Justified and Westerns
31/03/15 14:04 Filed in: Interests
The TV show Justified is set to finish its last season in a few weeks. It is just about the best TV series of all time in my book. The acting and writing are superb. It holds your attention every week. I have always been a Timothy Olyphant fan along with many of the others in this series. Now I came across an article discussing how the series and the main character, Raylan Givens, relates to the western genre and modern manhood. More of the discussion can be found here. At least, I can get away from all the secular progressive garbage on the internet and look at a mix of traditional and modern concepts with this show.
Rachel Lu thinks heroes of the western genre like John Wayne embodied a noble vision of American manhood as honorable, reliable, and self-sacrificing—everything a good American man should be.
Understood in that light, Lu argues that the FX series “Justified,” although it has elements of the western genre, is thoroughly modern, its characters “infused with far more moral ambiguity than John Wayne typically faced.” The show’s protagonist, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant), might dress like a cowboy, but “as a family man, he leaves much to be desired”—because he sleeps around with strange women and refuses to join his wife and baby in another state. By contrast, the show’s villain, Boyd Crowder (the excellent Walton Goggins), is devoted to one woman and his “devotion even inspires dreams of respectability.”
Rachel Lu thinks heroes of the western genre like John Wayne embodied a noble vision of American manhood as honorable, reliable, and self-sacrificing—everything a good American man should be.
Understood in that light, Lu argues that the FX series “Justified,” although it has elements of the western genre, is thoroughly modern, its characters “infused with far more moral ambiguity than John Wayne typically faced.” The show’s protagonist, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant), might dress like a cowboy, but “as a family man, he leaves much to be desired”—because he sleeps around with strange women and refuses to join his wife and baby in another state. By contrast, the show’s villain, Boyd Crowder (the excellent Walton Goggins), is devoted to one woman and his “devotion even inspires dreams of respectability.”
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