One of the most iconic depictions of the Western genre can be illustrated through My Darling Clementine's mise-en-scene; the rugged heroes, floating in long shot stases of savagery and justice, deal in conflicts related to moral and technical order in the backdrop of an amoebic civilization.
Fittingly, the diegesis of My Darling Clementine co-dependently utilizes an ingredient from which its genre has been built-history. It represents the contentions over the rule of law and the structure of civilization through the culturally familiar period of America's expansion westward.
Yet the absolute need for a film's historical dependence is unnecessary, as one can argue the true essence of the Western could exist more so through its adherence to formal meaning (as in archetype and form) rather than specific, contextual definitions.
The idea of cowboys shooting their guns in austere landscapes can be brashly deduced as an adventure story. Likewise, a film such as John Carpenter's The Thing, containing both the form and character models of a Western, should not be dismissed as such merely because its unusual narrative setting and predilection for the supernatural.
Two analogical scenes of My Darling Clementine and The Thing , in particular, share core elements of a Western; in an effort to define genre, the juxtaposition of these scenes in fact will display the importance of the Western's structural model over any specific temporal and geographical setting.
The scene in which Wyatt Earp's shave becomes interrupted by a drunken Indian's violence is, overall, stimulated by the Western's underlying theme of lawlessness on the frontier and the plea for civilized order; Tombstone's marshal rejects his duty based on self-preservation, cuing Earp to act as the law enforcer on the basis of preserve a tolerable civility within the morally and structurally threatened town. At this point in the film, Earp's forefront ambition stems from his past experience as a marshal.
The spectator is introduced to a figure of rugged individualism that also realizes the need for order, and through violence, an idea formally associated with the villains of a Western, the threat is eliminated.
In The Thing , a newly developing civilization (a scientific research lab in the Antarctic) becomes threatened by a savage, outside force (an alien).
The Antarctic, an inspired, albeit unusual setting for a Western, in fact methodically follows the Western's formal idea of the frontier in the sense that it is beyond any thoroughly structured society with morals and security. The alien then shares the similar role of the Indian, an agent that fails to exist in man's established respect, thus, presented as a threatening force.
Towards the middle of the film, the surviving members of the lab build a level of distrust with Garry, the archetypical enforcer and possible alien. They reveal the need for trusted order. After several refusals to lead, T.J. MacReady, a stoically lone, bearded character, volunteers himself to preserve order and drive out this extra-terrestrial threat. The scene exemplifies the ethical corruption of a vulnerable, isolated civilization due from an outside (otherworldly) threat. Violence, man's most visceral resolution, appears as the sanctuary to progress.
While the film itself is represented by elements not necessarily seen in a typical Western (supernatural agency and an unusual, geographical setting), it can still be regarded within the Western genre due to its ideological core; the film's central idea deals with a civilized order threatened by lawlessness. The iconography of the loner hero and the incompetence of pre-existing enforcement stand apparent in both films as well.
With this, The Thing becomes no less of a Western than My Darling Clementine , but more so, subsists as a kind of camouflage within the genre to maintain cultural interest-a necessary exploit for a genre's progression.
Or maybe survival.
About this Author
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tyler_M_Wilson
