KLR The West-Hardboiled

While addressing a contradiction in Wayne’s Westerns in her opening pages, Sue Matheson is able to describe a plot that most commentators agree on: the classic Western is about heroes and villains. Matheson states that Wayne’s characters “do not-one may say inherently cannot-conform to this most fundamental convention of the Western genre because the Duke is hardboiled” (The West-Hardboiled 889). Because of this, John Wayne movies tend to “transmit cultural information that calls for an understanding of that popular and radical art form, film noir,” differing from the traditional Western movie ideas (The West-Hardboiled 889).

One of the most important elements in noir films is the setting, or in this case, landscape. Claustrophobic rooms, alleyways, and even “dank cities act as metaphors that reflect the psychological conditions of their protagonists” (The West-Hardboiled 890). Of the open landscape shots in The Searchers, Matheson suggests that the red sand and rocks were darkened “to the color of blood underpins and reinforces the bloody nature of vengeance” (The West-Hardboiled 890). Matheson applies this element of noir films in John Wayne’s Westerns to prove that each setting is used as a metaphor to in some way describe the characters’ personalities.

Matheson applies the idea of appearance to the actual characters, suggesting that the way they are presented in films suggests the character of the person. Normally, heroes may “be dusty but not dirty” (The West-Hardboiled 892). They are rarely shown being sweaty or having greasy clothes and they have always shaved. Matheson suggests that “cleanliness and dirt register how normal or abnormal a character’s psychology is” (The West-Hardboiled 892). In a film where a character has dirty clothes, and is smelly, such as Shanghai McCoy in Rooster Cogburn, the character himself tells the audience, “I ain’t got an ounce of good will in me and that’s a fact” (The West-Hardboiled 892). From here, Matheson goes on to give other examples of “dirty” characters that seem to have psychopathic behaviors.