The Rifleman

TV Milestones

by Christopher Sharrett

The Rifleman is perhaps the most significant and intelligent of the TV westerns from the late 1950s—an era when the western was the dominant television genre. With its story of a single father raising a son in 1880s New Mexico, The Rifleman offered many alternatives to the conventions of the western. It also embodied many of the genre’s contradictions, setting its ideas about domesticity and level-headedness alongside the gun violence adopted by westerns as central to the settling of the West and the creation of America. With its initial episodes written and directed by celebrated auteur Sam Peckinpah, and the overall series produced by veteran Dick Powell and the pioneering television production team of Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner, and Arnold Laven, The Rifleman is distinguished by its stewardship of some of the most talented minds of early television.

In his succinct study of this television milestone, Christopher Sharrett uses television studies, psychoanalytic criticism, gender studies, and American studies to place The Rifleman within the TV western genre and early television culture. While discussing the intelligence and lasting value of this series, Sharrett also challenges the reader to consider the broader role of 1950s television in shaping the consciousness of the postwar generation. The Rifleman remains one of the great examples of the stalemates within American mass culture: the struggle between reason and violence.

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2005

About the author

Christopher Sharrett is an associate professor of communications at Seton Hall University. He is the editor of Crisis Cinema: The Apocalyptic Idea in Postmodem Narrative Film (Maisonneuve Press, 1993).

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some social commentary on the tv western series from the late 50's, early 60's. A nice companion to watching it on Encore Westerns.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is it with academics when they study movies, books and in this case a TV show. To me they tend to over analyse, over dramatise and over sexualize things. They seem to find things they want to be there but really may not be there. I would take issue with the author on a number of points but then he is a professor and I am merely a fan. And I will stay a fan of The Rifleman and try not to think too deeply about it.