He Was Some Kind of a Man

"McGillis' love of the cowboy film, indeed the overwhelming importance of the genre for his childhood identity, is evident throughout the book, which is full of personal anecdotes and nostalgic recollections...He is most effective when discussing masculinity and boyhood and he analyses costume in the B Western well." Paul Sutton (Roehampton University), Times Higher Education, 19 November 2009
"A fascinating study of part of the wider genre that wise pardners would be quick to get out of the saddle and check out. Yee-haw." -- Screentrade Feb 2010
``Although McGillis focuses on...Westerns of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Hopalong Cassidy (among others) of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, this study transcends this body of films and makes important contributions to theorization of cinematic masculinity.... His remarkable knowledge of the story lines of the films allows him to articulate several leitmotifs of the subgenre. His application of queer and psychoanalytic theory is brash, and his discussion of gender construction, textuality, and cowboy codes in B Westerns applies both to the films and to 20th-century concepts of masculinity.... Highly recommended.'' -- G.R. Butters, Jr., Aurora University -- CHOICE, April 2010, 201004
``McGillis is particularly good at making critical and psychoanalytical theory intelligible for the layman.'' -- John M. Clum, Duke University -- Great Plains Quarterly, Fall 2010, 201011
``In his fine book He Was Some Kind of a Man ... McGillis views B westerns with the steely-eyed gaze of a tough-minded culture critic.... As McGillis notes, the heroes of B westerns are 'steadfast, independent, resourceful, self-reliant, aggressive, rational and controlling' (1).... To be a B-movie cowboy is to live the playfully irresponsible (and sexually inactive) life of a boy. Indeed, according to McGillis, 'the "boy" is our ideal of masculinity' (18). Real men do not work in offices, change diapers, or cut down on sweets or gunplay.... As well as drawing on theories of camp and drag and offering a Lacanian analysis of the cowboy hero as ideal, McGillis derives insights from a range of ideological theories and cultural approaches, including shrewd and persuasive discussions of race and stereotyping, queerness and homosociality, the psychological significance of horses and guns, and the ambiguous relationship between the B western's usual identification of bankers and businessmen as villains and their cowboy hero's involvement in consumer culture. Indeed, the book's main strength is the way it combines diverse theoretical threads into a complex reading of what seems at first to be so simple.'' -- Perry Nodelman -- Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 3.2, 2011, 201201
``This sharp and fabulously entertaining study of B westerns and the American cowboy also has a lot to say about popular culture, children's literature, the gun fetish, white privilege, camp, heteronormativity, and nationalism. McGillis is at home on the range. A major work of scholarship and great fun as well. His heroes have always been cowboys, admits McGillis, and lucky for us. McGillis provides an incisive and entertaining analysis of American cowboy culture by way of B westerns from the 1930s to the mid-50s. A significant work of scholarship, of interest to anyone working in American cultural and literary studies.'' -- Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida -- 200904
``Roderick McGillis analyzes the portrayal of masculinity in the Saturday afternoon western films of the thirties, forties, and early fifties, the B westerns of the early sound era. He approaches these films as a version of children's literature, since they were aimed at and primarily viewed by boys. He considers various standard images, including those of women, of Indians and blacks (the racial Other), of guns, of clothes (sequins, fringes), of horses, and of the western landscape. His analytic tools include references to queer theory, psychoanalysis, and the needs of the market. He was a fan of these films as a child, he remains a fan today, and he wants to understand the effects of these flms on our current concepts of manliness.... Thought provoking and insightful.'' -- Will Wright -- University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 81, number 3, Summer 2011, 201212