Genre discussion: are the following films Westerns?

[throatybeard]

Dances with Wolves

Brokeback Mountain

No Country for Old Men

There Will be Blood

[Jarhead]

No !

[wiscodevil]

I just saw this and thought it was a great Western. Very retro in story and feel.

[Duvall]

Dances with Wolves

Brokeback Mountain

No Country for Old Men

There Will be Blood

I would say yes for all of them - each of the films are set in the West and address traditional Western themes, even if they seek to invert some of those themes. Why wouldn't they be considered Westerns?

[2535Miles]

I don't think you could classify No Country for Old Men as a western, but I think There Will Be Blood definitely fits the genre. Dances with Wolves and Brokeback Mountain are right out!

3:10 To Yuma is a remake of the 1957 film of the same name.

My favorite Western: Shane.

[2535Miles]

Why wouldn't they be considered Westerns?

First, I think we have to agree on what constitutes a "Western" genre. There are certain elements that must be included in order for a film to be considered a Western. Why don't we start a list?

I'll say that a Western has to include "Good vs. Evil" or some sort of moral struggle. Think about the Cowboy in White vs. Cowboy in Black, or Ranchers vs. Industry, Cowboys vs. Indians. Classic films portray obvious characters to fulfill these roles but the viewers are also left to determine "what is really bad?". Were Indians bad or was the policy for Western Expansion bad?

Thoughts?

[throatybeard]

Obviously, if you count any of the four of them, it would have to be as revisionist Westerns...but so have been just about all good Westerns since the mid-60s.

I'll wait for a few more replies before I hold forth.

[Duvall]

First, I think we have to agree on what constitutes a "Western" genre. There are certain elements that must be included in order for a film to be considered a Western. Why don't we start a list?

I'll say that a Western has to include "Good vs. Evil" or some sort of moral struggle. Think about the Cowboy in White vs. Cowboy in Black, or Ranchers vs. Industry, Cowboys vs. Indians. Classic films portray obvious characters to fulfill these roles but the viewers are also left to determine "what is really bad?". Were Indians bad or was the policy for Western Expansion bad?

Thoughts?

Well, by that standard I don't see how you could exclude No Country for Old Men or Dances With Wolves. The main theme of NCfOM is the moral struggle, and whether it exists or has a purpose. It's set in the recent past, but that's another important element of the film - asking whether the ideas and romantic notions of the West still apply, or ever existed. And Dances With Wolves was about taking the notions of Indians as evil and westward expansion as good and inverting them. It was steeped in the imagery and ideas of classic Westerns; it just approached those ideas from a different perspective.

[OldPhiKap]

First, I think we have to agree on what constitutes a "Western" genre. There are certain elements that must be included in order for a film to be considered a Western. Why don't we start a list?

I'll say that a Western has to include "Good vs. Evil" or some sort of moral struggle. Think about the Cowboy in White vs. Cowboy in Black, or Ranchers vs. Industry, Cowboys vs. Indians. Classic films portray obvious characters to fulfill these roles but the viewers are also left to determine "what is really bad?". Were Indians bad or was the policy for Western Expansion bad?

Thoughts?

I think most good movies have a moral struggle or good vs. evil. By that definition, Terminator is a Western. So is Smokey and the Bandit.

There definitely are "black hat/white hat" movies, but not all are that clean. Unforgiven is a great example, as are several of Clint's spaghetti Westerns.

[Mal]

Yes, no, sort of, no.

For me, the definition of the genre is based mostly on the inclusion of a few particular thematic underpinnings. The struggle for retention of individuality in the face of encroaching societal constraints (and technology); the loner character who personifies this struggle; a meditation on whether traditional codes of honor or formalized law and legal process are better (with a heavy dose of vigilantism and blood feud gun violence thrown in); conflict between loyalty to family vs. community vs. country; desecration of the sacred purity of the unsettled West, with a dash of the guilt and conflict brought on by European-America's inevitable push to the Pacific in the face of the displacement of Native Americans while doing so.

I don't know whether it's cause or effect re: those themes, but for me "Western" also means it's most likely set between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th Century.

So, under those guidelines, certainly "yes" for Dances with Wolves. You've got the loner rebelling against the brutality of his white community, a sense of sadness for the loss of traditional, honor society, plenty of guns, all of that. It was somewhat revisionist by telling the story from the Native point of view, but the themes are all there.

Brokeback Mountain to some extent had the element of rebellion/loner-ism, especially in Heath Ledger's character. But that was based more on the characters' sexuality than anything. It's an elegiac love story, without violence, set in modern times. These characters are struggling not because the world's moving too fast for them, but because they're way out ahead of it. Not a Western, despite the copious mountains and horses.

No Country has an individual out for revenge, but with no regret or regard for the law, and he's clearly not a conflicted hero. He's a psychopath. There is a bit of Western in the sheriff, though. Overall, it felt more like an action movie with a meditation on the psychic costs of violence (to all of society) to me. Not quite a Western.

Blood is an allegory about the dangers of American excess and exceptionalism. It's too much about one man's struggle with himself to be a Western. Western's aren't that post-modern about psychology and character study. They don't tend to delve all that much into religion, either, or the religion of capitalism.

[Jarhead]

Thought it was Great!

[dkbaseball]

I like Mal's analysis and final verdicts. I'd just add that for Brokeback and Blood the perspectives of the authors of the books they were based on is worth considering.

The woman who wrote Brokeback described herself as an adherent of the "annales" school of history, and saw herself as addressing the dilemma faced by people who just don't seem to fit in the time and place in which fate has landed them. While the western genre can perhaps be extended a little into the 20th century -- I believe Wild Bunch was set shortly after the turn of the century -- 1963 just doesn't satisfy the time criterion.

But most fundamentally, both Brokeback and Blood are not elegies to individualism, but social criticism. Especially Blood, which was based on a book by Upton Sinclair, the quintessential American muckraker and social critic of the first half of the 20th century. It's an attack on the anti-social aspects of American individualism. It also takes aim at one of the fundamental themes of the western -- the need for regenerative violence.

Social criticism is the antithesis of the western, which eschews actual history and creates a culture-less, mythical landscape in which the drama of individualism plays itself out.

[allenmurray]

one of the fundamental themes of the western -- the need for regenerative violence.

Social criticism is the antithesis of the western, which eschews actual history and creates a culture-less, mythical landscape in which the drama of individualism plays itself out.

Star Wars.

[dkbaseball]

Star Wars.

While I think it's safe to say George Lucas has anti-war sensibilities born of the Vietnam era, it's true that with Star Wars he was deliberately harking back to his youth in the early years of post-WWII triumphalism, when the western and the good triumphing over evil theme were in their heydays. But if you accept that individualism is a major theme of westerns, I'd say the analogy of Star Wars to this genre breaks down here. I'm thinking in particular of the party at the end of Return of the Jedi -- a very communitarian feel -- as opposed to the typical ending of a western where the hero rides off alone into the sunset, his integrity and individualism intact, the bad guys dispatched by his violence.

[OldPhiKap]

Is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia a Western? That one always strattles for me.

[allenmurray]

While I think it's safe to say George Lucas has anti-war sensibilities born of the Vietnam era, it's true that with Star Wars he was deliberately harking back to his youth in the early years of post-WWII triumphalism, when the western and the good triumphing over evil theme were in their heydays. But if you accept that individualism is a major theme of westerns, I'd say the analogy of Star Wars to this genre breaks down here. I'm thinking in particular of the party at the end of Return of the Jedi -- a very communitarian feel -- as opposed to the typical ending of a western where the hero rides off alone into the sunset, his integrity and individualism intact, the bad guys dispatched by his violence.

I agree. But the initial film, standing alone, fits the genre quite well.

[Jim3k]

I agree. But the initial film, standing alone, fits the genre quite well.

Robert Redford has at least two movies that don't fit the era to be westerns, but I think must be placed there: Electric Horseman and The Horse Whisperer. And, they certainly have features that both do and don't fit traditional westerns. Yet it would be hard not to call them westerns. Neither of his characters had fully accepted the 20th century, though both were planted in the last third of it. Rodeos and Montana push them there without much question. Yet, I'm not sure that they fit Mal's criteria. (Which, BTW, were well-considered.)

The same can be said of some of Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet (1970's story about Phoenix cop bringing back (female) witness that crooked law enforcement wants dead -- incredible shootout in the Man With No Name genre where the individual's own sense of morality is the driving force. Similarly, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a Montana based bank robber story taking place in the 1960's, where Eastwood and Jeff Bridges are trying to find the loot after Clint is released from prison.

Going to the four movies in question, I have no trouble characterizing all four as westerns.

I would have no difficulty in modifying the definition of a western to include modern wester-based films which still have a touch of good v. evil -- even if they might also be psychological studies. (An older version of this might be Treasure of Sierra Madre, which is Mexican based, but we follow Bogie as he descends into madness over his greed for gold in the 1920's. Also famous, among other things for Alfonso Bedoya's classic line: "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!")

[Jim3k]

And I forgot Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Same kind of thing, fits most of the criteria, but modern.

[dkbaseball]

throaty,

I thought you were going to descend, like a deus ex machina, and resolve these matters? Your students are all gathered around the seminar table, lost in the post-modern haze of our muddled individual accounts, waiting for you to return from the break. Come forth and teach.

[DevilAlumna]

And I forgot Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Same kind of thing, fits most of the criteria, but modern.

Oh, you beat me to it. This was an excellent recent movie, very under-advertised.

As for the original question, I haven't seen "Old Country" or "There Will Be Blood," but the other two are definitely Westerns (even though my raised-on-1950's-Americana parents might disagree with my definition.)