Settlers riding off into the sunset: Melissa Beattie, ‘”This is where the cowboy rides away?” The Magnificent Seven and settler colonialism’, CST Online, 25/10/24 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers riding off into the sunset: Melissa Beattie, ‘”This is where the cowboy rides away?” The Magnificent Seven and settler colonialism’, CST Online, 25/10/24

29Sep25

Excerpt: For those unfamiliar with the series (or the film it is loosely adapted from), it features seven gunslingers from various backgrounds who are, in the pilot episode, hired by an Indigenous village to protect them against former Confederate soldiers who are threatening them. They eventually settle in a local town, employed as law enforcement officials with extremely limited judicial oversight. The Seven consist of the taciturn ‘man in black,’ Chris Larabee (Michael Biehn), quiet bounty hunter wrongfully accused of murder Vin Tanner (Eric Close), ladies’ man Buck Wilmington (Dale Midkiff), defrocked priest and (intermittently) recovering alcoholic Josiah Sanchez (Ron Perlman), young, adventure-seeking JD Dunne (Andrew Kavovit), escaped slave turned doctor Nathan Jackson (Rick Worthy) and Southern gambler, grifter and money-addict Ezra Standish (Anthony Starke). Rounding out the cast is journalist, niece of the local circuit judge and love interest for Chris, Mary Travis (Laurie Holden). The series does a number of things differently to the usual portrayals of gunslingers due to its regular setting, most notably through leveraging the homosociality of the seven leads to allow their characters to develop and discuss their feelings, relationships and traumas with each other. But the setting also allows for discourses related to settler colonialism which is what this blog will focus upon.

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