Use the examples below and your own research to summarise the key conventions of the Western genre
CONVENTIONS :
Characters : Hero /Villain
Sheriff/ Cowboy/Gunfighter
Narrative : shootout/ conflict resolves the story
Themes :
good v evil
past v present
law and order v chaos and criminality
Film form
Setting : landscape
Props and Costumes
Modern subversions and changes ? Links to other genres ?
Shane : good v evil gunfighters
High Noon : The good sheriff
Stagecoach ": the landscape
The Good, the bad and the ugly
The gunfight
The Wild Bunch shootout
the importance of the shootout at the climax of the film
themes : past v present
New wave of more explicitly violent films
Revisionist westerns of the 1970s- 1990s became more concerned with changing pur understanding of the tradiitional good v evil cowboy v Indians binary opposition , with films such as Dances With Wolves
Representations of ethnicity
MODERN EXAMPLES AND COMPARISONS
The Proposition
Deadwood :
Role of sheriff, lawless nature of Wild West , order v chaos.
The Quick and the dead : fight
The importance of the gunfight , subverted by it becoming an explosive action scene
Pastiche of the gunfight
THE COEN BROTHERS HAVE USED SOME OF THE CONVENTIONS OF THE WESTERN IN A VARIETY OF WAYS IN A NUMBER OF FILMS
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