English

ppt/slides/slide51.xml

In Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Kelly Reichardt’s attention to Neo-neorealistic aesthetics such as extreme juxtapositions of natural lighting and grating diegetic sound extends the wandering characters’ anxiety to the individual senses of the spectator. Her aesthetic assault on the individual experience of cinema undercuts the valorization of individualism cemented in the history of the western genre and espoused by neoliberal proponents at the time of the film’s release. The unconventional aspect ratio creates a vertically that pronounces patriarchal hierarchy while simultaneously alienating the women, Native American, and spectators from certainty and decision-making processes in the camera’s depth of field. The film’s thematic preoccupation with aimless and alienated anxieties resulting from uncertainty uses the western genre as an allegorical vehicle to critique the neoliberal capitalist structure, connecting early 21st century American anxieties resulting from the housing mortgage crisis that exacerbated the economic recession of 2008 with failed promises of its economic system. What How Why