On Westerns and Settler Migration: A Reading of “Meek’s Cutoff” by Kelly Reichardt

Autori

  • Elisa Bordin Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2021.i17.1011

Parole chiave:

Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff, Oregon Trail, feminist revisionist western, migration

Abstract

This essay examines Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) as an example of ‘slow’ and feminist western film. In particular, it shows how, by applying an “austere” aesthetics (Gorfinkel 2015) and by giving prominence to the act of migrating rather than the act of settling, the movie rewrites pioneer history, offering an example of what Catherine Russel defines “migrant cinema” (2017). Because of the visual centrality given to the act of migration, with its feeling of geographical displacement and psychological apprehension, the movie situates itself alongside other contemporary films representing present-day migration, and questions the traditional western movement as a travel of self-confident expansion and colonization. In this sense, Meek’s Cutoff can be rather read as a “decolonizing” (Trimble Young and Veracini 2017) rendition of white migration in the West, mostly achieved by including two destabilizing characters within the group of white settlers, Emily Tetherow and a Cayuse Indian, who trigger reflections on matters of knowledge and alliances.

Biografia autore

  • Elisa Bordin, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia

    Assistant Professor

    Department of Comaprative Linguistic and Cultural Studies

Riferimenti bibliografici

Akerman, Chantal. From the Other Side. 2002.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe and Frances Fuller Victor. History of Oregon, Vol. 1 (1834-1848). San Francisco: The History Company, 1886.

Berry, Michael. Frontera. 2014.

Cairns, Davis, et al. “Open Discussion on Meek’s Cutoff.” La furia umana 9 (2011).

Campbell, Neil. “What West? Worlding the Western in Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance.” Western American Literature 54.2 (Summer 2019): 103-121.

Clark, Keith and Lowell Tiller. Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff, 1845. Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1966.

Collins Menefee, Leah and Lowell Tiller. “Cutoff Fever, III.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 78.2 (June 1977): 121-157.

De León, Jason. The Land of Open Graves. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015.

De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2014.

Diaz, Hernan. In the Distance. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2017.

Dietrich, Joy. “O Pioneers! Kelly Reichardt’s Anti-Western.” The New York Times 7 April 2011. https://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/o-pioneers-kelly-reichardts-anti-western/. All websites last visited on 19/05/2021.

Ford, John. Wagon Master. 1950.

Gilbey, Ryan. “Kelly Reichardt: How I Trekked Across Oregon for Meek’s Cutoff then Returned to Teaching.” The Guardian 8 April 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/apr/09/kelly-reichardt-meeks-cutoff.

González Iñárritu, Alexandro. Babel. 2006.

Gorfinkel, Elena. “Exhausted Drift: Austerity, Dispossession and the Politics of Slow in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff.” Slow Cinema. Edited by Luca de Tiago and Jorge Nuno Barradas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. 123-136.

Goulder, William Armistead. Reminiscences: Incidents in the Life of a Pioneer in Oregon and Idaho. Boise: T. Regan, 1909.

Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019.

Gray, William Henry. A History of Oregon, 1792-1849: Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information. Portland: Harris & Holman, 1870.

Hall, Wade and Rick Wallach, edited by. Sacred Violence: A Reader’s Companion to Cormac McCarthy. El Paso: The University of Texas Press, 1995.

Henry, Claire. “The Temporal Resistance of Kelly Reichardt’s Cinema.” Open Cultural Studies 2 (2018): 486-499.

Howard, Ron. Far and Away. 1992.

King, Geoff. “Indie’s Continuities: The Presence of American Independent Tradition in Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff.” Revue française d’études américaines 136 (2013): 15-27.

Kois, Dan. “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables”. New York Times Magazine 29 April 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01Riff-t.html.

Kollin, Susan. “Uncertain Wests: Kelly Reichardt, Settler Sensibilities, and the Challenges of Feminist Filmmaking.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture 68.1 (2020): 7-20.

Lilley, James D., edited by. Cormac McCarthy: New Directions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.

Limón, Graciela. The River Flows North. Houston: Árte Público Press, 2009.

Longworth, Karina. “Meek’s Cutoff: Go West, Young Women.” LA Weekly 14 April 2011. https://www.laweekly.com/meeks-cutoff-go-west-young-women/.

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage, 1985.

McKim, Kristi. “Review of Kelly Reichardt by Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour.” Cinéaste 43.3 (Summer 2018): 75-76.

Milch, David, creator. Deadwood. 2004-2006.

Mitchell, Lee Clark. Late Westerns: The Persistence of a Genre. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Pejkovic, Matthew. “Interview with Meek’s Cutoff Writer Jon Raymond.” Trespass Magazine 11 June 2011. http://www.trespassmag.com/interview-with-meeks-cutoff-writer-jon-raymond/.

Quart, Leonard. “The Way West: A Feminist Perspective: An Interview with Kelly Reichardt.” Cinéaste 36.2 (Spring 2011): 40-42.

Reichardt, Kelly. Meek’s Cutoff. 2010.

---. Old Joy. 2006.

---. River of Grass. 1994.

---. Wendy and Lucy. 2008.

Russell, Catherine. “Migrant Cinema: Scenes of Displacement.” Cinéaste 43.1 (Winter 2017): 17-21.

Savage, William W., Jr. The Cowboy Hero: His Image in American History & Culture. Nor¬man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Trimble Young, Alex and Lorenzo Veracini. “‘If I am native to anything’: Settler Colonial Studies and Western American Literature.” Western American Literature 52.1 (Spring 2017): 1-23.

Truman Dorris, Jonathan. “The Oregon Trail.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984) 10.4 (January 1918): 473-547.

Veracini, Lorenzo. “Settler Colonialism.” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Wallach, Rick, edited by. Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2000.

Weiwei, Ai. Human Flow. 2017.

Wellman, William. Westward the Women. 1951.

Pubblicato

2021-06-18

Fascicolo

Sezione

Articoli: sezione monografica