포스트 9․11 시대와 이스트우드주의: <그랜 토리노>와 <아메리칸 스나이퍼>에 나타난 서부영화의 신화 내면화하기 연구

Abstract

This paper examines Clint Eastwood’s attempts to internalize the myth of western films in his works Gran Torino and American Sniper. To this end, the discussion focuses on how post-9/11 renegotiates national identity and new western hero through its narrative. In Gran Torino, Eastwood shows a gesture of so many Western heroes and cops he embodied in the past, that is, taking a gun out of holster and symbolizes the heritage of new American masculinity. American Sniper arises from the simple premise of a fight to the death between good guys and bad guys. The film is not quite among them, but much of its considerable power derives from the clarity and sincerity of its bedrock convictions. Eastwood shows that Kyle, for all his personal problems, is not himself the problem, but a symptom of a larger problem. The real problem is with the segment of society that glorifies this behavior as heroic, holding up Kyle in particular as a super-hero. Consequently, I assert Eastwood shows the twisted logic that holds up people like Walt and Kyle as heroes while failing to question the cause or need for war and violence in the first place to demythologize the false picture that the tradition of Westerns.