Genre: The Western

Genre

A category of film, such as the western, the horror film, the costume drama, the melodrama, and so on, with recognizable conventions and character types.

Semantic Approach

Focus on similarities

Fixed meanings, what remains constant

Building blocks of the genre

Syntactic Approach

Focus on change and development over time

Variable relationships between structured elements

Semantic ApproachThe Western is a film whose action, situated in the American West, is consistent with the atmosphere , the values, and the conditions of existence in the Far West between 1840 and 1900.

Syntactic ApproachThe Western is a genre that results from several overlapping thematic clashes: the West as desert vs. the West as garden; nature vs. culture; the individual vs. community.

Semantic Approach= broad applicability.

Syntactic Approach= explanatory power.

Semantic ApproachThe Western hero is typically a nomadic male loner who comes to town, purges it of its savage or criminal elements, and leaves. He is often motivated by revenge and/or a sense of justice.

Syntactic ApproachHow do variations in the Western hero represent changing images of masculinity and changing attitudes toward the history of Western settlement?

Conventions (Semantic Elements)

o Settingso Character Typeso Costumes and Propso Plots/Situationso Conflictso Cinematic elements:

cinematography, mise-en-scene

Overlapping Thematic Clashes(Syntactic Relationships)

The West as as garden

Culture

Community

The West as as desert

Nature

Individual

vs.

The Western as Myth

“ . . . in The Searchers (dir. John Ford, 1956) there is a direct confrontation with the fact that the origin of the territorial U.S. rested on a virulent racism and genocidal war against aboriginal peoples, a war that would not have been possible and perhaps would not have been won without the racist hatred of characters like the John Wayne character.”- Robert B. Pippin, “What Is a Western? Politics and Self-Knowledge in John Ford’s The Searchers,” Critical Inquiry 35.2 (2009)

Repeated Images in The Searchers

Marriages on the BorderDebbie and Scar

Marty and Look

Marty and Laurie