I would say one of the biggest roles of the woman in SWs is to die…
Either to A) give the gunman a reason to get pissed and kill people or B) provide a shock and additional drama towards the end of the film
As others have mentioned, there are certainly quite a few rape or attempted rape scenes in these films as well, I’d say mostly for the exploitation side of the genre… Basically these films are more or less about bad men and the women are usually used to re-enforce their baddyness.
Even in some of the films where the women have primary roles, say Frenchie King, they’re still prone to chauvinist ideas. The gang of women in Frenchie King is sitting around a fire at one point, discussing how they just want a man to bake pies for LOL. And this is the movie who’s tagline is “The West is no place for a man.”
There’s a pile of psycho-babble called Italian Cinema : Gender and Genre by Maggie Gunsberg (Professor of Italian, University of Manchester) published by palgrave macmillan - that you may wanna check out chapter 5 of - called The Man With No Name: Masculinity as Style in the Spaghetti Western.
“The spaghetti western is notorious for its memorable iconography of masculinity involved in sadomasochistic violence taken to surreal excess and displayed in close-up detail.” Sounds good so far ;D.
Then it goes on …
“It’s homosocial and predominantly homoerotic base allows little room, as a rule, for femininity and heterosexuality.” :o
It concludes its 40-odd pages with …
“The spaghetti western is especially concerned with the borderline between different genders, sexualities and races. It both investigates and polices the boundaries of masculinity against the the incursions of femininity and non-whiteness, invoking then denying male homoeroticism, and, on occasion, homosexuality. Ultimately, from a sociopolitical, as well as psychical, gender standpoint, the genre reinforces homosociality against the threat of gynosociality, a fundamental dynamic … blah blah blah … blagh!”
The section on masochism is a joy to read - it having the effect of producing homosexual (and denial of) erotic tension resulting from sadistic mutilation and legitimating the male body as the object of the (male) gaze.
I’m sure amongst all this stuff, that’d have all us red-blooded macho chap-types, down as closet gays, there may be summat of interest - maybe - and there is stuff on the absence and inclusion of a “fetishism of femininity”.
[quote=“Col. Douglas Mortimer, post:28, topic:1654”]I’ve never found anything homoerotic about SW’s. This maggie gunsberg is a magpie.[/quote]Django Kill? El Puro? Ruthless Four? Heck there’s even character called Frank the Fairy in Crazy Bunch. haha!
I may indeed write a bit about the legendary homosexual refferences which is said to be found… also thanks guys for the replies… why do you think women are treated lower than men in most SW also they seemed to change overtime eg. Post dollars (man with no name trilogy) do you think this due to the feminist movement of the 60’s?
i think confining low treatment to the women only in SWs is kind of a fallacy… i mean, pretty much everyone in an SW is treated very lowly except the main character and a few bandits… the shop keepers, hotel guys, kids, mexicans, non-bandit non-gunslinger dudes, etc…
edit for clarification
For the most part I don’t think spaghettis are sophisticated enough for over-analyzation … I think most characters in a spaghetti, woman or man, serve to either re-enforce how “bad” or “good” one of the main characters is
I’ve been studying China 9, Liberty 37 for a review and it has a strong female character. She is presented as something of a tramp who does not know what she has done. But she is shown in a favourable light and clearly knows yet fails to follow right and wrong. This is how many SW females are I think.
