It's interesting, when I look at westerns, that most people look at westerns always in relationship to each other over time; my insitnct is to look at westerns in relation each to its own time, and what other movies are being made in that time. Except for the landscapes -- and those vary wildly too -- I don't see a consistency of theme like a lot of people do.

Oh, I do think most Westerns share a basic morality tale. The better ones are the ones where that morality has lots of shades of grey. Actually, despite the statement I made about Ford's growing sympathy for the Indians, I was just thinking about one of Ford's earlier movies - Fort Apache, I think - which had a very sympathetic view of the Otherness of Indians.

But I think you're right in the sense that Westerns, like any movies, are definitely a product of the times. I think it's more complex than that, though: there's a dialogue between Westerns as a genre over time, too, and I think that dialogue is sometimes more interesting than the context of time.

Whereas, I think Carter from Get Carter, and Lee Marvin in Point Blank, and Clint Eastwood in the Italian westerns -- have a lot in common.

Definitely. Spaghetti Westerns aren't like US Westerns. Those are good comparisons, because they're more like stylized gangster movies.

Edit - apologies for the serial Western posts.

Reavera as Indians iare not really the antagonist, though. The true antagonist in Fierefly is civilization versus savagery. Many Westerns use Indians to represent savagery--although nature itself is also savage and can be just as strong an antagonist. In Firefly, the crew is constantly fighting that savagery in themselves and in others. Greed, violence, fear, clannishness, selfishness, ignorance--those are the elements they fight and that is what makes it work for me. To say we have to have a group which equals Indians, seems reductivist to me.

The true antagonist in Fierefly is civilization versus savagery

What I meant was, you can do civilized vs. savage in many contexts -- you don't need cowboys and Indians. So although there is imagery of cowboys and Indians all over the show, the thematics are not, in fact, about cowboys and Indians at all. Or else there would be dispossessed natives on all those planets the crew keeps visiting. The term "Indian" in the phrase "cowboys and Indians" turns out to be an empty category.

It's cowboys and crazier cowboys, which is not the same kind of story. (And could as easily have been gentlemen and debauched gentlemen, if Joss had had a thing for duels at dawn.)

points toward "Shindig"...

Maybe Jane does?

Whereas, I think Carter from Get Carter, and Lee Marvin in Point Blank, and Clint Eastwood in the Italian westerns -- have a lot in common.

I must sit zazen with this for a while. I do think Carter is less of a cipher than the other two. He's more rooted and less enigmatic. Though once that particular story gets going, Carter is just as implacable. Might be interesting to compare Lee Marvin in Point Blank with Joe Don Baker in Charley Varrick. (Have you seen Charley Varrick, Nutty? You should.)

It's cowboys and crazier cowboys

More like space cowboys and cannibal pirates.

Space cowboys and cannibal space pirate cowboys!

Ipso facto quod erat demonstrandum.

I have not seen Charlie Varrick. I agree that Carter is the least enigmatic of the three of them; but the thing they have in common is the stylish implacable antiheroism as antidote to contemporary anxiety about masculine roles. I might even have put Bullitt in the mix as well, because Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was wearing a turtleneck to avoid the question of whether he ought to wear a necktie; but Bullitt is a good guy so it's kind of moot.

Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was wearing a turtleneck to avoid the question of whether he ought to wear a necktie

Wait a minute. Bullitt's biggest accomplishment was a car chase that went on for app. 32 hours (at least that's the way it was in my memory).

And this discussion may have run out of steam, but I do want to note that lots of Westerns, as I alluded in an earlier post, are cowboys vs. crazier cowboys. See Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, for instance. My problems with Firefly didn't have anything to do with the genre-play, but with some of the very strange choices they made in creating that universe. Overall, though, I give most of my misgivings a pass.

What I did really like about the Firefly universe was that they created a place which ensured moral ambiguities. They had characters like Inara and Simon and Book who had extremely different tensions with the core planets than Mal or Zoe.

Mal had to make dodgy choices all the time, and so the narrative always hinged on defining your morality instead of reversing the tachyon flow.

That's what I liked, too. My problems were that we were supposed to sympathize with states-rights Confederates (which is ambivalent at best and downright noxious at worst), accept that everyone curses in Chinese but never speak any other Chinese words, despite the fact that no Asian people ever appeared on the show, and deal with Mal's unfailing moral sense. I mean, I love moral struggle, but would prefer the guy with the shades of grey to be wrong occasionally and less in the thrall of his heart of gold. These problems were more major when the show was running, though. In retrospect, it was a B+ kinda show, which is heads and tails above the C- dreck TV usually serves up.

My problems with Firefly didn't have anything to do with the genre-play, but with some of the very strange choices they made in creating that universe.

It seemed to me that Firefly had the surface trappings of the genre but no actual understanding of What Makes Something A Western. Which is one of the things about it that pissed me off.

The "very strange choices" thing didn't help, either.