JM Matheson "The West Hardboiled"

In her piece, The West- Hardboiled: Adoptions of Film Noir Elements, Existentialism, and Ethics in John Wayne’s Westerns, Matheson focuses on the importance and influence that Wayne presented not just to the film industry, but also to society in general. John Wayne is the iconic cowboy that defines what it is to be a strong male figure. Wayne’s presence in his films opened up western films to what would become known as the Wayne phenomenon. Sue Matheson makes the argument that many of John Wayne’s movies contain influences from the era’s they were shot during, as opposed to the time period that the movie is supposed to be set in using noir techniques. “To understand how the Wayne phenomenon revises the Westerns in which he appears by introducing twentieth-century preoccupations and attitudes into the 1880’s, it is necessary to understand how noir elements work” (890). Matheson brings up the idea that there is a definitive difference between normal westerns and western movies that contain John Wayne. She attributes this major difference to the presence of film noir, which use landscape as a means to portray the internal feelings of the characters, in Wayne’s movies. By using intense colors and drastic changes in landscape, it can add a tone to the movie that helps further the mood of the scene and the emotional connection tied with it. Matheson says, “In short, as in a noir film, the wilderness without in The Searchers is accurate depiction of the emotional and moral wilderness within” (890).
Matheson points out, “Unlike the traditional Western, the noir narratives of Wayne’s West are concerned with man’s savage nature rather than mankind’s ability to domesticate nature itself and create the garden world that is “civilized” America” (891), the dominating attitude that Wayne has toward both the people and the landscape in his movies is not consistent with what is thought of the time as defining the time period his movies are representing. She also targets the fact that what is considered normal or socially acceptable in Wayne’s movies does not accurately portray what was happening during the time. While the movies do not completely represent the time period, they represent what is thought to be the attitude a masculine figure must have. John Wayne normally portrays a strong lone figure who overcomes challenges with ease while keeping to his strict beliefs. In many movies the idea of a man being detached from society and living off what the earth provides, is pushed to make Wayne’s character to seem unreachable and unbreakable. So although Matheson points out the lack of realism of movies attempting to portray the late 1800’s, it becomes apparent that there is a 1900’s mindset behind them.