He Was Some Kind of a Man: Masculinities in the B Western explores the construction and representation of masculinity in low-budget western movies made from the 1930s to the early 1950s. These films contained some of the mid-twentieth-century’s most familiar names, especially for youngsters: cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. The first serious study of a body of films that was central to the youth of two generations, He Was Some Kind of a Man combines the author’s childhood fascination with this genre with an interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of the films influence on modern views of masculinity.
McGillis argues that the masculinity offered by these films is less one-dimensional than it is plural, perhaps contrary to expectations. Their deeply conservative values are edged with transgressive desire, and they construct a male figure who does not fit into binary categories, such as insider/outsider or masculine/feminine. Particularly relevant is the author’s discussion of George W. Bush as a cowboy and how his aspirations to cowboy ideals continue to shape American policy.
This engagingly written book will appeal to the general reader interested in film, westerns, and contemporary culture as well as to scholars in film studies, gender studies, children’s literature, and auto/biography.

Roderick McGillis is a professor of English at the University of Calgary. He is the author of the award-winning The Nimble Reader (1996), A Little Princess: Gender and Empire (1996), and Les Pieds Devant (2007), and the editor of George MacDonald: Literary Heritage and Heirs (2007). He is a former editor of The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, and former president of the Children’s Literature Association.

Roderick McGillis' profile page

• Short-listed, Finalist for the ForeWord Magazine 2009 Book of the Year Award in the Popular Culture Category

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, 2009 April

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, 2009 April

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, 2010 April

McGillis is particularly good at making critical and psychoanalytical theory intelligible for the layman.

John M. Clum, Duke University, Great Plains Quarterly, Fall 2010, 2010 November