Come Back, Todd: Rehabilitating Shane (George Stevens, 1953) in Soldier (Paul W.S. Anderson 1998)
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Films and theorists throughout the twentieth century noted the dehumanizing required of American men to serve society.Shane (George Stevens 1953) belongs to a group of post-World War II Westerns that addressed the personal sacrifices demanded of the "hero."Despite its bleak message, Shane has resonated in the popular imagination, not only for Shane's single-handed rescue of the Starrett family and their community, but for his subsequent exile -marked by Joey Starrett's plaintive cry.Among the films inspired by Shane is the science-fiction Soldier (Paul W.S. Anderson 1998), a film which presents a significant deepening and revision of the narrative.Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell) belongs to a race of soldiers trained and molded from birth.Unfortunately, he and his kind have been replaced by a new breed of soldiers, who are even closer to manufactured.After being literally discarded, Todd becomes part of a settler family, comparable to the Starrett family's inclusion of the wandering Shane.This retired Soldier faces challenges and limits that parallel the retired gunfighter.Donna Harawa� ys "A Cyborg Manifesto" (2016) provides not only an appropriate lens through which to view Soldier but also to examine the Western's gunman: But basically, machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous.They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it.They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream.(11)After teaching 17 years at a community college, Elizabeth Abele joined the faculty of the Gulf University for Science and Technology as Associate Professor in Literature.Her essays on the intersections of American culture with gender and race have appeared in Western American Literature, American Studies, Journal of Transnational American Studies and College Literature, and in edited anthologies on work of Kurt Vonnegut, Ridley Scott, Anne Proulx and M. Night Shyamalan.She is the author of Home Front Hero: The Rise of a New Hollywood Archetype, 1988Archetype, -1999Archetype, (2014) ) and coeditor of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism (2015).In addition to serving as a board member and chair for several academic associations, she was Executive Director of the Northeast Modern Language Association from 2006-14.Her most recent publications have traced the gothic contemporary film with € Guillermo del Toro's Political Fairy Tales€ (REDEN) and €Visions of Red Riding Hood: Transformative Bodies in Contemporary Films" (Humanities).
Author: Elizabeth Abele
Language: English
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4388939050