Hollywood Westerns and American Myth by Robert B Pippin

Hollywood Westerns and American Myth by Robert B Pippin

In this pathbreaking book one of America's most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks' "Red River" and John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "The Searchers". Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its 'second founding', or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gain some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state's claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected. Pippin's account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the centre of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favour of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy.

Robert Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy, and in the College at the University of Chicago.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780300145779
ISBN 10	0300145772
Title	Hollywood Westerns and American Myth
Author	Robert B Pippin
Series	Castle Lectures Series
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Yale University Press
Year published	2010-05-25
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.