The Western Genre Between Tradition and Change

This paper explores analyzes the gender bias of the Western genre, showing how western narratives stem from the perspective of men in a societal structure in which women occupy a central role only to the extent that it is assigned to them within the framework of a patriarchal ideology. The first part of the paper focuses on the emergence of the Western genre and I discuss the characteristics of the western hero. The second part of the paper focuses on the classical hypostases of the western heroine – “the damsel in distress”, “the prostitute with the heart of gold”, “the femme fatale” etc. I discuss the ideology behind the western movies and the way in which tropes and gendered stereotypes from early westerns are revisited and deconstructed in recent westerns, in the light of the theoretical framework of a new ideology which includes queer identities.