This week in Exploding Genre I’ve been watching some films, doing some readings and writing my script and shot list with Dom for our final media piece.

dinnerforthreescript

In order to grasp an understanding of Bottle I watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window and read John Beltons ‘The Space of Rear Window’. I found how Belton interpreted space in the film was quite interesting, he contended that when the viewer was looking at the Jeffries story (the part love story part paranoia drama that unfolded in his room) we (the viewer) were the intruders, we were the ones snooping in on a story that we wish we hadn’t had seen (one of paranoia and the discovery of murder). When we were placed in Jeffries room, Jeffries went from the spectator to the spectacle, which I thought was rather interesting-and quite meta. I also found the theatrical elements of the film quite interesting, the way Belton made a link between the fade to blacks in the film and the curtain within the theatre (generally used to mark the end of an act) was quite interesting. This along with Hitchcock’s minimalist set (for Jeffries apartment) and small cast-(there are really only 4-5 characters that get significant screen time) as well the film occurring in entirely one location demonstrate Rear Windows links to theatre.

I’ll have to admit I’m not the biggest fan of action films so I wasn’t super excited for this week, however I enjoyed Ronin far more than a standard action film, possibly because what a ‘standard’ action film is has changed drastically in my teenage years (early 2010s) as opposed to what it was like in the 90s. The reading  suggests that in our current day and age narrative is tied up in action, the action is no longer seperate from the narrative. For example in a modern superhero film or a Michael Bay movie, the action and the story are linked (this is because of the films monotonous yet relentless pace), whereas in Ronin and classic Hollywood action films the action punctuates the drama/the story. Bordwell suggests that this change has occurred since cutting has become inexpensive and that speed has become a defining principle of contemporary editing, especially in action movies where there are often lengthy sequences of film where each shot goes for 1-2 seconds. I remember watching Deadpool this year and in the action sequences I counted the time between each shot (because I picked up on the rhythm and new it was going ridiculously quickly) and no shot held for longer than two seconds, most peaked at 2 but some were even quicker. I think some of this is tied up with the role media now plays in peoples lives-its now well established that people have shorter tolerance for lengthier pieces of media (because we are so used to super quick Facebook videos, posts and interactions on our phones) so for any film wanting to appeal to the masses (people that aren’t necessarily fans of cinema) they need to keep shot lengths down just to hold the viewers attention. Lastly, it isn’t just shot lengths that create a quick paced feel in action cinema, it is also other techniques such as: Cutting on bursts of light, Vehicles or other big and quick objects moving quickly in the foreground, jerky camera movements and whiplash pans.

Attached is a copy of the script myself and Dom have been working on in the last week or so.

Looking from today into the future, I hope to make a 7-8 minute short film (with Dom) for my final assessment. Without knowing too much about what a ‘bottle film’ is, it had an instant appeal to me based on the practicality of the genre (single setting, dialogue focused). Before I begin to write on Rear Window, here are some of the notes of taken in class about Bottle Film as a genre.

• Occurs when the production team runs out of money, often after a big run of expensive episodes.
• It often comes after a plot line is resolved and the production team needs to blow off steam and create something different.
• It’s often dialogue heavy.
• Every character has tense emotional moments that reveal something, everyone learns something about the characters on and off the screen.
• Minimal Cast.
• A Clash of Ideas, A Clash of Personalities that creates the conflict, as opposed to an external event.
• A small space that is defined by editing and cinematography.
• Often it ends with characters going into the real world, looking into the future- they escape the bottle.
• In the screening of Community we saw the characters react to a singular event in there own entertaining, idiosyncratic and ultimately comical way. Community is a very meta show, Ahmed referenced the episode within the episode saying something long the lines of ‘oh no its going to be a bottle episode’. This gave the writers free reigns to take all the elements of a conventional bottle episode and channel it into there own parody episode. In that episode we saw quick paced dialogue (and lots of it), a great deal of hyper emotional moments that were warped into comedy (that amount of emotion is rarely displayed in traditional comedy), the emphasis on performance (if the actors didn’t nail it, it would have been a cringe worthy episode) and a singular setting that created a claustrophobic feel- to the comedy/mock drama of the episode.

Rear Window is Hitchcock’s most cinematic work. Its one of the few films I’ve seen that can exclusively be told through the medium of film. Rear Window switches perspectives from a love story that centres around Jeff and Lisa to Jeff’s perceptions of fellow people who live in the apartment complex. Half the story (the half that focuses on Lisa and Jeff’s relationship) is sensibly directed and comes across like a rather conventional piece of film and/or theatre. The audience is put in a privileged position where a story is delivered in front of them from an omniscient camera. However, the other half of Rear Window is told entirely from a point of view shot coming from Jeff’s perspective-everything he sees the audience sees, everything this he doesn’t see, the audience doesn’t see. In theatre you can’t replicate a characters perceptions like in film, you can’t technically do a point of view shot, you can’t literally show what they’re seeing-the brilliance of Rear Window is that you see half the film in this exclusively filmic manner. This is why Alfred Hitchcock continually cited Rear Window as his most cinematic film.

Lisa either has all the agency in the story or none of the agency in the story. She is the person that turns Jeff’s ideas into reality, she actualises his theory and through her courage she uncovered/shone a light on the crime. Its quite liberating as having a woman as the hero, however one could argue that the only reason she got involved in the first place was to get Jeff’s attention back (he became infatuated by looking out the window). Another argument would be that She got involved with the story in order to show her adventurous spirit to prove to Jeff that she was good fit to be his wife. Lastly, is the only reason a woman was the hero because the leading man was temporarily wheel chair bound? This on top of other throwaway lines such as “She’ll get her happiness and one man will lose his” and (when referring to food his carer made) “No wonder your husband still loves you” makes Rear Window comes across as dated and at times sexist, leading me to think that the agency Lisa had in the story derived from her want to win Jeff’s affection. Another thing I took issue with was in one of the final shots of the film where the film shows Gene Kelly putting away an adventure magazine in order to read a copy of Bazaar. This came across as if Hitchcock was contending that Women innately find comfort and fashion more  appealing than action and adventure-irregardless of how much they wish to please there husband.

I really appreciated the strong sense of place that came from the film, I often feel as though in Bottle Films that place-though it stays the same becomes more significant and has a greater effect on the tone/mood of the story than a story that takes place in several locations. I remember last semester I did a documentary class (for this course) and my initial plan was to film in a few places and create a story that would take the audience places, however later on (the night before the filming) I decided to keep the whole documentary just set in one place and in turn it became not only more focused but the sense of place that developed because of it gave it an intimate feel that worked really well for the project. The two most recent Hitchcock films I’ve seen has been North By Northwest and Rear Window and Rear Window came across to me as being more memorable and somewhat warmer than NBNW because of it taking place in a single location.

Most of my ideas are original however I did read Josh Beltons ‘The Space in Rear Window’ in order to get the ball rolling, I thoroughly enjoyed his comparisons of Rear Window to that of theatre.

Brydan Meredith, Project Brief 3 Exegesis

The Western is at its most significant when subverting conventions traditionally inscribed within the genre. The 1992 film Unforgiven is a quintessential example of a film unwilling to abide by genre conventions as it critiques and re-interprets myths embedded in the old West. Director and star of the film Clint Eastwood, a man who has built a career off Western Mythology and has since become a part of Western Iconography, told the Los Angeles Times that Unforgiven “summaries everything that he feels about the Western”. This quote frames the films meta-narrative that continually comments on the genre.

So what does a man so synonymous with the genre have to say about it? Firstly, there is an apology. Sally, the silent American Indian character in Unforgiven gives Clint Eastwood’s Will, as his character later puts it ‘the evil eye’. Sally is only in the film for 2 minutes and during her screen time she sporadically glances at Eastwood’s character with a look of hatred. Will symbolises protagonists in quintessential, traditional Westerns- where American Indians were treated as cruel and immoral animals. In Unforgiven Will is a fading Western hero who doesnt shoots gun and can’t mount a horse, he is no longer young and his days of race fuelled violence (just like the genre) are over. However, Will seems to have forgotten those days, he (like the genre) has the ability to put it behind him, whereas Sally and the rest of the Native Americans haven’t. Sally looks at him with disgust because the past has stayed with her and Will, as a symbol of the Western genre, is Unforgiven.

Eastwood continues to demythologise the Western through his depiction of violence. The violence in Unforgiven isn’t glorified. The most brutal depiction of violence is of Quick Mike slashing a prostitute in the face with his knife. This scene is horrific, the viewer hears her screams and sees the knife cut her face. This is Eastwood commenting on the reality of violence. Many of his past films (as well as other traditional Western Films) romanticise it, when a ‘bad guy’ gets shot a bucketful of red paint squirts from him in an entertaining yet unrealistic fashion. In traditional Westerns people die in a way that allow the viewer to become numb to the significance of death. Eastwood problematises this in Unforgiven as he attempts to show the disparity between reality and mythology. The reality of the West is that it is a physically cruel and barren land where people die in futile, unforgiving circumstances. This is unlike the myths that spawn from the Western frontier in the form of film and literature which suggest that death is glamorous and killing in the name of good is honourable and justified. This false mythology has created a framework used to rationalise violence in Western Film, which Eastwood (by depicting violence rooted in realism) wants to inverse. This shift away from genre norms, by questioning the morals of its basis, gives significance to Unforgiven and stops it from becoming a simple genre film. This is what I’m trying to do in my own piece of Media, I created a scene from a traditional Western where the significance of death isn’t trivialised and its permanence and gravity is understood. This is why my protagonist writes a sign that says ‘Forever’ on it in order to mark the place of his death. I am emphasising to my viewers that death in Westerns should be grounded in realism in order to evoke pathos- I am taking issue with the fact they are often depicted as trivial, insignificant often humorous events that simply speed up the narrative and entertain the viewer.

The convention of good conquering bad through violence is a genre trope that the viewer expects in every Western and unsurprisingly Unforgiven abides by it. However the film isn’t as simple as good vs bad. There are no heroes. The film abides by the trope to the extent of the protagonist (an anti-hero) killing his nemesis in the final moments of the narrative. In traditional Western films the the viewer doesn’t understand that they’re tricked, they’re tricked into believing that the good is justified in killing the bad. Unforgiven contends that they are never justified. This what The Schofield Kid learns. At the beginning of the story (like the viewer) he is fascinated and enthralled with the ways of the west, he actively self-mythologises, he wants to turn himself into a legend ‘I’ve killed five men’. Later in the film he kills his first man, a women beating criminal, and the significance of the death he dealt makes him weep. This is The Schofield Kids redeeming moment, he is ignorant and insensitive at the beginning of the film and changed when he begins to ponder the significance and permenance of death. Instead of coming of age as a superstar cowboy gunslinger (something the traditional western would promote) he instead matures in a more real sense. He has the realisation that guns and violence aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. This is Eastwood contending that the mythology embedded in the Western is best left a myth, it should never be celebrated or brought into reality. The Schofield Kid is a surrogate for the audience, he comes into the film celebrating death and violence- he is desensitised by his own idea of the West. However by the end he understands (like the audience) the cruel and merciless reality of the West. Unforgiven is ultimately a cautionary tale warning its viewers that the Western itself is innately flawed.

1. 2-3 minute presentation due in-class Week 7 (5%, pass/fail); tell us what you’re exploring, try to identify where you’ll head for later projects; what really interests you about genre? What’s inspired you? This presentation should indicate your ‘Genre Trajectory’, which will be important for Project Brief 4.

Brief Intro

• In Project Brief 2 I explored the difference between neo-traditional romantic comedies (films like Annie Hall and Sleepless in Seattle) and Hollywood Romantic comedies (the example I wrote about was the far-fetched love story in Singing in the Rain). A major difference between these two sub-genres is that the neo-traditional comedy is rooted in realism whereas the Traditional Hollywood ones aren’t. This makes these Neo-Traditional comedies much more relatable and in turn the audience can identify and empathise with the characters on a more significant and intimate basis.
• I then began to explore identification and empathy within genre. A theorist called Berys Gauts suggested that there are two categories of emotions in cinema. The first is artificial emotions (which are emotions purely drawn from film technique such as a beautiful shot, music, fantastic editing). In this case the audience doesn’t need to know anything about character-its all film (so like an opening shot of a movie that evokes a certain feeling). The other type of emotion is Representational Emotions where emotion is not drawn from any film techniques but from the Story Events in the film. This type has everything to do with story, narrative and character.
• I’ve Currently shifted away from that. I’ve been looking at the Western Genre. In particular Revisionist Westerns and how revisionist westerns exploit genre traditions. I watched ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘Once upon a time in the West’. Unforgiven is by Clint Eastwood, written on my DVD of the film was a quote that Eastwood told the Daily Telegraph. He said that it was everything he had to say about the Western Genre. It questioned the authenticity of Western storytelling by suggesting that the stories that spawn from the frontier are hyperbolised to the point of fiction-they are not grounded in reality at all (in the film there is a writer who does this). Eastwood is saying that the reality of the west and the depiction of the West is very different. He also depicted Violence in a unique way. Traditional Westerns romanticise violence to a point where the significance of death becomes numbed and people die everywhere and the audience doesn’t feel anything however in Unforgiven a young gunslinger quits his life as a cowboy after killing one criminal because he took absolutely everything away from the man-he understood the significance of it. Once Upon a time in the west is significant because it isn’t clear cut, Leone doesn’t offer a world of good vs bad like in normal westerns, instead he offers an ultra-capitalist world where everyone operates at random in order to benefit themselves. These films and the relevant essays I’ve read on them and the genre lead me to my contention that The Western is at its most significant when operating outside of genre tradition.
• I think in my next project I’m continue exploring genre films subverting and operating outside of genre traditions.

• I’m contending that the Western Genre is at its best when critiquing/subverting/not abiding by  its own genre conventions. Showing the reality and cruelty that is the Western frontier

Joel’s Story

Its opens with 3-4 establishing shots of the area, of the pylons, trees, metal. These will be all images of desolation.

In time with the music my lead character, Joel, hits a nail into some wood that he is attaching against a tree, we see a shot of his hands doing this. For one bar he hits the nail, then for a bar he stops, then in the next bar he hits the nail against the tree. There is dirt on his hands. I cover this by shooting a closeup of his hands and a longish shot from behind of him doing this (so we can’t see his face). We then cut up and see Joel’s face, he is angry and tired, he looks at the tree and the sign it says nothing. The music stops on this cut. There is a pile of sticks nearby, on the sticks he has on it what he owns, there is a backpack, hammers, nails and tin of paint. After picking these things up he walks back to the tree and writes ‘Forever’ on it. He looks at what he wrote and puts his hands on his hips. He walks back to where his stuff is and picks up a pencil and a notebook, he begins to write. He writes this.

To whomever may read this, There is nothing for me in this life anymore, no food, no water, no emotion.

Goodbye,

He then looks up and around his environment he sees barren land, he sees trees. He is thinking about what to sign his note. He then decides.

He signs it as ‘anonymous’.

Brydan’s Story

Brydan is chopping a piece of wood. He looks at his stuff by the tree and navigates the landscape, he decides to sit by the tree. He looks upset and forlorn. Brydan is sitting near a tree, he has a mug of water in his hands and he delivers this directly to camera.

Well, when I wake up I feel like I’ve woken up on a boat, or in a plane but not on solid ground. I take a step out of my bed and I feel like I’m falling, that at any time, in any moment my life could just evaporate into nothingness and I could be erased and I wouldn’t have changed the world, I would just be another person that lived and faded and (cut out on this line) no one really knew them. After this we cut back in and see Brydan drink some tea. He then says to the camera ‘Not a bad cup of tea’.

We hear gunfire in the distance. Brydan is sort of startled he turns and looks to where he has seen the shot. Here was cut on Brydans turn to another angle so we see his face properly. The camera cuts to a point of view shot (which looks up to where Joel was) the camera cuts back and we see Brydans reaction. He is initially sceptical, he stands up and puts his hands in the air and shouts ‘Don’t Shoot’ ‘Whose there’. Eventually he puts them down and begins to run up the hill. Here we cut from a conservative medium close up to a long shot behind Brydan, we see him run up the hill. At the top of the hill he looks at Joel lying face down in the dirt (or slumped against a tree). Its a long shot of Joel, under the sign that says ‘Forever’. We cut back to a sad Brydan (who now understands the importance of forever)

• On Friday I saw Once Upon a Time in the West for the first time-and it was amazing!
• Once upon a time in the West is ironically titled, it isn’t a traditional Western that abides by (and promotes) genre conventions, it is grounded in realism and uses the mythology of the old west against itself. Instead of contending that these myths are something to be celebrated it, the film instead highlights the immorality of the Western. The film accentuates its bad features-lack of fertility (symbolised by draught and lack of women), Violence- Violence punctuates the slow moving scenes, through his pacing Leone shows the life before death, in real time, this pacing really draws the audience into the scene and gives them time to identify with and speculate the characters motives  on the screen, so when Leone kills off this people the pathos of death really hits home-initially we see everyday people, fighting boredom, the next thing we know they are dead.
• Ford is against type, normally Fords Westerns focus on the American Dream, where peaceful families and communities exist and the fighting is to help protect there way of life. In Once Upon a Time it is dog eat dog. There are no connections, alliances are made and broken, even the presence of gunman Cheyenne is an odd one, he really doesn’t have that much invested in the land or the major conflicts, yet he plays such a major role in the film, at times he is a comforter (to Jill McBain) and at other times he comes across as an untrustworthy murderer, what he really is, is just another man fighting for money and survival against the cruel, arid conditions of the wild west. As a character he is really just caught up in the narrative. This lack of connection between character (Harmonica not repaying the love of Jill, Frank betraying essentially everyone, Jills stoicism and lack of warmth, the only family depicted in the film (Brett Mccains) being killed) is what Once Upon a Time is about. It showing the reality behind the myth-in reality the frontier isn’t romantic or moral-it is cruel and unjust.
• Another subversion is having a woman and a strong independent character-who doesn’t really need other character to fight on behalf of her. The reason Jill ends up successful and living is because she doesn’t chase money like the other characters. When selling her property she states ‘Its not about the money’. Once Upon a time is an anti-capitalist tale, where money hungry tyrants die and people like Jill, who don’t get caught up in money, live.
• There are No heroes. On Wikipedia Henry Fonda is the villain and Charles Bronson is his nemesis. Bronson, the avenger, the person the audience is supposed to root for, is not labelled a hero. Every action, every motive, is self-serving (he doesn’t let someone else kill Frank because he wants to do it himself, he strikes Jill McBain, he doesn’t show warmth).
• The railroad being built is a symbol of Industrialisation-as Harmonica leaves the township at the end because he doesn’t belong in that society, he is a cowboy at heart, he understands the frontier is changing.
• Violence punctuates mundanity (the mundanity creates an element of realism, which makes it all the more shocking when violence interrupts it).
• The long shots of the workers are filled with melancholy. It is tragic to see these people killing themselves in order to dig holes in the ground.In the final show they flock to water like animals, like thirsty sheep would a muddy puddle. This is Leone showing the land defeating the people- the citizens are literally floundering in the dirt. All four leads want to control the land, they want to master it, to own it. But in all its monetary worth the land can’t be controlled, its can’t be conquered by man because the frontier is unpredictable, there are too many self-centred, individualistic people who operate at random to serve themselves (an example of this would be Harmonica not killing Frank). Leone is critiquing the capitalist ideas embedded in a traditional Western, he shows the selfishness that ultimately kills everyone (including the ranger at the start, though he was clever, it was also Self-Serving). Jill is the least greedy of all and leads the most meaningful existence. Leone critiques capitalism and individualistic society, he believes that the traditional Western conventions promote these things (tradition, greedy, money, violence), instead of romanticising these things (like in a John Wayne film) he critiques the Western for what it is-immoral.
• Everyone is driven by the appeal of money, land or revenge.
• Modernity will come via train.
• Unflinching Violence, Unforgiving Land.
• Frank is an industrialist.
• Harmonica is destined not to settle, but to die out as the railroad and civilisation encroach on the frontier. As he leaves the era is ending.
• In traditional films heroes tame the wild west, in non-traditional ones they fail.
• Water is significant because it is life giving, it is pure. It is everything the wild west isn’t, yet characters such as Morton (the tycoon) love it, is this because its everything the wild west isn’t? And everyone has a subconscious desire to get out, to leave?
• Brett McBain was killed in limbo while waiting for his money and his wife. Is Leone suggesting that like his story everything else in the wild west is in vain? Reward simply doesn’t come, it is one big melting pot of revenge, death and futility.

Here are some sources I looked at after watching the film.

http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/onceuponatimeinthewest.asp

https://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-film-preservation-board/documents/once_time_west.pdf

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/stable/pdf/41690264.pdf

A reflection on Joseph H Cuphers chapter titled Seductive and Subversive Meta-Narrative in Unforgiven. Published in the Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 60, No. 3/4 (FALL/WINTER 2008), pp. 103-114

• Unforgiven has a self-reflexive narrative designed to demythologise the traditional Western. Firstly, the violence in the film isn’t glorified. The most brutal depiction of violence is of Quick Mike slashing a prostitute in the face with his knife. This is scene is horrific, the viewers hears her screams and sees the knife cut her face. This is Eastwood commenting on the reality of violence. Many of his films in the past romanticise it, when a ‘bad guy’ gets shot a bucketful of red paint spawns from him, in a gory, unrealistic fashion. Unforgiven is Eastwood’s statement on the Western. Eastwood through Unforgiven contends that the audience must appreciate/celebrate the Western for its mythology, but not reality. Because the reality of violence is nothing to celebrate, which is why he begins his most honest film in a very honest, brutal fashion.
• The film criticises similar stories for their disturbing glamorisation of violence. Beauchamp is a significant character because he quite literally fills in the gap between truth and lies. Essentially he is the person who hyperbolises the truth until it becomes fiction. He represents the writers and filmmakers who give enduring, yet false substance to Oral history. For example, In the film Little Bill witnesses English Bob kill a man. Beauchamp’s writing of the event only told part of the truth-most of it was hyperbole or a straight out lie. This is Unforgiven critiquing the Western genre for its inability to tell the truth, it is a genre entirely based on false mythology. This false mythology has been a framework used to rationalise violence. The idea of good conquering bad through violence fulfils the viewer. What the viewer doesn’t know is that they’re tricked, they’re tricked into believing the good is justified in killing the bad. What Unforgiven and (and Sergio Leone) does is blur these boundaries. They don’t justify death in any scenario they contend it is innately cruel and undignified. This what The Schofield Kid learns. At the beginning of the story (like the viewer) he is fascinated and enthralled with the ways of the west, he actively self-mythologises, he wants to turn himself into a legend ‘I’ve killed five men’. After he kills Quick Mike the reality of death hits him, he begins to understand that he took absolutely everything away from that man forever-the significance and permanence of his actions hit him like a train and he begins to weep. This is The Kids redeeming moment, he is ignorant and insensitive at the beginning of the film and is swept off his feet when the reality of death hits him. Instead of coming of age as a superstar cowboy gunslinger (something the traditional western would promote) he instead matures in a more real sense. He has the realisation that guns and violence aren’t really all there cracked up to be. Again, this is Eastwoods statement on the Western and it goes back to the same old contention that the mythology embedded in the Western is best left a myth, it should never be celebrated or brought into reality. In many ways he wants the audience to learn the same thing as The Schofield Kid-that the reality of violence and death is nothing to be celebrated. Unforgiven is a cautionary tale. The idea of the western is good, but the western itself is innately flawed.
• It critiques the pathological connection too Manhood and violence: Quick Mike attacks the woman because she insults the size of his genitals. Corcoran (who was killed by English Bob) is called ‘Two Gun’ because he has a large penis. These two occurrences associate masculinity and violence. In ‘Once upon a time in the West’ we see Henry Fonda’s greater (the most violent man in the film) has sex with Jill McBain. There seems to be an innate link between masculinity and violence that these two revisionist Westerns critique. The men in Unforgiven appear as unintelligent brutes (except Morgan Freemans Ned) whereas the women get revenge on the violent cowboys in a subtle, non-violent method. They also show care and love for each other, that the men in the film do not show. Strawberry Alice (the leader of the prostitutes) is the most articulate character on the film, she has a strong understanding of justice.
• Clint Eastwood, by portraying the old and deeply flawed Will, symbolises the Western within contemporary society-it is old and out of touch. The morals celebrated in traditional westerns are no longer celebrated-Eastwood contends this is a good thing.
• By Fulfilling our expectations at the end of the film, it reinserts itself back into tradition.
• The film teaches the audience, not to believe everything it hears. There is a huge disparity between truth and myth.
• There is racism in Unforgiven and Once Upon a time in the West. English Bob bounty hunts Chinese People and Henry Fonda’s character in ‘Once Upon a Time’ seemed to be hanging a Chinese Man and his Son out of pure cruelty. These revisionist Westerns are showing blatantly and all to significantly the evil within racism (that has plagued the Western genre from its conception).
• Yes Clint Eastwoods Will is an anti-hero. But did he kill women and children as the story suggests? Because truth is the first fatality the audience cannot and should not believe what the characters in the film are saying in regards to Wills past-what they are repeating would be second or third hand information that through time would have become bloated and twisted.
• Many revisionist Westerns believe that true law must replace conflict with guns. However to make this possible, to implement the law-they need guns.
• Unlike a traditional Western (such as High Noon). Will, Ned and the Schofield Kid are the outsiders looking to restore balance. This is subverting the convention of the Sheriff protecting the town from outsiders who are looking to overthrow the balance of thing. In almost all cases the Sheriff doesn’t want change.

• Clint Eastwood told the Las Angelas Times that Unforgiven “summarises everything I feel about the Western”. So What does Clint Eastwood feel about the Western? Here are some notes I made whilst watching Unforgiven.
• Sally, the American Indian character in Unforgiven gave Eastwood, as his character later in the film puts it, ‘the evil eye’. She is only in the film for about 2 minutes and during her screen time she is silent and looks at Eastwood with hatred- with no forgiveness at all. Eastwood’s Will symbolises protagonists in quintessential, old school Westerns (where American Indians were treated as cruel and immoral animals) and Sally looks at him with the evil eye because she knows it. In the film Will is old and past his days of race fuelled violence (just like the genre). However, Will seems to have forgotten those days, he has the ability to put it behind him, whereas Sally and the rest of the Native Americans haven’t-this brings an extra layer of pathos to the film. This meta-ness is what makes revisionist Westerns so interesting, in this scene ‘Unforgiven’ is a genre film apologising for its past. I find it interesting that Sally doesn’t speak, its almost as if she’s a ghost.
• In standard, ‘old school’ American Westerns the female is merely an object in the film, often She is the damsel in distress or merely a sex object. In Unforgiven this is not the case. The first time Men are depicted is in the tavern, they are dirty, unrefined, they behave in quite a physical, animalistic way. The lighting in the tavern is dim, and often the actors have shadows across there faces so the audience only has a limited view of there expression-this is designed to make the audience feel threatened by the characters, to not really trust them. Not being able to see the actors full expressions means that the audience doesn’t have any cues that can lead them to understanding each characters motivations-this ambiguity means that the audience can’t identify (or empathise) with the characters.  Women are depicted differently too men at the beginning of the film. They have an interesting, well balanced discussion in there well-lit bedroom. In this scene the conversation flows naturally and the characters show genuine care for one another. Eastwood covers this scene with nothing but close-ups and medium close-ups that allow the audience to see the pain and tiredness on the lady’s faces. By being able to see the emotion and humanity in the characters faces, the audience feels sympathy for them and in turn empathises with them. Because we see an intimate moment between the ladies (who are in there own private room away from the rest of the tavern) we are positioned to trust them as characters.
• In the ‘Classic’ Western its an un-written rule that violence is the answer, however in a revisionist Western Violence isn’t put on the same pedestal. I found it interesting that the ladies, instead of taking violence into there own hands, put up a secret bounty to allow for others to do the killing. They got there revenge passively-without lifting a finger. This is quite intelligent and is far cry from the classic Western where women are nothing but objects. I also found it interesting that towards the end of the film The Schofield kid began to weep after he killed the man on the toilet seat, this is quite subversive because death is such a common occurrence in many Westerns. Its so common that many characters within them don’t deem it as a heavy, significant thing-its just a common occurrence. So when The Schofield Kid began to weep and empathise with the individual he killed (who would never exist again) I was rather shocked. It was interesting seeing so much emotion come to the surface, everyone else seemed hard and desensitised throughout the whole film yet when the Schofield Kid mourned and began to understand the significance of death it was a reminder to me that (even as an audience member) I shouldn’t be desensitised to death.
• Animals and property are placed at a higher value than women. When Delilah the prostitute gets slashed in the face the culprits give 5 horses to the local Sheriff ‘Little Bill Dagget’. ‘Maybe we aint nothing but whores but by golly where not horses’.
• The weather plays a significant role (the rain that comes in the latter part of the film foreshadows the impending violence). Wind also played a prominent role in the soundtrack-it was designed too unsettle the viewer.
• Will (a symbol of the old Western) can’t jump on a horse anymore. This is either because the Western has changed as a genre to a point where many of the values that were deemed worthwhile are no longer so. And that the old Western and many of the conventions its so values are changing to a point where people set in there old ways (like Eastwood) can’t keep up. Its showing the new triumphing over the old.
• The film had all the usual genre tropes. Steam Trains, Mountains that bring a sense of isolation, lonely individuals, a bounty, long shots mixed with close-ups, scraggly cowboys, violence.