Triggered: The Post-Traumatic Woman and Narratology in HBO’s Westworld

By Keith Clavin and Christopher La Casse. As the show develops, we come to learn that some of the hosts are not ‘forgetting’ the traumas inflicted upon them…. Despite a wipe of their memory caches regarding prior ‘narratives’ (earlier roles they played in the park’s performances), they seem to be […]

Katabasis and News of the World

By Ken Hall. The journey undertaken by Captain Kidd (Tom Hanks)…through Texas causes him to pass through ‘alien territory’ in a double sense. He is not closely acquainted with some of the locales which he encounters nor with the routes to those locales. Perhaps more important is the underlying strangeness of the […]

Challenging the Myths of the Australian Frontier: High Ground

By Theresa Rodewald. Instead of perpetuating the myth of Australia as terra nullius or ’empty land’ that previous to European settlement had not belonged to anyone, the film depicts the clash of colonisers and First Nations people in a country that had been anything but empty.” Gorgeously shot and drawing […]

A Western by Any Other Name: Destry Rides Again (Criterion Collection)

By Jeremy Carr. There is, first and most famously, Marlene Dietrich. Since the time of its premiere in 1939, to its latest reemergence in the form of a Criterion Collection Blu-ray, conversation concerning Destry Rides Again has inevitably, and quite justly, hinged on the presence of this beguiling, Berlin-born beauty. […]