The rhetoric of gender role reversal – strong female characters in the American revisionist western
The rhetoric of gender role reversal – strong female characters in the American revisionist western

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates gender role reversal in the feminist revisionist Western film by exploring the notion of reversal (peripeteia). First, it demonstrates features of classical Western on the example of John Ford’s „The Searchers” (1956). It establishes genre’s reliance on gendered binary opposites i.e. civilization/wilderness, individual/community, passive/active, and draws attention to language. Then it analyzes how these fundamental conventions are changed in more recent films and what do differences signal rhetorically. Distinction is made between „The Missing” (2013) with its clear focus on reversal of generic features associated with dominant masculinity, and „The Ballad of Little Jo” (1993) which addresses critical concepts of agency, gaze, and performative aspect of gender.

• Details
• Contents