Story of the Western Genre

by
Josh O'Kane
A film genre is a grouping of films that tend to
share similar patterns, themes, iconography,
costuming, and types of character and story
evolution. Western is no different from any
other genre in that fact that they have these
patterns that extend from the earlier films all
the way to westerns we see today, there tend
to be great parallels between them. The idea
of theme or thematic issues in the western
tends to be the idea of the one group taking
over the other and originally in the genre that
was the idea of white Europeans taking over
the Native Americans, or the law abiding
dealing with outlaws, heroes versus villains.
What about the idea of the movie 'Avatar'?
Are there some elements of one group trying
to take over the other one? Who do we side with? Are we ok with the people coming
in to ravage the land? Or do we tend to side with the blue native people? Even
though 'Avatar' is a super high tech and on the more modern end of films it does
have some thematic issues that are similar to the western. We also see the idea of
code of honour, what it means to be a true hero, nature versus culture and freedom
versus restriction.
Iconography, the repeated images that pervade a film genre for the western tend to
be things that deal with the cowboy, some things like; the covered wagon (in some of
the older more traditional westerns), the railroad, the settlers starch dresses and
Sunday suits, Indians' overly stereotypical tribal clothing, the loner or outsider comes
to town contradicting the status quo, waist coats and revolvers, the idea that the
saloon is some sort of central place in these no street towns. But then we also get
the school house and church; we know they exist in these western towns but are
they as important as the saloon which shows up in nearly every western film? What
are the film makers trying to tell us about this genre, when these films have both
good guys and bad guys settling their differences in a saloon which is more crowded
than an abandoned school house or church? Are they trying to pass some sort of
moral lesson onto us? In terms of iconography these are the kind of things that
repeat over and over again throughout the genre of the western.
Another part of the genre that continues to transpire throughout its evolution is the
idea of the mood of a film and often times the western has very clear lines of who is

good and who is bad, especially in the early developments of the genre. Very clearly
the guy who in the white hat is the good and the guy in the black hat is bad. They're
doing their best to teach right and wrong through this film that happens to be set in
the west.
Cinematic style is how the film is shot. What kind of shots do we have? What kind of
camera angles? What kind of camera motion do we have? Or lighting? Or sound?
that changes within a genre. In the western we tend to have a lot of establishing
shots, long shots, shots from the distance so we can see the landscape and see how
barren this land is and the only hope for that land is the lone stranger who comes in
to save the town, typically using sweeping camera movements again to show the
expanse of how large the west is, using this setting as a higher chance of defeat for
our underdog who miraculously saves the day. The lighting often low key causing
shadows kind of film noir. A character whose positive will have high key lighting
whereas the definitive bad guy will get shadows with harshly angled lighting on them
and probably some scary music when they get introduced so we can differentiate
early on in the film who the film makers want us to like and dislike.
The Western genre is one that has evolved and has gone through different stages;
the primitive stagei of this genre is where we have patterns developing, themes and
iconography and an example of that is the first ever known western film which is the
1903 production by Edwin S. Porter 'The Great Train Robbery' which lasts 12
minutes and features no sound other than a dreary but captive orchestrated
soundtrack which over dubs the onscreen action. This short film has heavily
influenced directors such as Martin Scorsese who mirrors the final shot, of the actor
Justus D. Barnes emptying his pistol point blank into the camera in his 1990
gangster film 'Goodfellas' when actor Joe Pesci does the exact same thing.
Although this shot was placed at the end of 'The Great Train Robbery' Porter stated
the scene could also appear at the beginning. ii It is the first American action film and
first western film with a recognisable form, but also a heist film which in 1990 was
selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Liberty of
Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" iii which
suggests that genres reflect our reality and history and what may not seem like a film
category at the time, but a true accounts of what humanities stance once was in the
world, later becomes a 'style' that we look at for story setting.

As film makers later took this style of the primitive stage they then started to use it
over and over again in many different forms, this is the classical stageiv in which we
get many of the great western films made, such as Sergio Corbuccis' 1966 spaghetti
western 'Django' which follows a
mysterious stranger who
wanders into a town torn between
two gangs that operate
just across from one another and
are forever in dispute.
Our protagonist takes up arms
against one gang and
then the other, much like the plot
of the Sergio Leone film
'A Fistful of Dollars' which in
recent years has been
remade into the 1996 gangster
western
'Last
Man
Standing' starring Bruce Willis.
Where
the
location
remains a small, isolated dusty
western town like in the
other
films,
however
the
iconography is slightly
changed to best suit the 1930
way of life, using cars
instead of horses as the main
form of transport, Tommy
guns replacing the common revolver, liquor running being the gangs main business
rather than stealing gold as they do in both the other two films. These three films
have the same type of characters such as the quiet mysterious stranger being the
hero (John Smith being our heroes name in 'Last Man Standing' is a nod to Clint
Eastwood's character known as "the man with no name" from 'A Fistful of Dollars'),
the two gang leaders (one more deadly than the other), the inn keeper who acts as a
donor and informer to our hero yet never clearly picks aside in order not to get on
any ones bad side and last but not least the controversial damsel in distress. These
characteristics are very famous in the classical stage of the western and have
originated from the 1961 Japanese film 'Yojimbo'.v This is evident on how time
passes; a similar story in the same genre can be changed to suit the era it is made
or culture it's made for.
Then further down the line we get the revisionist stagevi of the genre where things
become more complex, these films may be set in the west and have the ideas of
cowboys, Indians, good guys and bad guys, but some of the themes are more
ambiguous. Like the film 'Dances with Wolves' where we don't exactly have
cowboys and Indians, we have former army officers and Native Americans who at

first do the very stereotypical thing which is not trust each other, but with time they
begin to learn from each other, understand each other's ways of life and grow to
become more close. Here we see ties to the original genre and the same
iconography however things are more of a grey area. This is what separates the
original 1966 version of 'Django' (which had a very classical story structure to it with
maybe one or two anti-hero moments that may make it slightly a hybrid between
both stages) from Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' that is most definitely,
completely in the revisionist stage. In Tarantino's version our hero is a slave who is
rescued by a bounty hunter who needs his help tracking down three bandits which
Django is familiar with. On finding and killing these bandits, the bounty hunter is
impressed with Django and makes him an offer that if he helps him with his
remaining bounties that he will in return, help Django to locate and save his wife from
a cotton plantation that she works as a field slave. We see our hero fight for his
wife's life and freedom against all odds and many enemies. He is the vision for the
common slave as a liberator for the black man, however turns his back on fellow
slaves and shows no interest in being any kind of revolutionary, even though he is
the obvious candidate. This gives us a satisfying ending for our hero but not so much
for the rest of humanity in this movie as it's a selfish ending, showing not everyone
can be saved.

Above we see the two opening shots from both movies, which both open with the
protagonist walking away with his back to the camera, with the same theme song
and credit font. This is one of the very few similarities in these movies as well as
Django himself being dubbed "the fasted gun in the west" in both features.

Another similarity shown here above is themes of racism and racial war which occurs
between an all white American gang of red hoods in the 1966 version who are in
constant dispute with the Mexican gang, to what can only be assumed, the earliest
form of the Ku Klux Klan in Tarantino's version.
Eventually like all genres the western descended into the
parodic stagevii where the genre is mocked, where we have
themes of being an individual in the great frontier, conquering
something, using the same iconography. The films tend to
make fun of themselves, for example 'Blazing Saddles' is not
a serious look at the west, but it has all the same elements as
a western when the sheriff has to come in and save the town
or in 'The Three Amigos' which was a spoof of the 1960 film
'The Magnificent Seven' but instead of seven heroes we
have three cowardly, dim-witted actors who find themselves at
the wrong place at the wrong time. Even recently with Seth
MacFarlane's movie debut 'A Million Ways to Die in the West' they take the
classical themes and turn them on their head in an attempt to show how predictable
and repetitive such story structures can be, however always entertaining when
introducing a new twist or view point.
The final Idea of any genre is the extension stageviii, where we revert back to the
original values and theme of the beginning primitive stages but everything seems to
be completely more modern, for example 'Star Wars' set in a galaxy "far far away"
but have these wide open spaced frontier type planets
with saloons and outlaws, bounty hunters and law men,
battle between good and evil, right and wrong. Take a
look of Harrison Ford's character in the movie, Han
Solo; he wears a vest, jean like trouser, holsters his
blaster in his belt. He is in fact a space cowboy. Other
films that could be considered an extension of westerns
are 'Mad Max' again with the open badlands and law
versus outlaw with a leather wearing cowboy as our
protagonist. Other forms of mixed genre westerns
include the Sci-Fi/Westerns such as 'Cowboys &
Aliens' and 'Back to the Future Part III'. Other forms
of media such as video games like 'GUN' which would
have taken themes from the revisionist stage and comic
books such as DC Comic's 'Jonah Hex'.
The western genre has indeed seen and been developed long since the days of train
heists and small town gang wars. We have come a long way since Edwin S. Porters
'The Great Train Robbery' and I am still unsure of weather the question of, "do
genres actually exist?' has been or even can be answered without a lot more years

of analysis. However I look forward to seeing what the future brings for the western
genre and all genres inside the next 100 years.

REFERENCES

i http://www89.homepage.villanova.edu/elana.starr/pages/western-filmgenre.htm
ii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_film)
iii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Train_Robbery_(1903_film)
iv http://www89.homepage.villanova.edu/elana.starr/pages/western-filmgenre.htm
v https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Man_Standing_(film)
vi http://www89.homepage.villanova.edu/elana.starr/pages/western-filmgenre.htm
vii http://www89.homepage.villanova.edu/elana.starr/pages/western-filmgenre.htm
viii http://www89.homepage.villanova.edu/elana.starr/pages/western-filmgenre.htm