Literary Analysis Of 'The Searchers( 1956 ) And Taxi Driver'

In 1939 John Ford masterminded a classical western film by the name of Stagecoach. This film has the integrity of a fine work of art. Being that it could be considered a work of art, the impression left on a viewing audience could differ relying on the audience's demographics. However, it is conceivable to all audiences that Ford delivers a cast of characters that are built on stereotypes and perceptions conjured from 'B' westerns that preceded this film's time. Each character is introduced to the audience in a stereotypical genre, as the film progresses, these stereotypes are broken down and the characters become more humanized. This is apparent with a handful of characters being

John Ford built a standard that many future directors would follow with his classic 1939 film “Stagecoach”. Although there were a plethora of western films made before 1939, the film “Stagecoach” revolutionized the western genre by elevating the genre from a “B” film into a more serious genre. The film challenged not only western stereotypes but also class divisions in society. Utilizing specific aspects of mise-en-scène and cinematography, John Ford displays his views of society.

A film genre is a motion picture category based on similarities in either the narrative elements or the emotional response to the film. While films have at least one major genre, there are a number of films that are considered crossbreeds or hybrids with three or four coinciding genre or sub-genre types that they can be identified with them and most can be filed into categories that are easily recognizable to audiences (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 1998, p. 4.1). However, ever so seldom a film comes along that breaks free of its invisible bounds of genre and it leaves the audiences confused about the actual existence of genre. One such film is a film that most are familiar with Steven Spielberg’s classic Saving Private Ryan.

According to the film critic, Phillip French, “The Western has always been about America rewriting and reinterpreting her own past,” if this is indeed the case, then the two most popular Westerns of the early 1990s reveal that many Americans had rejected the traditional interpretation of the Old West. The critically and commercially successful, Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven, repudiated the patriotic frontier myth that had characterised the Western when it was the preeminent genre in American cinema. Informed by new Western historiography, itself an expression of political concerns that had been moving into the American mainstream since the 1960s, the movies display a complex and nuanced understanding of the frontier experience. Dances with Wolves rejected the traditional narrative of the inherent superiority of the Anglo-American hero conquering both Native Americans and the wilderness, and also focused on the environmental destruction that accompanied the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Unforgiven would similarly reject the frontier myth, replacing the democratic, civilised frontier town, with a brutal regime in which white men’s property rights prevail over any sense of justice. The film is noted for its self-reflexive nature, with a writer documenting and embellishing the tales of the Old West before the viewer’s eyes. This self-reflexion indicates that Americans were re-evaluating the myths of the frontier, and seeing them for what they were, creations by the

“Some of the features that are to become key elements of the genre are to be found in early silent Westerns from the late 1890s and early 1900s” (Westerns). Since this time, many of the famous films have become household names. For some people, the reason they have been introduced to this film genre is because of their grandparents or parents. For others, they may have a genuine interest to understand this culture that has transformed itself to fit with a new era of time. Although these films have been able to generate great amounts of revenue, they are full of underlying elements that show the cultural issues of that time period. Moreover, some of these elements may not be noticeable to everyone at first, but that is where the satire and parody come into play.

Following the end of the United States’ Civil War, new territories had becomes states, notably what is now known as the West. The West, iconized by its Cowboys, gunfights, and horses in the years that followed the Civil War, made its way to the silver screen as one of the first genres of movies to be produced. The genre is popularized as a “Western” and is devoted to telling the

How would you feel if I told you women had more of a hand in setting the Wild West than you have been lead to believe? How would you feel if you knew many of those women were prostitutes? Like a majority of people my views of the Wild West originally stemmed from the old Westerns I used to watch with my family. I never paid a second glance to the women in those stories for they all seemed the same. Just some saloon girl hussies with a tendency to be damsels in distress but after seeing a video from the Adam Ruins Everything series my views have changed.

Christine Bold’s article, “The Rough Riders at Home and Abroad: Cody, Roosevelt, Remington, and the Imperialist Hero,” tracks the contributions of three important historical figures: William Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederic Remington, to the image of the Rough Riders and the “packaged version of the American West” and its influence during the Spanish-American War (Bold, 324). After offering background on the conflict, she first considers the contributions of William Cody and his Wild West Show to the Rough Riders. She details how Cody constructed a narrative

The southwest is a region of the United States that makes our country unique. Without the southwest, we would undoubtedly lack the spirit, hope, beauty, and truth that this vast region brings to the rest of the United States as a whole. The southwest represents many things, such as journeying, racism, violence, the clashing and cooperation of cultures, and spirituality, as well as primitivism and pastoralism. All of these elements that the Southwest is comprised of is perhaps the reason why the rest of the country feels so captivated by it; why the southwest is considered a place to “find yourself” or to “regenerate”; and why literature and film regarding the Southwest has been and continues to be of the most popular genres. The western film was one of the most popular during the first half of the twentieth century. Audiences far and wide were mesmerized by actors such as John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and their roles as heroes who fought to tame the American frontier. This very concept, ‘taming the frontier’, gives way to a larger theme that was prevalent in many western films and literature of the southwest: ubi sunt, or rather “where are those who came before us?”. Director Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue portrays this idea better than any other western film; the concept of ubi sunt is undeniably the film’s overarching theme, clearly seen through its components.

This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: color saturation (or black and white), sound, setting, type of camera angles used; repetition of visual motifs (Metz, 1985). The two films explored were made in the 1960s. Neither film is American, yet both reveal influences and reflections on American cinema and American power; the Western film, adherence or detracting from Hollywood Classical cinema tropes, i.e. close-ups, shot-reverse-shot, POV, depth of field (Bazin, 1985: 128-9). The two films are Kurasawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), from Japan and Italy, respectively. How are they different; how similar? Why do they use the same plot,

Typically referred to as ‘Indians’ in popular culture, Native Americans were traditionally seen in Westerns as the antagonists. The Western genre typically tells the story of the colonisation and discovery of America, which saw the major Hollywood studios revive the interest in the Western. Westerns draw on “historical actuality, a romantic philosophy of nature, and the concept of the […] savage” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3). Westerns often split the “depiction of the Indian, with the cruel and treacherous [Indian] balanced by the faithful [Indian]” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3) which resulted in the portrayals of Native Americans witnessed in films today.

Genre is a French word meaning ‘type or ‘kind’ (Genre, 2016). The film industry has been around for at least 100 years. The evolution of entertainment is growing rapidly through the use of media. And as these years go on, films have begun to fit into specific genres, and are important to appeal to the different types of audiences. Films can be described to genre in different types of ways, such as stars, director and narrative to help identify what genre the film is (Neale, 1990, pg. 49). Genre in films has become common because it helps give the audience a different expectation. One specific genre of film is a horror. Horror is a genre that tries to create, panic, dread and fear for the audience.

Genre is known to change discourse by the format the information is presented to the audience (Varela, 2008). It is also a category of composition that is characterized by a particular style, form or content as dictate by Webster Third Dictionary. However Trosborg (n.d) stated that for the past decade, genre identification, classification and description have been scholarly concern. Certain scholars dictate that genre is defined primarily around its basic external criteria such as journals and newspaper discourse while other scholars stand on the opinion that genre can be classify by its communicative purpose, linguistic content and form of role its play in the discourse made (Trosborg, n.d).

According to film theorist Thomas Schatz, “a genre approach (to film) provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing, and appreciating the Hollywood cinema (Schatz vii).” His approach to film is strongly supported by theorist Edward Branigan’s and the narrative representation of character interaction (Branigan), and André Bazin’s arguments that the objective reality pressed against audience interpretation.

the films genre. The genre is a way for the audience to distinguish types of