The Westerns Of The 1930's

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.

Stagecoach represents Native Americans as noble savages, a typical Hollywood Indian in western movies. A noble savage is a racist term used to describe a character as a wild person who symbolizes the goodness of humanity. They are an outsider who has not been civilized yet. This representation of Indians is completely stereotyped and is completely inaccurate but was created for the entertainment of white audiences who watch western films. The film Stagecoach is a complete western style film with scenes of cowboys versus Indians, in which the Indians are helpless, and cowboys seem to come out of the middle of the desert (Ford, 1939). These types of western films portray the American Indians through basic stereotypes such as riding horses with bows and arrows, they are always outnumbered, and they are portrayed in a dehumanizing style. These films act as if Indians are wild animals and not as actual people. The cowboys always are the heroes and the Indians always are incapable of surviving. Due to western movies, America now has the image of the Hollywood Indian that some people still believe Indians are in today's society. The representation of Indians in Stagecoach creates a visual that Indians are impotent and not humane. American Indians are always seen as the bad guys in western films which allows today's society to use the image of Indians as costumes for Halloween and allows people to see Indians as an object and not

American western movies were a thing of the 1950’s but they were no longer captivating in the 1970’s. It was apparent that guns, cowboys, and American heroes were no longer seen as a point of interest for the viewing public. Mel Gibson’s film entitled, Blazing Saddles, debuted in 1974 and seemed to fit the bill of the post-1960’s western. Blazing Saddles is a film that is able to take on racism and utilize it as an important reflection of the time. The film goes where no film has gone before in terms of discussing race and Hollywood. Blazing Saddles was able to seemingly integrate elements of Blaxploitation and introduce the film industry’s first interracial buddy comedy.

Throughout the 1900's one predominant narrative permeated and dominated the curricula of American history, as well as the narrative of the American West, throughout our entire educational system. This can be encapsulated and succinctly summarized by Fredrick Jackson Turner during his Frontier Thesis at the World's Columbian Exposition. Turner elaborated during the World Fair that,  " Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development." (Turner, 1893) Concomitant to this was  the pervasiveness of  the romantic ideal of the American West throughout the United States. For many Americans the westward expansion of the United States was a period of "rugged American ingenuity/individualism" as well as the inexorable stream of American progress, and the expansion of "Western Civilization" against the barren and "barbaric west".

Romance is a genre which has been going since the 1890’s. Silent films were the starting point. These very short films in black and white which involved two characters falling in love. They would only last around 7 minutes. Film makers described love films being about desire and sex. In the 1920’s to 50’s, romantic films began to portray more painful love. The story line would involve two people who didn’t get on. They would then fall in love more towards the end.

Many people may ask you, “What’s so important about the Roaring Twenties?” You may have not given them a great answer, until now! The most important part of the Roaring Twenties are the decade’s heros. Those people may have been Babe Ruth or Neil Armstrong, but the unique people of the Twenties were Harry Houdini and Amelia Earhart. They’re unique because, between the both of them, they have defied odds for women and gave people interesting types of entertainment. Harry Houdini and Amelia Earhart are important 1920’s

By conquering the frontier, characters in western films portray how they, as well as society at this

Western, a genre of short stories that are set in the American west, primarily in the late of the 19th century (“Western” 598), and still being told until today by films, televisions, radio, and other art works. The major of moving to the west was because of the Homestead Act, 1862 (“U.S. Statues at Large” 392) which would give lands to people who stayed there for five years. This lead to a huge wave of immigrants moved to the West, and they had to face to many hardships and conflicts such as Indian attacks, tornadoes, blizzards, and illnesses.

He was the academy winning Western legend, recognized as one of the best filmmakers of all time, his name was John Ford. He started out his career in film in July 1914 as an assistant, labourman and actor for his brother Francis Ford. It was not until 1917 where he made his debut as a director with the lost film, The Tornado and ended his career in the early 1970s with his last film Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend. During his early years, he was making silent films where Westerns were very popular during the time. When the introduction of sound came and the birth of Talkies came, however, the genre started losing its popularity. Yet, that did not stop the director from working on the genre, eventually to the point where he is now credited today as the man who played a huge role in bringing the westerns back to popularity. So, in this video essay, I will be talking about John Ford’s take on Westerns and how he revolutionized the genre.

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.

Iconography is the standard visual elements used repeatedly in films that have a specific meaning. Outside of the genre or independently these symbols hold little significance. The Western genre is an obvious. The surface appearance of the film signals the film’s genre. For the Western these include can horses, pistols, holsters, wide-brimmed hats, spurs, saloons, sheriffs, and stagecoaches.

The Western became one of the most popular film genres between the 1930s and the 1950s because of theses advances in technology. The development of smaller, lighter cameras freed the cameras from a tripod allowing more detailed camera work. To show moving effects cameras could be put on platforms that were attached to rubber wheels or steel rails like railroad tracks. The cameras could also be raised and lowered on cranes. Another thing that made Westerns more popular was the introduction of full colour in the 1930s and widescreen in the 1950s,

In his article “Cowboys and Comedy”, Mathew R. Turner suggests that western comedy films both reinforce and subvert the conventions of their more serious classical counterparts in an attempt to “breathe new life into the genre”. While the author recognises that comedy “relies, to a certain extent, on the reversal of expectations”, he argues that the subgenre of western comedies actually has its own complex set of principles which can be observed throughout films belonging to the subgenre. To illustrate this Turner compares five western comedies ranging in timeframe from Go West (Edward Buzzell, 1940) to Shanghai Noon (Tom Dey, 2000).

Before going in-depth to the history of the Western genre, it is important to note the film conventions of the genre because they are incredibly influential to the movement of the genre cycle. The structure of the Classic Western is set up with a hero and a villain in a town. Will Wright says, “Each film is the story of a hero who is somehow estranged from his society but on whose ability rests the fate of that society. The villains threatened the society until the hero acts to protect and save it” (Wright, 1975). This is the classical plot for a western, while a vengeance plot in the western is “the vengeance hero leaves the society because of his strength and their weakness and abandons his fight because of these same values (of society)” (Wright, 1975). Some of these conventions can also be seen as cliché because of the myths tied together with the Western. These include opening scenes of vast landscapes or when “a cowboy makes a dramatic entrance through the batwing saloon doors, the man playing the piano abruptly stops” (Varner, 2008) or the more obvious, the hero riding off into the sunset at the end of the film. (Varner, 2008) The Western conventions then evolve over time until the end of the Classic Westerns, in which Spaghetti Westerns, parodies, and Post Westerns can easily point out the conventions and use them to make a new story.