The Revisionist Western

Just what exactly is a revisionist western? When asked to cite an example the first that come to mind are The Wild Bunch, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Little Big Man, High Plains Drifter, and so on. Generally these are movies that contain enough conventions to be recognized as part of the genre, yet are clearly conscious of these conventions and use them as a foundation for critique. It's sort of like playing football without linemen: you can still recognize the sport but the name of the game has changed.

Revisionist westerns are on the attack. This is not an attempt to dismiss the classic westerns, but rather to put their magnificent structures to another use: criticizing the ideology they support. At the most basic level, in classic westerns the society (town, sheriff) represents the good guys, while in the revisionist western the society is evil, and is rejected by the good guys. John Wayne protects the town, Clint Eastwood uses the town.

Critic Will Wright (Six Guns and Society, 1975) suggests that there are basic oppositions at work in the western: Good guys-Bad guys inside society-outside society civilization-wilderness good-bad strong-weak

In the revisionist western, or what Wright calls the "professional" western, the hero is now opposed to society, resulting in the following oppositions: Good guys-Bad guys outside society-inside society wilderness-civilization strong-weak good-bad

Although this is strictly a simplified generalization, I think it is a good framework to start investigating the forces at work in films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, and The Unforgiven. Graeme Turner uses this structuralist criticism to analyze Butch Cassidy in his text: Film as Social Practice (Routledge, 1988).

The problem with revisionist concepts is that after a few successful attempts they became self-conscious and didactic. The story gets lost in the theme and the film feels like a lecture. For whatever reason it always seems that the first convention that gets ignored is the humour. Humour is essential to the western, just as it is to Shakespeare and blind-dates. Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is a fine example of a revisionist western which embraces humour and recognizes it as a powerful tool of subversion.

Structuralist theory works great for genre flicks, and I'll try my hand at some of my own criticism later on down the road.

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