Django Unchained Themes

Westerns have come a long way since the silent film days and the original western, The Great Train Robbery in 1903. Today, modern technology has allowed westerns to become more thrilling, more daring, and more action packed than ever before, and none of this is more true than for Django Unchained(2012) directed by Quentin Tarantino and the TV show Firefly(2002), created by Joss Whedon. While both embrace new and interesting twists to the genre, both still feature many of the classic themes featured throughout all films in the western genre, including the setting, the characterization, and the essential plot lines. There is something about a western film that makes them so easily identifiable to even the common viewer. The most recurring and iconic conventions used in almost every western ever created is implemented though the mise-en-scene, …show more content…
Every western has a ‘hero’, or as Willian S Hart put it “the good bad man”(). This hero is almost always male with a volatile personality and a proclivity towards violence. Along these lines they are also typically “masculine persons of integrity and principle - courageous, moral, tough, solid and self sufficient, maverick characters”(). Continuing along the classical narrative design, there are often external forces pushing the action forward. Typically the main character is a hero for hire, and takes jobs for the shallow goal of acquiring more money. However, there is usually a larger goal in mind: the fight for justice, which typically involves saving the damsel in distress. Eventually, while along his journey, the hero for hire is often faced with a moral dilemma. He must decide if he wants to continue to fight for good or fight for the forces of evil instead. These elements, and many others, recur time and time again and are what comprise the fabric of the western genre. As expected, many of these elements mentioned above appear in both Django and Firefly. Both feature the common mise-en-scene elements