Western philosophy

Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything is an energetic and lively account of the most beloved and legendary American genre—The Western. Western films and novels have become a large part of many American’s lives and continues to influence filmmaking to this day. People from all over the world visit western states to have what they think is the cowboy experience. West of Everything expresses a heavy concern with the role of gender in the genre, however, and points out that it is a male dominated field…

There is nothing more classical in film then the Western, and no one tackled the Western better than John Ford. Shawn Dwyer a classic movie expert states, “if there was ever a director-actor tandem that defined the Western genre, it was John Ford and John Wayne” (Dwyer 1). His film Stagecoach was the first of it’s kind in the film industry as being the first talking picture in the Western genre. The film included everything known to the classic Western, however, Ford wanted to question some…

many characteristics of a classic western. Everything from the horses, bounties, and violence point to this movie being a typical western film. However, because of the abundance of twists and turns it would be considered a revisionist western movie. Despite its few traits of a classic western, everything ranging from the unclear heroes to the absence of typical female roles lead to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly classifying as a revisionist western. A typical western movie has a very distinct…

The movie, “Border Bandits” was produced and directed by Kirby Warnock, the grandson of Roland Warnock, and included the real voice of Roland Warnock to describe the events occurred in 1915. The movie featured the role of Mexican Immigrants and Texas Rangers. The story began through the rise of Mexican banditos raiding the McAllen Ranch, one of the largest in South Texas. Then, several Texas Rangers arrived and eliminated the perpetrators, but it does not reveal the entire story. It started with…

subgenre of film known as the "Revisionist Western”. I’m sure you are asking yourself; how does this film that I chose enact the genre it is supposed to represent and how does it subvert it? Well, according to thescriptlab.com, “Western Film is a genre that revolves around stories primarily set in the late 19th century in the American Old West. Most Westerns are set between the American Civil War (1865) and the early 1900s. Common themes within Western…

Brokeback Mountain has both the aspects of a western film and a drama. In the western genre of film the men are normally fighting their way through the wilderness since it is their job and the way that they support themselves and their families. Another aspect of the western is the codes of honour. The men/cowboys are supposed to live their lives in a way that they follow all of the rules that society expects of them. The men are meant to follow all of the social norms, they are the providers…

Unforgiven Morals The grey line between right and wrong is hard for anyone to define and so was the case in Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven which released in 1992. The movie takes place in the old west at a town called Big Whisky. The film stars Clint Eastwood as William Munny a retired gun slinger who decides to come to the aid of a prostitute called Delilah, portrayed by Anna Levine, which was disfigured by the local town gang. William has been living on a farm, raising his two children,…

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly fits greatly in the history of the western. The movie was film in the West America because of the desert, mountains, small town frontier, railroads, saloons, and military forts of the Wild West. Most of the western movies had cowboys armed with a revolver gun, wearing boots, hats, spurs, and bandanas abound their necks while riding horses. Western movies usually had the same story lines about lawman and bounty hunters tracking down wanted people for a living. Most…

Western being a genre itself has subgenres. The major common subgenres are pre-classic, classic, spaghetti and revisionist. Western movies, regardless of what subgenre, had a similar major attribute, which included; Narratives that took after a mission that the legend needed to partake in-characters, mostly males who isolate themselves from whatever remains of human advancement by having an unmatched level of mental/physical durability and chivalry settings in normal settings, for example,…

A group of seven misfits comes together to save a town from an evil, money seeking man in the film The Magnificent Seven directed by Antoine Fuqua. James Horner and Simon Franglen’s film score in The Magnificent Seven transported me back to the old west. Horner and Franglen effectively utilized the unique timbres of select instruments, texture, and foreshadowing making the audience feel as if they are riding along side the misfits, a character in the story experiencing all that unfolds on the…