Violence The Western Way

Serious films made for male audiences use violence as an integral part of the narrative: violent action is frequently used either to overcome an obstacle or as the ultimate test of the masculinity of the hero. In reality violence is categorized as occurring against persons or against inanimate objects and this definition will be useful in understanding film symbols. In film almost all violence occurs with the technological aid of special effects. Special effects in male action movies destroy inanimate objects—cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes—in a continuing progression. Recently as a special effect the White House was blown up along with the rest of Washington, D.C., as well as New York and Los Angeles. Experts in special effects make a special display of interpersonal violence against people to elicit overt emotional reactions from the audience, but the long-term effects of repeated “imaginary” violence on the audience remains unexamined.

Modern cinematic violence against persons changed with the film Bonnie and Clyde. In this film the gun shot and the shot hitting the victim occur within the same movie frame. Before this “breakthrough” film special-effects violence was controlled by censors, and direct visual violent links were shunned. There are differences in special-effects violence and violence in reality. In reality violence is brutal and messy, the surface and integrity of the body is violated, and it is to be resisted. Violence and violent death in movies occurs with a willing belief in the imaginary. The movie plays again, the dead actors become alive, and the psychic structures of the people in the audience returns to a different belief system.

In the following, some of the meanings of violence as it occur in Westerns in general and the award-winning movie Unforgiven in particular will be examined. The relationship between the imagery