             
Copyright (c) 1999 Turner Learning,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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THE STARS OF THE VIRGINIAN PROVIDE SOME ANSWERS
"You get a sense of geographic expansion; now it seems that telecommunications is shrinking the world.
The television has brought us all inside each other's backyards. It's good to see one big vista that you
can't really embrace."
Bill Pullman
"This particular period of our history was so free. We could get close to the notion of a self-made
person; an individual went out to the West and conquered it. They hunted their own food; the land was
theirs. People today want that same sense of freedom. They want not to be encumbered by rules; the more
rules we create for ourselves, the less freedom we have. There weren't a lot of rules in the old West;
and what there were the people had made up according to their own needs."
Dennis Weaver
- Ask your students how they respond to the images of the Western landscape in this film and elsewhere.
Do they give a sense of freedom? How so? Is Bill Pullman right about our desire to escape the grasp of
technologies?
- Dennis Weaver's comments invoke the myth of "rugged individualism." Ask students if they agree
with:
- his claims about the historical West--from what sources do we draw our stereotypes of the frontier?
- his notion that rules inhibit freedom--what freedoms might rules protect?
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