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This book considers the presence of the supernatural and Gothic elements of the Western on screen. These dark and sinister undertones often exist in Western narratives to draw attention to the ever-present issue of death and its haunting resonance which characters encounter. This book examines this through key historic moments in Western film and its contemporary incarnations. The book detects imposing correlations in themes and currents between the Gothic and the Western relating to existential crisis and a loss of faith in ideologies and institutions. These themes represent the tensions between the old and the new, the deranged insistence on civility and order in a chaotic landscape, disillusionment and the shattering of faith in the natural order, and even nature and order themselves. The Western, just like the Gothic tale, reminds us that new frontiers are mired in the past, and optimism and survival are hunted down and haunted by guilt-ridden past and passed anxieties and traumas
"Through detailed, skillful readings and encyclopedic knowledge, the book The Spectral West probes a grim relationship between the Western and the Gothic, unearthing refracted links and resonances to expose spectral inheritances that are always fascinating, engaging and deeply troubling.” —Neil Campbell, Emeritus Professor of American Studies, University of Derby, UK.
“Both the scholar and the enthusiast will find themselves watching Westerns from a new vantage point after reading this book, as if seeing the plains, towns and graveyards in a new, shadowy light for the first time.” —Jenny Barrett, Edge Hill University, UK.
Keith McDonald holds a PhD from Birkbeck College, the University of London, and is an Associate Professor in Film Studies and Media at York St John University. He is the co-author of Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art (2014) and Contemporary Gothic and Horror Film: Transnational Perspectives (2021).
Wayne Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at York St. John University. He received his PhD from Keele University. He is the co-author of Contemporary Gothic and Horror Film: Transnational Perspectives (2021) and co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (2024).
Acknowledgements ; Introduction: The Western as Eco-Gothic ; Part 1: The Savage West ; 1 The Revenant West: Gothic and Spectral Landscapes; 2 Ghost Riders in the Lonesome West: The Homely and the Un-Homely; Part 2: To the Boneyard ; 3 Dead Men Walking; 4 Desolation Road; Part 3: The New Viscera in the Twenty-First Century Western ; 5 Tooth and Claw; 6 ‘I Like the Way You Die, Boy’; Coda ; Bibliography ; Index