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Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English DOI: 10.1057/9781137531285_12 BibTeX citation key: Paryz2015 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "Jonah Hex", Adaptation, Film adaptation, Superhero, Terrorism, USA, Western Creators: Leo, Paryz Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (New York [etc.]) Collection: The Post-2000 Film Western. Contexts, Transnationality, Hybridity |
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Abstract |
Jonah Hex was created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga for DC Comics in the early 1970s. In the course of time, he became a hero of a long-running series of comic strips (1977–2005, two volumes) and was featured in a variety of crossovers with other characters from the DC universe. He then appeared in a series of Batman cartoons in the 1990s. The choice of Jonah Hex for the protagonist of a feature film was thus a natural outcome of his continuing presence in the American popular imagination. Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex premiered in 2010, featuring an impressive cast, with Josh Brolin as the eponymous hero, Megan Fox as prostitute Lilah, his beloved, John Malkovitch as Quentin Turnbull, his enemy, and Michael Fassbender as Burke, Turnbull’s most trusted helper. This article offers an analysis of the film, focusing on its two aspects: the modification of the convention of the Western and the construction of the political subtext. Jonah Hex is based on a confusing, excessive combination of genres, but the Western remains its most easily recognizable narrative schema, which testifies to the resilience of the Western in films that undo its rules through some kind of exaggeration.
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