The Western Genre

Irina Maldea

It would be through the interaction of key, or stock situations employed by a

director and genre expectations held by an audience that a genre could develop
(adapt, evolve) over a period of time, and also reveal (affirm or question) the
ideology of the times in which it was made.
Discuss this with reference to the western genre and three films you have seen.
Abstract: This essay deals with development of the Western film genre. It examines
the closed and self referencing world of the genre, and analyses the ideology of the
times using as an example its treatment of native American Indians in particular.
The paradigms of genre films remain basically unchanged and recognisable, while
different directors and films develop new experiences for the audience, often based on
changes in political viewpoint and ideology. This essay analyses particularly those
films including representation of the Native Americans or Indians. It follows then that
the key area of the relationship between genre, myth and historical accuracy must then
also be examined. The three films which will be studied in detail are John Fords
Stagecoach (1939) and Fort Apache (1948) and Ulzanas Raid (1972) directed
by Robert Aldrich. Other films will be referenced.
Hollywoods West has typically been from about 1865 to 1890 or sowithin its
brief span we can count a number of frontiers in the sudden rush of mining camps, the
building of the railways, the Indian wars, the cattle drives, the coming of the farmer.
Together with the last days of the Civil War and the exploits of the badmen, here is the
raw material of the Western. 1 What is a Western? There is general consensus on the
broad definition. But genre theorists are divided on the interpretation and theories
relating to genres. Tom Ryall2 divides them into the ritual approach, which came from
Claude Levi-Strauss and his followers, which saw the Western as an epic, revealing
the myth to the audience, whose attendance at the movies performs the ritual function
Levi-Strauss noted in primitive societies. In this theory the audience is the ultimate
creator, as Hollywood gives them what they want to see. 3 With the increased interest
in Marxist analysis in the 60s and 70s, there developed an ideological approach,
which sees Hollywood as a manipulator, and each genre as a specific lie. Whichever
1

Jim Kitses, Horizons West : The Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood, 1969
Tom Ryall, Teachers Study Guide 2: The Ganster Film, 1978
3
Rick Altman, A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre Text and Intertext, 1984
2

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approach one takes, a key question then, is the relationship of the Western genre to
history and ideology.
The Western above all other genre is historically based. Bazin says This bookwill
emphasise a little known aspect of the western: its faithfulness to history4. But he
qualifies this shortly after: True, few westerns are explicitly concerned with
historical accuracy..For the relations between the facts of history and the western
are not immediate and direct, but dialectic. Earlier he states Those formal attributes
by which one normally recognises the western are simply signs or symbols of its
profound reality, namely the myth. As Bazin would have been thinking primarily of
John Ford when he wrote, this is interesting for our discussion of Fords films.
The problem with claiming historical validation for Westerns is the nature of genre
films. Robert Warshow says that every genre gradually generates its own distinct
reality. The relationship between the conventions which go to make up such a type
and the real experience of its audience or the real facts of whatever situation it
pretends to describe is only of secondary importance and does not determine its
aesthetic force. It is only in the ultimate sense that the type appeals to the audiences
experience of reality; much more immediately, it appeals to the previous experience of
the type itself: it creates its own field of reference5
John Tuska writes What happens in a romantic historical reconstruction happens for
an ideological reason.it steadily discloses its own internal i.e. textually specific
value system, its own particular skew on the issues and conflicts inherent within the
western story.6 Having examined the history of the western and the genre theories
which seek to explain the western, we now move on to the analysis of particular films.
to see how the genre developed and how much ideology was a factor. Given the
historical basis of the genre, the question of the relationship to history must be asked.
John Ford is an interesting example of a director whose films are categorised as
classical Westerns. He has his myth, the masculine hero of the frontier, slightly
outside society, flawed, but ultimately more moral that the self-righteous burghers
4

Andr Bazin, The Western in What is Cinema, 1971

Robert Warshow, The Gangster as Tragic Hero in The Immediate Experience, 1962
6
Jon Tuska, The American West in Film, 1985
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around him. When he went to make Stagecoach , he hadnt made a Western for
years, but Stagecoach is, to many critics, the archetypal classical Western.
Thomas Schatz writes; Basic to the Western story in whatever formulation is an
elemental conflict between civilisation and savagery. This is the thematic nucleus and
the defining characteristic of the genre and it informs virtually every aspect of its
narrative composition, from character and setting to plot structure and thematics.7
In terms of stock situations and characters, Stagecoach is on the surface, the classic.
The story begins with the announcement that Geronimo, notorious Apache warlord,
has quit the reservation. An Apache war band is on the loose, they are the peril
throughout the film. The Indian as threat had been in existence since the beginning
of the genre, it is a staple of paintings, Wild West shows and dime novels. Here,
Geronimos role is simply to threaten the lives of our characters. There is no further
depth given to that subject. We then see two characters being run out of town by the
decent citizens. They are Dallas, the Whore with the heart of gold and the town
drunk Doc Boone. With a group of other stock characters: the upstanding banker who
is actually a criminal, the uptight prude, the Southern gentleman gambler, and finally
the outlaw Ringo. Falsely charged with murder, he has broken out of jail to revenge
himself on the Plummer gang, who have killed his father and brother. Many of these
could have come from a Bret Harte story from the 1880s (Ford did film The
Outcasts of Poker Flat but the print has not survived).
The characters are put together in a stagecoach and sent on a perilous journey, where
the real character of each individual is revealed. The flawed outsiders repeatedly save
the day, and when attacked by the Indians, the cavalry arrives just in time to rescue
most of them. One important stock situation used is the fate worse than death,
where the Southern Gentleman put his revolver with his last bullet to the ladies head.
There are no words, but the audience would clearly understand that he is going to kill
her so she can avoid rape by Indians. As well as the stock characters and situations,
Ford gave several classic icons to cinema: the landscape of Monument Valley and the
re-launch of the career of John Wayne.

Thomas Schatz, The Western in Handbook of American Film Genres, ed. Wes Gehring, 1988

The Western Genre

Irina Maldea

Ford is justifiably recognised as an auteur film-maker by Bazin for this film.

Stagecoach is the ideal example of the maturity of a style brought to perfection. John
Ford struck the ideal balance between social myth, historical reconstruction,
psychological truth and the traditional theme of the Western mise en scene.8
But as well as a perfect example of the genre, the film is hugely influenced by Fords
politics at that time. A stated left-winger, he donated $1,000 to the Spanish antiFranco cause. The film openly attacks big business and supports Roosevelt and the
New Deal. One of only two characters introduced into the script by Ford is the
banker Gatewood, a despicable character who mouths phrases like Whats good for
the banks is good for the country. He gets locked up at the end. And the only
character in the stagecoach to get killed by the Indians is the Southern Gentleman
Hatfield. His crimes are twofold: he is a Southern confederate and there is no place
for him in America of 1939, on the eve of WWII. Secondly, and more interestingly, he
is shot just as he decides to save Lucy, the Gentlewoman, from the fate worse than
death. Clearly in Fords view, thats not his decision.
The director has certainly stayed within the recognisable genre film. On the other
hand he has developed certain issues. One is race: It is a film which announces, and
in a forthright way that no other Western of its day did, that a key dimension of this
drama is one a racial conflict and violence. Through out American cinema we can
find an oft recurring scene in which a white woman is about to be killed by a loved
one.9 In this case, she doesnt get killed, the killer is shot himself by the Indians. This
represents Fords concern with the nature of civilisation, particularly its fear of the
other, its hardly repressed sense that even a little bit savage, even a slight taint
usually seems far too much for American tastes.10 The first Indian we see in the film
is mistaken by a soldier for an Apache. He quickly put right: the man is a Comanche,
they hate the Apache even more than we do. In a very limited and subtle way, Ford
is using the genre and yet questioning knee jerk racial stereotyping.
To sum up the discussion of Stagecoach, the director uses and emphasises the stock
characters and situations of the genre, while at the same time overturning some
8

Andr Bazin, The Evolution of the Western in What is Cinema, 1971

J.P. Telotte Stagecoach and Racial representation in John Fords Stagecoach, 1995
10
J.P. Telotte Stagecoach and Racial representation in John Fords Stagecoach, 1995
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Irina Maldea

stereotypes. This fits in with his ideology of an America that must be prepared to
eliminate prejudice and be inclusive. It must not be class divided; he accepts the
Roosevelt New Deal politics.
In Fort Apache (1948), Ford again presents a stock situation. The Apache have left
the reservation under Cochise and Geronimo. It is up to the cavalry stationed at a
remote outpost to save the situation. But he has considerably developed his
presentation of Indians since the whooping caricatures of Stagecoach: The Indians
have speaking roles and conflict is either the fault of white prejudice or young
hotheads, not inherent in the Indians nature. 11 It should be pointed out that Fords
later Rio Grande reverts to the Apache as savage, killing for the fun of it, killing
them being the only way to deal with this. Ford is more concerned with what helps the
story, rather than beating home an ideological point. In The Searchers (1956), the
myth of the fate worse than death and the bogey of Indians having sexual relations
with white women is continued unquestioningly, even though ultimately the film is
very anti-racist. But in Fort Apache, the Indian case is put strongly and logically.
Ford does not think that the Indian can stand in the way of progress, and they must
submit to the inevitable and adapt their ways to the white man. But they should not be
provoked or swindled, if this happens, the reaction is inevitable. As John Captain York
(John Wayne) says of Cochise leaving the reservation: any man would do the same in
the circumstances.
His real concern in this film is the disparity between nature and convention. Ford
draws out this theme in two ways: first with respect to social life within the outpost;
second with respect to the relationship between the cavalry and the Indians.12
The film concerns a martinet Lt Col. Owen Thursday, who arrives at Fort Apache
knowing nothing of the Apache or Indian ways. He continually ignores the advice of
Captain York, an experienced Indian fighter, and leads his men to destruction. At the
end of the film, Thursday is celebrated as a hero. The myth and the tradition of the
army is more important than the man. Thursday is clearly based on Custer, who Ford
11

Edward Buscombe, Injuns! Native Americans in the movies, 2006

Jean Heffernan, Poised between savagery and civilization Forging political communities in John
Fords Westerns, paper delivered, American Political Science Association meeting, September 1998,
Boston, MA.
12

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despised, but his experiences of army life in the war, and the ideological
contingencies being brought about by the beginning of the Cold Was, meant that a
united front had to be presented. The treatment of ex-Confederate officers in Fort
Apache is considerably more tolerant than the depiction of Hatfield in Stagecoach,
a cad, who would shoot you in the back. There is some debate on Fords intentions
with his jingoistic finale, but in the film he does question the rightness of the US
treatment of Indians. As Heffernan (1998) says: Fort Apache deposits us on the edge
of civilisation, then challenges our very notions of civilisation and savagery as we
confront the fateful role that conventional distinctions can play in political
judgement.13 There is little question where Fords sympathies lie. As Doc Boone says
at the end of Stagecoach: Well, theyre saved from the blessings of civilisation.
Throughout the film, Ford builds up the cavalry as the well ordered and equipped
fighting force. In the genre, we would expect that they will triumph, or that at least
any defeat would be revenged. This does not happen. There is no great confrontation:
Cochise rides up to York and returns the captured standard to him, an act of nobility
deliberately contrasting with Thursdays ignorant and racist behaviour in his
negotiations with Cochise. The simplicities of the early treatment of Indians will no
longer do in the post war climate - for one thing, many Indians fought in the war, and
the Hollywood Code deliberately pushed more sympathetic treatment.
But sympathetic treatment did not mean historical accuracy. The portrayal of Indians
always had more to do with the ideology of the times than with reality. This is to be
seen clearly in the films of the Vietnam era, such as Ulzanas Raid (1972), Little
Big Man (1970) and Soldier Blue (1970). Schatz writes: Vietnam itself proved to be
too sensitive a setting for films that examined the United States militaristic/imperialist
impulses, while the western genre provided an apt metaphor for what was happening
in South East Asia, particularly the cavalry-versus-injun variation that dealt with
Manifest Destiny and the calculated destruction of the Native American race.14

13

Jean Heffernan, Poised between savagery and civilization Forging political communities in John
Fords Westerns, paper delivered, American Political Science Association meeting, September 1998,
Boston, MA.
14
Thomas Schatz, The Western in Handbook of American Film Genres, ed. Wes Gehring, 1988

The Western Genre

Irina Maldea

Ulzanas Raid is the most complex of these films, although Little Big Man for the
first time presents Indians as individuals, with a sense of humour. John Saunders
writes that the film is one of the most thoughtful accounts of the clash of cultures.15
The films sticks to the rules of genre, it is recognisably a western. There is a young
inexperienced cavalry officer, accompanied by the grizzled veteran scout McIntosh.
The Apache have again broken out of the reservation and are on a murderous
campaign. The cavalry must ride to the rescue. The difference here is that no side is
presented as better than the other. The Apache kill because they must, to increase their
power. They see nothing wrong with torture and murder, its part of their culture.
There is a scene remarkable for its swiftness and brutality (it takes the viewer a while
before the full impact of what happens: when the Apache attack a woman and her son,
guarded by a soldier, the trooper flees. The woman begs him to come back, not to
leave her. He rides towards her guns blazing. But she is the target. When she drops
dead, he tries to rescue the boy, but when his horse is shot he turns his gun on himself,
leaving the boy, who the Apache leave unharmed. We are later told that there is no
power to be gained from the killing of a child. All this fits perfectly into the logic of
the fate worse than death and into the filmmakers programme of showing the
Apache warts and all. A woman is raped into insanity, as in The Searchers. The film
was and is highly praised for its realism: Apache captives are slowly roasted over
fires, as they are in Fort Apache and countless other Westerns.
The problem is that nothing like this ever happened. In Ulzanas real raid, his band
did murder 39 people. They didnt rape any women. Nobody was torture or roasted,
this was not Indian practice. In other words, many of the staples we are told about
Indians within the Western film genre are simply not accurate. There was no fate
worse than death, just death. A huge junk of a peoples history has been travestied,
either to tell a good story or prove a political point.
The filmmakers concern is to use the genre to comment on culture clash, the fear of
the other. And here lies the problem with the whole western genre and its
relationship to history. Jack Nachbar writes about pro-progress and anti-progress
westerns. In the first, the Indian is treacherous, cunning and sadistically violent. In
the latter, they are nobly virtuous, a proper alternative to the vulgarities of white
15

John Sounders, The Western Genre from Lordsburg to Big Whiskey, 2001

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society.16 He argues that Ulzanas Raid is a synthesis of the two. It is necessary for
each side to be equally brutal to make a comment on culture clash. This is necessary
so that McIntosh can say: What bothers you, Lieutenant, is you dont like to think of
white men behaving like Indians. Kind of confuses the issue, dont it?. This is the
theme of the film. So Aldrich has stayed within the confines of the Western Genre, but
managed to make a point suitable to the ideology of his time, the time of Vietnam and
My Lai. Everything that is in Fort Apache is here, but the genre has evolved.
This demonstrates the problem of the genre. Not all commentators find it acceptable
to glorify the myth and the genre at the expense of history. John Tuska writes: I do
not find it critically responsible to exalt a racial stereotype to the level of mythology.
To put it bluntly, what apologists really mean by a mythic dimension in a Western
film is that part of it which they know to be a lie but which, for whatever reason, they
still wish to embrace.17
To what extent is it moral to hide behind the screen of genre when describing an
actual race, which still exists? Would Science Fiction not be a preferable genre to
explore these issues? Tuska is harsh in his judgement: I do not think any new
synthesis will be possible until filmmakers are willing to present audiences with
historical reconstructions, until there is a legitimate concept of historical reality
informing both the structure and the characters in a western filmdealing with
Native Americans and Native American culture.18

16

Jack Nachbar, "Ulzana's raid (1972)" in Western movies (ed.s William T. Pilkington and Don
Graham) 1979
17
John Tuska The American West in Film 1985
18
ditto

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Irina Maldea

References
Rick Altman, A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre Text and Intertext,
1984
Peter Babiak Icons and Subversion in the Westerns of Clint Eastwood, Cineaction
Andr Bazin, The Western from What is Cinema, 1971
Andr Bazin, The Evolution of the Western in What is Cinema, 1971
Edward Buscombe, Injuns! Native Americans in the movies, 2006
Edward Buscombe, The Searchers, 2000
Edward Buscombe, Stagecoach, 1992
John Cawelti What rough beast new westerns? in ANQ vol. 9 1996
Pam Cook, The Cinema Book, 2004
Micheal Dunne, Mikhail Bakhtin and the Sundance Kid: generic dialogue in the
Western, Post Script Vol. 23 2004
Arthur Eckstein Darkening Ethan: John Fords The Searchers (1956) from novel to
screenplay to screen, Cinema Journal Vol.38 1998
Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to
Sergio Leone, 2006
Phillip Gianos, Politics and Politicians in American Film in Praeger Series in
Political Communication
Jean Heffernan, Poised between savagery and civilization Forging political
communities in John Fords Westerns, paper delivered, American Political Science
Association meeting, September 1998, Boston, MA.
Jim Kitses, Horizons West : The Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood, 1969
Robert Leighninger The Westerner as male soap opera: John Fords Rio Grande,
Journal of Mens Studies, vol. 6 1998
Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood, 2000
Armando Jose Prats His master's voice(over): revisionist ethos and narrative
dependence from 'Broken Arrow' (1950) to 'Geronimo: An American Legend' (1993)
in ANQ Vol. 9 1996
Arthur Redding, Frontier mythographies: savagery and civilisation in Frederick
Jackson and John Ford, Literature-Film Quarterly, Vol. 35, 2007
Thomas Schatz, The Western in Handbook of American Film Genres, ed. Wes
Gehring, 1988
Christopher Sharrett Through a door darkly: a reappraisal of John Fords The
Searchers, Cineaste vol. 31 2006
Tom Ryall, Teachers Study Guide 2: The Ganster Film, 1978
Paul Simpson, The Rough Guide to Westerns, 2006
John Sounders, The Western Genre from Lordsburg to Big Whiskey, 2001
J.P. Telotte Stagecoach and Racial representation in John Fords Stagecoach, ed.
Barry Keith Grant,1995
Matthew R. Turner Cowboys and Comedy: The simultaneous Deconstruction and
reinforcement of generic convention in the western parody, Film & History,
John Tuska, The American West in Film, 1985
Films
Robert Aldrich Ulzanas raid
Robert Altman Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Kevin Costner Dances with Wolves
Delmer Daves Broken Arrow
John Ford Iron Horse
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John Ford Stagecoach

John Ford Fort Apache
John Ford She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
John Ford Rio Grande
John Ford The Searchers
John Ford The Man who shot Liberty Valance
George Roy Hill Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Akira Kurosawa Yojimbo
Sergio Leone The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Ralph Nelson Soldier Blue
Sam Peckinpah The Wild Bunch
George Stevens Shane

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