“Raylan meets Bullock: Narrative Progenies in Justified”

Zinder, Paul ORCID: 0000-0002-9578-4009 (2017) “Raylan meets Bullock: Narrative Progenies in Justified”. In: National Conference Popular Culture Association American Culture Association, 12 - 15 April 2017, San Diego, California. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The FX series Justified, adapted from the Elmore Leonard story “Fire in the Hole”, is a critically acclaimed, award-winning contemporary crime show with the sensibility of a deconstructive Western. During the series’ broadcast run from 2010 – 2015, creator Graham Yost (Boomtown, Speed) employed the show’s setting in the American South to tailor the narrative structure and iconography of Justified and investigate its theoretical and ideological ties to the Western genre. The casting of Timothy Olyphant as the series protagonist, Cowboy hat-wearing U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, recalls the most significant Western of the 2000s, David Milch’s violent period drama Deadwood. In Deadwood, Olyphant portrays Seth Bullock, the sheriff of the gold-bearing town who butts heads (and eventually allies with) Al Swearengen, a brutal criminal who invites viewer identification much like anti-hero Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s chief target in Justified. Due to the writers’ unique use of the English language, the complexity of the show’s thematic concerns, and the multitude of cameo appearances by Olyphant’s former co-stars, Justified feels like the natural progeny of Deadwood, as the present-day interpretation of age-old Western conflict. Paul Zinder – Biography Paul Zinder is Senior Lecturer in Film Production at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the co-editor of the collection The Multiple Worlds of Fringe: Essays on the J.J. Abrams Science Fiction Series (McFarland, 2014), and his writing on genre and cult-television appears in the volumes Justified and Philosophy (Open Court, 2015) Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television Since 1990 (Scarecrow Press, 2013), The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), Investigating Veronica Mars: Essays on the Teen Detective Series (McFarland, 2011) and Investigating Alias: Secrets and Spies (I.B. Tauris, 2007). He is also an award-winning filmmaker whose work can be seen at www.paulzinder.com.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting P Language and Literature > PS American literature
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Creative Practice and Theory Culture, Continuity, and Transformation
Depositing User:	Anne Pengelly
Date Deposited:	06 Oct 2017 13:48
Last Modified:	08 Aug 2023 20:06
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/5000

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