Crafting post-feminist women in contemporary western/horror

Abstract

The scarcity of creative work that engages the problematic issue of female marginalization in the western/horror hybrid space demonstrates the need to expand her limited framework and develop a new screenwriting approach that privileges the female perspective. Prevailing contemporary western and horror hybrid texts, such as and Bone Tomahawk (2015) adhere to traditional male-centred American myths that re-inform genre codes and conventions supporting patriarchal power. Female-centered western/horror hybrid narratives, such as The Witch (2015), Brimstone (2016), Mohawk (2017), and Prey (2022) move issues of female representation into lesser-explored territory, but, when read through a post-feminist lens, do not fully realize the fruitful craft potential that, as I will argue, genre hybridity and post-feminist screenwriting generates. That said, using Mohawk, as a detailed case study, I will analyze how post-feminism successfully informs the narrative and character construction, to advance female representation in mixed-genre form. In addition, this article proposes and explores a new approach to ‘writing’ strong female characters: one that expands the limits of power beyond the boundaries of the existing western/horror storytelling.