수정주의 웨스턴의 탈신화화 양상들—로버트 알트만의 <맥케이브와 밀러부인>을 중심으로

Abstract

By way of reviewing Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), this essay discusses the historical context of revisionist Western films which emerged in the turmoil of American society amid the black power movement, anti-war protests, and feminist movements of the 1960s and later. Following this context, it delves into how the images and values of the outlaw hero in the classical Western film genre had been transformed to cause the de-mythologizing effects in the paradigm of the New American Cinema after 1960s. For this purpose, it analyzes various aspects of Altman’s film such as the parody of cowboy characters; positive characterization of femininity; the change of space settings; and the reinterpretation of American individualism. It also attempts to diagnose the socio-cultural context of revisionist tendency in the Hollywood industry of 1960s and 70s, in which the homogeneous values of American myth came to dissipate into a variety of heterogeneous values with the change of spectatorship in American society.

By way of reviewing Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), this essay discusses the historical context of revisionist Western films which emerged in the turmoil of American society amid the black power movement, anti-war protests, and feminist movements of the 1960s and later. Following this context, it delves into how the images and values of the outlaw hero in the classical Western film genre had been transformed to cause the de-mythologizing effects in the paradigm of the New American Cinema after 1960s. For this purpose, it analyzes various aspects of Altman’s film such as the parody of cowboy characters; positive characterization of femininity; the change of space settings; and the reinterpretation of American individualism. It also attempts to diagnose the socio-cultural context of revisionist tendency in the Hollywood industry of 1960s and 70s, in which the homogeneous values of American myth came to dissipate into a variety of heterogeneous values with the change of spectatorship in American society.