Popular Culture Review Vol. 27, No. 1, Winter 2016 | Page 50

lawman appear in history as the Western spectacle: notably, fame and a reputation accompany each figure as it does Raylan. In his pursuance of order, Raylan is willing to cross boundaries, to behave immorally, to ensure a momentary stop to the criminal behavior in his community, thereby returning it to its former utopic condition. When the series opens, Raylan appears to have parted ways with Harlan County; however, this separation is short-lived. In 1.1, Raylan is introduced as a seventeen-year veteran of the US Marshal service currently located in Miami, Florida. According to Slotkin, the Old West was no longer considered an existing space but rather only an influential concept after 1890 (4). As Etulain discusses the popularity of the Western, indicating its various representations in media (the novel, the film, etc.), he also acknowledges that interest in the Western waned briefly in the late 1960s and 1970s before increasing with the appearance of Dances with Wolves in 1990 (Telling 95; Introduction x). As with other New West writers,  Leonard  has  recreated  a  version  of  the  Old  West  in  “Fire  in  the  Hole”,  thereby   updating it to reflect twenty-first century concerns. Reporter Julie Hinds of the Detroit Free Press calls  Raylan  “a  hero  with  a  hint  of  John  Wayne”  (Leonard,  “‘Justified’   character”).  In  reference  to  the  frontier,  in  the  case  of  Justified, this term is used to designate  a  space  without  defined  borders  in  which  a  threat  to  the  “standard  of  living”— one’s  freedom—expressly exists and must be defeated by th