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genre and narrative question
Jul. 13th, 2004 11:10 pmI think that I don't understand Westerns.
We've been watching a bunch of them recently*, and they all feel plotless to me, aimless. One thing happening after another instead of an actual plot arc.
As an example, The Magnificent Seven frustrated me intensely, because the only character who had any kind of a story was Lee (Robert Vaughn), and it felt to me terribly wrong that he simply died with the other designated "unimportant" five, leaving Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen to ride off statically into the sunset together.
Likewise, The Quick and the Dead is the only one of these movies that didn't feel aimless. It had a tight, coherent plot which I understood and responded to. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that by the standards of the genre, it's not a very good Western.
Obviously, because many of the movies we've been watching are acknowledged classics of the genre, what feels to me like plotlessness is a feature, not a bug, so I'm putting the question out there: what is the function of plot in the Western and how does it work?
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*Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Dead Man (1995), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Quick and the Dead (1995), The Wild Bunch (1969)
We've been watching a bunch of them recently*, and they all feel plotless to me, aimless. One thing happening after another instead of an actual plot arc.
As an example, The Magnificent Seven frustrated me intensely, because the only character who had any kind of a story was Lee (Robert Vaughn), and it felt to me terribly wrong that he simply died with the other designated "unimportant" five, leaving Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen to ride off statically into the sunset together.
Likewise, The Quick and the Dead is the only one of these movies that didn't feel aimless. It had a tight, coherent plot which I understood and responded to. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that by the standards of the genre, it's not a very good Western.
Obviously, because many of the movies we've been watching are acknowledged classics of the genre, what feels to me like plotlessness is a feature, not a bug, so I'm putting the question out there: what is the function of plot in the Western and how does it work?
---
*Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Dead Man (1995), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Quick and the Dead (1995), The Wild Bunch (1969)
