HOW AND WHY «WILD WEST GENRE» REMAINS RELEVANT IN THE XXI CENTURY ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE FILM «THE POWER OF THE DOG» BY JANE CAMPION

Abstract

The history of cinema uncovers not just one forgotten as unnecessary genre, whose representation of the world could not address fast-changing social, political, and ideological challenges. Because of these issues in the 80s, the Western was predicted to die, and films by C. Eastwood were being released as a farewell to the once extremely popular genre, which was considered to be one of the elements of the American culture code for a long time. However, in the XXI century, the Western is experiencing a new wave of popularity. World-renowned directors produce genre movies despite global cinema processes of genres, styles, and trends merger. The article presents a study on the reasons for the Western genre relevance preservation on the example of the film «The Power of the Dog» by Jane Campion (2021). The hypothesis of the article based on the idea that the skillful use of the genre traditions allows directors to keep the Western relevant and stay in the modern social context simultaneously. The main artistic idea of the film identified, the semiotic levels of elements revealing this idea analyzed, and the novelty of these techniques in the motion picture genre field is correlated with the reasons for the Western relevance. The result of the research is the determination of the Western genre essence in the cinematography of the XXI century from its formal as well as ideological perspective.