Post-modern Westerns and the endangered woman

Abstract

This research essay explores the increasing scarcity of female roles in post-modern western films due to changes that have occurred over several decades since the origination of the genre.

A string of highly-acclaimed post-modern western films of the twenty-first century have an absence of major female characters, the cause of which stems from the way the genre has progressed since its inception. Classic westerns of the twentieth century had explicit representations of society and straightforward (albeit archaic) gender roles, each functioning in a direct manner to fulfil the plot, but as the genre has changed over several decades so has the representation of society, which has directly impacted the already limited female character. By understanding genre conventions of traditional twentieth-century western films, and then looking at how the representation of society has changed in certain post-modern westerns of the twentyfirst century, a link between the representation of society and the representation of women will be established, to understand what the female character means thematically to each film and why her role has become increasingly endangered in the genre.