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No Longer Printing the Legend: The Aporia of Heteronormativity in the American Western (1903-1969)
(2023)
This study critically investigates the U.S.-American Western and its construction of sexuality and gender, revealing that the heteronormative matrix that is upheld and defended in the genre is consistently preceded by the exploration of alternative sexualities and ways to think gender beyond the binary. The endeavor to naturalize heterosexuality seems to be baked in the formula of the U.S.-Western. However, as I show in this study, this endeavor relies on an aporia, because the U.S.-Western can only ever attempt to naturalize gender by constructing it first, hence inevitably and simultaneously construct evidence that supports the opposite: the unnaturalness and contingency of gender and sexuality.
My study relies on the works of Raewyn Connell, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler, and amalgamates in its methodology established approaches from film and literary studies (i.e., close readings) with a Foucaultian understanding of discourse and discourse analysis, which allows me to relate individual texts to cultural, socio-political and economical contexts that invariably informed the production and reception of any filmic text. In an analysis of 14 U.S.-Westerns (excluding three excursions) that appeared between 1903 and 1969 I give ample and minute narrative and film-aesthetical evidence to reveal the complex and contradictory construction of gender and sexuality in the U.S.-Western, aiming to reveal both the normative power of those categories and its structural instability and inconsistency.
This study proofs that the Western up until 1969 did not find a stable pattern to represent the gender binary. The U.S.-Western is not necessarily always looking to confirm or stabilize governing constructs of (gendered) power. However, it without fail explores and negotiates its legitimacy. Heterosexuality and male hegemony are never natural, self-evident, incontestable, or preordained. Quite conversely: the U.S.-Western repeatedly – and in a surprisingly diverse and versatile way – reveals the illogical constructedness of the heteronormative matrix.
My study therefore offers a fresh perspective on the genre and shows that the critical exploration and negotiation of the legitimacy of heteronormativity as a way to organize society is constitutive for the U.S.-Western. It is the inquiry – not necessarily the affirmation – of the legitimacy of this model that gives the U.S.-Western its ideological currency and significance as an artifact of U.S.-American popular culture.
In my paper I will talk about the mutual influences between the female spectators and the programming practices of Imperial Germany- cinema. I will focus on the period of the transition from the short film programme of the "cinema of attractions" to the dominance of the long feature film, i.e. from 1906-1918. I will ask questions how the presence of women in the cinema (the place where they first entered the public sphere) influenced the practice of programming. So I will deal with the relatively new topic of the programme (and its structural changes) as a mode of exhibition and I will try to connect this to the role the female audience played in shaping this format: how does the female audience affect the changes of the programme patterns, the modification of genres and their meaning within the structure of the programme and does it finally bring about a change in the mode of reception. And on the other hand how does the cinematographical programme represent and influence the female identity, and women- wishes and needs. One must ask for the reasons why the early cinema, that was characterised by diversity concerning class, gender and cultural issues and that built a kind of alternative public sphere, was displaced by an institutionalised, state monitored and nationalised German cinema. Taking into account that this change of film forms was not a teleological evolution, "gender" might be a more useful and insightful category than "class" is to explain the changes of the programme and the essence of early cinema. First I am going to present the main ideas of my project, then I"ll talk about the composition of the audience and the relation between audience and program, after that I"ll make some remarks on the reform movement and what the reformers thought about women in the cinema and about the programming practices, and as a last part, we"ll have a look at what actually happened in the cinema and at the program of the year 1911/1912 and how this program catered to the interests of the female audience. I"ll conclude with a short outlook on the changes that occurred during WW I.
Cinema programming, the composition of films to make a specific "show," remains a neglected way to research the relation between audiences and film form. As a mode of exhibition " advertised, promoted, and circulating in the public sphere even before an audience is gathered " the program can be seen as an active social relation between cinema managers and their audiences. Changes in the composition of film programs, in my case the years before the First World War in Mannheim, Germany, are thus not taken as part of a teleological evolution of film form, but instead reveal emerging practices of cinema-going, a changing relation among showmen, distributors, audiences, and the city they are all part of. The category of "the audience" becomes a compliment to narrative, economic and technical influences. Selecting the city of Mannheim further allows me to draw upon the pioneering German sociological study of cinema audiences, conducted there by Emilie Altenloh in 1911 and 1912. Thus, I am able to compare her survey data to the film programs that were actually advertised and offered to the public at the time, and also include knowledge of the social history of the city, to approximate a description of the historical audiences she studied. Here I follow the findings of Miriam Hansen and Heide Schlüpmann, who both stress the importance of the female audience in Imperial Germany. I account for a reciprocal relation between female spectators and the film industry- local programming practice to describe the transitional period from the short film programme of the "cinema of attractions" to the dominance of the long feature film, i.e. from 1906-1918. Looking closely at the advertised programmes of Mannheim I show that almost all of the first multiple-reel feature films deal with women- topics, i.e. with the fate and fortune of women, concluding that the presence of women in the audience helped established the long feature as central to the institutionalized cinema program. The film program and the specific feature films represented female identity on the screen, responding to the perceived wishes and needs of the women who gathered as audiences. Taking this "program analysis" approach, because it provides a synopsis of the social relation between audience, industry, and film form, is a valuable tool for comparing the social place of film comparatively, across many films, and potentially across regions, countries, and cultures.