A genre is one of the categories that artistic works such as film and literature can be divided

into on the basis of form, style, or subject matter. In the movie business genre films have a history of

high production, or maybe the high production birthed the genre. Either way, a viewer or reader

coming to a work belonging to one of these specific groups, like the Western, carries in mind preceding

works and brings the significance of that past to the present. The new work is within itself not unique

or authentic, at least it can only be so in the mind of person interpreting it. A good genre film or written

work doesn’t duplicate its predecessors. Rather it alters, questions, and builds up understanding of what

that genre is.

To say that a group of works does not form a genre is to say that there is no similar set of these

formal elements. Genre theorists present paradoxical arguments and say that genres differ from styles

even thought the latter is often discussed as such, like noir, which has an amorphous nature. Basically,

words like genre, sub-genre, and style boil down to being conceptual frameworks from which to talk

about artistic works.

The Western is accepted as an American genre, its films and writings are typically set in the

Western United States during 1860-1890 and portrayed in a romanticized light, like many of the

paintings by Frederick Remington. The vision of the West is horizontal, where blazing skies oppose

dusty bedrock with cacti or pine trees decorating the unfenced landscape. These tales of morality

showcase characters like pioneers and defenders of order pursuing the American dream vs. the outlaw,

Indian, or the wild frontier. The hero is the lone cowboy or mountain man living by codes of honor,

rather than law, on a quest who moves like the wind and came form it perhaps. West of Dodge is a

collection of short stories written by Louis L’Amor, a master of the Western, and in To Hang Me Too

High we hear Ryan Tyler tells how he killed his sixth man in the defense of a good woman’s

reputation. The story is written like a landscape, describing the movement from one location to other,

stretching across the frontier and along gun barrels. Just before Ryan confronts and kills Tate, who
threatened Rosa and her good name, Rosa seeks his help, “ ‘Tate Lipman saw him, Rye. And he’s

heard bad things people are saying about me… he said that that no girl like me had the right to choose

her man. If one man could have me, then he could, too….’ ‘All right,’ I said. Looking into her clear

blue eyes I could do nothing but believe her”(p 202). The language of westerns is quick and decisive.

Descriptions are made without fuss, and words are written how the character would pronounce them,

they are genuine.

Noir has a specific visual language in film as well as in literature. Some descriptions of

environments in Farwell, My Lovely that depict the jarring high contrast deep ambiguous spaces of

noir’s black and white cinematography are; “A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and

fell noiselessly on the carpet”(p 47); “the jutting neon sign”(p 3); and “It was close to the ocean and

you could feel the ocean in the air but you couldn’t see water…”(p 119). The sharp forms allude to the

influence of German Expressionist imagery and the flashing city lights and misty air tell the usual

location, now the stage is set for a tale of urban malice. Many noirs are inspired from books,

particularly the hard-boiled narrative which is a style of writing that follows a quest structure where the

loner hero ends up in a final shoot-out. However, it breaks the traditional detective story by having a

disturbed protagonist where heroes and villains are not clearly defined, and moments of happiness or

eroticism inappropriate for the moment. Noirs are almost always narrated by the main character, who is

usually a male with a tough-guy voice. In one highly controversial novel for it’s time, The Postman

Always Rings Twice by James Cain, after the main characters Frank and Cora have successfully killed

Nick, Cora’s husband, in a staged car accident, Frank rips her cloths and gives her a black eye to make

it look like she survived the tumbling of the car. But this violence greatly contrasts that of To Hang Me

High and is described like foreplay, “I began to fool with her blouse, to bust the buttons, so she would

look banged up. She was looking at me, and her eyes didn’t look blue, they looked black. I could feel

her breath coming fast. Then it stopped…. I ripped her, I shoved my hand in her blouse and jerked. She
was wide open from her throat to her belly”(p 46). This crude and disturbing narration occurs within

ten feet of Nick’s corps. Cora’s black eyes diverge from the sweet representation of Rosa and the

Western female. And thus we see noir as being dark visually and in content.

These seemingly opposing subjects, the Western and Noir, both found publication in cheap

magazines known as pulp fiction magazines. The name refers to the wood pulp the paper was made

from upon which the stories were printed. Papermaking is a violent process where the material, like

wood or cotton, needs to be pulverized into fibers. It is fitting that much of the subject matter in the

magazines pictured heroic burly men, like Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan, railroad men, and cowboys of

course. All who could have made the very paper with their bear hands. The success of pulp fiction

increased the popularity of the Dime Western and other western fiction.

Furthermore, both western and noir fiction transpose beautifully to the theater. Poetic

descriptions are given sweeping visuals. Restraints of film in the time of noir’s classic period in the

1940’s and 50’s encouraged technological innovation and forced filmmakers to get creative and

discover new ways of making a film image, then the complex thoughts like those presented by

Raymond Chandler can be visualized in powerful gestures. Chandler’s descriptions of a drug induced

psychotic episode, involving visions of smoke filled rooms and gigantic spider webs in Farwell, My

Lovely, were matched in the film Murder, My Sweet. This conversion builds not only our

understanding of the moment, but also the art of cinematography and the development of the noir look,

proving to be a noteworthy example of a genre movie.

At the culmination lies the Noir Western, or the psychological Western. One example is

Pursued, a 1947 film directed by Raoul Walsh and written by Niven Busch, which stars a civil war

hero named Jeb who suffers from amnesia and is haunted by what he doesn’t remember. Jeb represents

the lone cowboy of the Western on a quest to reclaim his memory. Yes, men ride horses and shots are

fired, but this movie does not have clearly defined heroes and villains, opposing that genre’s
convention. He is rather the wandering noir hitchhiker, who suffers from forbidden love. It is narrated

as a flashback, and told visually in claustrophobic angular black and white cinematography, which it

utilizes appropriately to reflect the tortured souls of the characters. This is an effortless fusion where

neither genre or style tries to be dominant. Here, noir leaves the mist and fog of the city for the frontier

and the Western trades it’s all-American dream for a dark hellish nightmare.

The wedding of noir and western follows an evolution of the male in literature, descending from

the knight errant. Much like the cowboy of the Western frontier, the errant of European tales and poetry

wandered from place to place on horseback in search of adventure and romance, often rescuing damsels

in distress. He was not bound to any social structure, simply his own inherent code of honor and was

self-reliant. In an essay titled Self-Reliance, Ralph Emerson, who’s influence is evident in even modern

works like those mentioned in this essay, illustrates that to have this characteristic is to be ideal,

optimistic, represent manhood, believe in one’s individual ability, transcend everyday life, and look

down upon materialism. At the same time Emerson defines the self-reliant hero, he also simultaneously

defines the loser as representing patriarchal corruption and decay. This is the Noir hero who rises and

falls, who is driven by greed for money and sex yet does not have a clear destination. For example, in

the film Detour, the piano player who hitchhikes in search of his girl attempts to cover up the

accidental death of the car owner who was driving him. He is not confidant that the police will believe

his story. As a result of his lack of faith in himself and his general pessimism, his big dreams of being

successful and marring the woman he loves crash down on him. He is hauled off to jail (in other noirs,

the protagonist dies) and in this way, similar to the cowboy, reaffirms the laws of his society. The

heroes of both genres are basically the same character, which is a man with a gun, and in noir, the

damsel in ‘distress’ gets him to kill for her.

To conclude, myths are transferable from culture to culture and are dynamic living things. The

hero of a young United States was found in the cowboy who was the defender of the American dream
and rides off into the blazing sunset toward a horizon of new beginnings. Modern societies need

mythical heroes as much as the ancients ones did, and the gangster or outlaw of the city is as American

as apple pie.
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