DS Matheson "The West Hardboiled"

There are Westerns, and then there are John Wayne Westerns. This is a central component of Sue Matheson's article, “The West-Hardboiled: Adaptations of Film Noir Elements, Existentialism, and Ethics in John Wayne’s Westerns” in which she compares Wayne's films to the rest of the genre. While many commentators agree that the general plot of a Western is "resolved in terms of heroes and villains," Matheson identifies an inherent contradiction within Wayne's Westerns, stating that his characters "do not--one may say inherently cannot--conform to this most fundamental convention of the Western genre because the Duke is hardboiled." In contrast to our traditional perception of Westerns, "Wayne's frontier houses not heroic settlers, but the marginalizeda broad spectrum of misfits, among them misogynists, misandrists, and murderers." Matheson asserts that Wayne's Westerns modernize and revolutionize the genre to reflect the stylistic elements of film noir.

In film noir, the environment communicates to the audience the states of the inner world, the mind and emotions. The environments "act as metaphors that reflect the psychological conditions of their protagonists."Matheson points to John Ford's The Searchers as an example of this, stating "the effect of the red sand and rocks darkened to the color of blood underpins and reinforces the bloody nature of vengeance, the force that motivates Ethan Edwards (John Wayne)." Matheson further contrasts Wayne's Westerns with traditional Westerns, stating that the "noir narratives...are concerned with man's savage nature rather than mankind's ability to domesticate nature itself..." It is more of an internal struggle of values and morals than it is an external struggle with the challenges of the harsh environment.

Existentialism also plays a key role in Wayne's Westerns. Noir "places it's emphasis on man's contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes." For Wayne's characters, "transcendental values" and "moral absolutes" are scarce, if not non-existent. The world is "ultimately corrupt and corrupting," and John Wayne's characters reflect this ideal. Wayne's characters reflect existentialist thought through the notion that the individual determines their own place in the world as opposed to some greater authority.

This individual moral code leads to an alienation of the character from society due to an overwhelming sense of one's duty in spite of societal moral obligations. Wayne's heroes are in fact antiheroes, not afraid to break the law to accomplish their ends. This notion is exemplified in Taw Jackson's character, who is required to commit wrongs in order to right previous wrongs. How these antiheroes act is born out of one's sense of what is right and which means most effectively satisfy their ends. The moral integrity of each of Wayne's characters stems only from the characters themselves, and are not necessarily governed by societal expectations.