Since we are dealing with a visual medium we ought surely to look for our defining criteria in what we actually see on the screen. It is immediately apparent that there before our eyes is a whole range of "outer forms." There is, first of all, the setting, the chief glory of many of the films. Often it is outdoors, in very particular kinds of country: deserts, mountains, plains, woods. Or it is indoors--but again, special kinds of indoors: saloons, jails, courtrooms, ranch houses, hotels, riverboats, brothels--all places frequented by those who live an outdoor and/or wandering kind of life.

Then there are the clothes: wide-brimmed hats, open-neck shirts with scarves, tight jeans (which have become steadily tighter as the years have gone by), sometimes worn with leather chaps and almost always with spurs and high-heeled boots; or, alternatively, army uniforms or the wide but carefully distinguished variety of Indian costume. There are also certain clothes for specialist occupations. There are bootlace ties for gamblers and black gloves for psychopathic hired guns; a man who wears a watch chain is often a judge; and a black hat can denote a preacher; a bowler, a newspaperman. For women there are usually only two sorts of clothes: wide, full skirts and tight bodices or the more tomboyish jeans and shirt. (There is a third costume usually reserved for the Mexican girl or prostitute-often synonymous-in which the bodice is looser and the neckline appreciably lower.)

Third, there are the various tools of the trade, principally weapons, and of these, principally guns. They are usually specifically identified: Colt 45'S, Winchester and Springfield rifles, shotguns for certain situations (such as robbing banks or facing a numerically superior enemy), and, in westerns of an earlier period, single-shot, muzzle-loading muskets. Such care in the choice of weapons is not mere pedantry nor dictated purely by considerations of historical accuracy, for an incredible variety of arms were in use. The weapons employed in the films are there for largely stylistic reasons; consider, for example, the significant difference in the style of movement required to cock a Winchester and a Lee-Enfield 303. Other weapons have their place: knives, often the murderous looking Bowie type, whips (used by women or bullies), sometimes cannon for the military, and assorted Indian hardware, notably the bow and arrow. Again, there are specialist weapons. The man who wears a bootlace tie should be watched carefully in case he produces a Derringer.

Next in importance come horses, also used in formally differentiated ways. Indians ride barebacked or with only a blanket, a sign perhaps of their closeness to the animal world. White and black horses have frequently a symbolic function, and if a woman does not ride sidesaddle she is no lady, though not always the worse for that. Doctors and judges ride in a buggy, unless, like Doc Holliday, they have ceased to practice. We know, too, what kind of people travel in stagecoaches: in descending order of their entitlement to respect, women, gamblers, corset salesmen, Easterners.

Fourth, there is a large group of miscellaneous physical objects that recur and thereby take on a formal function. Trains are invariably of the same kind, with cowcatchers in front of the engine, carriages with a railed open platform at the back (useful for fights), and seats either side of a central aisle. Mines, general stores, and forts also feature largely, representing the corruption of money, the virtue of honest industry, and an oasis of strength in a hostile land. Indians, too, in spite of the more liberal attitudes of the last few years, are still primarily important not as people in their own right but as part of the setting.

All these things operate as formal elements. That is to say, the films are not "about" them any more than a sonnet is about fourteen lines in a certain meter. For example, Winchester 73 (Anthony Mann, 1950) is not about the gun, which is a mere connecting device to hold the story together. The film, like all films, is about people. Obviously the formal structure is looser than that of a sonnet; not all the elements need be present. But if we say that a western is a film that includes at least one of them (and of course the list is by no means exhaustive), then we are saying something both intelligible and useful. The visual conventions provide a framework within which the story can be told.

Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema,” Screen 11 (1970): 33-45.