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In this essay, we argue that the HBO series Deadwood rhetorically reflects post-9/11 anger and anguish by exploiting and subverting the narrative comfort and cathartic closure characteristic of the traditional American Western. In doing so, Deadwood deviates in three key ways from the conventions of the American monomythic formula that informs the Western genre: First, there is no Edenic community to redeem. Second, the morality, practicality, and psychological satisfaction associated with retributive justice are called into question. While the community faces a few exterior threats to its existence from Native Americans and the United States federal government, these threats are remote and might never be realized; the immediate threats to communal life come not from without, but from within. And third, there is the felt loss of a clear moral compass, and with this loss doubts are raised regarding conventional mythic notions of the hero, and indeed of heroism itself. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study which examined how the strategic rhetoric supporting the heterosexual mainstream simultaneously renders straight sex natural and accords it unquestioned socio-sexual centrality while at the same time serving to domesticate queers and queer sexuality. The television program "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," garnered much popular and critical acclaim. The series celebrates the sophisticated tastes and make-over prowess of a quintet of self-identified gay men, the Fab Five. From a queer theory perspective, there is much to celebrate about the TV program's openly gay stars and their easy fraternization with straight men. Still, there are reasons for critical concern. The researchers interrogated the series as an expression of the strategic rhetoric of straightness that hides and supports the very heteronormative order it seems to challenge. They argue that, as such, the series functions as a mediated ritual of rebellion in which gays are given temporary license to tame, touch, and tease heterosexual men, violating norms governing appropriate male behavior. And yet, even while this popular culture text challenges heteronormative hegemony, ultimately, they contend, Queer Eye strategically serves to domesticate queers and contain queer sexuality.