Cultural Tropes of the Contemporary American WestThis study explores the abiding fascination and provocation of the American frontier West in the contemporary period, in contexts which both ground it historically and extrapolate from it, refracting it through contemporary film, literature, science fiction and the rhetoric of information technology. A historical, geopolitical specificity in granted by chapters on D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico, contemporary Montana literature, and two popular movies set there and in Oregon respectively. The American West is more generally considered strategically in its connections to Europe, as in Wim Wenders's classic Paris, Texas, the Beach Boys' work in the Netherlands and the consideration of the European vision of the internet as a new frontier. Comparable connections to East Asia are granted in a chapter on the presentation of Japan in seminal works by Richard Brautigan. Close textual analysis of abiding works is given, against a background of seminal, related critical works not only in historical and cultural studies, but also in film analysis and information technology. therefore yield a pertinent and timely contribution of that reassessment of the nation as it enters the new millennium. |
Contents
D H Lawrence invents America for himself | 31 |
Chapter 2 | 69 |
Chapter 3 | 107 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. B. Guthrie album American West appears audience Australia band Beach Boys becomes Benjamin Borg Borg Queen Brian Wilson California called chapter claims classic considered Contact movie contemporary context Costner's course criticism cultural D. H. Lawrence desire dialectic dream earlier economy episode Europe European example experience film flâneur Frederick Jackson Turner frontier future genre German gives Grateful Dead Holnists human imaginary imagination Indians information technology Japan Japanese June 30th Krantz later Lawrence Lawrence's Lewis literary live metaphorical millennium Montana mountain move movie narrative narrator nostalgia novel one's particularly passage perhaps poem political popular music possible Postman present productive projected readers reading reference reflects relation rhetoric Richard Brautigan science fiction sense settlers Shepard's song space specific Star Trek story strategy style temporal Texas Tokyo tradition tropes Turner updated vision Wenders Wenders's Western Wim Wenders woman writing