Violence and Masculinity in the Cold War Western "3:10 to Yuma" by Delmer Daves

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Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Seminar "West in Fiction", language: English, abstract: In this paper I want to describe how the Cold War shaped the depiction of violence, masculinity and society in the movie “3:10 to Yuma”. I will argue that this movie not only criticizes the Korean War and the Cold War in general, but I will also showcase how societal anxieties of an escalation, for example in the form of a nuclear strike, are processed. I will argue that the idealism of Cold War liberalism, which stands in stark contrast to communism, is shown in this movie and that it shapes the way masculinity is portrayed and favored. In this way, the movie can be analyzed as a mirror both of societal processes and anxieties, and perceptions of ideal masculinity of the American culture in the 1950s.