AMERICAN FILM GENRES

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AMERICAN FILM GENRES

• THE WESTERN
• 21.4.2008

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The Western characteristics

• Time 1865-1890
• place U.S. Western Frontier, Mexico
• Monument Valley for John Ford
• characters nomadic wanderer hero, gunslinger,
  townspeople, farmers and rancher, Indians, U.S.
  Cavalry, damsel in distress

• Visual motifs
• Weapons revolver and rifle
• The technology of the era such as the
  telegraph, printing press, and railroad
• Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins
• the vast landscape

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Genre evolution 3

• early formative stage
• the classical period of archetypal expression
• a more intellectual phase in which conventions
  are examined and questioned rather than merely
  presented
• ironic, self-conscious mode typically expressed
  by parody
• Note these do overlap
• The Great Train Robbery, dir. Edwin S. Porter,
  1903
• Stagecoach (Ford, 1939) John Fords cavalry
  westerns Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks 1959 Red
  River, Howard Hawks, 1948
• The Searchers, John Ford, 1956
• Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Mel
  Brookss Blazing Saddles (1974), Unforgiven,
  Clint Eastwood. 1992

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Edward Buscombe

• iconography - the visual conventions of Westerns
  are highly distinctive and coded
• but in this sense Western is a generic exception
• the Western has an imaginative relationship to
  the American geography and history -gt mythology
  moving western frontier where Anglo-Saxon vs.
  other meet, opportunity and danger, Manifest
  Destiny

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Jim Kitses semantic analysis (1969)

• original Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher and Sam
  Peckinpah
• recently revised, additions new chapters on John
  Ford, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood
• these directors found their essence in the
  Western
• structuralist method based on the anthropology by
  Lévi-Strauss (1967)
• civilisation versus the wilderness binary, around
  which the binary chart is built
• the collision of the structure and motifs of
  melodrama where the community is seen as
  invariably the endangered family in the Westerns
  of Ford

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Kitses binaries

• THE WILDERNESS
• (desert)
• The Individual
• freedom
• honor
• self-knowledge
• integiry
• self-interest
• solipsism

• CIVILIZATION
• (garden)
• The Community
• restriction
• institutions
• illusion
• compromise
• social responsibility
• democracy

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Kitses binaries 2

• Nature
• purity
• experience
• empiricism
• pragmatism
• brutalization
• savagery

• Culture
• corruption
• knowledge
• legalism
• idealism
• refinement
• humanity

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Kitses 3

• The West
• America
• the Frontier
• equality
• agrarianism
• tradition
• the past

• The East
• Europe
• America
• class
• industrialism
• change
• the future

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John Cawelti (1970)

• setting on or near the frontier
• a moment in the development of Amer.
  civilization law taking over lawlessness
• 3 central roles the townspeople (agents of
  civilization), the savages or outlaws who
  threaten this group, the hero(es) who are men in
  the middle
• narratives w/ violent confrontations central

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Wright

• in a classic western plot the hero uses his
  savage skills to combat savagery, to thus protect
  the civilized community who will finally accept
  him, hero joins the community
• Lévi-Strauss the hero possesses characteristics
  of both sides
• Die Hard, dir. John McTiernan, 1988

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Rick Altman (1984)

• semantic analysis
• basic elements of the genre (characters,
  locations, shooting style etc.)
• In 1999 Altman added production (for ex genre
  cycles) and audience (interpretation) into this
  schemata

• syntactic approach looks at the relationships
  between these elements and how they are
  structured in narratives gt
• thematics such as the opposition of East and
  West or garden and desert (Kitses)

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Western sub-genres

• Classical westerns Ford, Hawks
• Spagetti westerns Sergio Leone
• Osterns - East European westerns
• Revisionist western positive representation of
  Native Americans, Sam Peckinpah, Unforgiven
  (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
• question the simple hero-versus-villain dualism
• Acid Western Mon Helmans Shooting, Jim
  Jarmuschs Dead Man Walking
• Contemporary western the story placed in
  contemporary West Brokeback Mountain, No Country
  for Old Men

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Contemporary Western Misfits, dir. John Huston
with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Cable
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Schatz Ritual approach

• Thomas Schatz has argued that genres can be seen
  as a form of collective cultural expression and
  as a vehicle for exploring ideals, cultural
  values and ideas within American society. This
  has led critics including Schatz to postulate
  that some genres take place in different social
  spaces as a symbolic arena of action such as
  the cowboy or gangster film. In these films
  specific social conflicts are acted out.
• But ...evidence from contemporary audience
  surveys suggests that westerns were produced in
  large numbers during the studio era despite the
  fact that they were popular only with rural
  audiences and adolescent boys and despite the
  fact that they were actively disliked by a
  majority of the viewing population as a whole (
  Steve Neale 2000 225 ) .

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The Wild Bunch, dir. Sam Peckinpah
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Spagetti western Sergio LeoneOnce upon a Time
in the West/C'era una volta il West (1968)
For a Fistful of Dollars