ABSTRACT
As portrayed in the Western and alluded to in the road movie, frontier symbolism is propelled by masculinity and a particular conception of American national identity that revolves around individualism and aggression. During the height of the studio system, this symbolic core codified into the Western film as an iconography evoking already nostalgic ideas about the frontier. As the Western condensed further into what we now refer to as the genre of the road film, these characteristics become concentrated and codified, in part through the insistence on the extremely linear narrative structure of the road film. What ultimately links the road movie to the Western is this ideal of masculinity inherent in certain underlying conceptualizations of American national identity that have persisted, if only through continual ideological struggle.
