Unlike other film genres, the western is indivisibly connected to U.S. origin myths. In essence, Hollywood westerns are stories America tells itself about itself. Thus, even fifty years after the western peaked in public popularity and social influence, the genre remains a fascinating canvas of dominant national ideologies upon which a multitude of cultural anxieties can be traced and studied—from race and religion to economics and politics to, most essentially and especially, gender and the performance of masculinity.

These generic codes of masculinity are indeed the subject of Matt Payne’s video essay “Who Ever Heard…?” and while the topic could easily become overreaching, Payne successfully engages the task with shrewd focus, skillful design, and playful technique.

Payne uses a single scene from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961) as the raw material—the infamous dinner scene, wherein the film’s outlaw villain (Lee Marvin), outlaw hero (John Wayne), and official hero (James Stewart) all come into conflict over a tarnished steak. The true conflict of the scene, of course, is tarnished manhood and how challenges to machismo should be properly addressed. Payne breaks the scene into a small collection of two second moments spread across nine windows. Each two seconds adds to a growing symphonic remix, using the rhythmic repetition of each moment to comment upon the ever-repeating generic codes of a classic western standoff. Vera Miles’s initial cry (“Who ever heard of a man waiting on tables?!”) is eventually joined by all manner of masculine performance, from slamming whips to the threatening snarls to guns cocking.

The choice of the scene also adds greatly to the project. Although not expressed in the author’s supporting statement, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is inherently an interrogation of the western genre. Arguably the last great work of Hollywood’s most famous western director, the film comes near the end of Hollywood’s classic western cycle and carries a deeper skepticism towards traditional American masculinity than possibly any western up to that time. Thus, it is not just codes of masculinity that ring through the Payne’s nine windows, but also challenges to these codes, as the macho threats of Wayne and Marvin are complimented by Stewart’s cries of exacerbation that men would threaten to kill each other over so little. Even Vera Miles’s titular question reveals the inquisitorial nature of film itself.

Payne’s conceit is simple and his execution deeply clever. The video and its rhythms act as a witty distancing device, offering the spectator a simple and fresh view of the scene, the genre, and the ideology.