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A friend recently linked me to this blog post as possibly “relevant to my interests.” She was, of course, correct.
It’s not the easiest read and perhaps also not the clearest in terms of what the author is trying to say, which is perhaps unsurprising if you’re trying to define something by a negative. What does a black hole look like? Well, by definition we don’t really know, do we? We’re just making our best guesses based on its effects on what we can observe.
But I think I would find agreement with him on what I believe is his basic thesis, which is that the classic Western is far more convoluted (and even subversive) than many might assume, even before the controversial “deconstruction” that was High Noon. Or, in our more modern era, we might see Unforgiven in the same way. I believe his main point is that a true Western is not a simple matter of sound and fury but of hard choices and complicated people. He doesn’t like the remake of 3:10 to Yuma and I agree with him, especially since I have seen the original and found it far superior in terms of having something to say, so to hear that the remake’s director was comparing cowboys to “Greek Gods in chaps” in his commentary is at the same time a WTF and also an insight into what went wrong. That comparison is far more apt to superheroes than cowboys.
Now sure, we’ve got our Zorros and our Lone Rangers and our Man with No Name, but they’re all still a far cry from Superman and Wonder Woman. Get down to the “street level” of characters like Hawkeye and Daredevil and that’s a lot closer, but still, the classic Western at least is populated with heroes who may have extraordinary skills and/or determination but are very, very mortal. William Munny may slaughter an entire saloon full of enemies at the climax of Unforgiven and emerge unscathed but not long before almost died from a fever. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance may exhort “print the legend” but the classic Western depicts the more muddled circumstances behind the legend, the real story rather than the dime novel exaggerations and fabrications. The latter can be entertaining in its own right, but is it a Western?
Well, I suppose I’m not going to die on the hill of saying what does and doesn’t count, but it seems to me that the ability to transplant a “Western” into other settings like feudal Japan or outer space means there are certain conventions of the genre that transcend the American Old West. The titular character of The Mandalorian is a badass but also a man dealing with a rickety ship and a recalcitrant toddler and who sometimes gets the crap kicked out of him despite his skills. Plus he’s trying to live by a code in a largely lawless frontier, which doesn’t always hold up when faced with the murky realities and relationships of his profession, and all of that just screams “Western” to me far more than six-guns and stagecoaches ever will.