The film 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' is typical of its genre through the icongraphies, narrative aspects, representations and ideologies that it uses. It has many features that are similar throughout the genre and make it recognisable as a Western film. There are four main areas that a Western film has that help it to be classified.
Icongraphies are the visual symbols that are decoded by the audience in order to establish the genre of the piece. Western films have many related objects and places that act as iconography, and are tell tale signs that the film is part of this genre. These aspects are pieces such as the costumes used for the characters, for example Stetson cowboy hats, shirts with beech coloured waist coats and cowboy boots. Another aspect are the props that are used in the films too, most commonly different kinds of hand guns and shot guns, boot spurs, sheriff badges and rope lassos. The setting is also included in the iconography of Western film as they mostly tend to be set in a desert location, with sandy roads and big, empty spaces. There's also the regular inclusion of a small town full of wooden huts that usually has a Saloon and a Jail that tie into this genre.
These simple visual codes translate to the audience and help them to effectively understand that the films with these features are similar and can be classified as traditional Western films. It allows the audience to therefore adjust their views and expectation according so they can interpret the film correctly.
Narrative aspects of the film industry include the structure, events and character roles that appear throughout the piece. In the Western film genre, the story usually has a central theme of the binary of civilisation and lawlessness and then evolves with many story lines being similar to East vs. West, Culture vs. Nature, Settlers vs. Indians or Community vs. Individuals. The films of the genre tend to have the common good vs. bad binary opposition structure. They also tend to use Todorov's theory of equilibrium, which is restored by the end of the film. The movies also normally involve certain events, depending on their features and storyline, such as a climatic gun fight, an Indian attack or a chivalrous rescue.
There is a traditional set of characters, similar to the theory that Propp put forward. The main character is almost always a good guy/hero or a bad guy with good intentions that's misunderstood. This 'hero' character tends to mediate between the two sides of the dispute - for example, he is normally caught in between the battle of civilisation and the lawless frontier. His motivations tend to be either revenge or a sense of justice and he usually ends up repairing the disagreements present at the start of the film and being commended or accepted in some way, either by being awarded a new title or gaining forgiveness and respect.
Another character role that is common in the Western film genre is the role of the bad guy. He's the character that causes all the trouble and the one that originally disrupts the equilibrium. By the end of the story, he usually gets his comeuppance through events such as being prosecuted, publicly shamed or killed.
There's also normally a princess, the character that the hero rescues or saves in some way, or changes his behaviour for. However, this is not true for all Western films, but most tend to feature a princess character in some way. In the concluding part of the film, the love story is normally completed and the hero and the princess end up together, again proving the equilibrium has been balanced again.
The representations of characters and areas throughout the film are another signal of a Western genre. In relation to the class, the poorer portion of the society featured in the piece tend to be either troublemakers or drunks and are depicted as quite stupid. The upper class characters tend to be the princess character, or the people who run the town and tend to have a bad opinion of the hero character to begin with. The hero only manages to change their opinion when he saves the day and earns their respect. As for the middle/working class characters, these tend to be where the hero and the villain fit in terms of wealth. They appear as normal people and tend to have a 'level-head' and a tight grip on reality as they go on their journey.
In relation to the race, religion and region of the characters, many tend to be white British or white American and some are depicted as Christians. Many characters of different races and ethnicities tend to be shown as the opposing side and as the 'bad guys' rather than the good ones. They don't tend to have a religion tied to them either. As for the region of Western films, many tend to be set in America, a trademark of this genre.
The representation of age in the Western film genre is different to many others, as while the 'princess' character tends to be young, the 'hero' tends to be a middle-aged man, rather than a strapping young gentleman. This gives the middle aged group of people more power and shows them as more dominant in this genre.
There are no differences of sexuality in Western films as, relative to the times when they are set, it was a sin to be anything other than hetrosexual and so all the relationships in the films attached to this genre remain between a man and a woman. A common feature of Western films is the overrepresentation of males in order to make them the more dominant character and more dominant sex. There tends to be the sole representation of women as the 'princess' and shows them as a damsel in distress. However, in some Western films, the 'princess' involved tends to be more masculine than a usual female character, but still ends up being a damsel in distress and has to be saved at some point throughout the film.
The last area that provides signs of a genre are the ideologies that it contains. Ideologies are the themes and the beliefs and ideas of the 'ideal'concept that are shown throughout a film and tend to be consistent throughout a genre.
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