Queering the Cowboy: From The Virginian to Westworld

An exploration of the queer Western across contemporary literature and film, before and beyond Brokeback Mountain.

Queer cowboys are everywhere. From the kinky kitsch of Chappell Roan and Orville Peck to the cinema blockbuster The Power of the Dog (2021), the queer cowboy has become a person of interest. Queering the Cowboy traces the phenomenon from the classic Western to contemporary films and books, to demonstrate that the journey from John Wayne to Roan is not long since camp has always been a flipside to the cowboy's hypermasculinity.

Adopting queer theory with intersectional and psychoanalytical approaches, Mark Asquith reveals queer subtexts in ostensibly straight texts and assesses the success of queer representation in queer blockbusters. He shows how the Western replaces the woman as object of male appreciation with the cowboy, including how his leather chaps and spurs have become fetishized objects of male desire. The book also explores how male relationships in Westerns are mediated through screen women, horses, and expertise with a gun; how the cowboy becomes both surrogate father and queered model of masculinity to young boys; and how crossdressing and transgender men and women are represented.

Queering the Cowboy offers readings of Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Power of the Dog, and Brokeback Mountain (2005), arguing that the films tend to straighten out the more radically written texts. Ending with an analysis of HBO's Westworld (2016-2022), it shows that, even when projected into the distant future, the robot cowboy remains a distinctly queer character.